"The Carriage" by Nikolai Gogol

The cob has fallen off them on account of the rain, and the walls, instead of white, have become piebald; the roofs are in most cases covered with thatch, as is usual in our southern towns; as for the gardens, they were cut down long ago on the mayor’s orders, to improve appearances.

The cob has fallen off them on account of the rain, and the walls, instead of white, have become piebald; the roofs are in most cases covered with thatch, as is usual in our southern towns; as for the gardens, they were cut down long ago on the mayor’s orders, to improve appearances.

Rarely, very rarely, some landowner possessed of eleven peasant souls, wearing a nankeen frock coat, would rattle down the street in something halfway between a cart and a britzka, peeking out from amidst a heap of flour sacks and whipping up a bay mare with a colt running behind her.

...further on, a fashionable plank fence stands all by itself, painted gray to match the color of the mud, erected as a model for other buildings by the mayor in the time of his youth, when he did not yet have the habit of napping directly after dinner and taking some sort of infusion of dried gooseberries before going to bed.

The little, low houses often saw passing by a trim, adroit officer with a plume on his head, on his way to visit a friend for a chat about horse breeding, or the excellence of tobacco, or occasionally for a game of cards, with what might be called the regimental droshky as the stake, because it managed to pass through everybody’s hands without ever leaving the regiment...

...today the major was driving around in it, tomorrow it turned up in the lieutenant’s stable, and a week later, lo and behold, again the major’s orderly was greasing it with lard.

In the middle of the square, a soldier with a mustache was sure to be soaping the beard of some village yokel, who merely grunted, rolling up his eyes.

Among the landowners, the most remarkable was Pythagor Pythagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats of the B. region, who made the biggest stir at the local elections, coming to them in a jaunty carriage.

At least he was seen at many balls and gatherings, wherever his regiment happened to migrate; the girls of Tambov and Simbirsk provinces might, incidentally, be asked about that.

It’s quite possible that his favorable repute would have spread to other provinces as well, if he had not retired on a certain occasion, usually known as an unpleasant incident: either he gave someone a slap in his earlier years, or he was given one, I don’t remember for sure, only the upshot was that he was asked to retire.

However, he by no means lost any of his dignity: wore a high-waisted tailcoat after the fashion of military uniforms, spurs on his boots, and a mustache under his nose, because otherwise the noblemen might have thought he had served in the infantry, which he sometimes scornfully called infantury and sometimes infantary.

With great adroitness he would leap from his light carriage or droshky before them and make their acquaintance extremely quickly.

He generally behaved with largesse, as they say in the districts and provinces, married a pretty little thing, with her got a dowry of two hundred souls plus several thousand in capital.

The capital went immediately on a sixsome of really fine horses, gilded door latches, a tame monkey for the house, and a Frenchman for a butler.

The general was stocky and corpulent himself, though a good commander in the officers' opinion.

The myriads of bottles—tall ones of Lafitte, short-necked ones of Madeira—the beautiful summer day, the windows all thrown wide open, the plates of ice on the table, the gentlemen officers with their bottom button unbuttoned, the owners of trim tailcoats with their shirt fronts all rumpled, the crisscross conversation dominated by the general’s voice and drowned in champagne—everything was in harmony with everything else.

“Please, my good fellow,” he added, turning to his aide-de-camp, a rather adroit young man of pleasant appearance, “tell them to bring the bay mare here! You’ll see for yourselves.”

Meanwhile, a soldier sprang out of the stable, the sound of hooves was heard, another finally appeared in a white coverall, with an enormous black mustache, leading by the bridle the twitching and shying horse, which, suddenly raising its head, all but raised the crouching soldier into the air along with his mustache.

The colonel himself stepped down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle.

“Very, very good,” said Chertokutsky, “a shapely horse! How’s her gait, Your Excellency, if I may ask?”

“Very, very nice. And do you have a corresponding equipage, Your Excellency?”
“Equipage? ...But this is a saddle horse.”

“I have a surpassing carriage, Your Excellency, real Viennese workmanship.”

Chertokutsky was extremely pleased to have invited the gentlemen officers; in anticipation, he ordered pâtés and sauces in his head, kept glancing very gaily at the gentlemen officers, who, for their part, also doubled their benevolence toward him, as could be noticed by their eyes and little gestures of a half-bowing sort.

Chertokutsky’s step grew somehow more casual, his voice more languid: it sounded like a voice heavy with pleasure.

Imperceptibly, a glass of punch turned up before him, which he, forgetting himself, drank straight off that same minute.

It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky almost inadvertently had sometimes to fill his glass because there were bottles standing to right and left of him.

One landowner who had served back in the campaign of 1812 told about a battle such as never took place, and then, for completely unknown reasons, removed the stopper from a decanter and stuck it into a pastry.

It was followed by another, a four-seater; in it sat the major, with the general’s aide-de-camp and two officers on the facing seats; following that carriage came the regimental droshky known to all the world, owned this time by the corpulent major; after the droshky came a four-place bonvoyage in which four officers sat holding a fifth on their lap...behind the bonvoyage three officers pranced on handsome dapple-bay horses.

“The master’s not at home,” said a lackey, coming out to the porch.

“Well, nothing special,” said the general, “a most ordinary carriage.”
“Most ungainly,” said the colonel, “absolutely nothing good about it.”