Produced by Meredith Bach, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [ Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] THE MANTLE AND OTHER STORIES Printed in Great Britain THE MANTLE AND OTHER STORIES BY NICHOLAS GOGOL AUTHOR OF "DEAD SOULS," "TARAS BULBA," ETC. TRANSLATED BY CLAUD FIELD AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION ON GOGOL BY PROSPER MERIMÉE New York: FREDERICK A. STOKES Co. London: T. WERNER LAURIE LIMITED "Gogol, Nikolai Vassilievitch. Born in the government of Pultowa, March 31 (N.S.), 1809, died at Moscow, March 4 (N.S.), 1852. A Russian novelist and dramatist. He was educated in a public gymnasium at Pultowa, and subsequently in the lyceum, then newly established, at Niejinsk. In 1831 he was appointed teacher of history at the Patriotic Institution, a place which he exchanged in 1834 for the professorship of history in the University of St Petersburg. This he resigned at the end of a year and devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1836 Gogol left Russia. He lived most of the time in Rome. In 1837 he wrote 'Dead Souls.' In 1840 he went to Russia for a short period in order to superintend the publication of the first volume of 'Dead Souls,' and then returned to Italy. In 1846 he returned to Russia and fell into a state of fanatical mysticism. One of his last acts was to burn the manuscript of the concluding portion of 'Dead Souls,' which he considered harmful. He also wrote 'The Mantle,' 'Evenings at the Farm,' 'St Petersburg Stories,' 'Taras Bulba,' a tale of the Cossacks, 'The Revizor,' a comedy, etc."--From _The Century Cyclopædia of Names_. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 7 THE MANTLE 19 THE NOSE 67 MEMOIRS OF A MADMAN 107 A MAY NIGHT 141 THE VIY 187 PREFACE As a novel-writer and a dramatist, Gogol appears to me to deserve a minute study, and if the knowledge of Russian were more widely spread, he could not fail to obtain in Europe a reputation equal to that of the best English humorists.