“What! with that brute! I to be reconciled to that clown! Never! It shall not be, it shall not be!” Ivan Ivanovitch was in a remarkably determined frame of mind. “As you like,” replied the chief of police, treating both nostrils to snuff. “I will not venture to advise you; but permit me to mention--here you live at enmity, and if you make peace...” But Ivan Ivanovitch began to talk about catching quail, as he usually did when he wanted to put an end to a conversation. So the chief of police was obliged to retire without having achieved any success whatever. CHAPTER VI FROM WHICH THE READER CAN EASILY DISCOVER WHAT IS CONTAINED IN IT In spite of all the judge’s efforts to keep the matter secret, all Mirgorod knew by the next day that Ivan Ivanovitch’s sow had stolen Ivan Nikiforovitch’s petition. The chief of police himself, in a moment of forgetfulness, was the first to betray himself. When Ivan Nikiforovitch was informed of it he said nothing: he merely inquired, “Was it the brown one?” But Agafya Fedosyevna, who was present, began again to urge on Ivan Nikiforovitch. “What’s the matter with you, Ivan Nikiforovitch? People will laugh at you as at a fool if you let it pass. How can you remain a nobleman after that? You will be worse than the old woman who sells the honeycakes with hemp-seed oil you are so fond of.” And the mischief-maker persuaded him. She hunted up somewhere a middle-aged man with dark complexion, spots all over his face, and a dark-blue surtout patched on the elbows, a regular official scribbler. He blacked his boots with tar, wore three pens behind his ear, and a glass vial tied to his buttonhole with a string instead of an ink-bottle: ate as many as nine pies at once, and put the tenth in his pocket, and wrote so many slanders of all sorts on a single sheet of stamped paper that no reader could get through all at one time without interspersing coughs and sneezes. This man laboured, toiled, and wrote, and finally concocted the following document:-- “To the District Judge of Mirgorod, from the noble, Ivan Dovgotchkun, son of Nikifor. “In pursuance of my plaint which was presented by me, Ivan Dovgotchkun, son of Nikifor, against the nobleman, Ivan Pererepenko, son of Ivan, to which the judge of the Mirgorod district court has exhibited indifference; and the shameless, high-handed deed of the brown sow being kept secret, and coming to my ears from outside parties.