Samosvitov
then made for the gaol where Chichikov was confined, and, en route,
impressed into the service the first street woman whom he encountered,
and handed her over to the care of two young fellows of like sort
with himself. The next step was to hurry back to the prison where the
original woman had been interned, and there to intimate to the sentry
that he, Samosvitov (with whiskers and rifle complete), had been sent
to relieve the said sentry at his post--a proceeding which, of course,
enabled the newly-arrived relief to ensure, while performing his
self-assumed turn of duty, that for the woman lying under arrest there
should be substituted the woman recently recruited to the plot, and that
the former should then be conveyed to a place of concealment where she
was highly unlikely to be discovered.

Meanwhile, Samosvitov's feats in the military sphere were being rivalled
by the wonders worked by Chichikov's lawyer in the civilian field of
action. As a first step, the lawyer caused it to be intimated to the
local Governor that the Public Prosecutor was engaged in drawing up a
report to his, the local Governor's, detriment; whereafter the lawyer
caused it to be intimated also to the Chief of Gendarmery that a certain
confidential official was engaged in doing the same by HIM; whereafter,
again, the lawyer confided to the confidential official in question
that, owing to the documentary exertions of an official of a still
more confidential nature than the first, he (the confidential official
first-mentioned) was in a fair way to find himself in the same boat as
both the local Governor and the Chief of Gendarmery: with the result
that the whole trio were reduced to a frame of mind in which they were
only too glad to turn to him (Samosvitov) for advice. The ultimate and
farcical upshot was that report came crowding upon report, and that such
alleged doings were brought to light as the sun had never before beheld.
In fact, the documents in question employed anything and everything as
material, even to announcing that such and such an individual had an
illegitimate son, that such and such another kept a paid mistress, and
that such and such a third was troubled with a gadabout wife; whereby
there became interwoven with and welded into Chichikov's past history
and the story of the dead souls such a crop of scandals and innuendoes
that by no manner of means could any mortal decide to which of these
rubbishy romances to award