Nor can any one but God say to what a figure the fortunes of the pair might not eventually have attained, had not an awkward contretemps cut right across their arrangements.

That is to say, for some reason or another the devil so far deprived these tchinovnik-conspirators of sense as to make them come to words with one another, and then to engage in a quarrel.

Beginning with a heated argument, this quarrel reached the point of Chichikov--who was, possibly, a trifle tipsy--calling his colleague a priest's son; and though that description of the person so addressed was perfectly accurate, he chose to take offence, and to answer Chichikov with the words (loudly and incisively uttered), "It is YOU who have a priest for your father," and to add to that (the more to incense his companion), "Yes, mark you! THAT is how it is." Yet, though he had thus turned the tables upon Chichikov with a tu quoque, and then capped that exploit with the words last quoted, the offended tchinovnik could not remain satisfied, but went on to send in an anonymous document to the authorities.

On the other hand, some aver that it was over a woman that the pair fell out--over a woman who, to quote the phrase then current among the staff of the Customs Department, was "as fresh and as strong as the pulp of a turnip," and that night-birds were hired to assault our hero in a dark alley, and that the scheme miscarried, and that in any case both Chichikov and his friend had been deceived, seeing that the person to whom the lady had really accorded her favours was a certain staff-captain named Shamsharev.

However, only God knows the truth of the matter.