Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/318

306 living in every respect; but that he could not answer for what would happen in the future, that if they were to die during transportation from the hardships of the journey, it would not be his fault, that was in God's hands, and that there were plenty of fevers and dangerous illnesses, and that there were instances of whole villages dying of them at once. The official gentlemen had recourse to one other method which was not perfectly honourable perhaps, but which is however sometimes employed, that is, through various acquaintances in the servants' quarters to question privately Tchitchikov's serfs, and to find out whether they knew anything of their master's past life or circumstances: but again they got very little. From Petrushka they got nothing but the smell of a stuffy room, while from Selifan they heard that: 'he was engaged in the Imperial Service, and before that was in the Revenue Department'—and nothing more. Persons of this class have a very strange habit. If they are asked a direct question they are utterly unable to remember anything, cannot put their thoughts in order, and even answer simply that they do not know, but if they are questioned about something different, they immediately complicate it with ever so many details that you do not want to hear. All the investigations made by the officials revealed to them nothing but that they did not know what Tchitchikov was, and at the same time that Tchitchikov certainly must be something. They resolved at last to