Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/93

Rh a pestering fellow!' 'Yes, he is mischievous, he is mischievous,' his father usually replied: 'but there, what's to be done? It's too late to knock him about, besides every one would blame me for cruelty; and he is sensitive; reproach him before two or three other people, he'll be meek, but then the publicity! That is what is so dreadful! All the town would be calling him a cur. Do you really imagine that would not be painful—am I not his father? Because I am absorbed in philosophy and have not time to attend to my family, do you suppose I am not a father? No, indeed, I am his father! his father, hang it all, his father. Moky Kifovitch is very near and dear to me!' At this point Kifa Mokievitch smote himself on the chest with his fist and became greatly excited. 'If he is to remain a cur, don't let people learn it from me, don't let me give him away!' And having thus displayed his paternal sentiments, he left Moky Kifovitch to persevere in his heroic exploits and returned again to his favourite subject, asking himself some such question as: 'Well, if an elephant were hatched out of an egg I expect the shell would be pretty thick, you wouldn't break it with a cannon ball, they would have to invent some new explosive.' So thus they went on living, these two citizens who have so unexpectedly peeped out of their quiet retirement as out of a window into the end of our poem, in order to furnish a modest answer to the censures of some ardent patriots who have hitherto