Dead Souls

"They'll get picked, the circumstances will get picked! Believe me: frequent exercise makes the head resourceful. Above all remember that you're going to be helped. In a complicated case there's gain for many: more officials are needed, and more pay for them ... In short, more people must be drawn into the case. Never mind that some of them will get into it for no reason: it's easier for them to justify themselves, they have to respond to the documents, to pay themselves off. . . So there's bread in it. . . Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that no one can understand anything. Why am I calm? Because I know: if my affairs get worse, I'll entangle them all in it—the governor, the vice-governor, the police chief, and the magiatrate—I'll get them all entangled. I know all their circumstances: who's angry with whom, and who's pouting at whom, and who wants to lock up whom. Let them disentangle themselves later, but while they do, others will have time to make their own gains. The crayfish thrives in troubled waters. Everyone's waiting to entangle everything." Here the jurist-philosopher looked into Chichikov's eyes again with that delight with which the teacher explains to the pupil a still more fascinating point in Russian grammar.

"No, the man is indeed a wizard," Chichikov thought to himself, and he parted from the lawyer in a most excellent and most agreeable state of mind.

Having been completely reassured and reinforced, he threw himself back on the springy cushions of the carriage with careless adroitness, ordered Selifan to take the top down (as he went to the lawyer, he had the top up and even the apron buttoned), and settled exactly like a retired colonel of the hussars, or Vishnepokromov himself—adroitly tucking one leg under the other, turning his face agreeably towards passersby, beaming from under the new silk hat cocked slightly over one ear. Selifan was ordered to proceed in the direction of the shopping arcade. Merchants, both itinerant and aboriginal, standing at the doors of their shops, reverently took their hats off, and Chichikov, not without dignity, raised his own in response. Many of them were already known to him; others, though itinerant, being charmed by the adroit air of this gentleman who knew how to bear himself, greeted him like an acquaintance. The fair in the town of Phooeyslavl was never-ending. After the horse fair and the agricultural fair were over, there came the fair of luxury goods for gentlefolk of high cultivation. The merchants who came on wheels planned to go home not otherwise than on sleds.

"Welcome, sir, welcome!" a German frock coat made in Moscow kept saying, outside a fabric shop, posing courteously, his head uncovered, his hat in his outstretched hand, just barely holding two fingers to his round, glabrous chin and with an expression of cultivated finesse on his face.

Chichikov went into the shop.

"Show me your little fabrics, my most gentle sir."

The propitious merchant at once lifted the removable board in the counter and, having thereby made a passage for himself, wound up inside the shop, his back to his goods, his face to the buyer.

Standing back to his goods and face to the buyer, the merchant of the bare head and the outstretched hat greeted Chichikov once again. Then he put his hat on and, leaning forward agreeably, his two arms resting on the counter, spoke thus:

"What sort of cloth, sir? Of English manufacture, or do you prefer domestic?"

"Domestic," said Chichikov, "only precisely of that best sort known as English cloth."

"What colors would you prefer?" inquired the merchant, still swaying agreeably with his two arms resting on the counter.

"Dark colors, olive or bottle green, with flecks tending, so to speak, towards cranberry," said Chichikov.

"I may say that you will get the foremost sort, of which there is none better in either capital," the merchant said as he hoisted himself to the upper shelf to get the bolt; he flung it down adroitly onto the counter, unrolled it from the other end, and held it to the light. "What play, sir! The most fashionable, the latest taste!"

The cloth gleamed like silk. The merchant could smell that there stood before him a connoisseur of fabrics, and he did not wish to begin with the ten-rouble sort.

"Decent enough," said Chichikov, stroking it lightly. "But I tell you what, my worthy man, show me at once the one you save for last, and there should be more of that color . . . those flecks, those red flecks."

"I understand, sir: you truly want the color that is now becoming fashionable in Petersburg. I have cloth of the most excellent properties. I warn you that the price is high, but so is the quality."

"Let's have it."

Not a word about the price.