sant.

"What? You don't know skinflint Plushkin who feeds his people so badly?"

"Of course I do!" exclaimed the fellow, and added thereto an
uncomplimentary expression of a species not ordinarily employed in
polite society. We may guess that it was a pretty apt expression, since
long after the man had become lost to view Chichikov was still laughing
in his britchka. And, indeed, the language of the Russian populace is
always forcible in its phraseology.

CHAPTER VI

Chichikov's amusement at the peasant's outburst prevented him from
noticing that he had reached the centre of a large and populous village;
but, presently, a violent jolt aroused him to the fact that he was
driving over wooden pavements of a kind compared with which the
cobblestones of the town had been as nothing. Like the keys of a piano,
the planks kept rising and falling, and unguarded passage over them
entailed either a bump on the back of the neck or a bruise on the
forehead or a bite on the tip of one's tongue. At the same time
Chichikov noticed a look of decay about the buildings of the village.
The beams of the huts had grown dark with age, many of their roofs were
riddled with holes, others had but a tile of the roof remaining, and yet
others were reduced to the rib-like framework of the same. It would
seem as though the inhabitants themselves had removed the laths and
traverses, on the very natural plea that the huts were no protection
against the rain, and therefore, since the latter entered in bucketfuls,
there was no particular object to be gained by sitting in such huts when
all the time there was the tavern and the highroad and other places to
resort to.

Suddenly a woman appeared from an outbuilding--apparently the
housekeeper of the mansion, but so roughly and dirtily dressed as almost
to seem indistinguishable from a man. Chichikov inquired for the master
of the place.

"He is not at home," she replied, almost before her interlocutor had had
time to finish. Then she added: "What do you want with him?"

"I have some business to do," said Chichikov.

"Then pray walk into the house," the woman advised. Then she turned upon
him a back that was smeared with flour and had a long slit in the lower
portion of its covering. Entering a large, dark hall which reeked like
a tomb, he passed into an equally dark parlour that was lighted only by
such rays as contrived to filter through a crack under the door. When
Chichikov opened the door