Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/238

226 better than he has ever been. The other day he made me a chaise better than anything they make in Moscow. He really ought to be working for the Tsar.'

'Yes, Miheyev is a fine craftsman,' said the president, 'and indeed I wonder you could bring yourself to part with him.'

'If it were only Miheyev! but Stepan Probka, my carpenter, Milushkin, my bricklayer, Maxim Telyatnikov, my bootmaker. They are all gone, I have sold them all!' And when the president asked him why he had got rid of them, considering that they were craftsmen whose work was essential for the house and estate, Sobakevitch answered with a wave of his hand: 'Well, it was simply my foolishness: "Come, I'll sell them," I thought, and I sold them in my foolishness.' Thereupon he hung his head as though he were regretting what he had done and added: 'Here my hair is turning grey, but I have got no sense yet.'

'But excuse me, Pavel Ivanovitch,' said the president, 'how is it you are buying peasants without land? Are you going to settle them elsewhere?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that's a different matter; in what part of the country?'

'In the Kherson province.'

'Oh, there is excellent land there!' said the president, and referred with great appreciation to the luxuriant growth of the grass in that district.

'And have you sufficient land?'