Read Online Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolái Gógol - Free Book Online

all to rude.... He stood behind her chair, not daring to speak or even to breathe. “You were bored?” she said: “I was bored, too. I see you hate me,” she added, dropping her long lashes.
    â€œHate you? I? I . . .” Piskarev, who was completely bewildered, wanted to say, and he probably would have uttered a whole heap of disconnected words, but at this moment a chamberlain came up with witty and pleasant remarks and a wonderfully curled quiff on his head. He showed rather pleasantly a row of quite tolerable teeth and with each witticism drove a sharp nail into Piskarev’s heart. At last someone, luckily, turned to the chamberlain with some sort of question.
    â€œHow intolerable it is!” said she, raising her heavenly eyes to his. “I shall sit down at the other end of the ballroom; be there!” She slipped through the crowd and vanished. He pushed his way through like a madman and was there.
    Was this she? She sat like a queen, superior to all, more beautiful than all and searched for him with her eyes.
    â€œAre you there?” she murmured softly. “I shall be frank with you: the circumstances of our meeting probably seem strange to you. Can you possibly think that I could belong to the despised class among whom you met me? My actions will seem odd to you, but I will let you into a secret. Can I rely on you never to divulge it?” and she fixed her eyes earnestly upon him.
    â€œOh, you can, you can, you can! . . .”
    But at this moment a rather elderly man came up, said something to her in a language Piskarev could not understand and gave her his arm. She gave Piskarev an imploring look and signed to him to remain where he was till she returned, but in a fit of impatience he had not the strength of mind to listen to any bidding, even to one from her lips. He set off to follow her; but the crowd parted them. He could no longer see the lilac dress; he walked from one room into another anxiously and pushed everyone who got in his way mercilessly, but in every room there were important personages at whist, buried in a dead silence. In one corner several elderly people were arguing about the superiority of a military as opposed to a civil career; in another a group of young people in wonderful dress-coats made casual remarks about the voluminous labors of a hard-working poet. Piskarev felt an elderly man of reverend aspect seize him by the button of his frock-coat and put forward some judicious remarks for his consideration, but he pushed him aside rudely, without even noticing that the man was wearing a rather important decoration round his neck. He rushed into another room . . . she was not there. Into a third . . . or there either. “Where is she? Give her to me! Oh, I can’t live without seeing her! I want to hear what she was trying to tell me!” But his search proved vain. Anxious and worn out, he leant against a pillar and searched the throng; but his eyes were overstrained and showed him everything in a blurred way. Finally, the walls of his own room appeared clearly to him. He raised his eyes; a candlestick stood before him, the light almost out at its base; the whole candle had melted; the grease lay on his dilapidated table.
    So he had been asleep! God, what a wonderful dream! Why had he woken up? Why hadn’t he waited one minute longer? she would probably have appeared again! A disappointing dawn looked in at his window with its unpleasant dim light. His room was in such a grey, dull disorder. . . . Oh, how repulsive reality was! What was it beside the dream? He undressed hurriedly and lay down in bed wrapped in a blanket, desiring to bring the vanished dream-vision back by force. Sleep was not slow to overtake him, only it showed him everything but what he wanted to see: how Lieutenant Pirogov appeared with his pipe, now the porter from the academy, or an actual councillor of state, or the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had once