by discovering, like Socrates, that all they knew was,
that nothing could be known. In vain did mine host essay to pump him:
with a show of the most voluble confidence, Tchitchikof contrived
always virtually to tell nothing. In vain the postmaster looked among
the letters with a lynx eye; not one word of writing ever came to
Tchitchikof through the medium of the post. Their knowledge of him
speedily resolved itself into this: that he was a dashing, handsome
young man, of most refined and polished manners, eminently gifted with
that self-possession which is the never-failing accompaniment of
good-breeding and intercourse with what is termed good society,
elegant in dress, and, as the host of the Eagle announced, decidedly
eccentric. This eccentricity manifested itself in one way, and one
only, and that altogether incomprehensible to the greedy
Nikolskians--namely, a morbid desire to part with his money. If
Tchitchikof met a serf on the highway, he would offer him a ruble for
a stick, a cap, or any other article he wore, intrinsically not worth
a handful of corn; and when the bewildered serf hesitated, would
manifest the utmost anger and impatience until he had gained
possession of the coveted article. With possession, his value for it
ceased, and the dear purchase was generally consigned to the fire a
few minutes after it was bought. However varied his freaks might be in
detail, in spirit they were ever essentially the same; they ever
consisted in making some worthless piece of lumber an excuse for
lightening his purse of a ruble or two.

The priest of the place was the first to find a solution of
Tchitchikof's conduct. He asserted that Tchitchikof, in his love for
money, had committed some fraud or some misdeed to obtain it, and that
his conscience smiting him, he had sought ghostly solace from some
minister, by whom he had been ordered, as adequate penance, to get off
a certain portion per annum in bad bargains--thus at once doing good
to the sellers and torturing the avaricious spirit of the penitential
purchaser. To this the governor objected, with much force, that, money
being the end of human existence, the gaining of it, by any means
short of murder, must be laudable, and could sit heavily on no sane
man's conscience; but being warned by the priest, that such arguments
bordered on heresy, he shifted his ground, and maintained that
Tchitchikof was much too young and too far from death to dream of
penitence, even