kov perceived this person to be a man rather
than a woman, since a female housekeeper would have had no beard to
shave, whereas the chin of the newcomer, with the lower portion of his
cheeks, strongly resembled the curry-comb which is used for grooming
horses. Chichikov assumed a questioning air, and waited to hear what the
housekeeper might have to say. The housekeeper did the same. At length,
surprised at the misunderstanding, Chichikov decided to ask the first
question.

"Is the master at home?" he inquired.

"Yes," replied the person addressed.

"Then were is he?" continued Chichikov.

"Are you blind, my good sir?" retorted the other. "_I_ am the master."

Involuntarily our hero started and stared. During his travels it had
befallen him to meet various types of men--some of them, it may be,
types which you and I have never encountered; but even to Chichikov this
particular species was new. In the old man's face there was nothing very
special--it was much like the wizened face of many another dotard, save
that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was
forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his
small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging
brows like the eyes of mice when, with attentive ears and sensitive
whiskers, they snuff the air and peer forth from their holes to
see whether a cat or a boy may not be in the vicinity. No, the most
noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it
have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves and
its skirts were so ragged and filthy as to defy description, while
instead of two posterior tails, there dangled four of those appendages,
with, projecting from them, a torn newspaper. Also, around his neck
there was wrapped something which might have been a stocking, a garter,
or a stomacher, but was certainly not a tie. In short, had Chichikov
chanced to encounter him at a church door, he would have bestowed upon
him a copper or two (for, to do our hero justice, he had a sympathetic
heart and never refrained from presenting a beggar with alms), but in
the present case there was standing before him, not a mendicant, but
a landowner--and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the
superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the
owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun
cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepski