In the master of the house, stinginess displayed itself still more noticeably, furthered in its development by its faithful friend, the gray flickering in his coarse hair; the French tutor was dismissed, because the time came for the son to enter the civil service; madame was chased out, because she was found not guiltless in Alexandra Stepanovna's elopement; the son, having been sent to the provincial capital to learn in a government office what, in his father's view, real service was, enlisted in a regiment instead and wrote to his father only after he enlisted, asking for money to equip himself; for which, quite naturally, he got what among common folk is known as a fig. Finally the last daughter, who had stayed at home with him, died, and the old man found himself the sole guardian, keeper, and master of his riches. Solitary life gave ample nourishment to his avarice, which, as is known, has a wolf's appetite and grows more insatiable the more it devours; human feelings, never very deep in him anyway, became shallower every moment, and each day something more was lost in this worn-out ruin. There came a moment, as if on purpose to confirm his opinion of the military, when his son happened to lose heavily at cards; he sent him a paternal curse from the bottom of his heart, and was never again interested in knowing whether his son existed in the world or not. Each year more windows in his house were closed up, until finally only two were left, one of which, as the reader already knows, had paper glued over it; each year more and more of the main parts of management were lost sight of, and his petty glance turned to the little scraps and feathers he collected in his room; he grew more unyielding with the buyers who came to take the products of his estate; the buyers bargained, bargained, and finally dropped him altogether, saying he was a devil, not a man; the hay and wheat rotted, the stooks and ricks turned to pure dung, good for planting cabbages in; the flour in the cellars became stone and had to be hacked up; the felt, linen, and homespun materials were even frightening to touch: they turned to dust. He himself had forgotten by then how much he had of what, and only remembered where in the cupboard he kept a little decanter with the remainder of some liqueur, on which he himself had made a mark, so that no one could steal a drink from it, or where a feather or a bit of sealing wax lay. But meanwhile the revenues of the estate were collected as before: the muzhik had to bring the same amount of quitrent, every woman was taxed the same amount of nuts, or as many lengths of linen if she was a weaver—all this was dumped in the storerooms, and it all turned to rot and gape, and he himself finally turned into a sort of gape in mankind. Alexandra Stepa-novna once came a couple of times with her little son, trying to see if she could get anything; apparently camp life with the staff captain was not as attractive as it had seemed before the wedding. Plyushkin forgave her, however, and even gave his little grandson a button that was lying on the table to play with, but money he gave none. The next time Alexandra Stepanovna came with two little ones and brought him a kulich[28] for tea and a new robe, because her papa's robe was such that it was not only embarrassing but even shameful to behold. Plyushkin was nice to both grandchildren and, placing one of them on his right knee and the other on his left, rocked them in exactly the same way as if they had been riding a horse; he accepted the kulich and the robe, but gave his daughter decidedly nothing; and with that Alexandra Stepanovna left.

And so, this was the sort of landowner who stood before Chichikov! It must be said that one rarely comes upon such a phenomenon in Russia, where everything prefers rather to expand than to shrink, and it is all the more striking when, right there in the neighborhood, there happens to be a landowner who carouses to the full breadth of Russian dash and largesse—who, as they say, burns up his whole life. A newcomer passing by will stop in amazement at the sight of his dwelling, wondering what sovereign prince has suddenly appeared among small, obscure landowners: there is the look of a palace about his white stone mansions with their numberless multitude of chimneys, belvederes, weather vanes, surrounded by a flock of cottages and all sorts of lodgings for long-term guests. Is there anything he lacks? Theatricals, balls; all night the garden shines, adorned with lights and lampions, resounding with the thunder of music. Half the province is decked out and gaily strolling under the trees, and in this forcible illumination no one sees it as wild and menacing when a branch leaps out theatrically from the thick of the trees, lit by the false light, robbed of its bright green; and, through all that, the night sky up above appears darker and sterner and twenty times more menacing; and the stern treetops, their leaves trembling in the far-off heights, sink deeper into the impenetrable darkness, indignant at this tinsel glitter illuminating their roots below.

For several minutes already Plyushkin had been standing there, not saying a word, yet Chichikov was still unable to begin talking, distracted as much by the look of the master himself as by all that was in his room. For a long time he was unable to think up any words to explain the reason for his visit. He was just about to express himself in some such spirit as, having heard of his virtue and the rare qualities of his soul, he felt it his duty personally to pay a tribute of respect, but he checked himself, feeling it was too much. Casting one more sidelong glance at all that was in the room, he felt that the words "virtue" and "rare qualities of soul" could successfully be replaced by the words "economy" and "order"; and therefore, transforming the speech in this manner, he said that, having heard of his economy and rare skill in running his estate, he felt it his duty to make his acquaintance and offer his respects personally. Of course, it would have been possible to produce another, better reason, but nothing else came into his head just then.

To this Plyushkin muttered something through his lips—for there were no teeth—precisely what is not known, but the meaning was probably this: "Ah, devil take you and your respects!" But since hospitality is so much the thing with us that even a niggard cannot transgress its laws, he added at once, somewhat more distinctly: "Pray be seated!"

"It's quite a while since I've seen visitors," he said, "and, I confess to say, I see little benefit in it. There's a most indecent custom of going and visiting each other, while the work of the estate is neglected . . . plus giving hay to their horses! I had my dinner long ago, and my kitchen is low, very shabby, and the chimney's all falling to pieces: heat it up and you'll start a fire."

"So that's how it is!" Chichikov thought to himself. "A good thing I snatched a cheesecake and a slice of lamb at Sobakevich's."

"And, such a nasty story, there's not a wisp of hay on the whole estate!" Plyushkin went on. "And how, indeed, can one save any?—wretched little piece of land, lazy muzhiks, don't like to work at all, dream only of the pot-house . . . I'm afraid I'll find myself a beggar in my old age."

"I was told, however," Chichikov observed modestly, "that you have more than a thousand souls."

"Who told you so? You ought, my dear, to have spit in the eye of the one who said it! He's a joker, obviously, and wanted to poke fun at you. A thousand souls, they say, but you just try counting them and there'll be nothing to count! In the last three years the cursed fever has killed off a healthy lot of muzhiks on me."