"No, really, have you sold that excellent fellow Micheeff?" the President inquired. "I remember now your coach-builder, Micheeff, very well—an excellent and clever artisan. He has often mended my droschki. But stop, allow me—how is this—I remember now, you told me that he was dead."
"Who! Micheeff dead?" said Sobakevitch, and nearly betraying himself. "It was his brother who died; as for the coach-builder, he is perfectly alive and healthier than ever he was before. He finished the other day a britchka with which you might venture to travel in a canter to Moscow. I am of opinion that he ought to be appointed to work for the Emperor alone."
"Yes, truly, Micheeff is a very clever fellow indeed," said the President, "and I am even surprised that you could agree to part with him for any amount or consideration."
"Micheeff is not the only one. I have even sold Stephen Korobka, the joiner; Milushkin, the potter; Maxim Teliatnikoff, the shoemaker—they are all gone, I have got rid of every one of them."
But when the President asked him why he had thus disposed of them, as they were all such clever and indispensable workmen on a country estate, Sobakevitch answered, whilst sawing his right arm in the air:
"Bah, I was attacked by a peculiar whim of mine, and I said to myself, I am determined, and will sell all these fellows, and thus, then, I got rid of them all on account of a fancy." After this explanation; he allowed his head to hang down, as if he was addressing inward reproaches to himself, and then he added again:
"Though you see that I am already a greyhaired man, yet I must confess I am still deficient in wisdom."
"But allow me to ask you, my dear Pavel Ivanovitch," the President said again, "how did you purchase these serfs, without the land they were born upon? is it with the intention of removing them from here?"
"Just so, for emigration."
"Ah, for emigration views, that is another thing. And pray for what part of the country? if the question is not indiscreet?"