"Selifan," he went on, "did you ask how to get to Colonel Koshkarev's?"

"Yes, Paul Ivanovitch. At least, there was such a clatter around the
koliaska that I could not; but Petrushka asked the coachman."

"You fool! How often have I told you not to rely on Petrushka? Petrushka
is a blockhead, an idiot. Besides, at the present moment I believe him
to be drunk."

"No, you are wrong, barin," put in the person referred to, turning his
head with a sidelong glance. "After we get down the next hill we shall
need but to keep bending round it. That is all."

"Yes, and I suppose you'll tell me that sivnkha is the only thing that
has passed your lips? Well, the view at least is beautiful. In fact,
when one has seen this place one may say that one has seen one of
the beauty spots of Europe." This said, Chichikov added to himself,
smoothing his chin: "What a difference between the features of a
civilised man of the world and those of a common lacquey!"

Meanwhile the koliaska quickened its pace, and Chichikov once more
caught sight of Tientietnikov's aspen-studded meadows. Undulating gently
on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline,
and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and
jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a
molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The vehicle was comfort itself.

Swiftly there flew by clumps of osiers, slender elder trees, and
silver-leaved poplars, their branches brushing against Selifan and
Petrushka, and at intervals depriving the valet of his cap. Each time
that this happened, the sullen-faced servitor fell to cursing both the
tree responsible for the occurrence and the landowner responsible for
the tree being in existence; yet nothing would induce him thereafter
either to tie on the cap or to steady it with his hand, so complete was
his assurance that the accident would never be repeated. Soon to the
foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir,
while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue
iris and the yellow wood-tulip. Gradually the forest grew darker, as
though eventually the obscurity would become complete. Then through
the trunks and the boughs there began to gleam points of light like
glittering mirrors, and as the number of trees lessened, these points
grew larger, until the travellers debouched upon the shore of a lake
four versts or so in circumferen