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

he used to lose his mind over it.
    “Ah, Odarka!” the merry beauty said, turning to one of the girls, “you have new booties!Oh, what pretty ones!and with gold!You’re lucky, Odarka, you have a man who buys everything for you; and I don’t have anyone to get me such nice booties.”
    “Don’t grieve, my darling Oksana!” the blacksmith picked up.“It’s a rare young lady who wears such booties as I’ll get for you.”
    “You?” Oksana said, giving him a quick and haughty glance.“I’d like to see where you’re going to get booties such as I could wear on my feet.Unless you bring me the ones the tsaritsa wears.”
    “See what she wants!” the crowd of girls shouted, laughing.
    “Yes,” the beauty proudly continued, “you’ll all be witnesses: if the blacksmith Vakula brings me the very booties the tsaritsa wears, I give my word that I’ll marry him at once.”
    The girls took the capricious beauty with them.
    “Laugh, laugh!” said the blacksmith, following them out.“I’m laughing at my own self!I think, and can’t decide what’s become of my reason.She doesn’t love me—so, God be with her!As if Oksana’s the only one in the world.Thank God, there are lots of nice girls in the village besides her.And what is this Oksana?She’d never make a good housewife; she’s only good at dressing herself up.No, enough, it’s time to stop playing the fool.”
    But just as the blacksmith was preparing to be resolute, some evil spirit carried before him the laughing image of Oksana, saying mockingly: “Get the tsaritsa’s booties for me, blacksmith, and I’llmarry you!” Everything in him was stirred, and he could think of nothing but Oksana.
    Crowds of carolers, the lads separately and the girls separately, hastened from one street to another.But the blacksmith walked along without seeing anything or taking part in the merriment that he used to love more than anyone else.
    T HE DEVIL MEANWHILE was indulging himself in earnest at Solokha’s: kissed her hand, mugging like an assessor at a priest’s daughter, pressed his hand to his heart, sighed, and said straight out that if she did not agree to satisfy his passions and reward him in the customary way, he was ready for anything: he’d throw himself in the water and send his soul straight to hellfire.Solokha was not so cruel, and besides, the devil, as is known, acted in cahoots with her.She did like seeing a crowd dangling after her, and she was rarely without company; however, she had thought she would spend that evening alone, because all the notable inhabitants of the village had been invited for kutya at the deacon’s.But everything turned out otherwise: the devil had just presented his demand when suddenly the voice of the stalwart headman was heard.Solokha ran to open the door, and the nimble devil got into one of the sacks lying there.
    The headman, after shaking the snow off the earflaps of his hat and drinking the glass of vodka that Solokha handed him, said that he had not gone to the deacon’s on account of the blizzard, and seeing a light in her house, had stopped by, intending to spend the evening with her.
    Before the headman finished speaking, there came a knocking at the door and the voice of the deacon.
    “Hide me somewhere,” the headman whispered.“I don’t want to meet the deacon right now.”
    Solokha thought for a long time where to hide such a stout guest; she finally chose the biggest sack of coal; she dumped the coal into a barrel, and the stalwart headman got into it, mustache, head, earflaps, and all.
    The deacon came in, grunting and rubbing his hands, and saidthat none of his guests had come, and that he was heartily glad of this opportunity to sport a little at her place and the blizzard did not frighten him.Here he came closer to her, coughed, smiled, touched her bare, plump arm with his long fingers, and uttered with an air that showed both slyness and self-satisfaction:
    “And what have you got here,