“The truth is you don’t eat enough. Try the plan of making a good dinner. Weariness of everything is a modern invention. Once upon a time one never heard of it.”
“Well, boast away, but have you yourself never been tired of things?”
“Never in my life. I do not so much as know whether I should find time to be tired. In the morning, when one awakes, the cook is waiting, and the dinner has to be ordered. Then one drinks one’s morning tea, and then the bailiff arrives for HIS orders, and then there is fishing to be done, and then one’s dinner has to be eaten. Next, before one has even had a chance to utter a snore, there enters once again the cook, and one has to order supper; and when she has departed, behold, back she comes with a request for the following day’s dinner! What time does THAT leave one to be weary of things?”
Throughout this conversation, Chichikov had been taking stock of the newcomer, who astonished him with his good looks, his upright, picturesque figure, his appearance of fresh, unwasted youthfulness, and the boyish purity, innocence, and clarity of his features. Neither passion nor care nor aught of the nature of agitation or anxiety of mind had ventured to touch his unsullied face, or to lay a single wrinkle thereon. Yet the touch of life which those emotions might have imparted was wanting. The face was, as it were, dreaming, even though from time to time an ironical smile disturbed it.
“I, too, cannot understand,” remarked Chichikov, “how a man of your appearance can find things wearisome. Of course, if a man is hard pressed for money, or if he has enemies who are lying in wait for his life (as have certain folk of whom I know), well, then—”
“Believe me when I say,” interrupted the handsome guest, “that, for the sake of a diversion, I should be glad of ANY sort of an anxiety. Would that some enemy would conceive a grudge against me! But no one does so. Everything remains eternally dull.”
“But perhaps you lack a sufficiency of land or souls?”
“Not at all. I and my brother own ten thousand desiatins [44] of land, and over a thousand souls.”
“Curious! I do not understand it. But perhaps the harvest has failed, or you have sickness about, and many of your male peasants have died of it?”
“On the contrary, everything is in splendid order, for my brother is the best of managers.”