else), so our
future founder of a family continued, though weeping and bewailing
his lot, to let not a single detail escape his eye. That is to say,
he retained his wits ever in a state of activity, and kept his brain
constantly working. All that he required was a plan. Once more he pulled
himself together, once more he embarked upon a life of toil, once more
he stinted himself in everything, once more he left clean and decent
surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In other words, until
something better should turn up, he embraced the calling of an ordinary
attorney--a calling which, not then possessed of a civic status, was
jostled on very side, enjoyed little respect at the hands of the minor
legal fry (or, indeed, at its own), and perforce met with universal
slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity compelled Chichikov to face
these things. Among commissions entrusted to him was that of placing in
the hands of the Public Trustee several hundred peasants who belonged
to a ruined estate. The estate had reached its parlous condition through
cattle disease, through rascally bailiffs, through failures of the
harvest, through such epidemic diseases that had killed off the best
workmen, and, last, but not least, through the senseless conduct of the
owner himself, who had furnished a house in Moscow in the latest style,
and then squandered his every kopeck, so that nothing was left for
his further maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the
remains--including the peasants--of the estate. In those days mortgage
to the Treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as
attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to "entertain" every
official concerned (we know that, unless that be previously done, unless
a whole bottle of madeira first be emptied down each clerical throat,
not the smallest legal affair can be carried through), and to explain,
for the barring of future attachments, that half of the peasants were
dead.

"And are they entered on the revision lists?" asked the secretary.
"Yes," replied Chichikov. "Then what are you boggling at?" continued the
Secretary. "Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time grow
up to take the first one's place." Upon that there dawned on our hero
one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human brain. "What
a simpleton I am!" he thought to himself. "Here am I looking about for
my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked into my bel