Thus, in Nikolsk, the ancient saying, that there is nothing new under the sun, was daily and hourly verified. Week after week, and year after year, the governor pillaged the people; the inspector of charities pillaged the charities; the inspector of nuisances sedulously avoided inspecting at all, lest, by removing them, the need for his services should cease; the landowner ground down the serfs; the tax-assessor ground the landowners; and everybody, in return for the favours a paternal government showered upon them through its immaculate representatives, cheated and defrauded that government with a persistency and perseverance approaching the sublime. Mothers of daughters were in despair, for in Nikolsk there were no 'nice young men,' no eligible matches; fathers of sons despaired in their turn, for as everybody robbed everybody, and the government robbed the robbers, there were no heiresses; ladies wore the fashions of 1820 in 1840, under the impression that they were the newest from Paris; the reading portion of the community were just beginning to hear of Voltaire as a promising writer; and the general public laboured under the fixed idea, that somewhere or other Napoleon was still prosecuting his leviathan campaigns, happily _not_ in Russia. The only thing that ever broke the monotony of existence was the prevalence of cholera, or the governor essaying some loftier flight of tyranny than usual by hanging up a score of defaulters to the revenue, or knouting a bevy of ladies whose tongues outran their prudence.
Such being the state of affairs in Nikolsk, it will be easily imagined, that when mine host of the Black Eagle, in a very important and mysterious manner, announced to a select few that a singular and eccentric stranger, rolling in money, had arrived at his hostelry, with the intention of staying some time in Nikolsk, the news flew like a telegraphic message, or a piece of scandal among a community of old maids, through the place; and that in a few hours after his arrival, nobody, from governor to serf, thought or spoke of anything or anybody else than the mysterious stranger, who, under the name of Tchitchikof, occupied the best suite of apartments in the Black Eagle, and, as the landlord affirmed on oath, was eccentric to a degree, and revelled in untold gold.