away
in every direction, like crabs released from a net, and, but for the
assistance mentioned, Selifan would have found himself left to his own
devices. Presently she pointed to a building ahead, with the words,
"THERE is the main road."
"And what is the building?" asked Selifan.
"A tavern," she said.
"Then we can get along by ourselves," he observed. "Do you get down, and
be off home."
With that he stopped, and helped her to alight--muttering as he did so:
"Ah, you blackfooted creature!"
Chichikov added a copper groat, and she departed well pleased with her
ride in the gentleman's carriage.
CHAPTER IV
On reaching the tavern, Chichikov called a halt. His reasons for this
were twofold--namely, that he wanted to rest the horses, and that he
himself desired some refreshment. In this connection the author feels
bound to confess that the appetite and the capacity of such men are
greatly to be envied. Of those well-to-do folk of St. Petersburg and
Moscow who spend their time in considering what they shall eat on the
morrow, and in composing a dinner for the day following, and who never
sit down to a meal without first of all injecting a pill and then
swallowing oysters and crabs and a quantity of other monsters, while
eternally departing for Karlsbad or the Caucasus, the author has but a
small opinion. Yes, THEY are not the persons to inspire envy. Rather,
it is the folk of the middle classes--folk who at one posthouse call for
bacon, and at another for a sucking pig, and at a third for a steak of
sturgeon or a baked pudding with onions, and who can sit down to table
at any hour, as though they had never had a meal in their lives, and
can devour fish of all sorts, and guzzle and chew it with a view
to provoking further appetite--these, I say, are the folk who enjoy
heaven's most favoured gift. To attain such a celestial condition the
great folk of whom I have spoken would sacrifice half their serfs and
half their mortgaged and non-mortgaged property, with the foreign and
domestic improvements thereon, if thereby they could compass such
a stomach as is possessed by the folk of the middle class. But,
unfortunately, neither money nor real estate, whether improved or
non-improved, can purchase such a stomach.
The little wooden tavern, with its narrow, but hospitable, curtain
suspended from a pair of rough-hewn doorposts like old church
candlesticks, seemed to invite Chichikov to enter. True, the
establish
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