"Then what are you boggling at ?" continued the Secretary.

"Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time grow up to take the first one's place." Upon that there dawned on our hero one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human brain.

"What a simpleton I am!" he thought to himself.

"Here am I looking about for my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked into my belt.

Why, were I myself to buy up a few souls which are dead--to buy them before a new revision list shall have been made, the Council of Public Trust might pay me two hundred roubles apiece for them, and I might find myself with, say, a capital of two hundred thousand roubles! The present moment is particularly propitious, since in various parts of the country there has been an epidemic, and, glory be to God, a large number of souls have died of it.