At this Chichikov thought: "Well, it's unlikely that such a time will ever come. Here I am a literate man, and I've yet to read The Countess La Valliere."

"Terrible ignorance!" said Colonel Koshkarev in conclusion. "The darkness of the Middle Ages, and no way to remedy it. . . Believe me, there is none! And I could remedy it all; I know of one way, the surest way."

"What is it?"

"To dress every last man in Russia the way they go about in Germany. Nothing more than that, and I promise you everything will go swimmingly: learning will rise, trade will develop, a golden age will come to Russia."

Chichikov was looking at him intently, thinking: "Well, it seems there's no point in standing on ceremony with this one." Not leaving matters in the bottom drawer, he straightaway explained to the colonel thus and so: there was a need for such and such souls, with the drawing up of such and such deeds.

"As far as I can see from your words," said the colonel, not embarrassed in the least, "this is a request—is that so?"

"Exactly so."

"In that case, put it in writing. It will go to the commission for divers petitions. The commission for divers petitions, having made note of it, will forward it to me. From me it will go on to the village affairs committee, where all sorts of decisions and revisions will be made concerning the matter. The steward-in-chief together with the whole office will give his resolution in the soon-most time, and the matter will be settled."

Chichikov was dumbstruck.

"Excuse me," he said, "things will take too long that way."

"Ah!" the colonel said with a smile, "there's the benefit of paperwork! It will indeed take longer, but nothing will escape: every little detail will be in view."

"But, excuse me . . . How can one present it in writing? It's the sort of matter that. . . The souls are in a certain sense . . . dead."

"Very well. So you write that the souls are in a certain sense dead."

"But how can I—dead? It's impossible to write that. They're dead, but it must seem as if they're alive."

"Well, then, you write: 'But it must seem or it is required that they seem as if alive.'"

What was to be done with the colonel? Chichikov decided to go and see for himself what these commissions and committees were; and what he found there was not only amazing, but decidedly exceeded all understanding. The commission for divers petitions existed only on a signboard. Its chairman, a former valet, had been transferred to the newly formed village construction committee. He had been replaced by the clerk Timoshka, who had been dispatched on an investigation—to sort things out between the drunken steward and the village headman, a crook and a cheat. No official anywhere.

"But where is . . . but how am I to get any sense?" Chichikov said to his companion, an official for special missions, whom the colonel had given him as a guide.

"You won't get any sense," said the guide, "everything here is senseless. Here, you may be pleased to note, the building commission directs everything, disrupts everybody's work, sends people wherever it likes. The only ones who profit from it are those on the building commission." He was obviously displeased with the building commission. "It's customary here for everybody to lead the master by the nose. He thinks everything's as it ought to be, but it's so in name only."

"He ought, however, to be told that," thought Chichikov, and, having come to the colonel, he announced that his estate was in a muddle, and one could not get any sense, and that the building commission was stealing right and left.

The colonel seethed with noble indignation. Seizing pen and paper he straightaway wrote eight most severe inquiries: on what grounds had the building commission arbitrarily disposed of officials outside its jurisdiction? How could the steward-in-chief have allowed the chairman to go on an investigation without handing over his post? And how could the village affairs committee regard with indifference the fact that the committee for petitions did not even exist?

"Well, here comes mayhem," Chichikov thought, and he began to bow out.

"No, I won't let you go. In two hours, no more, you will be satisfied in everything. I will now put your matter in the charge of a special man who has just finished a course at the university. Sit in my library meanwhile. Here there is everything you might need: books, paper, pens, pencils—everything. Help yourself, help yourself, you are the master."

So spoke Koshkarev as he led him into the library. It was a huge room, with books from floor to ceiling. There were even stuffed animals. Books in all fields—forestry, cattle breeding, pig breeding, gardening, thousands of assorted journals, guidebooks, and a multitude of journals presenting the latest developments and improvements in horse breeding and natural science. There were such titles as: Pig Breeding as a Science. Seeing that these things were not for the pleasant passing of time, he turned to another bookcase. From the frying pan into the fire. They were all books of philosophy. One bore the title: Philosophy in a Scientific Sense. There was a row of six volumes entitled: A Preparatory Introduction to the Theory of Thinking in Their Entirety, Totality, Essence, and Application to the Comprehension of the Organic Principles of the Mutual Divarication of Social Production. Whichever book Chichikov opened, there was on every page a manifestation, a development, an abstract, enclosures, disclosures, and devil knows what was not there. "No, this is all not for me," Chichikov said, and turned to the third bookcase, which contained everything in the line of the arts. Here he pulled out some huge book with immodest mythological pictures and began studying them. This was to his taste. Middle-aged bachelors like such pictures. They say that recently they have begun to be liked even by little old men who have refined their taste at the ballet. What can be done about it, in our age mankind likes spicy roots. Having finished studying this book, Chichikov was already pulling out another of the same sort, when suddenly Colonel Koshkarev appeared with a beaming face and a paper.

"It's all done and done splendidly. This man alone decidedly understands enough for all of them. For that I'll set him over them: I'll establish a special higher board and make him president. This is what he has written ..."

"Well, thank God," thought Chichikov, and he got ready to listen. The colonel began to read:

"Setting about the consideration of the assignment I have been charged with by Your Honor, I have the privilege herewith to report on the above: (1) The very request of Mister Collegiate Councillor Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, Esquire, contains a certain misunderstanding: in the explanation of the demand for registered souls overtaken by various unexpectednesses, those who have died were also included. This was most probably meant to indicate those nearing death, and not those who have died; for those who have died are not purchasable. What is there to purchase, if there's nothing? Logic itself tells us as much. And in literary sciences, as is obvious, he never got very far ...” Here Koshkarev paused momentarily and said: "At this point, the slyboots ... he needles you a little. But consider what a glib pen— the style of a state secretary; and he was at the university only three years, and hasn't even finished the course." Koshkarev went on: "... in literary sciences, as is obvious, he never got very far, for he speaks of the souls as dead, while anyone who has taken a course in human knowledge knows for a certainty that the soul is immortal. (2) Of the above-mentioned registered souls, prescribed, or prescinded, or, as he is pleased to put it incorrectly, dead, there are none present who are not mortgaged, for they are not only all mortgaged without exception, in their totality, but they are also re-mortgaged for an additional hundred and fifty roubles per soul, except for the small village of Gurmailovka, which is in dispute on occasion of the lawsuit of the landowner Predishchev, and therefore can be neither purchased nor mortgaged."