How many brichkas [traps] and wagons were there! One was wide behind and narrow in front; another narrow behind and wide in front. One was a brichka and wagon combined; another neither a brichka nor a wagon. One resembled a huge hayrick, or a fat merchant’s wife; another a dilapidated Jew, or a skeleton not quite freed from the skin. One was a perfect pipe with long stem in profile; another, resembling nothing whatever, suggested some strange, utterly formless, and exceedingly fantastic, being. In the midst of this chaos of wheels and carriage-boxes, rose the semblances of coaches, with windows like those of a room, crossed with broad frames.

The coachmen, in gray Cossack coats, svitkas [tunics], and white hare coats, with sheepskin hats and caps of various patterns, and pipes in their hands, drove the unharnessed horses through the yard. What a reception the chief of police gave! Permit me to run through the list of those who were there: Taras Tarasovich, Evpl Akinfovich, Evtikhii Evtikhievich, Ivan Ivanovich—not that Ivan Ivanovich, but another—Gabba Gavrilonovich, our Ivan Ivanovich, Elevferii Elevferievich, Makar Nazarevich, Foma Grigorovich… I can do no more: my powers fail me, my hand ceases to write.

And how many ladies were there! dark and fair and short, fat like Ivan Nikiforovich, and some so thin that it seemed as though each one might hide herself in the scabbard of the chief’s sword. What head- dresses! what costumes!—red, yellow, coffee-color, green, blue, new, turned, made over—dresses, ribbons, reticules. Farewell, poor eyes! you will never be good for any thing any more after this spectacle.

And how long the table was drawn out! and how all talked! and what a humming they made! What is a mill with its driving-wheel, stones, beams, hammers, wheels, in comparison with this? I cannot tell you exactly what they talked about, but presumably of many agreeable and useful things, such as the weather, dogs, wheat, caps, and dice. At length Ivan Ivanovich—not that Ivan Ivanovich, but the other, who had but one eye—said, “It strikes me as strange that my right eye [one-eyed Ivan Ivanovich always spoke sarcastically about himself] does not see Ivan Nikiforovich, Mr. Dovgochkhun.”

“He would not come,” said the chief of police.

“Why not?”

“It’s two years now, glory to God! since they quarrelled; that is, Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich: and where one goes, the other will not go.”

“You don’t say so!” Thereupon one-eyed Ivan Ivanovich raised his eye, and clasped his hands. “Well, if people with good eyes cannot live in peace, how am I to live amicably, with my bad eye?” At these words, all laughed at the tops of their voices. All loved one-eyed Ivan Ivanovich, because he cracked jokes quite in the style of the present one. A tall, thin man in a frieze coat, with a plaster on his nose, who up to this time had sat in the corner, and never once altered the expression of his face, even when a fly lighted on his nose—this gentleman rose from his seat, and approached nearer to the crowd which surrounded one-eyed Ivan Ivanovich. “Listen,” said one-eyed Ivan Ivanovich, when he perceived that quite a throng had collected about him; “see here: instead of gazing at my bad eye, suppose we make peace between our friends. Ivan Ivanovich is talking with the women and girls;… let us go quietly for Ivan Nikiforovich, and bring them together.”

Ivan Ivanovich’s proposal was unanimously agreed to; and it was decided to send at once to Ivan Nikiforovich’s house, and beg him, at any rate, to come to the chief of police’s for dinner. But the difficult question as to who was to be intrusted with this weighty commission rendered all thoughtful. They debated long as to who was the most fitted for, and expert in, diplomatic matters. At length it was unanimously agreed to depute Anton Prokofievich Golopuz for this business.

But it is necessary, first of all, to make the reader somewhat acquainted with this noteworthy person. Anton Prokofievich was a truly virtuous man, in the fullest meaning of the term. If any one in Mirgorod gives him a neckerchief or underclothes, he returns thanks; if any one gives him a fillip on the nose—he returns thanks then also. If he was asked, “Why, Anton Prokofievich, have you a light brown coat