Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/247

times on the bed, which creaked mercilessly, he fell asleep like a genuine Kherson landowner. Meanwhile Petrushka carried out into the passage his master's breeches and his shot cranberry-coloured coat, and spreading them out on a wooden hatstand began beating and brushing them, filling the whole corridor with dust. As he was about to take the clothes down, he glanced over the banisters, and saw Selifan coming in from the stable. Their eyes met, they understood each other: the master had gone to sleep and they could go and look in somewhere. Instantly taking the coat and trousers into the room, Petrushka went downstairs and they set off together, without one word to each other as to the object of their journey, chattering on the way upon quite extraneous matters. They did not walk far: in fact they only went to the other side of the street to a house that was opposite the hotel, and in at a low grimy glass door, which led down almost to the cellar, where many people of different sorts, shaven and unshaven, in plain sheepskins or simply in their shirt sleeves, and here and there a frieze overcoat, were sitting at the wooden tables. What Petrushka and Selifan did there, God only knows; but they came out an hour later, arm in arm, maintaining complete silence, showing great solicitude for each other, and steering each other clear of all corners. Still arm in arm they spent a quarter of an hour getting up the stairs, at last got the better of them and reached the top. Petrushka