The next day Chichikov went to dine and spend the evening with the police chief, where they settled down to whist at three o'clock after dinner and played until two o'clock in the morning. There, incidentally, he made the acquaintance of the landowner Nozdryov, a man of about thirty, a rollicksome fellow, who after three or four words began to address him familiarly. He addressed the police chief and the prosecutor in the same way and was on friendly terms with them; yet when they sat down to play for big stakes, the police chief and the prosecutor studied each trick he took with extreme attention and watched almost every card he played. The next day Chichikov spent the evening with the head magistrate, who received his guests in his dressing gown, a slightly greasy one, and some two women among them. Then he attended a soirée at the vice-governor's, a big dinner at the tax farmer's, a small dinner at the prosecutor's, which, however, was as good as a big one; a light lunch after the morning liturgy, given by the town mayor, which was also as good as a dinner. In short, he did not have to stay home for a single hour, and came back to the inn only to sleep. The newcomer was somehow never at a loss and showed himself to be an experienced man of the world. Whatever the conversation, he always knew how to keep up his end: if the talk was of horse breeding, he spoke about horse breeding; if they were speaking of fine dogs, here, too, he made very sensible observations; if the discussion touched upon an investigation conducted by the treasury—he showed that he was not uninformed about legal wiles; if there were some argument about the game of billiards—in the game of billiards, too, he would not go amiss; if they spoke of virtue, on virtue, too, he reasoned very well, tears even came to his eyes; if on the distilling of spirits, then on the distilling of spirits he also knew his stuff; if on customs supervisors and officials, of them, too, he could judge as if he himself had been both an official and a supervisor. Remarkably, he knew how to clothe it all in some sort of decorum, he knew how to bear himself well. He spoke neither loudly nor softly, but absolutely as one ought. In short, however you turned it, he was a very respectable man. The officials were all pleased at the arrival of a new person. The governor opined of him that he was a right-minded man; the prosecutor that he was a sensible man; the colonel of the gendarmes said he was a learned man; the head magistrate that he was a knowledgeable and estimable man; the police chief that he was an estimable and amiable man; the police chief's wife that he was a most amiable and mannerly man. Even Sobakevich himself, who rarely spoke of anyone from the good side, when he returned home rather late from town and, undressing completely, lay down in bed beside his lean-fleshed wife, said to her: "I, my dearest, was at the governor's soirée and dined at the police chief's, and I made the acquaintance of Collegiate Councillor Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov—a most agreeable man!" To which his spouse replied: "Hm!"—and shoved him with her leg.
Such was the opinion, rather flattering for the visitor, that was formed of him in the town, and it persisted until the time when one strange property of the visitor and an undertaking, or passage,as they say in the provinces, of which the reader will soon learn, threw almost the whole town into utter perplexity.
Chapter Two
For more than a week already the newly arrived gentleman had been living in the town, driving about to soirées and dinners and thus passing his time, as they say, very pleasantly. At last he decided to transfer his visits outside of town and call on the landowners Manilov and Sobakevich, to whom he had given his word. Perhaps he was impelled to it by some other, more essential reason, some more serious matter, closer to his heart. . . But of all that the reader will learn gradually and in due time, if only he has patience enough to read the proffered tale, a very long one, which is to expand more widely and vastly later on, as it nears the end that crowns the matter. The coachman Selifan was given orders to harness the horses to the familiar britzka early in the morning; Petrushka was ordered to stay home, to keep an eye on the room and the trunk. It will not be superfluous here for the reader to make the acquaintance of these two bondsmen of our hero's. Although, of course, they are not such notable characters, and are what is known as secondary or even tertiary, although the main lines and springs of the poem do not rest on them, and perhaps only occasionally touch and graze them lightly—still, the author is extremely fond of being circumstantial in all things, and in this respect, despite his being a Russian man, he wishes to be as precise as a German. This will not take up much time or space, however, because not much needs to be added to what the reader already knows, to wit, that Petrushka went about in a rather loose brown frock coat from his master's back and had, as is customary for people of his station in life, a large nose and lips. He was more taciturn than talkative in character; he even had a noble impulse for enlightenment, that is, for reading books, the content of which did not trouble him: it made absolutely no difference to him whether it was the adventures of some amorous hero, a simple primer, or a prayer book—he read everything with equal attention; if they slipped him chemistry, he would not refuse that either. He liked not so much what he was reading about as the reading itself, or, better, the process of reading, the fact that letters are eternally forming some word, which sometimes even means the devil knows what. This reading was accomplished mostly in a recumbent position in the anteroom, on a bed and a mattress which, owing to this circumstance, was beaten down and thin as a flapjack. Besides a passion for reading, he had two further customs, which constituted two more of his characteristic traits: to sleep without undressing, just as he was, in the same frock coat; and always to have about him a sort of personal atmosphere of his own peculiar smell, somewhat reminiscent of living quarters, so that it was enough for him merely to set up his bed somewhere, even in a hitherto uninhabited room, and haul his overcoat and chattels there, for it to seem that people had been living there for ten years. Chichikov, being a most ticklish man and even on occasion a finical one, when he drew in air through a fresh nose in the morning, would only wince and toss his head, saying: "Devil knows, brother, you're sweating or something. You ought to go to a bathhouse." To which Petrushka made no reply and straightaway tried to busy himself somehow: either approaching his master's hanging tailcoat with a brush, or simply putting things in order. What he was thinking all the while he stood there silently—perhaps he was saying to himself: "And you're a good one, too, aren't you sick of repeating the same thing forty times?"—God knows, it is hard to tell what a household serf is thinking while his master admonishes him. And so, that is what can be said for a start about Petrushka. The coachman Selifan was a totally different man . . . But the author is most ashamed to occupy his readers for so long with people of low class, knowing from experience how reluctantly they make acquaintance with the lower estate. Such is the Russian man: strong is his passion for knowing someone at least one rank above himself, and a nodding acquaintance with a count or prince is better to him than any close relations with friends. The author even fears for his hero, who is only a collegiate councillor. Court councillors may well make his acquaintance, but those who are already nearing the rank of general, these, God knows, may even cast at him one of those contemptuous glances a man proudly casts at all that grovels at his feet, or, worse still, pass over him with an inattention deadly for the author. But, however lamentable the one and the other, it is nevertheless necessary for us to return to our hero. And so, having given the necessary orders the evening before, having awakened very early in the morning, having washed, having wiped himself from head to foot with a wet sponge, a thing done only on Sundays—and this day happened to be a Sunday—having shaved in such a way that his cheeks became real satin as regards smoothness and lustre, having put on a cranberry-colored tailcoat with flecks and then an overcoat lined with bearskin, he descended the stairs, supported under his elbow now on one side, now on the other, by the tavern servant, and got into the britzka. With a rumble, the britzka drove through the gates of the inn to the street. A passing priest took off his hat, several urchins in dirty shirts held their hands out, murmuring: "Master, give to the little orphan!" The coachman, noticing that one of them was an avid footboard rider, lashed him with his whip, and the britzka went bouncing off over the cobbles. Not without joy was the striped tollgate beheld in the distance, letting it be known that the pavement, like any other torment, would soon come to an end; and after a few more good hard bumps of his head against the sides, Chichikov was at last racing over soft: ground. No sooner had the town dropped back than all sorts of stuff and nonsense, as is usual with us, began scrawling itself along both sides of the road: tussocks, fir trees, low skimpy stands of young pines, charred trunks of old ones, wild heather, and similar gibberish. Strung-out villages happened by, their architecture resembling old stacks of firewood, covered with gray roofs with cutout wooden decorations under them, looking like embroidered towels hanging down. Several muzhiks yawned, as is their custom, sitting on benches before the gates in their sheepskin coats. Women with fat faces and tightly bound bosoms looked out of upper windows; out of the lower ones a calf peeked or a sow stuck her blind snout. Familiar sights, in short. Having driven past the tenth milestone, he recalled that, according to Manilov's words, his estate should be here, but the eleventh mile flew by and the estate was still nowhere to be seen, and had it not been for two muzhiks they met, things would hardly have gone well for them. To the question of how far it was to the village of Zamanilovka, the muzhiks took off their hats and one of them, who was a bit smarter and wore a pointed beard, replied: