The servants were rubbing away with some ice at the ill-used back of the poor captain-ispravnik. After the ice, he had some hot napkins applied to his bruised loins; then they drew on him a clean white shirt, and he fell asleep. Zazhmurin, having accurately divined what school his colleague had come from, allowed him to fall into a profound slumber, which, beneficial as it was, frustrated all his hopes of election, for he was obliged to keep his room for several days.

Our friend Pavel Ivanovitch Tchitchikoff, unlike the others, did not become agitated or discomposed by the elections. He went to bed like a genuine rustic, long before eleven o’clock. On the following morning, the 15th of September, he pulled on his trousers, washed himself in plenty of water, carefully rubbing down his face, his neck, his chest, and his arms. He had just donned his Tartar dressing-gown, when through the doorway, which his valet had left half open, he beheld the visage of his tailor’s assistant, who was carefully carrying a light package enveloped in a large silk handkerchief.

“Is it ready?” inquired Tchitchikoff.

“Quite ready, sir,” responded the tailor, putting down his bundle and extracting the pins.

“And it will become me?”

“It ought to,” replied the artist.

Tchitchikoff now took off his dressing-gown and donned the uniform which the tailor had brought him. Placing himself in front of a mirror, he executed divers movements, after which he remarked that the coat was perhaps a trifle tight under the arms.

The tailor asserted, however, that it left nothing to be desired.

“Very well,” said Tchitchikoff; “but look here, if I move like this and this, it impedes the action of my arms.”

“The electors’ assembly isn’t a lake, sir, and you won’t have to swim through it as if for your life in order to reach the shore; you will sit still there, like all the other nobles of your age.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” replied Tchitchikoff, somewhat mortified to think that he had assumed the airs of a shipwrecked mariner in the presence of his tailor. However, he could not refrain from trying on his three- cornered hat, and from saying, as he inspected it, “Faith, I look like a general in this uniform: don’t you think so, my friend?”

“Dressed like this, you are a real general.”

“Do you think so? And my face? Hey?”

“Exactly the face which suits a general, and not an ordinary general either.”

“What? An ordinary general? Are there several sorts of generals, then?”

“Well, there is the American sort, sir.”

“What nonsense! Where did you get the idea that we have American generals in Russia?”

“They are called so.”

“Who is called so?”

“Why, the grandees, the high nobility, the noble lords who are the owners of great estates.”

“You lie! Come, now; I can see that you are a great humbug.”