"Good morning, dearie. Did you sleep well?" said the mistress, rising from her place. She was better dressed than yesterday—in a dark dress, and not in a sleeping bonnet now, though there was still something wrapped around her neck.
"Quite well, quite well," said Chichikov, seating himself in an armchair. "And you, dearie?"
"Poorly, my dear."
"How so?"
"Insomnia. My lower back aches, and there's a gnawing pain in my leg, here, just above this little bone."
"It will pass, it will pass, dearie. Pay it no mind."
"God grant it passes. I did apply lard to it, and also wet it with turpentine. Will you have a sip of something with your tea? There's fruit liqueur in the flask."
"Not bad, dearie, let's have a sip of fruit liqueur."
The reader, I suppose, will already have noticed that Chichikov, despite his benign air, nevertheless spoke with greater liberty than with Manilov, and did not stand on any ceremony. It must be said that if we in Russia are still behind foreigners in some other things, we have far outstripped them in the art of address. Countless are all the nuances and subtleties of our address. No Frenchman or German will ever puzzle out and comprehend all its peculiarities and distinctions; he will speak in almost the same voice and language with a millionaire and with a mere tobacconist, though, of course, in his soul he will grovel duly before the first. Not so with us: there are such sages among us as will speak quite differently to a landowner with two hundred souls than to one with three hundred, and to one with three hundred, again, not as he will speak to one with five hundred, and to one with five hundred, again, not as to one with eight hundred—in short, you can go right up to a million, there will always be nuances. Suppose, for instance, that there exists an office, not here, but in some far-off kingdom, and in that office suppose there exists the head of the office. I ask you to look at him as he sits among his subordinates—one cannot even utter a word from fear!—pride and nobility, and what else does his face not express? Just take a brush and paint him: a Prometheus, decidedly a Prometheus! His gaze is like an eagle's, his step is smooth, measured. And this same eagle, as soon as he leaves his room and approaches his own superior's office, scurries, papers under his arm, just like a partridge, so help me. In society or at a party, if everyone is of low rank, Prometheus simply remains Prometheus, but if there is someone a bit above him, Prometheus will undergo such a metamorphosis as even Ovid could not invent: a fly, less than a fly, he self-annihilates into a grain of sand! "No, this is not Ivan Petrovich," you say, looking at him. "Ivan Petrovich is taller, and this is a short and skinny little fellow; Ivan Petrovich talks in a loud voice, a basso, and never laughs, while this one, devil knows, he peeps like a bird and can't stop laughing." You step closer, you see—it really is Ivan Petrovich! "Ah-ha-ha," you think to yourself. . . But, anyhow, let us return to our cast of characters. Chichikov, as we have already seen, decided to do without ceremony altogether, and therefore, taking a cup of tea in his hand and pouring some liqueur into it, he held forth thus:
"You've got a nice little estate here, dearie. How many souls are there?"
"Nigh onto eighty souls, my dear," the mistress said, "but the trouble is the weather's been bad, and there was such a poor harvest last year, God help us."
"Still, the muzhiks have a hearty look, the cottages are sturdy. But allow me to know your last name. I'm so absentminded . . . arrived in the night..."
"Korobochka, widow of a collegiate secretary."
"I humbly thank you. And your first name and patronymic?"
"Nastasya Petrovna."
"Nastasya Petrovna? A nice name, Nastasya Petrovna. My aunt, my mother's sister, is Nastasya Petrovna."
"And what's your name?" the lady landowner asked. "I expect you're a tax assessor?"
"No, dearie," Chichikov replied, smiling, "don't expect I'm a tax assessor, I'm just going around on my own little business."
"Ah, so you're a buyer! Really, my dear, what a pity I sold my honey to the merchants so cheaply, and here you would surely have bought it from me."
"No, your honey I wouldn't have bought."
"Something else, then? Hemp maybe? But I haven't got much hemp now either: only half a bale."
"No, dearie, mine are a different kind of goods: tell me, have any of your peasants died?"
"Oh, dearie, eighteen men!" the old woman said, sighing. "Died, and all such fine folk, all good workers. Some were born after that, it's true, but what's the use of them: all such runts; and the tax assessor comes—pay taxes on each soul, he says. Folk are dead, and you pay on them like the living. Last week my blacksmith burnt up on me, such a skillful one, and he knew lock-smithing, too."
"So you had a fire, dearie?"
"God spared us such a calamity, a fire would have been all that much worse; he got burnt up on his own, my dear. It somehow caught fire inside him, he drank too much, just this little blue flame came out of him, and he smoldered, smoldered, and turned black as coal, and he was such a very skillful blacksmith! And now I can't even go out for a drive: there's no one to shoe the horses."
"It's all as God wills, dearie!" said Chichikov, sighing, "there's no saying anything against the wisdom of God . . . Why not let me have them, Nastasya Petrovna?"
"Whom, dearie?"
"But, all that have died."
"But how can I let you have them?"
"But, just like that. Or maybe sell them. I'll give you money for them."
"But how? I really don't quite see. You're not going to dig them out of the ground, are you?"
Chichikov saw that the old woman had overshot the mark and that it was necessary to explain what it was all about. In a few words he made clear to her that the transfer or purchase would only be on paper, and the souls would be registered as if they were living.
"But what do you need them for?" the old woman said, goggling her eyes at him.
"That's my business."
"But they really are dead."
"But who ever said they were alive? That's why it's a loss for you, because they're dead: you pay for them, but now I'll rid you of the trouble and the payments. Understand? And not only rid you of them, but give you fifteen roubles to boot. Well, is it clear now?
"I really don't know," the mistress said with deliberation. "I never yet sold any dead ones."
"I should think not! It would be quite a wonder if you'd sold them to anyone. Or do you think they really are good for anything?"
"No, I don't think so. What good could they be, they're no good at all. The only thing that troubles me is that they're already dead."