long enough over it: in a trice only God can say what ideas may strike
one. You may fall even to thinking: "After all, did Madame Korobotchka
stand so very low in the scale of human perfection? Was there really
such a very great gulf between her and Madame Manilov--between her and
the Madame Manilov whom we have seen entrenched behind the walls of a
genteel mansion in which there were a fine staircase of wrought metal
and a number of rich carpets; the Madame Manilov who spent most of her
time in yawning behind half-read books, and in hoping for a visit from
some socially distinguished person in order that she might display her
wit and carefully rehearsed thoughts--thoughts which had been de rigeur
in town for a week past, yet which referred, not to what was going on
in her household or on her estate--both of which properties were at odds
and ends, owing to her ignorance of the art of managing them--but to
the coming political revolution in France and the direction in which
fashionable Catholicism was supposed to be moving? But away with such
things! Why need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into
the midst of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter
another, and a very different, tendency?--that the smile may not have
left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or
her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that
the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen
there?...

"Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!" exclaimed Chichikov on
perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing. "Ah, you blockhead!" he
went on to Selifan. "Why have you been loitering about? I suppose last
night's fumes have not yet left your brain?"

To this Selifan returned no reply.

"Good-bye, madam," added the speaker. "But where is the girl whom you
promised me?"

"Here, Pelagea!" called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was
dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet
which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so
encrusted were they with fresh mire. "Here, Pelagea! Come and show this
gentleman the way."

Selifan helped the girl to ascend to the box-seat. Placing one foot upon
the step by which the gentry mounted, she covered the said step with
mud, and then, ascending higher, attained the desired position beside
the coachman. Chichikov followed in her wake (causing the britchka to
heel ove