, which had become
marbled with ink-pots.

In the meantime a very important event for all Mirgorod had taken place.
The chief of police had given a reception. Whence shall I obtain the
brush and colours to depict this varied gathering and magnificent feast?
Take your watch, open it, and look what is going on inside. A fearful
confusion, is it not? Now, imagine almost the same, if not a greater,
number of wheels standing in the chief of police's courtyard. How many
carriages and waggons were there! One was wide behind and narrow in
front; another narrow behind and wide in front. One was a carriage and a
waggon combined; another neither a carriage nor a waggon. One resembled
a huge hayrick or a fat merchant's wife; another a dilapidated Jew or a
skeleton not quite freed from the skin. One was a perfect pipe with long
stem in profile; another, resembling nothing whatever, suggested some
strange, shapeless, fantastic object. In the midst of this chaos of
wheels rose coaches with windows like those of a room. The drivers, in
grey Cossack coats, gaberdines, and white hare-skin coats, sheepskin
hats and caps of various patterns, and with pipes in their hands, drove
the unharnessed horses through the yard.

What a reception the chief of police gave! Permit me to run through
the list of those who were there: Taras Tarasovitch, Evpl Akinfovitch,
Evtikhiy Evtikhievitch, Ivan Ivanovitch--not that Ivan Ivanovitch
but another--Gabba Bavrilonovitch, our Ivan Ivanovitch, Elevferiy
Elevferievitch, Makar Nazarevitch, Thoma Grigorovitch--I can say no
more: my powers fail me, my hand stops writing. And how many ladies were
there! dark and fair, tall and short, some fat like Ivan Nikiforovitch,
and some so thin that it seemed as though each one might hide herself
in the scabbard of the chief's sword. What head-dresses! what costumes!
red, yellow, coffee-colour, green, blue, new, turned, re-made dresses,
ribbons, reticules. Farewell, poor eyes! you will never be good for
anything any more after such a spectacle. And how long the table was
drawn out! and how all talked! and what a noise they made! What is
a mill with its driving-wheel, stones, beams, hammers, wheels, in
comparison with this? I cannot tell you exactly what they talked about,
but presumably of many agreeable and useful things, such as the weather,
dogs, wheat, caps, and dice. At length Ivan Ivanovitch--not our Ivan
Ivanovitch, but the other, who had but one eye--said, "It stri