In the same way did Chichikov suddenly become oblivious to the scene around him.

Yet all the while the melodious tongues of ladies were plying him with multitudinous hints and questions--hints and questions inspired with a desire to captivate.
"Might we poor cumberers of the ground make so bold as to ask you what you are thinking of ?" "Pray tell us where lie the happy regions in which your thoughts are wandering ?" "Might we be informed of the name of her who has plunged you into this sweet abandonment of meditation ?"--such were the phrases thrown at him.

But to everything he turned a dead ear, and the phrases in question might as well have been stones dropped into a pool.

Indeed, his rudeness soon reached the pitch of his walking away altogether, in order that he might go and reconnoitre wither the Governor's wife and daughter had retreated.

But the ladies were not going to let him off so easily.