eir own eternal
fripperies and gewgaws. Lastly came a few empty drozhkis. As soon as the
latter had passed, our hero was able to continue on his way. Throwing
back the hood of the britchka, he said to himself:

"Ah, good friend, you have lived your life, and now it is over! In the
newspapers they will say of you that you died regretted not only by
your subordinates, but also by humanity at large, as well as that, a
respected citizen, a kind father, and a husband beyond reproach, you
went to your grave amid the tears of your widow and orphans. Yet, should
those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance which
justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back upon the
fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows!"

With that Chichikov bid Selifan quicken his pace, and concluded: "After
all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they say that
to meet a funeral is lucky."

Presently the britchka turned into some less frequented streets, lines
of wooden fencing of the kind which mark the outskirts of a town began
to file by, the cobblestones came to an end, the macadam of the highroad
succeeded to them, and once more there began on either side of the
turnpike a procession of verst stones, road menders, and grey villages;
inns with samovars and peasant women and landlords who came running out
of yards with seivefuls of oats; pedestrians in worn shoes which, it
might be, had covered eight hundred versts; little towns, bright with
booths for the sale of flour in barrels, boots, small loaves, and other
trifles; heaps of slag; much repaired bridges; expanses of field to
right and to left; stout landowners; a mounted soldier bearing a green,
iron-clamped box inscribed: "The --th Battery of Artillery"; long strips
of freshly-tilled earth which gleamed green, yellow, and black on the
face of the countryside. With it mingled long-drawn singing, glimpses of
elm-tops amid mist, the far-off notes of bells, endless clouds of rocks,
and the illimitable line of the horizon.

Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still
see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you
the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature which
a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities
with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque
trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlastin