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'O no! was the reply. 'My name is Tchitchikof. I am no assessor; I travel on purely private business. 'I see: you have come to buy. How annoying! I've just sold all my honey to those thieves of merchants. 'It is of no consequence. I do not buy honey. 'Indeed! hemp, then? Dear me, and I have next to none. 'Never mind, matouchka, said Tchitchikof. 'My business in these parts is different.
Various were the speculations as to the occupations and antecedents of Tchitchikof, and the business that had called him to Nikolsk.
All the old theories about Tchitchikof revived; and the general opinion seemed to be, that it was all a deep-laid scheme of some irresponsible man in authority, the end whereof was to be suffering in some shape or other to the good people of Nikolsk; until the inspector of the hospital, the Nikolsk Socrates, proved clearly, by unassailable argumentation, that Tchitchikof was mad; that his exit was in exact keeping with his conduct during his sojourn; and that they might repose in the peace of easy consciences, proud that they had made the most of his insanity.
He asserted that Tchitchikof, in his love for money, had committed some fraud or some misdeed to obtain it, and that his conscience smiting him, he had sought ghostly solace from some minister, by whom he had been ordered, as adequate penance, to get off a certain portion per annum in bad bargains thus at once doing good to the sellers and torturing the avaricious spirit of the penitential purchaser.
You pay the tax for them, don't you? and that'll half-ruin you, you say. Well, I clear you of the tax for these eighteen dead ones do you understand? not only clear you of the tax, but give fifteen rubles into the bargain. Is that clear, or is it not? 'No yes I can't tell what to say. You see, I have never sold dead peasants before, and' 'It would be queer if you had, cried Tchitchikof.
But as to the fact of his being a stranger, was added the piquancy of a reputation for eccentricity, and the irresistible recommendation of wealth, the Tchitchikof mania spread over all ranks of society, and raged with the fury of a tornado by the evening of the very day upon which the host of the Eagle first delighted them with the news.
As Nastasie's cupidity excelled her stupidity, she did begin to understand; and after a little more hesitation and explanation, Tchitchikof drew up a formal conveyance of the eighteen souls, precisely as though they were bodies and souls, inserting their names, however, as a guarantee against his claiming any of Nastasie's living stock.
Such being the state of affairs in Nikolsk, it will be easily imagined, that when mine host of the Black Eagle, in a very important and mysterious manner, announced to a select few that a singular and eccentric stranger, rolling in money, had arrived at his hostelry, with the intention of staying some time in Nikolsk, the news flew like a telegraphic message, or a piece of scandal among a community of old maids, through the place; and that in a few hours after his arrival, nobody, from governor to serf, thought or spoke of anything or anybody else than the mysterious stranger, who, under the name of Tchitchikof, occupied the best suite of apartments in the Black Eagle, and, as the landlord affirmed on oath, was eccentric to a degree, and revelled in untold gold.
Nastasie signed it, Tchitchikof paid the money, and, after a good night's rest, departed for Nikolsk, with the title-deed of the dead souls safely in his possession.
So that the Nikolskians have to conclude, in reflecting on M. Tchitchikof, not without acerbity and a certain uncharitableness of spirit, that if he were a friend of his species, he limited his species to himself; and if he were mad, there was a very clear and profitable method in his madness.
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