1 Entering the courtyard, the britchka halted before a moderate-sized mansion.
2 Only when the equipage had entered the courtyard did it stand revealed as a light spring britchka.
3 "It has been rather too much of a good thing," remarked Chichikov as the vehicle issued from the courtyard.
4 Seizing his cap, and casting all ceremony to the winds, he fled from the house, and rushed through the courtyard.
5 The britchka bounded over the cobblestones, and at length turned into the hostelry's courtyard, where the travellers were met by Petrushka.
6 Yet far better would it have been for them if they had been clad in plain striped smocks, and running about the courtyard like peasant children.
7 Entering a mean, dirty courtyard covered with glass, they passed thence into a cellar where a number of customers were seated around small wooden tables.
8 Indeed, had any one, on a slushy winter's morning, glanced from a window into the said courtyard, he would have seen Plushkin's servitors performing saltatory feats worthy of the most vigorous of stage-dancers.
9 But one morning he noticed, on moving to the window after breakfast, that not a word was proceeding either from the butler or the housekeeper, but that, on the contrary, the courtyard seemed to smack of a certain bustle and excitement.
10 Evidently durability had been considered throughout, for the courtyard was enclosed by a strong and very high wooden fence, and both the stables, the coach-house, and the culinary premises were partially constructed of beams warranted to last for centuries.
11 In the centre of the courtyard two great lime trees covered half the surrounding space with shade, while beneath them were ranged a number of wooden benches, and the whole was encircled with a ring of blossoming lilacs and cherry trees which, like a beaded necklace, reinforced the wooden fence, and almost buried it beneath their clusters of leaves and flowers.
12 True, at intervals he would say, while gazing from the verandah to the courtyard, and from the courtyard to the pond, that it would be indeed splendid if a carriage drive could suddenly materialise, and the pond as suddenly become spanned with a stone bridge, and little shops as suddenly arise whence pedlars could dispense the petty merchandise of the kind which peasantry most need.