exclamations, the governmental armchair was noisily pushed back. Sobakevich, too, rose from his chair, and he and his long sleeves became visible from all sides. The magistrate took Chichikov into his embrace, and the office resounded with kisses; they inquired after each other's health; it turned out that they both had some slight lower- back pain, which was straightaway ascribed to the sedentary life. The magistrate seemed already to have been informed of the purchase by Sobakevich, because he set about offering congratulations, which embarrassed our hero somewhat at first, especially when he saw that Sobakevich and Manilov, both sellers with whom deals had been struck in private, were now standing face to face. However, he thanked the magistrate and, turning at once to Sobakevich, asked:
'And how is your health?'
'No complaints, thank God,' said Sobakevich.
And, indeed, he had nothing to complain of: iron would catch cold and start coughing sooner than this wondrously fashioned landowner.
'Yes, you've always been known for your health,' said the magistrate, 'and your late father was also a sturdy man.'
'Yes, he used to go alone after bear,' replied Sobakevich.
'It seems to me, however,' said the magistrate, 'that you'd also bring down your bear, if you chose to go against one.'
'No, I wouldn't,' replied Sobakevich, 'the old man was sturdier than I am,' and, sighing, he went on: 'No, people aren't what they used to be; look at my life, what kind of a life is it? just sort of something ...'
'It's a fine life, isn't it?' said the magistrate.
'No good, no good,' said Sobakevich, shaking his head. 'Consider for yourself, Ivan Grigorievich: I'm in my forties, and never once have I been sick; never even a sore throat, never even a pimple or a boil breaking out . . . No, it doesn't bode well! Some day I'll have to pay for it.' Here Sobakevich sank into melancholy.
'Eh, you,' Chichikov and the magistrate thought simultaneously, 'what a thing to bemoan!'
'I've got a little letter for you,' Chichikov said, taking Plyush-kin's letter from his pocket.
'From whom?' the magistrate said and, opening it, exclaimed:
'Ah! from Plyushkin. So he's still vegetating in this world. What a fate! Once he was an intelligent, wealthy man, and now ...'
'A sonofabitch,' said Sobakevich, 'a crook, starved all his people to death.'
'If you please, if you please,' said the magistrate, 'I'm ready to act as his attorney. When do you want to execute the deed, now or later?'
'Now,' said Chichikov. 'I will even ask you to do it, if possible, today, because I would like to leave town tomorrow. I've brought the deed and the application.'
'That's all very well, only, like it or not, we won't let you go so soon. The deeds will be executed today, but all the same you must stay on with us a bit. Here, I'll give the order at once,' he said, and opened the door to the chancellery, all filled with clerks, who could be likened to industrious bees scattered over a honeycomb, if a honeycomb may be likened to chancellery work. 'Is Ivan Antonovich here?'
'Here,' responded a voice from inside.
'Send him in.'
Ivan Antonovich, the jug mug, already known to our readers, appeared in the front office and bowed reverently.
'Here, Ivan Antonovich, take these deeds of his ...'
'And don't forget, Ivan Grigorievich,' Sobakevich picked up, 'there must be witnesses, at least two on each side. Send for the prosecutor right now, he's an idle man and must be sitting at home, everything's done for him by the attorney Zolotukha, the world's foremost muckworm. The inspector of the board of health is also an idle man and must be at home, unless he went somewhere to play cards, and there's a lot more around—Trukhachevsky, Be-gushkin, all of them a useless burden on the earth!'
'Precisely, precisely!' said the magistrate, and he at once dispatched a clerk to fetch them all.
'And I will ask you,' said Chichikov, 'to send for the attorney of a lady landowner with whom I also concluded a deal, the son of the archpriest Father Kiril; he works with you here.'
'Well, so, we'll send for him, too!' said the magistrate. 'It will all get done, and you are to give nothing to any of the clerks, that I beg of you. My friends should not pay.' Having said this, he straightaway gave some order to Ivan Antonovich, which he evidently did not like. The deeds seemed to make a good impression on the magistrate, especially when he saw that the purchases added up to almost a hundred thousand roubles. For several minutes he gazed into Chichikov's eyes with an expression of great contentment, and finally said:
'So that's how! That's the way, Pavel Ivanovich! That's how you've acquired!'
'Acquired,' replied Chichikov.
'A good thing, truly, a good thing.'
'Yes, I myself can see that I could not have undertaken any better thing. However it may be, a man's goal is never defined until he finally sets a firm foot on solid ground, and not on some freethinking chimera of youth.' Here he quite appropriately denounced all young people, and rightly so, for liberalism. Yet, remarkably, there was still some lack of firmness in his words, as if he were saying to himself at the same time: 'Eh, brother, you're lying, and mightily, too!' He did not even glance at Sobakevich and Manilov, for fear of encountering something on their faces. But he need not have feared: Sobakevich's face did not stir, and Manilov, enchanted by the phrase, just kept shaking his head approvingly, immersed in that state in which a music lover finds himself when the soprano has outdone the fiddle itself and squeaked on such a high note as is even too much for the throat of a bird.
'But why don't you tell Ivan Grigorievich,' Sobakevich responded, 'precisely what you've acquired; and you, Ivan Grigorievich, why don't you ask what acquisitions he has made? Such folk they are! Pure gold! I even sold him the cartwright Mikheev.'
'No, you mean you sold him Mikheev?' said the magistrate. 'I know the cartwright Mikheev: a fine craftsman; he rebuilt my droshky. Only, excuse me, but how . . . Didn't you tell me he died ...'
'Who died? Mikheev?' said Sobakevich, not in the least embarrassed. 'It's his brother who died, but he's as alive as can be and healthier than ever. The other day he put together such a britzka as they can't make even in Moscow. He ought, in all truth, be working just for the sovereign alone.'
'Yes, Mikheev's a fine craftsman,' said the magistrate, 'and I even wonder that you could part with him.'
'As if Mikheev's the only one! There's Cork Stepan, the carpenter, Milushkin, the bricklayer, Telyatnikov Maxim, the cobbler— they all went, I sold them all!' And when the magistrate asked why they had all gone, seeing they were craftsmen and people necessary for the household, Sobakevich replied with a wave of the hand: 'Ah! just like that! I've turned foolish: come on, I said, let's sell them—and so I sold them like a fool!' Whereupon he hung his head as if he regretted having done so, and added: 'A gray-haired man, and I still haven't grown wise.'
'But, excuse me, Pavel Ivanovich,' said the magistrate, 'how is it you're buying peasants without land? Or is it for resettlement?'
'For resettlement.'
'Well, resettlement is something else. And to what parts?'
'What parts ... to Kherson province.'
'Oh, there's excellent land there!' said the magistrate, and he spoke in great praise of the size of the grass in that region. 'And is there sufficient land?'
'Sufficient, as much as necessary for the peasants I've bought.'
'A river or a pond?'
'A river. However, there's also a pond.' Having said this, Chichikov glanced inadvertently at Sobakevich, and though Sobakevich was as immobile as ever, it seemed to him as if there were written on his face: 'Oh, are you lying! there's nary a river there, nor a pond, nor any land at all!'
While the conversation continued, the witnesses gradually began to appear: the blinking prosecutor, already known to the reader, the inspector of the board of health, Trukhachevsky Be-gushkin, and others who, in Sobakevich's words, were a useless burden on the earth. Many of them were completely unknown to Chichikov: the lacking and the extras were recruited on the spot from among the office clerks. Not only was the archpriest Father Kiril's son brought, but even the archpriest himself. Each of the witnesses put himself down, with all his dignities and ranks, one in backhand script, one slanting forward, one simply all but upside down, putting himself in such
