But, as hospitality is still in fashion with us, so much in fashion indeed, that even a miser dare not offend its laws and privileges, therefore the old niggard added immediately, and a little more audibly, "I pray you, Sir, be seated!"
"It is long since I have received company," said he, "and I must candidly confess I see no advantage in welcoming idle visitors. Some foolish people have introduced the fashion of driving about from one estate to the other, and thus neglect their own households—and if they happen to arrive, you have even to feed their horses and men as well! I have already dined some hours since, and my kitchen is so very low, badly constructed, and the chimney is crumbling, that, were I to order some fire again I might easily set the whole house on fire."
"Oh, oh, is that it!" thought Tchichikoff to himself, "it is well I made a good dinner at Sobakevitch's house, on the cabbage and shoulder of mutton."
"And a truss of hay and some bushels of oats are no joke in these hard times in any household!" continued Pluschkin, "and really, the more I think of it the more absurd this evil custom seems to me. I have but a small estate, my peasants are idle and do not like to work, but think only how to get into the dram-shop—really it is frightful to contemplate, one might easily go begging."
"However, I have been told," calmly observed Tchichikoff, "that you call more than a thousand serfs your own."
"And who has told you that? My dear Sir, you ought to have spit into the face of that person who told you this! he is a fool and wants to pass a joke upon you. All proclaim me to be the possessor of a thousand souls, but if they were to number them they would really find none. During the last three years the fever has carried off numbers of my best and healthiest peasants."
"Is it possible! and have you indeed lost many?" exclaimed Tchichikoff, with visible interest.
"Yes, the fever has carried off a great many."
"But allow me to inquire how many in number?"
"About eighty souls."