“No more than two at the most.”
“The old jackass! Don’t be angry with me, but I must say that, though your uncle, he is also a jackass.”
“Quite so, your Excellency. And though it grieves ME to have to confess that he is my uncle, what am I to do with him?”
Yet this was not altogether the truth. What would have been a far harder thing for Chichikov to have confessed was the fact that he possessed no uncles at all.
“I beg of you, your Excellency,” he went on, “to hand me over those, those—”
“Those dead souls, eh? Why, in return for the jest I will give you some land as well. Yes, you can take the whole graveyard if you like. Ha, ha, ha! The old man! Ha, ha, ha! WHAT a fool he’ll look! Ha, ha, ha!”
And once more the General’s guffaws went ringing through the house.
[At this point there is a long hiatus in the original.]