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Updated: June 15, 2025
Dead souls were getting quite a scarce article; and, on the true principles of supply and demand, some enterprising Nikolskians were about to import some defunct souls from a distance, when suddenly, one morning, the host of the Eagle announced, that at dead of the previous night, Tchitchikof had departed, bag and baggage and souls. This sudden departure created a great sensation.
The bank hears nothing of M. Tchitchikof. A letter is sent to Nikolsk: no reply. Another of a threatening nature: still no reply. Finally, a special agent is despatched, and finds neither Tchitchikof nor security; but gradually collects the particulars of his visit, as narrated above, and returns to report progress, or no progress, to his superiors.
Accordingly, Tchitchikof having now been a fortnight in Nikolsk, was fast ceasing to be an object of interest, when his eccentricity broke out in a fresh place, and there seemed some likelihood of the children of Nikolsk, in the end, spoiling that Egyptian.
To this the governor objected, with much force, that, money being the end of human existence, the gaining of it, by any means short of murder, must be laudable, and could sit heavily on no sane man's conscience; but being warned by the priest, that such arguments bordered on heresy, he shifted his ground, and maintained that Tchitchikof was much too young and too far from death to dream of penitence, even if he had committed such a crime; though he was evidently too reckless and devil-may-care to leave any dash of the miser in his composition.
Now, whatever had been the station in society of M. Tchitchikof, his means or his idiosyncrasy, the mere fact of his being a stranger had been enough to make the good people of Nikolsk pounce down upon him like a hawk on its quarry, and morally tear him to pieces with rapacious analysis to satiate their ravenous curiosity.
Every class, therefore, received with joy the assurance, that, he was simply a private gentleman of fortune, travelling over Russia at his own sweet will. This mine host positively stated that he had heard Tchitchikof say with his own lips.
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