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For two hundred roubles a month he gallops on and on, and only prays they may not be angry with him for his involuntary and inevitable misrepresentations. He feels guilty though it is not he that is to blame but Russian darkness.
Chichikov placed the notes in Sobakevitch's hand; whereupon the host moved nearer to the table, and added to the list of serfs a note that he had received for the peasants, therewith sold, the sum of twenty-five roubles, as earnest money. This done, he counted the notes once more. "This is a very OLD note," he remarked, holding one up to the light. "Also, it is a trifle torn.
"How have you had time for that?" "But I am very anxious to see Avdotya Romanovna once. I earnestly beg it. Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes. I have forgotten something. Tell your sister, Rodion Romanovitch, that Marfa Petrovna remembered her in her will and left her three thousand roubles. That's absolutely certain.
Well, I think to myself, "It's clear, my friend, these patients aren't rolling in riches." ... You smile; but I tell you, a poor man like me has to take everything into consideration.... If the coachman sits like a prince, and doesn't touch his cap, and even sneers at you behind his beard, and flicks his whip then you may bet on six roubles. But this case, I saw, had a very different air.
The entries were put in all sorts of handwritings; evidently any one who liked had a hand in managing the books. In the record of the subscriptions in kind there was no note of their money value. But, excuse me, I thought, the rye which is now worth one rouble fifteen kopecks may be worth two roubles fifteen kopecks in two months' time! Was that the way to do things?
At first its expenditure in the thirty-four provinces in which it existed was under six millions of roubles; in two years it had jumped up to fifteen millions; in 1875 it was nearly twenty-eight millions, in 1885 over forty-three millions, and at the end of the century it had attained the respectable figure of 95,800,000 roubles.
The day after we'd been betrothed, I bought her presents to the value of fifteen hundred roubles a set of diamonds and another of pearls and a silver dressing-case as large as this, with all sorts of things in it, so that even my Madonna's face glowed.
"Fifty roubles a year!" "Very well." "But I'll have no arrears, mind!" "Of course, no arrears"; and so he settled on the bog. 'Well, and has he grown rich? I inquired. 'Yes, he has grown rich. Now he pays me a round hundred for rent, and I shall raise it again, I dare say.
He possessed a very fair property, and without giving too much thought to its management, spent about ten thousand roubles a year, had obtained an excellent cook my friend was fond of good fare and ordered too from Moscow all the newest French books and magazines. In Russian he read nothing but the reports of his bailiff, and that with great difficulty.
“Don’t dare to do such a thing!” cried Pyotr Ilyitch. “I won’t have it in my house, it’s a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here, put it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say you’ll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep putting the notes in your side-pocket? Ah, you’ll lose them!”
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