"

"As you say, he is mad, and I should not have been intending to visit
him, were it not that General Betristchev is an intimate friend of mine,
as well as, I might add, my most generous benefactor."

"Then," said Kostanzhoglo, "do you go and see Colonel Koshkarev NOW.
He lives less than ten versts from here, and I have a gig already
harnessed. Go to him at once, and return here for tea."

"An excellent idea!" cried Chichikov, and with that he seized his cap.

Half an hour's drive sufficed to bring him to the Colonel's
establishment. The village attached to the manor was in a state of utter
confusion, since in every direction building and repairing operations
were in progress, and the alleys were choked with heaps of lime, bricks,
and beams of wood. Also, some of the huts were arranged to resemble
offices, and superscribed in gilt letters "Depot for Agricultural
Implements," "Chief Office of Accounts," "Estate Works Committee,"
"Normal School for the Education of Colonists," and so forth.

Chichikov found the Colonel posted behind a desk and holding a pen
between his teeth. Without an instant's delay the master of the
establishment--who seemed a kindly, approachable man, and accorded to
his visitor a very civil welcome--plunged into a recital of the labour
which it had cost him to bring the property to its present condition of
affluence. Then he went on to lament the fact that he could not make
his peasantry understand the incentives to labour which the riches
of science and art provide; for instance, he had failed to induce his
female serfs to wear corsets, whereas in Germany, where he had resided
for fourteen years, every humble miller's daughter could play the piano.
None the less, he said, he meant to peg away until every peasant on
the estate should, as he walked behind the plough, indulge in a regular
course of reading Franklin's Notes on Electricity, Virgil's Georgics, or
some work on the chemical properties of soil.

"Good gracious!" mentally exclaimed Chichikov. "Why, I myself have not
had time to finish that book by the Duchesse de la Valliere!"

Much else the Colonel said. In particular did he aver that, provided
the Russian peasant could be induced to array himself in German costume,
science would progress, trade increase, and the Golden Age dawn in
Russia.

For a while Chichikov listened with distended eyes. Then he felt
constrained to intimate that with all that he had nothing to do, seeing
that