The empress, who really had charming feet of an exquisite shape, could not refrain from smiling at such a compliment from a simple-minded blacksmith, who, notwithstanding his sunburnt features must have been accounted a handsome lad in his Zaporoghian dress.
The blacksmith, encouraged by the condescension of the Czarina, was already on the point of asking her some questions about all sorts of things, whether it was true that sovereigns fed upon nothing but honey and lard, and so on; but feeling the Zaporoghians pull the skirts of his coat, he resolved to keep silent; and when the empress turned to the older Cossacks, and began to ask them about their way of living, and their manners in the Ssiecha, he stepped a little back, bent his head towards his pocket, and said in a low voice: "Quick, carry me hence, away!" and in no time he had left the town gate far behind.
"He is drowned! I'll swear to it, he's drowned! May I never leave this spot alive, if he is not drowned!" said the fat weaver's wife, standing in the middle of the street, amidst a group of the villagers' wives.
"Then I am a liar? Did I ever steal anything? Did I ever cast an evil-eye upon any one? that I am no longer worthy of belief?" shrieked a hag wearing a Cossack's dress, and with a violet-coloured nose, brandishing her hands in the most violent manner: "May I never have another drink of water if old Pereperchenko's wife did not see with her own eyes, how that the blacksmith has hanged himself!"
"The blacksmith hanged himself? what is this I hear?" said the elder, stepping out of Choop's cottage; and he pushed his way nearer to the talking women.
"Say rather, mayest thou never wish to drink brandy again, old drunkard!" answered the weaver's wife. "One must be as mad as thou art to hang one's self. He is drowned! drowned in the ice hole! This I know as well as that thou just now didst come from the brandy-shop!"
"Shameless creature! what meanest thou to reproach me with?" angrily retorted the hag with the violet-coloured nose, "thou hadst better hold thy tongue, good-for-nothing woman! Don't I know that the clerk comes every evening to thee?"
The weaver's wife became red in the face. "What does the clerk do? to whom does the clerk come? What lie art thou telling?"
"The clerk?" cried, in shrill voice, the clerk's wife, who, dressed in a hare-skin cloak covered with blue nankeen, pushed her way towards the quarrelling ones; "I will let you know about the clerk! Who is talking here about the clerk?
"There is she to whom the clerk pays his visits!" said the violet-nosed woman, pointing to the weaver's wife.