"The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" by Nikolai Gogol

“Just to beg alms, good sir, if someone would give me enough to buy bread.”

Ivan Ivanovich is an extremely refined man and never says an improper word in decent conversation, and becomes offended at once if he hears one.

All of this mixed together made up a very entertaining spectacle for Ivan Ivanovich, while the sun’s rays, striking here and there on a blue or green sleeve, a red cuff or a portion of gold brocade, or sparkling on the sword steeple, turned it into something extraordinary, like those nativity scenes that itinerant hucksters take around to the farmsteads.

All of this mixed together made up a very entertaining spectacle for Ivan Ivanovich, while the sun’s rays, striking here and there on a blue or green sleeve, a red cuff or a portion of gold brocade, or sparkling on the sword steeple, turned it into something extraordinary, like those nativity scenes that itinerant hucksters take around to the farmsteads.

How can you go dragging yourself about the swamps, if your clothes, which could not decently be called by name in every conversation, are still being aired out, what then? No, you need peace, repose.

“Sit down, sit down! I won’t... Let the gun stay yours, let it rot and rust away standing in a corner of the closet—I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
After which silence ensued.

“Oh, touch-me-not! You’ll see, they’ll lard your tongue with hot needles in the other world for such iniquitous words. After talking with you, a man has to wash his face and hands and smoke himself with incense.”

“What! a gentleman?” cried Ivan Ivanovich with a feeling of pride and indignation.

Even the woman herself, when Ivan Ivanovich wished to ask her about something, performed such an indecency that Ivan Ivanovich, as a man of extreme delicacy, spat and said only, “What a nasty woman! Worse than her master!”

...how the white walls of houses enveloped in moonlight turn still whiter, the trees above them turn darker, the shadow of the trees falls blacker, the flowers and hushed grass grow more fragrant, and the crickets, indefatigable cavaliers of the night, with one accord begin their chirping songs in all corners.

Four oak chairs with high backs; against the walls, ironbound chests containing piles of regional calumny.

Started singing God knows what. As it continued, he got worse, turned guttural, hoarse—fit for the trash heap.

“What a glib pen! Lord God! how the man can write!”

The above-depicted gentleman, whose very name and surname inspire all possible loathing, nurses in his heart the wicked intention of setting fire to me in my own house. Indubitable tokens of which are manifest in the following: 1st, the said malignant gentleman has begun to emerge from his rooms frequently, something he never undertook before, on account of his laziness and the vile corpulence of his body...

...in his servant's quarters, which are adjacent to the fence surrounding my land, received by me from my late parent, Ivan, of blessed memory, son of Onisy, Pererepenko, a light burns every day and for an extraordinary length of time, which is already manifest evidence, for hitherto, in his miserly avarice, not only the tallow candle but even the night lamp was always put out.

And therefore I request that the said gentleman, Ivan, son of Nikifor, Dovgochkhun, being guilty of arson, of insult to my rank, name, and family, and of the thievish appropriation of property, and above all of the base and reprehensible appending to my family name of the appellation goose, have a penalty imposed on him, with payment of expenses and losses, and be condemned himself as a trespasser...

And therefore I request that the said gentleman, Ivan, son of Nikifor, Dovgochkhun, being guilty of arson, of insult to my rank, name, and family, and of the thievish appropriation of property, and above all of the base and reprehensible appending to my family name of the appellation goose, have a penalty imposed on him, with payment of expenses and losses, and be condemned himself as a trespasser...

Not the sort of affair that can be resolved in amicable agreement.

“Did they hurt you, Ivan Nikiforovich? I’ll tell my mother, she’ll send you a tincture—just rub your shoulders and lower back, and it will all go away.”

From his hateful spite and obvious ill will, Ivan, son of Ivan, Pererepenko, who calls himself a gentleman, is causing me various losses, doing me dirt, and performing other devious and terrifying acts, and yesterday, like a robber and a thief, with axes, saws, chisels, and other metalworking tools, got into my yard during the night and with his very own hands and in blameworthy fashion did chop up my very own goose pen located therein.

For which, on my part, I never gave any cause for such an illegal and marauding act.

The said gentleman Pererepenko presumes upon my very life and, having kept this intention secret until the 7th day of the last month, came to me and in a friendly and cunning fashion started begging for my gun, which was in my room, offering me, with his particular niggardliness, a lot of worthless things—to wit: a brown sow and two measures of oats.

But, divining his criminal intention even then, I made every effort to divert him from it; but the said crook and scoundrel, Ivan, son of Ivan, Pererepenko, did abuse me in a churlish manner, and since then has nursed an irreconcilable enmity toward me.

Yet the above-mentioned gentleman and robber Pererepenko has exceeded all his relations in bestial and blameworthy acts and, in the guise of piety, does the most godless things: does not keep fasts, for on the eve of St. Philip’s Day this apostate bought a lamb and ordered his lawless wench Gapka to slaughter it the next day, explaining that he supposedly needed tallow just then for lamps and candles.

Therefore I request that this gentleman, being a robber, a blasphemer, and a crook, already caught thieving and marauding, be put in irons and conveyed to prison, or to the state jail, and that there, on discretion, being stripped of his ranks and nobility, he be given a good basting with birch rods and be sent to hard labor in Siberia as necessary; that he be made to pay all expenses and losses, and that a decision be forthcoming on this my petition.

And therefore, before the police chief reached the gallery, Ivan Ivanovich had plenty of time to lose himself in conjectures as to the reason why the police chief was swinging his arms so quickly.

“My leg!” cried the police chief, casting one of those looks at Ivan Ivanovich that a giant casts at a pigmy or a learned pedant at a dancing master.

Do you know, Ivan Ivanovich, that someone who purloins an official document in court is subject to criminal prosecution, the same as for any other crime?

“What! with that boor? I should be reconciled with that churl? Never! It will not be, it will not!”

“What’s the matter with you, Ivan Nikiforovich? You’ll be laughed at like a fool if you let it pass! What kind of gentleman will you be after that! You’ll be worse than the woman who sells the sweets you like so much!”
And the obstreperous woman convinced him!

He tarred his boots, carried three quills behind his ear and a glass vial tied to a button with string instead of an inkpot; he ate nine pies at one go and stuffed the tenth into his pocket, and he could write so much of every sort of calumny on one sheet of stamped paper that no reader could read through it at one go without interspersing it with coughs and sneezes.

And this same said brazen willfulness of the brown sow, being kept secret and coming to be heard through outside persons.

But the said Mirgorod court, with its peculiar partiality, evinced secret connivance of its person; without which connivance the said sow could in no way have been permitted to steal the document: for the Mirgorod regional court is well provided with servants, it being enough to mention just the soldier alone, who abides in the anteroom at all times, and who, though having a crippled arm and one blind eye, is of quite commensurable ability for driving a sow away and hitting her with a cudgel.

But the said Mirgorod court, with its peculiar partiality, evinced secret connivance of its person; without which connivance the said sow could in no way have been permitted to steal the document: for the Mirgorod regional court is well provided with servants, it being enough to mention just the soldier alone, who abides in the anteroom at all times, and who, though having a crippled arm and one blind eye, is of quite commensurable ability for driving a sow away and hitting her with a cudgel.

From which may be trustworthily seen the connivance of the said Mirgorod regional court and the indisputable sharing of the Jewish profits from it by combining mutually.

But the secretary sent a deep “Hm” through his teeth and showed on his face that indifferent and devilishly ambiguous expression which Satan alone wears when he sees at his feet a victim having recourse to him.

Ivan Nikiforovich, to reprove Ivan Ivanovich, built a new goose pen, though a bit further away than the former one, and got himself completely built off from Ivan Ivanovich, so that these worthy people hardly ever glimpsed each other’s faces—and the case went on lying, in the very best order, on the shelf, which ink blots had turned to marble.

Where shall I get brushes and paints to portray the diversity of the gathering and the sumptuous feast?

Ivan Nikiforovich began to scrutinize a rooster that was standing on the porch crowing his throat off.

And this man, the epitome of mildness, who never passed over a beggar woman without questioning her, rushed out in a terrible fury.