"The Night Before Christmas" by Nikolai Gogol

If the Sorochintsy assessor had been passing by just then, driving
a troika of hired horses, in a hat with a lamb’s wool band after the uhlan fashion, in a dark blue coat lined with astrakhan, with the devilishly woven whip he used to urge his coachman on, he would surely have noticed her, for no witch in the world could elude the Sorochintsy assessor.

He could count off how many piglets each woman's sow had farrowed, and how much linen lay in every chest, and precisely which of his clothes and chattels a good man had pawned in the tavern of a Sunday.

And meanwhile his daughter, the beauty of the village, would stay at home, and this daughter would certainly be visited by the blacksmith, a stalwart and fine fellow, whom the devil found more disgusting than Father Kondrat's sermons.

Here the devil, sidling up to her, took her under the arm and started whispering in her ear what is usually whispered to the whole of womankind.

Oksana knew and heard all that was said about her, and was capricious, as beauties will be.

“Yes, lads, am I a match for you? Just look at me,” the pretty little coquette went on, “how smooth my step is; my shirt is embroidered with red silk. And what ribbons in my hair! You won’t see richer galloons ever! All this my father bought so that the finest fellow in the world would marry me!”

It’s hard to say what the wonderful girl’s dusky face expressed: sternness could be seen in it, and through the sternness a certain mockery of the abashed blacksmith; and a barely noticeable tinge of vexation also spread thinly over her face; all this was so mingled and so indescribably pretty that to kiss her a million times would have been the best thing to do at that moment.

If on Sunday a pious muzhik or squire, as the Cossacks call themselves, wearing a cloak with a hood, went to church—or, in case of bad weather, to the tavern—how could he not stop by at Solokha’s, to eat fatty dumplings with sour cream and chat in a warm cottage with a talkative and gregarious hostess?

All this Solokha thought it not superfluous to join to her own property, reflecting beforehand on the order that would be introduced into it once it passed into her hands, and she redoubled her benevolence toward old Choub.

“What’s with you!” said Choub, in a voice that expressed pain, vexation, and timorousness.

Just look at the big jackanapes! You think I can’t get justice against 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.”

Solokha poured the coal from another sack into the barrel, and the none-too- voluminous deacon got in and sat down at the bottom, so that another half sack of coal could have been poured on top of him.

He was more corpulent than the headman and taller than Choub's chum.

Here, with a resolute step, he went on, caught up with the crowd, came abreast of Oksana, and said in a firm voice:
“Farewell, Oksana! Seek whatever suitor you like, fool whomever
you like; but you won’t see any more of me in this world.”

As soon as the blacksmith put the sack down, he jumped out and sat astride his neck.

Here the devil laughed with joy, thinking how he was going to mock all the tailed race in hell, and how furious the lame devil would be, reputed the foremost contriver among them.

And the frivolous beauty was already joking with her girlfriends.

If it hadn’t been for the people, he might have found a way to get out; but to get out of a sack in front of everybody, to make himself a laughingstock...this held him back, and he decided to wait, only groaning slightly under Choub’s uncouth boots.

Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old women, praised and ate with great appetite, and fought with her husband only in the mornings, which was the one time she occasionally saw him.

Whatever the tender spouse wheedled out of good people she hid the best she could from her husband, and she often arbitrarily took his booty if he hadn’t managed to drink it up in the tavern.

The chum, despite his perennial sangfroid, did not like yielding to her, and therefore almost always left the house with two black eyes, and his dear better half trudged off to tell the old women about her husband’s outrages and the beatings she suffered from him.

“Well, that’s good!” she said, with the look of an exultant hawk.

“No help for it, this one will be enough for us,” Oksana prattled.

Everything was visible; and he could even observe how a sorcerer, sitting in a pot, raced past them like the wind; how the stars gathered together to play blindman’s buff; how a whole swarm of phantoms billowed in a cloud off to one side; how a devil dancing around the moon took his hat off on seeing the mounted blacksmith; how a broom came flying back, having just served some witch...they met a lot more trash.

And before Vakula had time to look around, he found himself in front of a big house, went up the stairs, himself not knowing how, opened a door, and drew back slightly from the splendor on seeing the furnished room; then he took heart somewhat, recognizing the same Cossacks who had passed through Dikanka sitting cross-legged on silk divans in their tarred boots and smoking the strongest tobacco, the kind known as rootstock.

“A grand province!” he replied with equanimity.

With that, his face assumed an imposing mien.

And the colors! oh, my God, what colors! I bet there’s not a kopeck’s worth of ochre; it’s all verdigris and crimson, and the blue is so bright!

The blacksmith would probably have gone on reasoning for a long time, if a lackey with galloons hadn’t nudged his arm, reminding him not to lag behind.

A minute later a rather stout man of majestic height, wearing a hetman’s uniform and yellow boots, came in, accompanied by a whole retinue.

The blacksmith, seeing nothing, also zealously prostrated himself on the floor.

“Get up!” a voice imperious and at the same time pleasant sounded above them.

Here the blacksmith also ventured to raise his head and saw standing before him a woman of small stature, even somewhat portly, powdered, with blue eyes, and with that majestically smiling air which knew so well how to make all obey and could belong only to a woman who reigns.

“What, then, do you want?” Catherine asked solicitously.

His thoughts were occupied with one thing: he was simply unable to forget Solokha’s perfidy and, even in his sleep, never stopped abusing her.

The headman licked his chops, imagining himself breaking his fast with sausage; the young girls’ thoughts were of going ice skating with the lads; the old women whispered their prayers more zealously than ever.

There were so many different feelings crowding in her heart, one more vexing than another, one more rueful than another, that her face expressed nothing but great confusion; tears quivered in her eyes.

Besides, he was the one who did the duties of the church warden. Matins were already over; after matins, the liturgy.

That, however, was not all: on the wall to the right as you entered the church, Vakula had painted a devil in hell, such a nasty one that everybody spat as they went by; and the women, if a child started crying in their arms, would carry it over to the picture and say, “See what a caca's painted there!” and the child, holding back its tears, would look askance at the picture and press against its mother's breast.