The hostess turned to Tchitchikoff very frequently, saying, “You are not eating anything; you have taken very little.”
To which Tchitchikoff each time replied, “I am greatly obliged; I am full. Agreeable conversation is better than any dish whatever.”
Finally, they all rose from the table. Maniloff was extremely well-pleased; and supporting his friend’s back with his hand, he was on the point of conducting him to the drawing-room, when suddenly Tchitchikoff announced, with a very important look, that he desired to speak with him on a momentous subject.
“In that case, permit me to invite you into my study,” said Maniloff; and he led him into a small room where the windows looked out upon the blue forest. “This is my little nook,” he added.
“A pleasant little room,” remarked Tchitchikoff, casting his eyes about it. The room was really not unpleasant; the walls were painted a greyish-blue colour. There were four chairs, one arm-chair, a table upon which lay the little book with the marker of which we have already had occasion to speak, and some papers covered with writing. However, there was more tobacco than anything else. It was in various forms—in paper packages, in boxes, and even piled in a heap on the table. On the sills of both windows, various piles of ashes, shaken out of pipes, were arranged with some attempt at an ornamental disposition. It was evident that this occasionally afforded Maniloff a means of whiling his time away.
“Permit me to request you to place yourself in this arm-chair,” he said. “You will be more comfortable here.”
“No; allow me to sit upon an ordinary chair.”
“That cannot be allowed, if you please,” resumed Maniloff with a smile. “My arm-chair is expressly assigned to guests; whether you like it or not, you must sit in it.”
Tchitchikoff sat down.
“Permit me to offer you a pipe,” said his host.
“No; I do not smoke,” replied Tchitchikoff politely, and with a certain air of regret.
“Why?” asked Maniloff also politely, and with an air of regret.
“I have never acquired the habit of smoking; a pipe is said to dry one up.”
“Permit me to remark that that is prejudice. I even hold that smoking a pipe is much more healthy than taking snuff. There was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very handsome and cultivated man, who never took his pipe out of his mouth, not even when he was at table or anywhere else, if I may say so. And now he is over forty; and, thank God, up to the present time he is so well that he could not possibly be better.”
Tchitchikoff remarked that that really did happen at times, and that there were many things in nature which could not be explained by even the most far-seeing minds.
“But permit me now to ask one question,” he began in a tone in which there was a strange, or almost a strange, expression, and then he glanced behind him, it is impossible to say why. Maniloff also glanced behind him for some inexplicable reason. “How long is it,” resumed Tchitchikoff, “since you condescended to hand in your census list?”
“Why, a long while, or rather, I don’t recollect.”
“So that many of your serfs have died since?”