“How is that? I have ordered the samovar. However, to tell the truth, I am not very fond of tea myself. It’s an expensive beverage; and, besides, the price of sugar has risen most terribly. Proshka, we don’t need the samovar. Carry the sugar back to Mavra, do you hear? Let it be put back in the same place—or no, give it here: I will take it back myself. Farewell, my dear fellow”—this to Tchitchikoff, “and may God bless you! And you will hand my letter to the president of the court. Yes, let him read it: he is an old acquaintance of mine. Why, we were brought up together!”

Thereupon, this extraordinary apparition, this little, withered-up old man, conducted our hero into the yard, after which he ordered the gates to be instantly locked. Then he went the round of his storehouses, in order to see whether the night watchmen were at their posts, ready to beat with their wooden shovels on empty casks in lieu of sheet-iron. Then he peeped into the kitchen, where, under the pretext of seeing whether the servants’ food was good, he partook heartily of some cabbage soup and groats; and, finally, having upbraided everyone of them for thieving and evil conduct, he returned to his own room. When he was alone, he even began to meditate how he might requite his visitor for his, in fact, unbounded magnanimity. “I will give him,” said he, “my watch. It is a very good silver watch, none of your brass or pinchbeck affairs. It’s somewhat out of order, but he can have it set to rights for himself. He is still a young man, and will need a watch in order to please his bride. Or no,” he added, after some thought, “it will be better to bequeath it to him after my death, in my will, as a remembrance.”

But our hero was in the most cheerful possible frame of mind, even without the watch. Such an unexpected acquisition as he had made was a perfect godsend, say what you like; it was not only dead souls, but fugitive ones into the bargain, and to the number of over two hundred! He had certainly felt, as he drove up to Pliushkin’s village, that he should reap some sort of a harvest; but he had by no means expected so bountiful a one. So all along the road he was extremely merry. It was already perfectly dark when they arrived at the inn in the town. There Tchitchikoff was met by his servant Petrushka, who held up the skirt of his surtout with one hand—for he did not like to have his coat-tails flying—while with the other he assisted his master to alight from the britchka. The waiter also ran out, with a candle in his hand, and a napkin over his arm. Whether Petrushka was rejoiced at the arrival of his master is not known. At all events, he exchanged a wink with Selifan; and his ordinarily surly countenance seemed on this occasion to brighten up a little.

“You have been pleased to stay away a long time,” said the waiter, as he lighted our hero up the staircase.

“Yes,” answered Tchitchikoff, as he set foot on the stairs. “Well, and how are you?”

“Very well, thanks be to God,” replied the waiter, bowing. “Some lieutenant or other arrived yesterday, and engaged number sixteen, next to your room.”

“A lieutenant?”

“I don’t know who he is; but he comes from Ryazan, and has some brown horses.”

“Good, good! Well, behave yourself as well in future,” said Tchitchikoff, and he then went to his room. On entering the ante-chamber he sniffed, and remarked to Petrushka, “You might at least have opened the windows while I was away!”

“I did open them,” said Petrushka; but he was lying.

His master was perfectly well aware of that, but he did not care to retort. He felt very much fatigued after the journey which he had taken. After partaking of the lightest kind of a supper—merely a sucking- pig—he immediately undressed, and, stowing himself away beneath the coverlet, he fell into a deep, sound sleep. Indeed, he slept in a wonderful way, as only those happy beings sleep who know nothing of either nightmares or fleas, and who are not given to cudgelling their brains.