nearly five o’clock
For a while the sounds were not wholly unpleasing , but suddenly something seemed to go wrong , for a mazurka started , to be followed by `` Marlborough has gone to the war , '' and to this , again , there succeeded an antiquated waltz . Also , long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle , one particularly shrill-pitched pipe which had , throughout , refused to harmonise with the rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own account . Then followed an exhibition of tobacco pipes -- pipes of clay , of wood , of meerschaum , pipes smoked and non-smoked ; pipes wrapped in chamois leather and not so wrapped ; an amber-mounted hookah -LRB- a stake won at cards -RRB- and a tobacco pouch -LRB- worked , it was alleged , by some countess who had fallen in love with Nozdrev at a posthouse , and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred to constitute the `` sublimity of superfluity '' -- a term which , in the Nozdrevian vocabulary , purported to signify the acme of perfection -RRB- . Finally , after some hors-d'oeuvres of sturgeon 's back , they sat down to table -- the time being then nearly five o'clock . But the meal did not constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken , seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked , and others were scarcely cooked at all . Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly to inspiration -- she had laid hold of the first thing which had happened to come to hand . For instance , had pepper represented the nearest article within reach , she had added pepper wholesale .