Yet barely a minute had elapsed before this instantaneously aroused emotion had, as instantaneously, disappeared from his wooden features.

Once more they assumed a careworn expression, and he even wiped his face with his handkerchief, then rolled it into a ball, and rubbed it to and fro against his upper lip.
"If it will not annoy you again to state the proposal," he went on, "what you undertake to do is to pay the annual tax upon these souls, and to remit the money either to me or to the Treasury ?" "Yes, that is how it shall be done.

We will draw up a deed of purchase as though the souls were still alive and you had sold them to myself." "Quite so--a deed of purchase," echoed Plushkin, once more relapsing into thought and the chewing motion of the lips.

"But a deed of such a kind will entail certain expenses, and lawyers are so devoid of conscience! In fact, so extortionate is their avarice that they will charge one half a rouble, and then a sack of flour, and then a whole waggon-load of meal.

I wonder that no one has yet called attention to the system." Upon that Chichikov intimated that, out of respect for his host, he himself would bear the cost of the transfer of souls.