“Permit me to ask another question: I assume that you are reckoning these souls from the time when the last census was taken?”
“Glory to God if it were only that!” said Pliushkin; “but since the last census I must have lost fully one hundred and twenty souls.”
“Really? fully one hundred and twenty?” exclaimed Tchitchikoff, and he even dropped his jaw somewhat with amazement.
“I am rather old to lie, my good fellow: I have lived seventy years,” said Pliushkin, who seemed to have taken offence at our hero’s almost joyous exclamation.
Tchitchikoff perceived that such a want of sympathy in another’s woe had really been extremely impolite; so he immediately sighed, and said that he felt very sorry.
“Yes, but your sorrow won’t put anything in my pocket,” said Pliushkin. “There’s a captain who lives here near me—the deuce knows where he came from, but he says that he’s a relative. ‘Dear uncle, dear uncle!’ he cries, and he begins to kiss my hand, and to express his sorrow, and raises such a howl that you have to hold your ears. He’s very red in the face, and he’s actually drinking himself to death on brandy. He probably lost all his money while serving as an officer, or some actress coaxed it out of him; so now he comes here, and tries to wheedle himself into my good graces!”
Tchitchikoff endeavoured to explain that his sympathy was of a very different sort to that of the captain, and that he was ready to prove it, not by empty words, but by deeds; in fact, without deferring the matter any further, he immediately expressed his willingness to take upon himself the responsibility of paying the taxes for all the serfs who had died in such an unfortunate manner. The proposition seemed to amaze Pliushkin. He stared at Tchitchikoff for a long time with his eyes wide open, and he finally inquired, “Haven’t you been in the army, my good fellow?”
“No,” replied Tchitchikoff, with a good deal of artfulness: “I was in the civil service.”
“In the civil service?” repeated Pliushkin, and he began to work his lips about, as though he were chewing something. “But what do you mean by this? It is surely a loss to you.”
“For your sake, I am even prepared to suffer loss.”
“Ah, my dear fellow! Ah, my benefactor!” shrieked Pliushkin, not perceiving, in his joy, that the snuff was dropping from his nose in a very unpicturesque fashion, and that the skirts of his dressing-gown, in flying apart, had displayed a very impolite garment to view. “You have comforted an old man! Ah, my Lord! Ah, my Saviour!” Pliushkin could say no more. But a minute had not elapsed, when the joy which had momentarily shown itself on his countenance disappeared as though it had not existed, and his face once more assumed a careworn expression. He even wiped it with his handkerchief; and, rolling this into a ball, he began to draw it along his upper lip.
“With your permission, may I ask if you mean to undertake paying the taxes for them every year? and will you give the money to me, or to the imperial treasury?”
“This is the way we will manage: we will make out a deed of sale for them, as though they were alive, and as though you had sold them to me.”
“Yes, a deed of sale,” said Pliushkin, falling into thought, and he again began to move his lips as before. “But a deed of sale—it’s nothing but an expense. Those officials have no consciences. In former days one used to pay half a rouble in copper as tax for a sack of flour; but now you have to send a whole waggon-load of groats, and add a red bank-note into the bargain—so grasping have they grown. I do not know why no one else has has called attention to that matter.”