herbs and spring vegetables. They all seated themselves at table. The servants quickly placed all the courses on the table, in covered dishes, together with everything that was necessary, and then quitted the room. Kostanzhoglo did not like to have the servants listen to the conversation of their superiors, and still less to have them stare at him while he was engaged in eating.
“You were speaking of becoming a landowner,” he said at last, addressing our hero. “Well, there is the estate of my neighbour, Khlobuyoff, for sale. Why don’t you buy it? It is a splendid chance; and I would pay him forty thousand roubles for it on the spot, if he demanded that sum.”
“H’m!” said Tchitchikoff, and he fell into thought. “But why,” he at last inquired, with some hesitation, “why do you not purchase it yourself?”
“One must know how to draw the line somewhere. I have a great many worries connected with my present estate, without assuming any more responsibilities. Moreover, the noblemen of the district are crying out against me, asserting that I have taken advantage of their need and bankrupt condition—indeed, that I am buying up all the land for a song, and so I have grown tired of it all.”
“How inclined people are to evil speaking!” said Tchitchikoff.
“Particularly in our province: it is something you can’t conceive. They never mention me otherwise than as a niggard and a miser of the first water. They make excuses for themselves on every point. ‘I certainly have been a spendthrift,’ one of them will say; ‘but that was because I lived in accordance with the higher requirements of life, and encouraged tradesmen, that is to say, rascals. Of course, I might have lived like a hog, as that Kostanzhoglo does’.”
“I should like to be such a hog!” said Tchitchikoff.
“And all that is so much falsehood and nonsense. The higher requirements, forsooth! Why are they so lauded? These fellows buy books, indeed, but then they don’t read them. The matter ends in cards and champagne. And all this comes of my not giving them dinners, and lending them money. I don’t give them dinners, simply because it would bore me to entertain them: I am not accustomed to parties. But if any one will come and eat what I eat myself—take pot-luck with me, as the saying goes—I am very glad to have him. I don’t lend money! What nonsense. Come to me in a case of absolute need, and tell me the circumstances, and how you propose to use my money; if I see from your words, that you will employ it sensibly, and that the money will clearly be of advantage to you, I won’t refuse; I won’t even ask you for interest.”
“This must be taken into consideration,” thought Tchitchikoff.
“And I seldom, if ever, refuse,” proceeded Kostanzhoglo. “But fling my money to the winds, I won’t. You must excuse my not doing that. Deuce take the man who does it! He will spend his cash on dinners for his mistress, or he will furnish his house in a mad style, or he will get up some sort of a jubilee in memory of the fact that he has lived his life in vain. There’s no use in lending such a man money!”
Here Kostanzhoglo spat, and came near uttering some violent and indelicate words in the presence of his wife. The gloomy tint of hypochondria darkened his countenance. Vertical and horizontal wrinkles, the witnesses of the wrathful movement of his spleen which had been so excited, collected on his brow.
“Permit me, honoured sir, to again recall you to the subject of our interrupted conversation,” said Tchitchikoff, drinking another glass of wine. “Suppose, for instance, that I were to acquire the property which you were so good as to mention; then how much time would be required for me to become sufficiently wealthy to——”
“If you wish,” interrupted Kostanzhoglo gruffly and abruptly, being still in an irritated frame of mind, “if you wish to grow rich in a short space of time, you will never become wealthy, at all; but if you wish to