r, and
he could dictate what terms he liked. Moreover, that the affair might
progress the more smoothly, he suborned a fellow tchinovnik of the type
which, in spite of grey hairs, stands powerless against temptation;
and, the contract concluded, the association duly proceeded to business.
Certainly business began brilliantly. But probably most of my readers
are familiar with the oft-repeated story of the passage of Spanish sheep
across the frontier in double fleeces which carried between their outer
layers and their inner enough lace of Brabant to sell to the tune of
millions of roubles; wherefore I will not recount the story again beyond
saying that those journeys took place just when Chichikov had become
head of the Customs, and that, had he not a hand in the enterprise, not
all the Jews in the world could have brought it to success. By the time
that three or four of these ovine invasions had taken place, Chichikov
and his accomplice had come to be the possessors of four hundred
thousand roubles apiece; while some even aver that the former's gains
totalled half a million, owing to the greater industry which he had
displayed in the matter. Nor can any one but God say to what a figure
the fortunes of the pair might not eventually have attained, had not an
awkward contretemps cut right across their arrangements. That is to
say, for some reason or another the devil so far deprived these
tchinovnik-conspirators of sense as to make them come to words with
one another, and then to engage in a quarrel. Beginning with a heated
argument, this quarrel reached the point of Chichikov--who was,
possibly, a trifle tipsy--calling his colleague a priest's son; and
though that description of the person so addressed was perfectly
accurate, he chose to take offence, and to answer Chichikov with the
words (loudly and incisively uttered), "It is YOU who have a priest for
your father," and to add to that (the more to incense his companion),
"Yes, mark you! THAT is how it is." Yet, though he had thus turned the
tables upon Chichikov with a tu quoque, and then capped that exploit
with the words last quoted, the offended tchinovnik could not remain
satisfied, but went on to send in an anonymous document to the
authorities. On the other hand, some aver that it was over a woman that
the pair fell out--over a woman who, to quote the phrase then current
among the staff of the Customs Department, was "as fresh and as strong
as the pulp of a turnip,"