indeed? 'As drunk as a shoemaker,' says the
proverb. _I_ know what you were like, my friend. If you wish, I will
tell you your whole history. You were apprenticed to a German, who fed
you and your fellows at a common table, thrashed you with a strap,
kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake, and spoke of you in
uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends. At length, when your
apprenticeship was over, you said to yourself, 'I am going to set up
on my own account, and not just to scrape together a kopeck here and a
kopeck there, as the Germans do, but to grow rich quick.' Hence you took
a shop at a high rent, bespoke a few orders, and set to work to buy up
some rotten leather out of which you could make, on each pair of boots,
a double profit. But those boots split within a fortnight, and brought
down upon your head dire showers of maledictions; with the result that
gradually your shop grew empty of customers, and you fell to roaming
the streets and exclaiming, 'The world is a very poor place indeed!
A Russian cannot make a living for German competition.' Well, well!
'Elizabeta Vorobei!' But that is a WOMAN'S name! How comes SHE to be on
the list? That villain Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my
knowing it."

"'Grigori Goiezhai-ne-Doiedesh,'" he went on. "What sort of a man were
YOU, I wonder? Were you a carrier who, having set up a team of three
horses and a tilt waggon, left your home, your native hovel, for ever,
and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that
you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you
to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness and
team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you,
lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt
that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into
an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death when
it comes!"

"And you, my friends?" continued Chichikov, turning to the sheet whereon
were inscribed the names of Plushkin's absconded serfs. "Although you
are still alive, what is the good of you? You are practically dead.
Whither, I wonder, have your fugitive feet carried you? Did you fare
hardly at Plushkin's, or was it that your natural inclinations led you
to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering travellers? Are you, by this
time, in gaol, or have you taken service with other masters for the