The Works of Nikolai Gogol, Vol. 1

From his boots, no one in the entire farm would say you could smell tar; but everyone knew he cleaned them with the very best lard, which, I think, many a peasant would gladly put into his porridge. Neither would anyone say that he ever wiped his nose with the hem of his gown, as some people of his rank do; instead, he would take from his breast a neatly folded, white handkerchief, embroidered along all its edges with red thread, and after setting right what needed to be, he would fold it again, as was his habit, into twelve parts, and tuck it back into his breast. And one of the guests... well, he was such a dandy original: "паничъ" that he was ready at any moment to be appointed as an assessor or a deputy marshal original: "подкоморій". He would place a finger before him, and, looking at the tip of it, begin to narrate—pretentiously and cleverly, as if in printed books! At times you listen and listen, and a pensive mood comes over you. You understand nothing, for the life of you. Where did he pick up such words? Foma Grigorievich once spun a glorious anecdote about this regarding him: he