“Is there a river or a pond?”
“A river. And there is a pond besides.” After saying this, Tchitchikoff glanced, unintentionally, at Sobakevitch; and, although Sobakevitch was as stolid as ever, it seemed to him as though there were written on his face, “Oh, you’re lying! You haven’t any river, or pond, or land, at all!”
During this conversation, the witnesses began to make their appearance—the blinking procurator, who is already known to the reader; the inspector of the Medical Institute, Trukhatchevsky, Byegushkin, and the other “encumberers of the earth,” as Sobakevitch expressed it. Many of them were entirely unknown to Tchitchikoff. Not only was the son of the protopope, Father Kirill, fetched, but even the protopope himself. Each of the witnesses signed with all his names and titles: some in a reversed handwriting; some in a slanting hand; some simply upside down—introducing such letters as were surely never yet beheld in the Russian alphabet. Our well-known Ivan Antonovitch did his work very briskly. The deeds of sale were recorded, the dates were entered, everything was copied in the books, and, when it was all done, there was a charge of one half-rouble per cent., for the registration, to be paid. However Tchitchikoff disbursed even less, for the president ordered that only one-half of the tax should be demanded of him; and the other half was, in some manner, transferred to the account of another purchase.
“So now,” said the president, when all was over, “it only remains for us to seal the contracts with a convivial glass.”
“I am ready,” said Tchitchikoff. “It only depends on you to name a time. It would be a sin on my part if I did not uncork two or three bottles of foaming wine for such an agreeable company.”
“No; you have not taken the matter aright. We are going to provide the foaming material ourselves,” said the president. “It is an obligation: it is our duty. You are our guest: we must entertain you. Do you know what, gentlemen? This is what we will do: we will all of us, as many as there are here present, go to the chief of police’s; he’s a wonderful fellow! It will only take him a minute to pass along through the fish- market and look at the wine merchants, and you know how we shall fare then! And we’ll also have a little whist-party to celebrate this occasion.”
No one could refuse such a proposition. The witnesses felt an appetite at the very mention of the fish- market: they all instantly took up their caps and hats, and the sitting of the court was at an end. When they passed through the offices, Ivan Antonovitch—he of the jug face—said softly to Tchitchikoff, as he made his bow, “You have bought a hundred thousand roubles’ worth of peasants, and yet you have only given me one white bank-note for my labour.”
“Yes; and what are peasants, after all?” Tchitchikoff answered him in a corresponding whisper; “a very worthless and most insignificant class of people, and not worth half that.”
Ivan Antonovitch then understood that his visitor was of an uncompromising character, and would not give him any more.
The visitors finally arrived at the chief of police’s house in a body. This chief of police really was a wonderful man. As soon as he learned the state of affairs, he called to the captain of the district, a bold young fellow in lacquered cavalry-boots, and whispered a couple of words in his ear, adding, “Do you understand?” And then while the guests were playing whist with ardour in one room, there appeared on the table in another some sturgeon, sterlet, salmon, sveriuga,3 pressed caviar, salted caviar, herrings, patties, cheese, smoked tongues, and so on; all of which came from the market. Next appeared a contribution from the officials’ own quarters—a boar’s head, a patty made out of a nine-pood sturgeon, another pasty of mushrooms, some gingerbread, butter-cakes, and vzvarenitza.4
The chief of police was a sort of father and benefactor to the town. He was as much at home among the citizens as in his own family, and he visited the shops and bazaars and disposed of their contents as if they were his own private storerooms.