It is already well known to our readers that Tchichikoff was particularly anxious about his heirs. A very tender subject. Many a man would perhaps venture head and neck, if it was not for the question which presses itself inexplicably upon him—"What, will my children say?" And the possible head of a future generation, like a precautious cat, looking sideways to espy if his master is in the way, seizes hurriedly everything that happens to be near him, either a piece of soap, some candles, tallow, or a canary bird if it should happen to fall under its claws; in a word, he allows nothing to escape.
Thus lamented our disconsolate hero: meanwhile his activity was not extinguished within him; it only slumbered for a while. There was always something that preoccupied his mind, and only waited for the chance of a sound plan. He armed himself once more with his peculiar virtues, and determined again to begin an active and difficult life; he again submitted himself to the well-known privations of former life, and again from an elevated and respectable position, he launched himself into sullied and low life. And in the expectation of something better turning up, he was obliged to accept the situation of a commission-agent, a profession yet badly received and acknowledged by our citizens, pushed about on all sides, shabbily paid and treated with disregard and even with contempt. However, necessity obliges us to many things, and also excuses them, and our hero therefore determined upon accepting the situation.
Among a variety of business with which he had been entrusted, was also the following: to mortgage in the Imperial Bank of the Council of Guardians, a few hundred serfs. The nobleman who had commissioned him to undertake this business was ruined, and reduced to the last extremity. His landed property was already completely encumbered, by an epidemic among his cattle, villainous and dishonest stewards, bad harvests, epidemic diseases which had carried off numbers of his most valuable serfs, and at last by the follies of the nobleman himself, who had purchased and furnished a house in St. Petersburg at an extravagant expense but in the last Parisian fashion, and who had spent upon this mad fancy his last rouble, so that he had nothing to eat. And for this reason, he was obliged to have recourse to the last extremity, and determine upon parting with his life estate.
The Imperial Bank for the mortgage of landed property and serfs, under the title of Council of Guardians, is one of the numerous paternal institutions of recent date, and of all of which his Majesty the Emperor is himself the head. The transactions of the Imperial Council of Guardians claim his peculiar attention, and consist chiefly in advancing monies to such noblemen of the Empire as have become embarrassed from various causes, but principally from such as we have already alluded to. The monies of the Crown are advanced upon real estate, namely upon land and serfs. It is principally left to the Council of Guardians to fix the period for repayment of the advanced funds, and if the nobleman thus assisted cannot redeem his mortgaged property in due time, it is again left to the discretion of the Imperial Council of Guardians to have the property of the nobleman valued by a special committee, and then it is sold to the Crown, which, after refunding itself, hands the residue to the thus ruined nobleman.
This system of paternal accommodation, which the Russian nobility enjoys at the hands of his Majesty the Emperor, fully accounts for the enormous number of Crown serfs, which number has increased since the establishment of the Imperial Council of Guardians nearly to a million souls.
At the time when Tchichikoff was intrusted with the mortgage of those few hundred serfs, the Council of Guardians had been but recently established, yet much of its operations had already transpired, and circulated among the nobility, and for that reason they were very reluctant to profit by this paternal accommodation. Tchichikoff, in his capacity of agent, had received instructions to conclude the mortgage of the serfs on the most advantageous terms; he therefore thought it proper to dispose everything favourably, (without previously well disposing a few of the Imperial employés, it would be hopeless to apply for anything like information, and it is therefore advisable to smooth their throats with a profusion of port and sherry), and thus, having as far as necessary well-disposed every one of the employés in the Council of Guardians, with whom he would have to transact business, he explained his errand to be connected with a very peculiar circumstance.
"Half of the serfs I wish to mortgage, have died since my arrival here at Moscow, and I am therefore alarmed lest there might be some misunderstanding about them later—"
"But allow me to ask you," said the secretary of the Board of Guardians, "are these two hundred serfs we are now speaking about, included in the census your nobleman has handed in to government, when the last census was taken?"
"Yes, they are included," answered Tchichikoff.
"If so, I can see no reason why you should feel faint-hearted?" the secretary returned, "if the one dies, another is born, and thus makes up the deficiency."