But why pay her so much attention?
The Widow Korobotchka, Madame Manilov, domestic life, non-domestic life--away with them all! How strangely are things compounded! In a trice may joy turn to sorrow, should one halt long enough over it: in a trice only God can say what ideas may strike one.

You may fall even to thinking: "After all, did Madame Korobotchka stand so very low in the scale of human perfection?
Was there really such a very great gulf between her and Madame Manilov--between her and the Madame Manilov whom we have seen entrenched behind the walls of a genteel mansion in which there were a fine staircase of wrought metal and a number of rich carpets; the Madame Manilov who spent most of her time in yawning behind half-read books, and in hoping for a visit from some socially distinguished person in order that she might display her wit and carefully rehearsed thoughts--thoughts which had been de rigeur in town for a week past, yet which referred, not to what was going on in her household or on her estate--both of which properties were at odds and ends, owing to her ignorance of the art of managing them--but to the coming political revolution in France and the direction in which fashionable Catholicism was supposed to be moving?
But away with such things! Why need we speak of them?
Yet how comes it that suddenly into the midst of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter another, and a very different, tendency ?--that the smile may not have left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen there ?...
"Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!" exclaimed Chichikov on perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing.

"Ah, you blockhead!" he went on to Selifan.

"Why have you been loitering about?
I suppose last night's fumes have not yet left your brain ?" To this Selifan returned no reply.
"Good-bye, madam," added the speaker.

"But where is the girl whom you promised me ?" "Here, Pelagea!" called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so encrusted were they with fresh mire.