Free Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolái Gógol Page A

soldier-watchman and only because he had drunk a glass too much of vodka. Not even Lieutenant Pirogov came to see the corpse of the unhappy creature to whom he had extended his great patronage when he was alive. As a matter of fact, he had no time for such things: he was busy with an amazing adventure. But let us turn to him. I do not like corpses and dead men and I always get an unpleasant feeling when a long funeral procession crosses my path and a disabled soldier dressed in some sort of capucine, takes a pinch of snuff with his left hand because his right is busy with a torch. I always feel heavy at heart when I see a rich catafalque and a velvet coffin; but my heaviness is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman taking away the red uncovered coffin of a poor man, with only a beggar woman ambling behind, since she met it at the crossroads and had no other business.
    I think we left Lieutenant Pirogov when he parted with poor Piskarev and followed the blonde. This blonde was an airy rather interesting little creature. She paused before each window and glanced at belts, kerchieves, ear-rings, gloves and other idle knick-knacks standing in the window, stared in all directions and glanced over her shoulders. “You’re mine, my dear!” Pirogov said confidently, continuing his pursuit and muffling his face in the collar of his greatcoat, in case he met anyone he knew. But the reader should be informed who this Lieutenant Pirogov was.
    But before we say who Lieutenant Pirogov was, it would be as well to describe the society in which Pirogov moved. There are officers who make up a kind of middle class in the society of St. Petersburg. At soirées, at dinners given by a councillor of state or an actual councillor of state who has attained this rank after forty years of toil, you will always meet one of these. Several pale daughters as completely colorless as St. Petersburg, some of whom are over-ripe, a tea-table, a piano, dancing in the drawing-room—all this is inseparable from the bright epaulette which shines in the lamplight between a well-behaved blonde and the black dress-coat of a brother or a friend of the family. These cold-blooded young women are very hard to move or make laugh; for this one must use great art, or more exactly, no art at all. You must speak neither too cleverly nor too wittily so that the trifles which all women love are included. In this one must give the above-mentioned gentlemen their due. They have a special gift for listening to these colorless beauties and making them laugh. Exclamations drowned in laughter: “Oh, do stop it! Aren’t you ashamed to make such jokes!” are often their highest reward. In the upper classes one meets them rarely, or rather, never. They are driven thence by what this class of society calls the aristocrats; however they are considered educated and well brought-up people. They like to discuss literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin and Grech and speak with scorn and barbed witticisms about A. A. Orlov. They never miss a single public lecture, whether it is about book-keeping or even about forestry. You will always meet one of them at the theatre whatever the piece, even if some sort of “Filatka” is on, which is an insult to their discerning taste. They are always at the theatre. They are the most useful people for the theatre directors. They are particularly fond of good verse in the drama and of calling loudly on the actors; many of them when taking the examinations for the civil service, or preparing for it, finally keep a cabriolet and pair. Then their circle of acquaintance widens. At last they attain to marriage with a merchant’s daughter who can play the piano and has a hundred thousand or thereabouts in ready cash and a heap of bearded relatives: but they cannot reach this honored state until they have at least become colonels; because Russian beards, despite the fact that they still give off an odour of cabbage will by