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and becomes, in the presence of the latter, even as a grain of sand.
"Surely that is not Ivan Petrovitch?" you will say of such and such a
man as you regard him. "Ivan Petrovitch is tall, whereas this man is
small and spare. Ivan Petrovitch has a loud, deep voice, and never
smiles, whereas this man (whoever he may be) is twittering like a
sparrow, and smiling all the time." Yet approach and take a good look
at the fellow and you will see that is IS Ivan Petrovitch. "Alack,
alack!" will be the only remark you can make.
Let us return to our characters in real life. We have seen that, on
this occasion, Chichikov decided to dispense with ceremony; wherefore,
taking up the teapot, he went on as follows:
"You have a nice little village here, madam. How many souls does it
contain?"
"A little less than eighty, dear sir. But the times are hard, and I
have lost a great deal through last year's harvest having proved a
failure."
"But your peasants look fine, strong fellows. May I enquire your name?
Through arriving so late at night I have quite lost my wits."
"Korobotchka, the widow of a Collegiate Secretary."
"I humbly thank you. And your Christian name and patronymic?"
"Nastasia Petrovna."
"Nastasia Petrovna! Those are excellent names. I have a maternal aunt
named like yourself."
"And YOUR name?" queried the lady. "May I take it that you are a
Government Assessor?"
"No, madam," replied Chichikov with a smile. "I am not an Assessor,
but a traveller on private business."
"Then you must be a buyer of produce? How I regret that I have sold my
honey so cheaply to other buyers! Otherwise YOU might have bought
it, dear sir."
"I never buy honey."
"Then WHAT do you buy, pray? Hemp? I have a little of that by me,
but not more than half a pood[6] or so."
[6] Forty Russian pounds.
"No, madam. It is in other wares that I deal. Tell me, have you, of
late years, lost many of your peasants by death?"
"Yes; no fewer than eighteen," responded the old lady with a sigh.
"Such a fine lot, too--all good workers! True, others have since grown
up, but of what use are THEY? Mere striplings. When the Assessor
last called upon me I could have wept; for, though those workmen of
mine are dead, I have to keep on paying for them as though they were
still alive! And only last week my blacksmith got burnt to death! Such
a clever hand at his trade he was!"
"What? A fire occurred at your place?"
"No, no, God preserve us all! It was not so bad as that. You must
understand that the blacksmith SET HIMSELF on fire--he got set on
fire in his bowels through overdrinking. Yes, all of a sudden there
burst from him a blue flame, and he smouldered and smouldered until he
had turned as black as a piece of charcoal! Yet what a clever
blacksmith he was! And now I have no horses to drive out with, for
there is no one to shoe them."
"In everything the will of God, madam," said Chichikov with a sigh.
"Against the divine wisdom it is not for us to rebel.
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