Dead Souls - Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich.pdf - Cove Systems

amenity! That is to say, having served both
God and the State, the stout individual has won
universal respect, and will end by retiring
from business, reordering his mode of life, and
becoming a Russian landowner--in other
words, a fine gentleman who dispenses
hospitality, lives in comfort and luxury, and is
destined to leave his property to heirs who are
purposing to squander the same on foreign
travel.
That the foregoing represents pretty much
the gist of Chichikov's reflections as he stood
watching the company I will not attempt to
deny. And of those reflections the upshot was
that he decided to join himself to the stouter
section of the guests, among whom he had
already recognised several familiar
faces--namely, those of the Public Prosecutor
(a man with beetling brows over eyes which
seemed to be saying with a wink, "Come into
the next room, my friend, for I have something
to say to you"--though, in the main, their owner
was a man of grave and taciturn habit), of the