not try to detain me."

"Your wife be--! But have you REALLY an important piece of business with
her?"

"No, no, my friend. The real reason is that she is a good and trustful
woman, and that she does a great deal for me. The tears spring to my
eyes as I think of it. Do not detain me. As an honourable man I say that
I must go. Of that I do assure you in all sincerity."

"Oh, let him go," put in Chichikov under his breath. "What use will he
be here?"

"Very well," said Nozdrev, "though, damn it, I do not like fellows who
lose their heads." Then he added to his brother-in-law: "All right,
Thetuk [20]. Off you go to your wife and your woman's talk and may the
devil go with you!"

"Do not insult me with the term Thetuk," retorted the brother-in-law.
"To her I owe my life, and she is a dear, good woman, and has shown me
much affection. At the very thought of it I could weep. You see, she
will be asking me what I have seen at the fair, and tell her about it I
must, for she is such a dear, good woman."

"Then off you go to her with your pack of lies. Here is your cap."

"No, good friend, you are not to speak of her like that. By so doing you
offend me greatly--I say that she is a dear, good woman."

"Then run along home to her."

"Yes, I am just going. Excuse me for having been unable to stay. Gladly
would I have stayed, but really I cannot."

The brother-in-law repeated his excuses again and again without noticing
that he had entered the britchka, that it had passed through the gates,
and that he was now in the open country. Permissibly we may suppose that
his wife succeeded in gleaning from him few details of the fair.

"What a fool!" said Nozdrev as, standing by the window, he watched the
departing vehicle. "Yet his off-horse is not such a bad one. For a long
time past I have been wanting to get hold of it. A man like that is
simply impossible. Yes, he is a Thetuk, a regular Thetuk."

With that they repaired to the parlour, where, on Porphyri bringing
candles, Chichikov perceived that his host had produced a pack of cards.

"I tell you what," said Nozdrev, pressing the sides of the pack
together, and then slightly bending them, so that the pack cracked and
a card flew out. "How would it be if, to pass the time, I were to make a
bank of three hundred?"

Chichikov pretended not to have heard him, but remarked with an air of
having just recollected a forgotten point:

"By the way, I had omitted to say that I