“Do you wish to render me a service?”

“I desire it greatly.”

“Well, listen! Each time that you receive your balls from the hand of the marshal, hand them to me, and I will deposit them according to your desires, as one’s oath, honour, and conscience require.”

“Well, we will see about it.”

“Good evening, Pavel Ivanovitch.”

“Adieu.”

“What is the matter with them all?” said Tchitchikoff to himself, as he re-entered his chamber at the inn; “why are they thus excited? One finds nothing but lying, fraud, and hypocrisy at every step. The elections are useful in many respects, as a privilege conferred on the nobility; but in the practice, in the exercise of the right, there is a little too much perfidy and malignity. I am not ambitious of any office, certainly; I only came here to divert my mind from my occupations as a landowner, and I find nothing but worry. Instead of remaining here any longer, I should do better to go and busy myself about the welfare of my peasants, the education of my young family, and many other things which would prove beneficial either to me, or my family, when I am gone. I must be honest; that accursed ambition, or rather that petty vanity, always oppresses my heart, after creeping in to it like a serpent. It is only too true, that I should like to be elected marshal of the nobility of our district. It seems that that is the goal of a noble’s desires, and all these parties and intrigues are due to it. Whatever I do or say, it seems as though someone were every moment urging me on, and shouting in my ears, ‘Announce yourself as a candidate; try, try! perhaps you will succeed!’ One unhappy man has undermined his whole fortune for the sake of collecting the nobility at his house; he is ruining himself, and all his family, by his extravagant expenditure. Still he never gets discouraged, but hopes to be elected marshal in spite of all the affronts and discomfitures he meets with. There are also a great many aspirants this year, and very few offices to be filled up. Ought not I to postpone my candidature until the next election? But no: three years are three centuries! Shall I be alive and in health three years hence? I should like to serve as marshal for eight or nine months, or a year at the most; then I would hand in a peremptory resignation; that would be the thing. Oh! if I could only have the pleasure of signing my name, in my clear, firm handwriting, on patents of nobility, or on a circular addressed to all my noble electors!”

Tchitchikoff was so engrossed with this last idea that, without thinking, he placed a sheet of paper before him, seized a pen, and wrote with one sweep of the hand in magisterial, flowing calligraphy, “Tchitchikoff, Marshal of the Nobility.” Then he glanced about him, twisted the paper up, burned it in the flame of his candle, and thought, as he took off his clothes, “What a miserable creature is man! After many tempests, I have entered a haven of safety, but my heart and my imagination have followed me into it; and in the absence of real troubles coming from without, I create for myself, by my own fancy, subjects of irritation and false hopes, which do not allow me to taste the sweets of repose.”

Three days elapsed, and the noisy elections for the district began. The streets were crowded from sunrise by equipages coming and going, filled, most of them, too, to excess, with members of the country nobility, in their grand uniforms. Some even went modestly on foot to each other’s houses; and when men who were tolerably sure of each other met, they alighted from their carriages or halted and exchanged embraces. They could be seen saluting each other at fabulous distances, and the most flattering hopes were depicted on their faces.

The turmoil aroused Tchitchikoff long before his ordinary hour of rising; he hastened to his window, and amused himself with watching an enormous britchka, drawn by two horses with long, badly-groomed coats, and containing five portly gentlemen in full dress.