The priest of the place was the first to find a solution of Tchitchikof's conduct. He asserted that Tchitchikof, in his love for money, had committed some fraud or some misdeed to obtain it, and that his conscience smiting him, he had sought ghostly solace from some minister, by whom he had been ordered, as adequate penance, to get off a certain portion per annum in bad bargains--thus at once doing good to the sellers and torturing the avaricious spirit of the penitential purchaser. To this the governor objected, with much force, that, money being the end of human existence, the gaining of it, by any means short of murder, must be laudable, and could sit heavily on no sane man's conscience; but being warned by the priest, that such arguments bordered on heresy, he shifted his ground, and maintained that Tchitchikof was much too young and too far from death to dream of penitence, even if he had committed such a crime; though he was evidently too reckless and devil-may-care to leave any dash of the miser in his composition. But the inspector of highways effectually knocked the clerical argument on the head, by saying, that had any priest thought it necessary, for the good of Tchitchikof's soul, that he should part with his money, he would have taken due care that, instead of it being squandered in Nikolsk, it had all gone to swell the revenues of Mother Church. The inspector of the hospital finally settled it to the satisfaction of all parties, by shewing, from attentive observation of Tchitchikof's conduct at the hospital, that he must be a monomaniac, whose particular insanity took the form of philanthropy; but that, believing that a gift debases the recipient, he dexterously contrived to _give_ his assistance under the cloak of a purchase. Although his companions could not see how any man could be so insane as to fancy a serf could be debased, this opinion was unanimously adopted, and the whole community set their wits to work to make themselves objects of charity for the nonce, and so obtain a share in the plunder.