Chichikov was in extraordinarily high spirits; he felt some sort of inspiration.
'Your Excellency!' he said.
'What?' said the general.
'There's another story.'
'What sort?'
'Also an amusing story, only I don't find it amusing. Even if Your Excellency...'
'How so?'
'Here's how, Your Excellency! ...' At this point Chichikov looked around and, seeing that the valet with the basin had left, began thus: 'I have an uncle, a decrepit old man. He owns three hundred souls and has no heirs except me. He himself, being decrepit, cannot manage the estate, yet he won't hand it over to me. And he gives such a strange reason: 'I don't know my nephew,' he says, 'maybe he's a spendthrift. Let him first prove to me that he's a reliable man, let him first acquire three hundred souls himself, then I'll give him my three hundred souls as well.’“
'What a fool!'
'Quite a correct observation, if you please, Your Excellency. But imagine my position now ...' Here Chichikov, lowering his voice, began speaking as if in secret: 'He has a housekeeper in his house, Your Excellency, and she has children. Just you watch, everything will go to them.'
'The stupid old man's gone dotty, that's all,' said the general. 'Only I don't see how I can be of use to you.'
'Here's what I've thought up. Right now, before the new census lists have been turned in, the owners of big estates may have, along with their living souls, also some that are departed and dead ... So that if, for instance, Your Excellency were to hand them over to me as if they were alive, with a deed of purchase, I could then present this deed to the old man, and he, dodge as he may, will have to give me my inheritance.'
Here the general burst into such laughter as hardly a man has ever laughed: he collapsed just as he was into his armchair; he threw his head back and nearly choked. The whole house became alarmed. The valet appeared. The daughter came running in, frightened.
'Papa, what's happened to you?'
'Nothing, my dear. Ha, ha, ha! Go to your room, we'll come to dinner presently. Ha, ha, ha!'
And, having run out of breath several times, the general's guffaw would burst out with renewed force, ringing throughout the general's high-ceilinged, resonant apartments from the front hall to the last room.
Chichikov waited worriedly for this extraordinary laughter to end.
'Well, brother, excuse me: the devil himself got you to pull such a trick. Ha, ha, ha! To give the old man a treat, to slip him the dead ones! Ha, ha, ha, ha! And the uncle, the uncle! Made such a fool of! Ha, ha, ha, ha!'
Chichikov's position was embarrassing: the valet was standing right there with gaping mouth and popping eyes.
'Your Excellency, it was tears that thought up this laughter,' he said.
'Excuse me, brother! No, it's killing! But I'd give five hundred thousand just to see your uncle as you present him with the deed for the dead souls. And what, is he so old? What's his age?'
'Eighty, Your Excellency. But this is in the closet, I'd. . . so that...' Chichikov gave a meaning look into the general's face and at the same time a sidelong glance at the valet.
'Off with you, my lad. Come back later,' the general said to the valet. The mustachio withdrew.
'Yes, Your Excellency . . . This, Your Excellency, is such a matter, that I'd prefer to keep it a secret...'
'Of course, I understand very well. What a foolish old man! To come up with such foolishness at the age of eighty! And what, how does he look? is he hale? still on his feet?'
'Yes, but with difficulty.'
'What a fool! And he's got his teeth?'
'Only two, Your Excellency.'
'What an ass! Don't be angry, brother . . . he's an ass...'
'Correct, Your Excellency. Though he's my relative, and it's hard to admit it, he is indeed an ass.'
However, as the reader can guess for himself, it was not hard for Chichikov to admit it, the less so since it is unlikely he ever had any uncle.
'So if you would be so good, Your Excellency, as to ...”
'As to give you the dead souls? But for such an invention I'll give them to you with land, with lodgings! Take the whole cemetery! Ha, ha, ha, ha! The old man, oh, the old man! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Made such a fool of! Ha, ha, ha, ha!'
And the general's laughter again went echoing all through the general's apartments.[i]
Chapter Three
'No, not like that,' Chichikov was saying as he found himself again in the midst of the open fields and spaces, 'I wouldn't handle it like that. As soon as, God willing, I finish it all happily and indeed become a well-to-do, prosperous man, I'll behave quite differently: I'll have a cook, and a house full of plenty, but the managerial side will also be in order. The ends will meet, and a little sum will be set aside each year for posterity, if only God grants my wife fruitfulness . . .
'Hey, you tomfool!'
Selifan and Petrushka both looked back from the box.
'Where are you going?'
'Just as you were pleased to order, Pavel Ivanovich—to Colonel Koshkarev's,' said Selifan.
'And you asked the way?'
'If you please, Pavel Ivanovich, since I was pottering with the carriage, I . . . saw only the general's stableboy . . . But Petrushka asked the coachman.'
'What a fool! I told you not to rely on Petrushka: Petrushka's a log.'
'It takes no sort of wisdom,' said Petrushka, with a sidelong glance, 'excepting as you go down the hill you should keep straight on, there's nothing more to it.'
'And I suppose you never touched a drop, excepting the home brew? I suppose you got yourself well oiled?'
Seeing what turn the conversation was taking, Petrushka merely set his nose awry. He was about to say that he had not even begun, but then he felt somehow ashamed.
'It's nice riding in a coach, sir,' Selifan said, turning around.
'What?'
'I say, Pavel Ivanovich, that it's nice for your honor to be riding in a coach, sir, better than a britzka, sir—less bouncy.'
'Drive, drive! No one's asking your opinion.'
Selifan gave the horses' steep flanks a light flick of the whip and addressed himself to Petrushka:
'Master Koshkarev, I hear tell, has got his muzhiks dressed up like Germans; you can't figure out from far off—he walks cranelike, same as a German. And the women don't wear kerchiefs on their heads, pie-shaped, like they do sometimes, or headbands either, but this sort of German bonnet, what German women wear, you know, a bonnet—a bonnet, it's called, you know, a bonnet. A German sort of bonnet.'
'What if they got you up like a German, and in a bonnet!' Petrushka said, sharpening his wit on Selifan and grinning. But what a mug resulted from this grin! It had no semblance of a grin, but was as if a man with a cold in his nose was trying to sneeze, but did not sneeze, and simply remained in the position of a man about to sneeze.
Chichikov peered into his mug from below, wishing to know what was going on there, and said: 'A fine one! and he still fancies he's a handsome fellow!' It must be said that Pavel Ivanovich was seriously convinced that Petrushka was in love with his own beauty, whereas the latter even forgot at times whether he had any mug at all.
