polite? If Ivan
Nikiforovitch had set to work in any other manner, if he had only said
bird and not goose, it might still have been arranged, but all was at an
end.

He gave one look at Ivan Nikiforovitch, but such a look! If that look
had possessed active power, then it would have turned Ivan Nikiforovitch
into dust. The guests understood the look and hastened to separate them.
And this man, the very model of gentleness, who never let a single poor
woman go by without interrogating her, rushed out in a fearful rage.
Such violent storms do passions produce!

For a whole month nothing was heard of Ivan Ivanovitch. He shut himself
up at home. His ancestral chest was opened, and from it were taken
silver rubles, his grandfather's old silver rubles! And these rubles
passed into the ink-stained hands of legal advisers. The case was sent
up to the higher court; and when Ivan Ivanovitch received the joyful
news that it would be decided on the morrow, then only did he look out
upon the world and resolve to emerge from his house. Alas! from that
time forth the council gave notice day by day that the case would be
finished on the morrow, for the space of ten years.

Five years ago, I passed through the town of Mirgorod. I came at a bad
time. It was autumn, with its damp, melancholy weather, mud and mists.
An unnatural verdure, the result of incessant rains, covered with a
watery network the fields and meadows, to which it is as well suited
as youthful pranks to an old man, or roses to an old woman. The weather
made a deep impression on me at the time: when it was dull, I was dull;
but in spite of this, when I came to pass through Mirgorod, my heart
beat violently. God, what reminiscences! I had not seen Mirgorod for
twenty years. Here had lived, in touching friendship, two inseparable
friends. And how many prominent people had died! Judge Demyan
Demyanovitch was already gone: Ivan Ivanovitch, with the one eye, had
long ceased to live.

I entered the main street. All about stood poles with bundles of straw
on top: some alterations were in progress. Several dwellings had been
removed. The remnants of board and wattled fences projected sadly here
and there. It was a festival day. I ordered my basket chaise to stop in
front of the church, and entered softly that no one might turn round. To
tell the truth, there was no need of this: the church was almost empty;
there were very few people; it was evident that even the most pious
f