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mind, poked him furiously with their elbows.
    â€œRise,” the empress addressed Vakula kindly. “If you want shoes like mine, that’s easy to arrange. Right away there, bring him my most expensive pair, theones with gold embroidery. Indeed, I find his simple manner appealing. Here’s a worthy subject for your pen,” she addressed a pale, modestly dressed man.
    â€œYour Majesty is too kind.” The man bowed. “This subject requires at least La Fontaine.”
    â€œNo, no, I am still quite taken with your
Brigadier
. But tell me,” she said, turning again to the delegates, “I’ve heard that Cossack warriors never marry.”
    â€œSure we do,
mamo
, it won’t do without a wife,” answered the same Cossack, who for some reason used the roughest idiom with the empress—some clever politicking on his part, Vakula guessed. “We ain’t some monks; we are plain sinners. There are many of us who have wives—some in Poland, some in the Ukraine, some as far as Turkey—only they don’t camp out with us in the Sich.”
    In the meantime a pair of shoes was brought out for Vakula. “My God, look at these! If you skate in shoes like these, then what kind of feet must you have? Made of sugar, I imagine!”
    The empress, who did in fact possess exceptionally lovely feet, couldn’t help but smile at this compliment and at the blacksmith himself, who despite his oliveskin looked quite dandy in his Zaporozhian dress. Encouraged by her benign attention, the blacksmith was about to interrogate the empress on everything he had always wanted to know—whether it was true, for example, that emperors eat only honey and bacon—but, feeling his neighbors’ elbows, decided to stay quiet. When the older delegates began to inform the empress about their customs, he stepped back and whispered, “Get me out of here,” and a moment later he was already beyond the city line.
    *   *   *
    â€œH e drowned. I’ll swear to it on anything,” the weaver’s wife declared to the congregation of Dikanka’s housewives.
    â€œWhat am I, a liar? Did I steal a cow from any of you? Or did I jinx anyone so now folks don’t believe me?” shouted another female with a purple nose. “May I never drink water again if old Pepperchikha hadn’t seen with her own eyes that the blacksmith hanged himself.”
    â€œVakula? Hanged himself?” the village head wondered, stepping out of Chub’s house. He stopped and joined the matrons to hear more.
    â€œWater? You?” the weaver’s wife screamed back at the purple nose. “You meant vodka, for sure. You have to be crazy to hang yourself. Drowned, I’m telling you; as surely as I know that you’ve just been at the pub.”
    â€œYou worthless hussy, you shame me with the pub? And who receives the deacon every night?”
    The weaver’s wife turned scarlet. “Deacon? What deacon? What are you talking about?”
    â€œWho said anything about my deacon?” the deacon’s wife sang out, approaching the speakers. “I’ll show you deacon!”
    â€œThis one here.” The purple nose pointed at the weaver’s wife.
    â€œSo it’s you, slut, it’s you, ugly witch, who casts spells on my deacon and feeds him poison to make him come back? May you never see your children again!” And the deacon’s wife spat at her rival but instead hit the village head. “Ah, you dirty mongrel,” yelped the village head, raising his whip. This caused the ladies to disperse with loud swearing. The village head continued to curse and wipe away the spit. “What filth! So the blacksmith drowned; my God, what a painter he was! And what scythes and plows he made—suchstrength he had. Men like that are rare in Dikanka. Come to think of it, when he carried me in that sack I noticed the poor wretch seemed upset about