'I believe you see objections?' observed Tchitchikov.
'I? … no, it's not that,' said Manilov, 'but pardon me … I cannot quite grasp it … I, of course, have not been so fortunate as to receive the brilliant education which is perceptible, one may say, in your every movement; I have no great art in expressing myself. Perhaps in this, in what you have just expressed, there is some hidden significance. Perhaps you have expressed yourself in this way as a figure of speech?'
'No,' Tchitchikov interposed. 'No, I mean just what I say, that is, the souls which are really dead.'
Manilov was completely bewildered. He felt he ought to do something, to put some question, but what the devil to ask, he could not tell. He ended at last by blowing out smoke again, not from his mouth but through his nostrils.
'And so if there are no obstacles we might, with God's blessing, proceed to draw up a deed of sale,' said Tchitchikov.
'What … a sale of dead souls?'
'Oh no,' said Tchitchikov, 'we shall write them as living, just as it actually stands in the census list. It is my habit never to depart one jot from the law; though I have had to suffer for that in the service, but pardon me: duty is for me a sacred thing, the law—before the law I am dumb.'
Manilov liked these last words but he had not the faintest inkling of what was meant, and, instead of answering, fell to sucking at his pipe so
