Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/265

Rh as soon as things begin to be critical, the first resource is complicating them. You can complicate things and muddle them, so that no one can make head or tail of it. Why am I so calm? Because I know that as soon as things begin to go badly, I'll involve every one in it, the governor and the vice-governor and the police-master and the treasurer—I'll bring them all into it. I know all their circumstances: who is on bad terms with whom and who wants to score off whom. Then let them all get out of it, and while they are doing it other people will have time to make their fortunes. You can only catch crayfish in troubled waters, you know. They are all only waiting to trouble them.' Here the philosophic lawyer gazed into Tchitchikov's eyes again with the satisfaction of a teacher who explains a still more tricky passage in the Russian grammar.

'Yes, this is a wise man, certainly,' thought Tchitchikov, and parted from the lawyer in the happiest and most cheerful frame of mind.

Completely reassured and fortified, he flung himself with careless agility on the resilient cushions of the carriage, told Selifan to draw back the hood of the carriage (he had had the hood up and even the leather covers buttoned on his way to the lawyer's) and settled himself like a retired colonel of the Hussars, or even like Vishnepokromov himself, jauntily crossing one leg over the other, turning affably towards the people he met, and beaming under his new silk hat which was tilted a little over one ear. Selifan was