"If Colonel Koshkarev should turn out to be as mad as the last one it is a bad look-out," said Chichikov to himself on opening his eyes amid fields and open country--everything else having disappeared save the vault of heaven and a couple of low-lying clouds.
"Selifan," he went on, "did you ask how to get to Colonel Koshkarev's?""Yes, Paul Ivanovitch. At least, there was such a clatter around the koliaska that I could not; but Petrushka asked the coachman.""You fool! How often have I told you not to rely on Petrushka?
Petrushka is a blockhead, an idiot. Besides, at the present moment Ibelieve him to be drunk."
"No, you are wrong, barin," put in the person referred to, turning his head with a sidelong glance. "After we get down the next hill we shall need but to keep bending round it. That is all.""Yes, and I suppose you'll tell me that sivnkha is the only thing that has passed your lips? Well, the view at least is beautiful. In fact, when one has seen this place one may say that one has seen one of the beauty spots of Europe." This said, Chichikov added to himself, smoothing his chin: "What a difference between the features of a civilised man of the world and those of a common lacquey!"Meanwhile the koliaska quickened its pace, and Chichikov once more caught sight of Tientietnikov's aspen-studded meadows. Undulating gently on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline, and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The vehicle was comfort itself.
Swiftly there flew by clumps of osiers, slender elder trees, and silver-leaved poplars, their branches brushing against Selifan and Petrushka, and at intervals depriving the valet of his cap. Each time that this happened, the sullen-faced servitor fell to cursing both the tree responsible for the occurrence and the landowner responsible for the tree being in existence; yet nothing would induce him thereafter either to tie on the cap or to steady it with his hand, so complete was his assurance that the accident would never be repeated. Soon to the foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir, while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue iris and the yellow wood-tulip. Gradually the forest grew darker, as though eventually the obscurity would become complete. Then through the trunks and the boughs there began to gleam points of light like glittering mirrors, and as the number of trees lessened, these points grew larger, until the travellers debouched upon the shore of a lake four versts or so in circumference, and having on its further margin the grey, scattered log huts of a peasant village. In the water a great commotion was in progress. In the first place, some twenty men, immersed to the knee, to the breast, or to the neck, were dragging a large fishing-net inshore, while, in the second place, there was entangled in the same, in addition to some fish, a stout man shaped precisely like a melon or a hogshead. Greatly excited, he was shouting at the top of his voice: "Let Kosma manage it, you lout of a Denis! Kosma, take the end of the rope from Denis! Don't bear so hard on it, Thoma Bolshoy[1]! Go where Thoma Menshov[2] is! Damn it, bring the net to land, will you!" From this it became clear that it was not on his own account that the stout man was worrying. Indeed, he had no need to do so, since his fat would in any case have prevented him from sinking. Yes, even if he had turned head over heels in an effort to dive, the water would persistently have borne him up; and the same if, say, a couple of men had jumped on his back--the only result would have been that he would have become a trifle deeper submerged, and forced to draw breath by spouting bubbles through his nose. No, the cause of his agitation was lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging some additional peasants who were standing on the bank to lay hold of and to pull at, an extra rope or two.
[1] The Elder.
[2] The Younger.
"That must be the barin--Colonel Koshkarev," said Selifan.
"Why?" asked Chichikov.
"Because, if you please, his skin is whiter than the rest, and he has the respectable paunch of a gentleman."Meanwhile good progress was being made with the hauling in of the barin; until, feeling the ground with his feet, he rose to an upright position, and at the same moment caught sight of the koliaska, with Chichikov seated therein, descending the declivity.
"Have you dined yet?" shouted the barin as, still entangled in the net, he approached the shore with a huge fish on his back. With one hand shading his eyes from the sun, and the other thrown backwards, he looked, in point of pose, like the Medici Venus emerging from her bath.
"No," replied Chichikov, raising his cap, and executing a series of bows.
"Then thank God for that," rejoined the gentleman.
"Why?" asked Chichikov with no little curiosity, and still holding his cap over his head.
"Because of THIS. Cast off the net, Thoma Menshov, and pick up that sturgeon for the gentleman to see. Go and help him, Telepen Kuzma."With that the peasants indicated picked up by the head what was a veritable monster of a fish.
"Isn't it a beauty--a sturgeon fresh run from the river?" exclaimed the stout barin. "And now let us be off home. Coachman, you can take the lower road through the kitchen garden. Run, you lout of a Thoma Bolshoy, and open the gate for him. He will guide you to the house, and I myself shall be along presently."Thereupon the barelegged Thoma Bolshoy, clad in nothing but a shirt, ran ahead of the koliaska through the village, every hut of which had hanging in front of it a variety of nets, for the reason that every inhabitant of the place was a fisherman. Next, he opened a gate into a large vegetable enclosure, and thence the koliaska emerged into a square near a wooden church, with, showing beyond the latter, the roofs of the manorial homestead.
