Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/85

Rh hesitatingly, 'you see I've never sold the dead before.'

'I should think not! It would be a wonder indeed if you could sell them to any one. Or do you suppose that there is some profit to be made out of them, really?'

'No, I don't suppose that! What profit could there be in them? They are no use at all. The only thing that troubles me is that they are dead.'

'Well, the woman's thick-headed, it seems,' Tchitchikov thought to himself. 'Listen, ma'am, just look at it fairly yourself: you are being ruined, paying for them as though they were living …'

'Oh, my good sir, don't speak about it,' the old lady caught him up. 'Only the week before last I paid more than a hundred and fifty, besides presents to the assessor.'

'There you see, ma'am! And now take into consideration the mere fact that you won't have to make presents to the assessor again, because now I shall have to pay for them,—I and not you; I take all the taxes on myself, I will even pay all the legal expenses, do you understand that?'

The old lady pondered. She saw that the transaction certainly seemed a profitable one, only it was too novel and unusual, and so she began to be extremely uneasy that the purchaser might be trying to cheat her. God knows where he had come from, and he had arrived in the middle of the night, too.

'Well, ma'am, how is it to be then, is it a bargain?' said Tchitchikov.