"Most honorable sir!" said Chichikov, "not only forty kopecks, I would pay you five hundred roubles! With pleasure I would pay it, because I see—an honorable, kindly old man is suffering on account of his own good-heartedness."

"Ah, by God, it's so! by God, it's true!" said Plyushkin, hanging his head down and shaking it ruefully. "All from good-heartedness."

"So, you see, I suddenly grasped your character. And so, why shouldn't I give you five hundred roubles per soul, but ... I haven't got a fortune; five kopecks, if you please, I'm ready to add, so that each soul would, in that case, cost thirty kopecks."

"Well, my dear, as you will, just tack on two kopecks."

"Two little kopecks I will tack on, if you please. How many of them do you have? I believe you were saying seventy?"

"No. It comes to seventy-eight in all."

"Seventy-eight, seventy-eight, at thirty kopecks per soul, that would make ..." Here our hero thought for one second, not more, and said suddenly: "... that would make twenty-four roubles, ninety-six kopecks!"—he was good at arithmetic. Straightaway he made Plyushkin write a receipt and handed him the money, which he received in both hands and carried to his bureau as carefully as if he were carrying some liquid, fearing every moment to spill it. Coming to his bureau, he looked through it once more and then placed it, also with extreme care, in one of the drawers, where it was probably doomed to lie buried until such time as Father Carp and Father Polycarp, the two priests of his village, came to bury him himself, to the indescribable delight of his son-in-law and daughter, and perhaps also of the captain who had enrolled himself among his relatives. Having put the money away, Plyushkin sat down in his armchair, at which point, it seemed, he was unable to find any further matter for conversation.

"What, you're already preparing to go?" he said, noticing a slight movement which Chichikov had made only so as to take his handkerchief from his pocket.

This question reminded him that in fact he had no reason to linger longer.

"Yes, it's time!" he said, picking up his hat.

"And a spot of tea?"

"No, better save the spot of tea for another time."

"Well, there, and I've sent for the samovar. I confess to say, I'm not an avid tea drinker: it's expensive, and the price of sugar has risen unmercifully. Proshka! never mind the samovar! Take the rusk to Mavra, do you hear: let her put it back in the same place—or, no, give it to me, I'd better take it myself. Good-bye, my dear, God bless you, and do give my letter to the magistrate. Yes! let him read it, he's my old acquaintance. Why, of course, we supped from the same trough!"

Whereupon this strange phenomenon, this wizened little old man, saw him off the premises, after which he ordered the gates locked at once, then made the round of the storerooms, to check whether the guards, who stood at every corner, banging with wooden spades on empty barrels instead of iron rails, were all in their places; after that, he peeked into the kitchen, where, on the pretext of testing whether people were being properly fed, he downed a goodly quantity of cabbage soup with groats and, having scolded every last one of them for thievery and bad behavior, returned to his room. Left alone, he even had the thought of somehow rewarding his guest for such indeed unexampled magnanimity. "I'll give him the pocket watch," he thought to himself. "It's a good silver watch, not some sort of pinchbeck or brass one; it's slightly broken, but he can have it repaired; he's still a young man, he needs a pocket watch so his fiancée will like him! Or, no," he added, after some reflection, "I'd better leave it to him after my death, in my will, so that he remembers me."

But our hero, even without the watch, was in the merriest spirits. Such an unexpected acquisition was a real gift. Indeed, whatever you say, not just dead souls alone, but runaways as well, and over two hundred persons in all! Of course, while still approaching Plyushkin's estate, he had had a presentiment of some pickings, but he had never expected anything so profitable. For the whole way he was extraordinarily merry, kept whistling, played on his lips, putting his fist to his mouth as if he were blowing a trumpet, and finally broke into some sort of song, extraordinary to such a degree that Selifan himself listened, listened, and then, shaking his head slightly, said: "Just look how the master's singing!" It was thick dusk by the time they drove up to the town. Shadow and light were thoroughly mingled, and objects themselves also seemed to mingle. The particolored tollgate took on some indefinite hue; the mustache of the soldier standing sentry seemed to be on his forehead, way above his eyes, and his nose was as if not there at all. A rumbling and jolting made it known that the britzka had come to the pavement. The streetlamps were not yet burning, only here and there the windows of the houses were beginning to light up, and in nooks and crooks there occurred scenes and conversations inseparable from that time of day in all towns where there are many soldiers, coachmen, workers, and beings of a special kind, in the form of ladies in red shawls and shoes without stockings, who flit about like bats at the street-corners. Chichikov paid them no notice, and even did not notice the many slim clerks with canes, who were probably returning home after taking a stroll out of town. From time to time there reached his ears certain, apparently feminine, exclamations: "Lies, you drunkard! I never allowed him no such rudeness!" or "Don't fight, you boor, go to the police, I'll prove it to you there!...” In short, words which suddenly pour like boiling pitch over some dreamy twenty-year-old youth, when he is returning from the theater, carrying in his head a street in Spain, night, the wondrous image of a woman with a guitar and curls. Is there anything, any dream, not in his head? He is in heaven and has come calling on Schiller[30]—and suddenly over him there resound, like thunder, the fatal words, and he sees that he is back on earth, and even on Haymarket Square, and even near a pot-house, and workaday life again goes strutting before him.

Finally, after a decent bounce, the britzka sank, as if into a hole, into the gates of the inn, and Chichikov was met by Petrushka, who held the skirts of his frock coat with one hand, for he did not like them to come open, and with the other began helping him to get out of the britzka. The floorboy also ran out with a candle in his hand and a napkin on his shoulder. Whether Petrushka was glad of his master's arrival is not known; in any case, he exchanged winks with Selifan, and his ordinarily stern exterior this time seemed to brighten a little.

"You've been off on a long one, sir," said the floorboy, lighting the stairway.

"Yes," said Chichikov, as he went up the stairs. "And how's with you?"

"Well, thank God," the floorboy replied, bowing. "Yesterday some army lieutenant came and took number sixteen."

"A lieutenant?"

"Some unknown kind, from Ryazan, bay horses."

"Very good, very good, keep up the good behavior," Chichikov said and went into his room. Passing through the anteroom, he wrinkled his nose and said to Petrushka: "You might at least have opened the windows!"

"But I did open them," Petrushka said, lying. Incidentally, the master knew he was lying, but he had no wish to object. After the trip he had made, he felt great fatigue. Having asked for a very light supper, consisting only of suckling pig, he straightaway got undressed and, slipping under the blanket, fell asleep soundly, deeply, fell asleep in the wondrous way that they alone sleep who are so fortunate as to know nothing of hemorrhoids, or fleas, or overly powerful mental abilities.