The people present, all who were at the table, turned mute with attention and could not tear their eyes from the former friends. The ladies, who till then had been taken up with a rather interesting conversation about the ways of preparing capon, suddenly broke it off. Everything became hushed! It was a picture deserving of the brush of a great painter!

Finally Ivan Ivanovich took out his handkerchief and began to blow his nose; but Ivan Nikiforovich looked around and rested his eyes on the open door. The police chief noticed this gesture at once and ordered the door tightly shut. Then each of the friends began to eat, and not once did they glance at each other again.

As soon as the dinner was over, the two former friends left their places and began looking for their hats, so as to slip away. Then the police chief winked, and Ivan Ivanovich-not that Ivan Ivanovich but the other, the one with the blind eye-stood behind Ivan Nikiforovich's back, while the police chief got behind Ivan Ivano-vich's back, and the two started shoving them from behind so as to push them together and not let go until they shook hands. Ivan

Ivanovich of the blind eye did push Ivan Nikiforovich, somewhat obliquely but still rather successfully, toward the place where Ivan Ivanovich had been standing; but the police chief's aim was way off, because he was unable to manage the willfulness of his infantry, which this time did not obey any commands and, as if on purpose, kept straying extremely far and in the completely opposite direction (which may have come from the fact that there were a great many liqueurs of all sorts on the table), so that Ivan Ivanovich fell over a lady in a red dress who, out of curiosity, had stuck herself right in the center. Such an omen did not bode any good. However, to put things right, the judge took the police chief's place and, sucking all the snuff from his upper lip into his nose, pushed Ivan Ivanovich in the other direction. This is the usual means of reconciliation in Mirgorod. It's something like playing ball. As soon as the judge pushed Ivan Ivanovich, Ivan Ivanovich of the blind eye took the firmest stand and pushed Ivan Nikiforovich, from whom the sweat poured down like rain off a roof. Though the two friends put up a strong resistance, they were nevertheless pushed together, because the two acting sides received significant reinforcement from the other guests.

Then they were surrounded tightly on all sides and were not let out until they resolved to shake hands with each other.

"God be with you, Ivan Nikiforovich and Ivan Ivanovich! Tell us in all conscience, what did you quarrel about? Wasn't it over a trifle? Aren't you ashamed before people and before God?"

"I don't know," said Ivan Nikiforovich, puffing with fatigue (one could see that he was not at all against the reconciliation), "I don't know what it was that I did to Ivan Ivanovich. Why, then, did he chop down my pen and plot to destroy me?"

"I'm not guilty of any evil designs," said Ivan Ivanovich, not turning his eyes to Ivan Nikiforovich. "I swear before God and before all of you honorable gentlemen, I did nothing to my enemy. Why, then, does he abuse me and do damage to my rank and name?"

"In what way have I done you damage, Ivan Ivanovich?" said Ivan Nikiforovich.

Another minute of talk and the long enmity would have been on the point of dying out. Ivan Nikiforovich was already going to his pocket to produce his snuff botde and say, "Help yourself."

"Isn't it damage," Ivan Ivanovich replied, without raising his eyes, "if you, my dear sir, insult my rank and family name with a word that it is even indecent to utter here?"

"Allow me to tell you as a friend, Ivan Ivanovich" (with that, Ivan Nikiforovich touched Ivan Ivanovich's button with his finger, signifying his entire good will), "that you got offended over devil knows what-over my calling you a goose…"

Ivan Nikiforovich caught himself committing the carelessness of uttering this word; but it was already too late: the word had been uttered.

Everything went to the devil!

If the uttering of this word without any witnesses had put Ivan Ivanovich beside himself and in such a rage as God keep us from ever seeing in any man-what now, only consider, gentle readers, what now, when this deadly word was uttered in a gathering that included many ladies, before whom Ivan Ivanovich liked to be especially proper? If Ivan Nikiforovich had acted differently, if he had said bird instead of goose, things still might have been put right.

But-it was all over!

He cast a glance at Ivan Nikiforovich-and what a glance! If this glance had been endowed with executive power, it would have turned Ivan Nikiforovich to dust. The guests understood this glance and hastened to separate them. And this man, the epitome of mildness, who never passed over a beggar woman without questioning her, rushed out in a terrible fury. Such violent storms the passions can produce!

For a whole month nothing was heard of Ivan Ivanovich. He locked himself up in his house. The secret trunk was unlocked, and from the trunk were taken-what? silver roubles! old ones, his ancestral silver roubles! And these roubles passed into the soiled hands of ink-slingers. The case was transferred to the state court. And when Ivan Ivanovich received the joyful news that it was to be decided the next day, only then did he look outside and venture to leave his house. Alas! since then, the court has informed him daily for the past ten years that the case would be concluded the next day!

Some five years ago I passed through the town of Mirgorod. I was traveling in bad weather. It was autumn, with its damp, melancholy days, its mud and mists. Some sort of unnatural green-the creation of dull, ceaseless rains-covered the fields and meadows with a thin net, which was as becoming as pranks to an old man or roses to an old woman. Weather affected me strongly then-I was dull when it was dull. But, despite that, as I approached Mirgorod, I felt my heart beating fast. God, so many memories! I hadn't seen Mirgorod for twelve years. Here, in touching friendship, there had then lived two singular men, two singular friends. And how many notable people had died! The judge Demyan Demyanovich was dead by then; Ivan Ivanovich, the one with the blind eye, had also bid the world farewell. I drove into the main street; poles with bunches of straw tied to their tops stood everywhere: some new project was under way! Several cottages had been demolished. The remnants of palings and wattle fences stuck up dejectedly.

It was then a feast day. I ordered my bast-covered kibitka to stop in front of the church and went in so quietly that no one turned around. True, there was no one to do so. The church was empty. Almost no people. One could see that even the most pious were afraid of the mud. The candles in that bleak, or, better to say, sickly daylight, were somehow strangely unpleasant; the dark vestibule was melancholy; the oblong windows with round glass poured down rainy tears. I stepped into the vestibule and turned to one respectable, gray-haired old man:

"If I may ask, is Ivan Nikiforovich still living?"

Just then the lamp flashed more brightly before the icon, and the light fell directly on the face of my neighbor. How surprised I was when, peering at him, I saw familiar features! It was Ivan Nikiforovich himself! But how changed he was!

"Are you well, Ivan Nikiforovich? You've aged so!"

"Yes, I've aged. I came from Poltava today," replied Ivan Niki-forovich.

"You don't say! You went to Poltava in such bad weather?"

"No help for it! The lawsuit…"

At that, I, too, sighed involuntarily. Ivan Nikiforovich noticed this sigh and said: