Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/239

Rh 'Yes, as much as I shall need for the peasants I have bought.'

'Is there a river or a pond?'

'There is a river. There is a pond too, though.' Tchitchikov chanced to look at Sobakevitch, and, although Sobakevitch was as immovable as ever, he could read in his face: 'Oh, you are lying! I doubt whether there is a river or a pond, or any land at all.'

While the conversation continued, the witnesses began to turn up, one by one, the winking prosecutor, already known to the reader, the inspector of the medical board, Truhatchevsky, Byegushkin and the others whom Sobakevitch had described as cumberers of the earth. With some of them Tchitchikov was quite unacquainted. The number was made up by taking some clerks from the office. Not only the son of Father Kirill but Father Kirill himself was brought. Each of the witnesses put down his name with all his grades and qualifications, some in an upright hand, others in a slanting handwriting, others forming letters almost upside down, such as had never been seen in the Russian alphabet. Ivan Antonovitch, known already to the reader, got through the business very rapidly, the purchase deeds were drawn up, revised, entered in a book and wherever else was necessary, and the half per cent. and charge for publication in the Gazetteer were made out, and Tchitchikov had to pay the merest trifle. The president even gave orders that only half the usual dues should be