fully informed by the police; and as the police quarters are in my house, you will live at my house, if you please, with me, and just as I do.”

This mayor had hardly any fortune, but he had kept on good terms with all classes of society. When a man impressed him as being rather good than evil, and when he could render him a service, he entered into the business with a great deal of zeal and goodwill. He had, above all things, a passion for a respectable air. On the present occasion he had the happiness of arranging, for less than one hundred and fifty roubles, all his prisoner’s affairs, and in addition he enabled him to derive a very good profit from the thousand souls which were left on his hands. Then he was pleased to allow Tchitchikoff to marry his daughter Marya, who was young, docile, fresh, and ignorant, it is true—indeed, utterly insignificant; but she was very good and very affectionate all the same, the best sort of wife that could be desired for our hero, and whom we could wish for the majority of our friends and acquaintances.

A good third of the gentry of the government took part in the wedding, which lasted for three days without a break; and the newly-married couple retired to a very fine estate which Tchitchikoff had purchased, at a convenient distance from the city of Krasnoi, and where, in the space of ten years, amid satisfactions of all sorts, repose, and true happiness, he saw his first nine children born and grow up. Our hero occupied his leisure with agriculture, kitchen-gardening, and even with arboriculture; he regulated his expenses in perfect accordance with his revenues; and in order not to lose a certain talent of the pen which he possessed, he thought proper to gather together his memoirs, and commit them to paper in the form of notes, whence, from all appearance, and thanks to our author, has proceeded most of the present work.

In the eleventh year of this unclouded happiness, such as but very few honest men taste of, Pavel Ivanovitch felt troubled; he felt weary of so much repose, so much health, so much luck, monotony, uniformity, and calm felicity. His notes were abandoned, he received the caresses of his young family in an absent- minded way, and he no longer went beyond his grounds. As he wandered about his yard, he reminded Selifan and Petrushka of the days of their former peregrinations; he endeavoured to awaken in these burly men some desire for an excursion in the fashion of the olden days; but, they had become fond of a sedentary life as they grew old, and they did not understand his meaning. He gazed upon them with scorn, and felt enraged with himself for having addressed the brutes except in the way of giving orders.

One day, when the spring had arrived, however, he informed these ancient relics, and without tolerating a single word of objection, that on the morrow, the fifth of May, at daybreak, the calash was to stand ready harnessed at the door, and that they were to hold themselves prepared for an excursion of several months’ duration. He proposed to go and visit Tentyotnikoff and the fair Ulinka, whose happiness he regarded as his own work. He should thus learn whether General Betrishtcheff was still of this world. He flattered himself that in any case he would be welcome, at least among a portion of his extensive circle of relations; and circumstances alone had prevented his revisiting the Tentyotnikoff family, as it was his duty to do, having made a promise to that effect.

They set out; but at the fourteenth verst, and five versts away from any wheelwright or blacksmith, two spokes and the rim of one of the wheels of the ancient calash broke. Tchitchikoff passed the night in a miserable village inn. On the following day, his constant presence in the artisan’s shop having produced no result except that of retarding the work, through affording the rustic so many opportunities to chatter, he was forced to make up his mind to pass a second night in the so-called inn, which was a hut. And when at length, on the second day, the wheels were all in good condition, the master felt ill. Selifan and Petrushka exchanged a glance, and, without having received any orders or instructions, the animals took the road for home of their own free will. Marya learnt all, but she carefully refrained from interrogating her husband as to the cause of his prompt return, and from laughing at his lamentable tale—a piece of discretion which induced Tchitchikoff, after he had related what had taken place, to ridicule his project and his discomfiture.

He then subscribed to seven Russian papers and to three periodical foreign publications—two French and one German—although he did not know a hundred words of French, and not six of German.