 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Read by Nikolas Bolton for Maxis Audiobooks BOOK ONE CHAPTER ONE A rather pretty little shays on springs, such as bachelors, half-pay officers, staff captains, landowners with about a hundred serfs—in short, all such as are spoken of as gentlemen of the middling sort, drive about in—rolled in at the gates at the hotel of the provincial town of N. In the shays sat a gentleman, not handsome, but not bad-looking, not too stout, and not too thin. It could not be said that he was old, neither could he be described as extremely young. His arrival in the town created no sensation whatever, and was not accompanied by anything remarkable. Only two Russian peasants standing at the door of the tavern facing the hotel made some observations with reference, however, rather to the carriage and to its occupant. "'My eye,' said one to the other, "'isn't that a wheel? What do you think? Would that wheel, if so, it chance to get to Moscow? Or would it never get there?' "'It would,' answered the other. "'But to Kazan now, I don't think it would get there.' "'It wouldn't get to Kazan,' answered the other. "'With that,' the conversation ended. Moreover, just as the shays drove up to the hotel, it was met by a young man in extremely short and narrow white canvas trousers, in a coat with fashionable cutaway tails, and a shirt-front fastened with a tulip breast-pin adorned with a bronze pistol. The young man turned round, stared at the shays holding his cap which was almost flying off in the wind, and went on his way. When the shays drove into the yard, the gentleman was met by a hotel servant—waiter, as they are called in the restaurants—a fellow so brisk and rapid in his movements that it was impossible to distinguish his countenance. He ran out nimbly with a dinner napkin in his hand, a long figure wearing a long frockcoat made of some cotton mixture, with the waist almost up to the nape of his neck, tossed his locks, and nimbly led the gentleman upstairs along the whole length of a wooden gallery to show the guest to the room Providence had sent him. The room was of the familiar type, but the hotel, too, was of the familiar type. That is, it was precisely like the hotels in provincial towns where, for two roubles a day, travellers get a quiet room with black beetles peeping out of every corner like prunes, and a door always barricaded with a chest of drawers into the next apartment, of which the occupant, a quiet and taciturn but excessively inquisitive person, is interested in finding out every detail relating to the newcomer. The out-of-a-sard of the hotel corresponded with its internal peculiarities. It was a very long building of two stories, the lower store— Sample complete. Ready to continue?