"Should you whip me, you will whip me, and I shall have nothing to complain of.

Why should you not whip me if I deserve it?
'Tis for you to do as you like.
Whippings are necessary sometimes, for a peasant often plays the fool, and discipline ought to be maintained.

If I have deserved it, beat me.
Why should you not ?" This reasoning seemed, at the moment, irrefutable, and Chichikov said nothing more.

Fortunately fate had decided to take pity on the pair, for from afar their ears caught the barking of a dog.

Plucking up courage, Chichikov gave orders for the britchka to be righted, and the horses to be urged forward; and since a Russian driver has at least this merit, that, owing to a keen sense of smell being able to take the place of eyesight, he can, if necessary, drive at random and yet reach a destination of some sort, Selifan succeeded, though powerless to discern a single object, in directing his steeds to a country house near by, and that with such a certainty of instinct that it was not until the shafts had collided with a garden wall, and thereby made it clear that to proceed another pace was impossible, that he stopped.