in general.] If any of you should come to St.
Petersburg, do please call to see me. I give balls, too,
you know.

ANNA. I can guess the taste and magnificence of
those balls.

KHLESTAKOV. Immense! For instance, watermelon
will be served costing seven hundred rubles. The soup
comes in the tureen straight from Paris by steamer.
When the lid is raised, the aroma of the steam is like
nothing else in the world. And we have formed a circle
for playing whist--the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the
French, the English and the German Ambassadors and
myself. We play so hard we kill ourselves over the
cards. There's nothing like it. After it's over I'm so
tired I run home up the stairs to the fourth floor and tell
the cook, "Here, Marushka, take my coat"-- What
am I talking about?--I forgot that I live on the first
floor. One flight up costs me-- My foyer before I rise
in the morning is an interesting spectacle indeed--counts
and princes jostling each other and humming like bees.
All you hear is buzz, buzz, buzz. Sometimes the Minister--
[The Governor and the rest rise in awe from their
chairs.] Even my mail comes addressed "Your Excellency."
And once I even had charge of a department.
A strange thing happened. The head of the department
went off, disappeared, no one knew where. Of
course there was a lot of talk about how the place would
be filled, who would fill it, and all that sort of thing.