"The more one listens to you, most honored Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov, "the more one has a wish to listen. Tell me, my esteemed sir: if, for example, I should have the intention of becoming a landowner in, say, this province, what should I pay most attention to? what should I do, how should I act in order to become rich in a short period of time, and thereby, so to speak, fulfill the essential duty of a citizen?"

"What you should do in order to become rich? Here's what..." said Kostanzhoglo.

"Time for supper!" said the mistress, rising from the sofa, and she stepped into the middle of the room, wrapping a shawl around her chilled young limbs.

Chichikov popped up from his chair with the adroitness of an almost military man, flew over to the mistress with the soft expression of a delicate civilian in his smile, offered her the crook of his arm, and led her gala-fashion through two rooms into the dining room, all the while keeping his head agreeably inclined a bit to one side. The servant took the lid off the tureen; they all moved their chairs up to the table, and the slurping of soup began.

Having polished off his soup and washed it down with a glass of liqueur (the liqueur was excellent), Chichikov spoke thus to Kostanzhoglo:

"Allow me, most honored sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. I was asking you what to do, how to act, how best to go about...” [Two pages are missing from the manuscript. In them the subject of Khlobuev's estate, mentioned in what follows, was introduced.—Trans.]

"An estate for which, if he were to ask even forty thousand, I'd count it out to him at once."

"Hm!" Chichikov fell to pondering. "And why is it," he spoke somewhat timidly, "that you don't buy it yourself?"

"But one needs finally to know one's limits. I have plenty to keep me busy around my own properties without that. Besides, our gentry are shouting at me without that, saying I supposedly take advantage of their extremities and their ruined estates to buy up land for next to nothing. I'm sick of it, finally."

"The gentry are quite capable of wicked talk!" said Chichikov.

"And with us, in our own province . . . You can't imagine what they say about me. They don't even call me anything else but a skinflint and a first-degree niggard. They excuse themselves for everything: 'I did squander it all, of course,' they say, 'but it was for the higher necessities of life. I need books, I must live in luxury, so as to encourage industry; but one may, perhaps, live without squandering all, if one lives like that swine Kostanzhoglo.' That's how it is!"

"I wish I were such a swine!" said Chichikov.

"And all that because I don't give dinners and don't lend them money. I don't give dinners because it would be oppressive for me, I'm not used to it. But to come and eat what I eat—you're quite welcome! I don't lend money—that's nonsense. If you're truly in need, come to me and tell me in detail how you'll make use of my money. If I see from your words that you'll dispose of it intelligently, and the money will clearly bring a profit—I won't refuse you, and won't even take interest on it. But I won't throw money to the winds. Let me be excused for that. He's planning some sort of dinner for his ladylove, or furnishing his house on a crazy footing, and I should lend him money! ..."

Here Kostanzhoglo spat and almost uttered several indecent and abusive words in the presence of his spouse. The stern shadow of gloomy hypochondria darkened his lively face. Down and across his forehead wrinkles gathered, betraying the wrathful movement of stirred bile.

Chichikov drank off a glass of raspberry liqueur and spoke thus:

"Allow me, my esteemed sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. Supposing I were to acquire that same estate you were pleased to mention, in how much time and how quickly can one get rich to such an extent..."

"If what you want," Kostanzhoglo picked up sternly and curtly, still full of ill humor, "is to get rich quickly, then you'll never get rich; but if you want to get rich without asking about time, you'll get rich quickly."

"So that's it!" said Chichikov.

"Yes," Kostanzhoglo said curtly, as if he were angry with Chichikov himself. "One must have a love of work; without it nothing can be done. One must come to love management, yes! And, believe me, there's nothing dull about it. They've invented the idea that country life is boring . . . but I'd die of boredom if I spent even one day in the city the way they do. A proprietor has no time to be bored. There's no emptiness in his life—everything is fullness. One need only consider this whole varied cycle of yearly occupations—and what occupations! occupations that truly elevate the spirit, to say nothing of their diversity. Here man walks side by side with nature, side by side with the seasons, a participant and conversant with everything that is accomplished in creation. Spring has not yet come, but work is already under way: supplies of firewood and everything for the floodtime; preparing seed; sorting and measuring grain in the granaries, and drying it; establishing new rents. The snow and floods are over— work is suddenly at the boil: here boats are being loaded, there forests are being thinned out, trees replanted in gardens, and the soil dug up everywhere. The spade is at work in the kitchen gardens, in the fields the plough and harrow. And the sowing begins.

A trifle! They're sowing the future harvest! Summer comes—the mowing, the ploughman's greatest feast. A trifle! Then comes harvest after harvest: rye followed by wheat, barley by oats, and then there's the pulling of the hemp. The piling of hayricks, the stacking of sheaves. August is now half over—everything's being brought to the threshing floors. Autumn comes—the ploughing and sowing of winter crops, repairing of granaries, threshing barns, cattle sheds, bundling of grain, and the first threshing. Winter comes—here, too, work doesn't sleep: first deliveries to town, threshing on all the threshing floors, transporting the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns, cutting and sawing of wood in the forests, deliveries of brick and materials for spring construction. But it's simply impossible for me to embrace it all. Such a diversity of work! You go and have a look here and there: to the mill, to the workshops, to the factories, and to the threshing floors! You also go and have a look at the muzhik working for himself. A trifle! But for me it's a feast if a carpenter has good command of his axe, I'm ready to stand there for two hours: such joy work gives me. And if you also see with what purpose it is all being done, and how everything around you brings increase upon increase, producing fruit and profit. I cannot even tell you what a pleasure it is. And not because the money's growing—money is money—but because all this is—your handiwork; because you see yourself being the cause and creator of it all, how from you, as from some sort of magician, abundance and good pour out on everything. No, where can you find me an equal delight?" said Kostanzhoglo, his face looking up, the wrinkles disappearing. He was as radiant as a king on the day of his solemn coronation. "No, you won't find such a delight in the whole world! Here, precisely here, man imitates God: God granted Himself the work of creation, as the highest delight, and He demands that man, too, be a creator of prosperity and the harmonious course of things. And this they call dull!"

As to the singing of a bird of paradise, Chichikov lost himself in listening to the sweet sounds of the proprietor's talk. His mouth was watering. His eyes became unctuous and acquired a sweet expression; he could have gone on listening forever.