van Ivanovitch generally inquired.

"How should it be otherwise? I am as hungry as a dog."

"Hm!" replied Ivan Ivanovitch usually, "and perhaps you would like
butter too?"

"Yes; everything which your kindness will give; I will be content with
all."

"Hm! Is butter better than bread?"

"How is a hungry person to choose? Anything you please, all is good."
Thereupon the old woman generally extended her hand.

"Well, go with God's blessing," said Ivan Ivanovitch. "Why do you stand
there? I'm not beating you." And turning to a second and a third with
the same questions, he finally returns home, or goes to drink a little
glass of vodka with his neighbour, Ivan Nikiforovitch, or the judge, or
the chief of police.

Ivan Ivanovitch is very fond of receiving presents. They please him
greatly.

A very fine man too is Ivan Nikiforovitch. They are such friends as the
world never saw. Anton Prokofievitch Pupopuz, who goes about to this
hour in his cinnamon-coloured surtout with blue sleeves and dines every
Sunday with the judge, was in the habit of saying that the Devil himself
had bound Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch together with a rope:
where one went, the other followed.

Ivan Nikiforovitch has never married. Although it was reported that
he was married it was completely false. I know Ivan Nikiforovitch very
well, and am able to state that he never even had any intention of
marrying. Where do all these scandals originate? In the same way it
was rumoured that Ivan Nikiforovitch was born with a tail! But this
invention is so clumsy and at the same time so horrible and indecent
that I do not even consider it necessary to refute it for the benefit of
civilised readers, to whom it is doubtless known that only witches, and
very few even of these, have tails. Witches, moreover, belong more to
the feminine than to the masculine gender.

In spite of their great friendship, these rare friends are not always
agreed between themselves. Their characters can best be judged by
comparing them. Ivan Ivanovitch has the usual gift of speaking in an
extremely pleasant manner. Heavens! How he does speak! The feeling can
best be described by comparing it to that which you experience when some
one combs your head or draws his finger softly across your heel. You
listen and listen until you drop your head. Pleasant, exceedingly
pleasant! like the sleep after a bath. Ivan Nikiforovitch, on the
contrary, is more reticent; but if he on