Dead Souls - Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich.pdf - Cove Systems

needs to strain one's faculties to the utmost
before it becomes possible to pick out their
variously subtle, their almost invisible,
features. In short, one needs, before doing
this, to carry out a prolonged probing with the
aid of an insight sharpened in the acute school
of research.
Only God can say what Manilov's real
character was. A class of men exists whom the
proverb has described as "men unto
themselves, neither this nor that--neither
Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village."
And to that class we had better assign also
Manilov. Outwardly he was presentable
enough, for his features were not wanting in
amiability, but that amiability was a quality
into which there entered too much of the
sugary element, so that his every gesture, his
every attitude, seemed to connote an excess of
eagerness to curry favour and cultivate a
closer acquaintance. On first speaking to the
man, his ingratiating smile, his flaxen hair, and
his blue eyes would lead one to say, "What a