they might give employment to many peasants who would otherwise
have starved. You see, the year happened to have been a lean one--thanks
to those same industry-mongering landowners, in that they had neglected
to sow their crops; and now my factories keep growing at the rate of
a factory a year, owing to the circumstance that such quantities
of remnants and cuttings become so accumulated that, if a man looks
carefully to his management, he will find every sort of rubbish to be
capable of bringing in a return--yes, to the point of his having to
reject money on the plea that he has no need of it. Yet I do not find
that to do all this I require to build a mansion with facades and
pillars!"

"Marvellous!" exclaimed Chichikov. "Beyond all things does it surprise
me that refuse can be so utilised."

"Yes, and that is what can be done by SIMPLE methods. But nowadays every
one is a mechanic, and wants to open that money chest with an instrument
instead of simply. For that purpose he hies him to England. Yes, THAT is
the thing to do. What folly!" Kostanzhoglo spat and added: "Yet when
he returns from abroad he is a hundred times more ignorant than when he
went."

"Ah, Constantine," put in his wife anxiously, "you know how bad for you
it is to talk like this."

"Yes, but how am I to help losing my temper? The thing touches me too
closely, it vexes me too deeply to think that the Russian character
should be degenerating. For in that character there has dawned a sort of
Quixotism which never used to be there. Yes, no sooner does a man get
a little education into his head than he becomes a Don Quixote, and
establishes schools on his estate such as even a madman would never have
dreamed of. And from that school there issues a workman who is good for
nothing, whether in the country or in the town--a fellow who drinks
and is for ever standing on his dignity. Yet still our landowners keep
taking to philanthropy, to converting themselves into philanthropic
knights-errant, and spending millions upon senseless hospitals and
institutions, and so ruining themselves and turning their families
adrift. Yes, that is all that comes of philanthropy."

Chichikov's business had nothing to do with the spread of enlightenment,
he was but seeking an opportunity to inquire further concerning the
putting of refuse to lucrative uses; but Kostanzhoglo would not let
him get a word in edgeways, so irresistibly did the flow of sarcastic
comment pour fro