ment showered upon them through its
immaculate representatives, cheated and defrauded that government with
a persistency and perseverance approaching the sublime. Mothers of
daughters were in despair, for in Nikolsk there were no 'nice young
men,' no eligible matches; fathers of sons despaired in their turn,
for as everybody robbed everybody, and the government robbed the
robbers, there were no heiresses; ladies wore the fashions of 1820 in
1840, under the impression that they were the newest from Paris; the
reading portion of the community were just beginning to hear of
Voltaire as a promising writer; and the general public laboured under
the fixed idea, that somewhere or other Napoleon was still prosecuting
his leviathan campaigns, happily _not_ in Russia. The only thing that
ever broke the monotony of existence was the prevalence of cholera, or
the governor essaying some loftier flight of tyranny than usual by
hanging up a score of defaulters to the revenue, or knouting a bevy of
ladies whose tongues outran their prudence.

Such being the state of affairs in Nikolsk, it will be easily
imagined, that when mine host of the Black Eagle, in a very important
and mysterious manner, announced to a select few that a singular and
eccentric stranger, rolling in money, had arrived at his hostelry,
with the intention of staying some time in Nikolsk, the news flew like
a telegraphic message, or a piece of scandal among a community of old
maids, through the place; and that in a few hours after his arrival,
nobody, from governor to serf, thought or spoke of anything or anybody
else than the mysterious stranger, who, under the name of Tchitchikof,
occupied the best suite of apartments in the Black Eagle, and, as the
landlord affirmed on oath, was eccentric to a degree, and revelled in
untold gold.

Now, whatever had been the station in society of M. Tchitchikof, his
means or his idiosyncrasy, the mere fact of his being a stranger had
been enough to make the good people of Nikolsk pounce down upon him
like a hawk on its quarry, and morally tear him to pieces with
rapacious analysis to satiate their ravenous curiosity. But as to the
fact of his being a stranger, was added the piquancy of a reputation
for eccentricity, and the irresistible recommendation of wealth, the
Tchitchikof mania spread over all ranks of society, and raged with the
fury of a tornado by the evening of the very day upon which the host
of the Eagle first delighte