was writing a secret report about him; he let the gendarmes' clerk hear that an official staying secretly in the town was writing a report against him, while he assured this secret official that there was a still more secret official who was giving information about him, and he brought them all into such a position that they were obliged to come to him for advice.
A regular chaos followed: there was one report on the top of another, and things were on the way of being discovered, such as the sun has never looked upon, and, indeed, such as did not exist at all. Everything was turned to account and brought into the case: the fact that so-and-so was an illegitimate son, and that so-and-so was of such an origin and calling, that so-and-so had a mistress, and whose wife was flirting with whom. Scandals, moral lapses and all sorts of things were so mixed up and intertwined with the story of Tchitchikov and of the dead souls, that it was utterly impossible to make out what was most nonsensical: it all seemed equally absurd. When the papers relating to the case began at last to reach the governor-general, the poor prince could make nothing of them. A very clever and efficient clerk who was commissioned to make a synopsis of them almost went out of his mind; it was utterly impossible to get a connected view of the case. The prince was worried at the time by a number of other matters, one more unpleasant than the other. There was famine in one part of the province. The officials
