"Excellent business! Yes, excellent business!"

"I, too, conceive that I could not well have done better. The truth is that never until a man has driven home the piles of his life's structure upon a lasting bottom, instead of upon the wayward chimeras of youth, will his aims in life assume a definite end." And, that said, Chichikov went on to deliver himself of a very telling indictment of Liberalism and our modern young men. Yet in his words there seemed to lurk a certain lack of conviction. Somehow he seemed secretly to be saying to himself, "My good sir, you are talking the most absolute rubbish, and nothing but rubbish." Nor did he even throw a glance at Sobakevitch and Manilov. It was as though he were uncertain what he might not encounter in their expression. Yet he need not have been afraid. Never once did Sobakevitch's face move a muscle, and, as for Manilov, he was too much under the spell of Chichikov's eloquence to do aught beyond nod his approval at intervals, and strike the kind of attitude which is assumed by lovers of music when a lady singer has, in rivalry of an accompanying violin, produced a note whereof the shrillness would exceed even the capacity of a bird's throstle.

"But why not tell Ivan Grigorievitch precisely what you have bought?" inquired Sobakevitch of Chichikov. "And why, Ivan Grigorievitch, do YOU not ask Monsieur Chichikov precisely what his purchases have consisted of? What a splendid lot of serfs, to be sure! I myself have sold him my wheelwright, Michiev."

"What? You have sold him Michiev?" exclaimed the President. "I know the man well. He is a splendid craftsman, and, on one occasion, made me a drozhki[4]. Only, only--well, lately didn't you tell me that he is dead?"

[4] A sort of low, four-wheeled carriage.

"That Michiev is dead?" re-echoed Sobakevitch, coming perilously near to laughing. "Oh dear no! That was his brother. Michiev himself is very much alive, and in even better health than he used to be. Any day he could knock you up a britchka such as you could not procure even in Moscow. However, he is now bound to work for only one master."

"Indeed a splendid craftsman!" repeated the President. "My only wonder is that you can have brought yourself to part with him."

"Then think you that Michiev is the ONLY serf with whom I have parted? Nay, for I have parted also with Probka Stepan, my carpenter, with Milushkin, my bricklayer, and with Teliatnikov, my bootmaker. Yes, the whole lot I have sold."

(Editor：ability)