"No, my good lady," replied Tchichikoff, smiling. "You have not guessed rightly, for I am not a judge, but I travel for my own little affairs."
"Ah! then you must be a public contractor. How very much I regret now that I sold my honey so cheap to those merchants; I am sure, my good Sir, you would have bought the honey of me."
"Pardon me, but I think I should not have bought your honey."
"What else? Perhaps some flax? But alas! I have very little at the present moment, perhaps not more than half a pud."
"No, my good lady, but I might buy perhaps some other kind of goods; tell me, if you please, have many of your peasants died lately?"
"Oh, my dear Sir, I lost eighteen men!" said the matron, with a deep sigh. "And it was a severe loss to me, for those who died were such healthy and hard-working peasants. It is true, since they died others again have been born; but what good are they as yet? they are all too young. I had but recently a visit from the judge, who came to claim the imperial capitation tax. Those eighteen are dead, and yet I have to pay the tax upon them all the same till the next census is taken. Last week a fire destroyed my smith, and that is again a severe loss, he was such an ingenious artisan, for he could even do locksmith's work."
"So you have suffered from a fire? this is sad indeed, my good lady."
"May God preserve me from such a calamity! for a real fire would be worse still; the smith burned himself to death, my good Sir. Somehow, a fire took place within his own body; he had been drinking too much, for a blue flame seemed to consume him, he smouldered, and became as black as a coal; but you can have no idea what an ingenious workman he was; and now I shall not be able to drive out at all, for I have no one to shoe my horses."
"All calamities are the decrees of Providence, my dear lady," said Tchichikoff, with a sigh; "the wisdom of God is beyond our understanding. You had better let me have them, my excellent Anastasia Petrovna?"
"Whom, my dear Sir?"