Read Online The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolái Gógol - Free Book Online

sacks?” Oksana picked up.“Let’s quickly take them to my house and have a better look at what he’s stuffed into them.”
    Everyone laughingly accepted this suggestion.
    “But we can’t lift them!” the whole crowd suddenly cried, straining to move the sacks.
    “Wait,” said Oksana, “let’s run and fetch a sled, we can take them on a sled.”
    And the crowd ran to fetch a sled.
    The prisoners were very weary of sitting in the sacks, though the deacon had made himself a big hole with his finger.If it hadn’t been for the people, he might have found a way to get out; but to get out of a sack in front of everybody, to make himself a laughingstock … this held him back, and he decided to wait, only groaning slightly under Choub’s uncouth boots.Choub himself had no less of a wish for freedom, feeling something under him that was terribly awkward to sit on.But once he heard his daughter’s decision, he calmed down and no longer wanted to get out, considering that to reach his house one would have to walk at least a hundred paces, maybe two.If he got out, he would have to straighten his clothes, button his coat, fasten his belt—so muchwork!And the hat with earflaps had stayed at Solokha’s.Better let the girls take him on a sled.But it happened not at all as Choub expected.Just as the girls went off to fetch the sled, the skinny chum was coming out of the tavern, upset and in low spirits.The woman who kept the tavern was in no way prepared to give him credit; he had waited in hopes some pious squire might come and treat him; but, as if on purpose, all the squires stayed home like honest Christians and ate kutya in the bosom of their families.Reflecting on the corruption of morals and the wooden heart of the Jewess who sold the drink, the chum wandered into the sacks and stopped in amazement.
    “Look what sacks somebody’s left in the road!” he said, glancing around.“There must be pork in them.Somebody’s had real luck to get so much stuff for his caroling!What frightful sacks!Suppose they’re stuffed with buckwheat loaves and lard biscuits—that’s good enough.If it’s nothing but flatbread, that’s already something: the Jewess gives a dram of vodka for each flatbread.I’ll take it quick, before anybody sees me.” Here he hauled the sack with Choub and the deacon onto his shoulders, but felt it was too heavy.“No, it’s too heavy to carry alone,” he said, “but here, as if on purpose, comes the weaver Shapuvalenko.Good evening, Ostap!”
    “Good evening,” said the weaver, stopping.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Dunno, wherever my legs take me.”
    “Help me, good man, to carry these sacks!Somebody went caroling and then dropped them in the middle of the road.We’ll divide the goods fifty-fifty.”
    “Sacks?And what’s in the sacks, wheat loaves or flatbread?”
    “I suppose there’s everything in them.”
    Here they hastily pulled sticks from a wattle fence, put a sack on them, and carried it on their shoulders.
    “Where are we taking it?to the tavern?” the weaver asked as they went.
    “That’s what I was thinking—to the tavern.But the cursed Jewess won’t believe us, she’ll think we stole it; besides, I just came from the tavern.We’ll take it to my place.No one will be in our way: my wife isn’t home.”
    “You’re sure she’s not home?” the prudent weaver asked.
    “Thank God, we’ve still got some wits left,” said the chum, “the devil if I’d go where she is.I suppose she’ll be dragging about with the women till dawn.”
    “Who’s there?” cried the chum’s wife, hearing the noise in the front hall produced by the two friends coming in with the sack, and she opened the door.
    The chum was dumbfounded.
    “There you go!” said the weaver, dropping his arms.
    The chum’s wife was a treasure of a sort not uncommon in the wide world.Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old