hundred roubles," and the other "about eight hundred." The brother-in-law inspected the articles in question, and then shook his head as before. Next, the visitors were shown some "real Turkish" daggers, of which one bore the inadvertent inscription, "Saveli Sibiriakov,[1] Master Cutler." Then came a barrel-organ, on which Nozdrev started to play some tune or another. For a while the sounds were not wholly unpleasing, but suddenly something seemed to go wrong, for a mazurka started, to be followed by "Marlborough has gone to the war," and to this, again, there succeeded an antiquated waltz. Also, long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle, one particularly shrill-pitched pipe which had, throughout, refused to harmonise with the rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own account. Then followed an exhibition of tobacco pipes—pipes of clay, of wood, of meerschaum, pipes smoked and non-smoked; pipes wrapped in chamois leather and not so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake won at cards) and a tobacco pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some countess who had fallen in love with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred to constitute the "sublimity of superfluity"—a term which, in the Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to signify the acme of perfection).
Finally, after some hors-d'oeuvres of sturgeon's back, they sat down to table—the time being then nearly five o'clock. But the meal did not constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken, seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked, and others were scarcely cooked at all. Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly to inspiration—she had laid hold of the first thing which had happened to come to hand. For instance, had pepper represented the nearest article within reach, she had added pepper wholesale. Had a cabbage chanced to be so encountered, she had pressed it also into the service. And the same with milk, bacon, and peas. In short, her rule seemed to have been "Make a hot dish of some sort, and some sort of a taste will result." For the rest, Nozdrev drew heavily upon the wine. Even before the soup had been served, he had poured out for each guest a bumper of port and another of "haut" sauterne. (Never in provincial towns is ordinary, vulgar sauterne even procurable). Next, he called for a bottle of madeira—"as fine a tipple as ever a field-marshal drank"; but the madeira only burnt the mouth, since the dealers, familiar with the taste of our landed gentry (who love
- ↑ That is to say, a distinctively Russian name.
