 10. On assembling at the residence indicated, the Chinovniks had occasioned to remark that, owing to all these cares and excitements, every one of their number had grown thinner. Yes, the appointment of a new Governor-General, coupled with the rumours described, and the reception of the two serious documents above mentioned, had left manifest traces upon the features of every one present. More than one frockcoat had come to look too large for its wearer, and more than one frame had fallen away, including the frames of the President of the Council, the Director of the Medical Department, and the Public Prosecutor. Even a certain Semen Ivanovitch, who for some reason or another was never alluded to by his family name, but who wore on his index finger a ring with which he was accustomed to dazzle his lady friends, had diminished in bulk. Yet, as always happens at such junctures, there were also present a score of brazen individuals who have succeeded in not losing their presence of mind, even though they constituted a mere sprinkling. Of them, the Postmaster formed one, since he was a man of equable temperament who could always say, We know you, Governor-Generals. We have seen three or four of you come and go, whereas we have been sitting on the same stool these thirty years. Nevertheless, a prominent feature of the gathering was the total absence of what is vulgarly known as common sense. In general, we Russians do not make a good show at representative assemblies, for the reason that, unless there be an authority, a leading spirit to control the rest, the affair always develops into confusion. Why this should be so, one can hardly say. But at all events, a success is scored only by such gatherings as have for their object dining and festivity, to wit gatherings at clubs or in German-run restaurants. However, on the present occasion the meeting was not one of this kind. It was a meeting convoked of necessity, and lightly in view of the threatened calamity to affect every chinophonic in the place. Also, in addition to the great divergency of views expressed there at, there was visible in all of the speakers an invincible tendency to indecision, which led them at one moment to make assertions, and then at the next to contradict the same. But on at least one point all seemed to agree, namely that Chishikov's appearance and conversation were too respectable for him to be a forger or a disguise-briggend. That is to say, all seemed to agree on the point, until a sudden shout arose from the direction of the postmaster, who for some time past had been sitting plunged in thought. I can tell you, he cried, who Chishikov is? Who then, replied the crowd in great excitement, here's none other than Captain Kopekin! And who may Captain Kopekin be? Taking a pinch of snuff, which he did with the lid of his snuff-box half open, lest some extraneous person should confrive to insert a not-over-clean finger into the stuff, the postmaster related the following story. To reproduce this story with a raciness worthy of the Russian original is practically impossible. The translator has not attempted the task. After fighting in the campaign of 1812, there was sent home wounded a certain Captain Kopekin, a headstrong lively blade who, whether on duty or under arrest, made things lively for everybody. Now, since at Krasnyi, or Leipzig, it matters not which, he had lost an arm and a leg, and in those days no provision was made for wounded soldiers, he could not work with his left arm alone. He set out to see his father. Unfortunately, his father could only just support himself and was forced to tell his son so. Wherefore, the Captain decided to go and apply for help in St. Petersburg, seeing that he had risked his life for his country and had lost much blood in its service. You can imagine him arriving in the capital on a baggage wagon, in the capital which is like no other city in the world. Before him, their sleigh spread out the whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian night, a picture made up of the Nevsky Prospect, Gorahovaya Street, countless tapering spires and a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing, in fact, a regular second Nineveh. Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets and so forth, that he saw it would mean throwing away a lot of money. True, as one walks to the streets of St. Petersburg, one seems to smell money by the thousand rubles, but our friend Kopekin's bank was limited to a few score coppers and a little silver, not enough to buy a village with. At length, at the price of a ruble a day, he obtained a lodging in the sort of tavern where the daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a crust of bread, and, as he felt that he could not manage to live very long on fare of that kind, he asked folk what he had better do. What you had better do, they said. Well, the government is not here, it is in Paris, and the troops have not yet returned from the war, but there is a temporary commission sitting, and you had better go and see what it can do for you. All right, he said, I will go and tell the commission that I have shed my blood and sacrificed my life for my country. And he got up early one morning and shaved himself with his left hand, since the expense of a barber was not worthwhile, and set out wooden leg and all to see the president of the commission. But first he asked where the president lived, and was told that his house was in Nabeer-Schneyer Street, and you may be sure that it was no presence hut, for its glazed windows and great mirrors and statues and lackeys and brass door handles. However it was the sort of place where you would enter only after you had bought a sheep sort cake of soap and indulged in a two-hour wash. Also at the entrance there were posted a grand Swiss footman with a baton and embroidered collar, a fellow looking like a fat overfed pud-dog. However, Frank Copekin managed to get himself and his wooden leg into the reception room, and there squeezed himself away into a corner, for fear lest he should knock down the gilded china with his elbow. And he stood waiting in great satisfaction at having arrived before the president had so much as left his bed and been served with his silver wash basin. Nevertheless, it was only when Copekin had been waiting for hours that a breakfast waiter entered to say, The president will soon be here. By now the room was as full as people as a plate of beans, and when the president left the breakfast room he brought with him, O such dignity and refinement, and such an air of the metropolis. For he walked up to one person, and then up to another, saying, What do you want? And what do you want? What can I do for you? What is your business? And at length he stopped before Copekin, and Copekin said to him, I have shed my blood and lost both an arm and a leg for my country, and I am unable to work. Might I therefore dare to ask you for a little help, if the regulations should permit it, or for a gratuity, or for a pension, or something of that kind? Then the president looked at him, and saw that one of his legs was indeed a wooden one, and that an empty right sleeve was pinned to his uniform. Very well, he said, Come to me again in a few days' time. Upon this friend Copekin felt delighted. Now I have done my job, he thought to himself, and you may imagine how gaily he trotted along the pavement, and how he dropped into a tavern for a glass of vodka, and how he ordered a cutlet and some caper sauce and some other things for luncheon, and how he called for a bottle of wine, and how he went to the theatre in the evening. In short, he did himself thoroughly well. Next he saw in the street a young English lady, as graceful as a swan, and set off after her on his wooden leg. But no, he thought to himself, To the devil with that sort of thing just now, I will wait until I have drawn my pension, for the present I have spent enough. And I may well tell you that by now he had got through fully half his money. Two or three days later he went to see the president of the commission again. I should be glad to know, he said, whether by now you can do anything for me in return for my having shed my blood and suffered sickness and wounds on military service. First of all, said the president, I must tell you that nothing can be decided in your case without the authority of the supreme government. Without that sanction we cannot move in this matter. Surely you see how things stand until the army shall have returned from the war. All that I can advise you to do is wait for the minister to return, and in the meanwhile to have patience. Rest assured that you will not be overlooked, and if for the moment you have nothing to live upon, this is the best that I can do for you. With that he handed Copaquin a trifle until his case should be decided. However, that was not what Copaquin wanted. He had supposed he would be given a gratuity of a thousand rubles straight away, whereas instead of drink and be merry it was wait for the time is not yet. Thus, though his head had been full of soup-plates and cutlets and English girls, he now descended the steps with his ears and his tail down. Everything in fact like a poodle over which the cook had poured a bucketful of water. You see, St. Petersburg life had changed him not a little since first he had got a taste of it, and now that the devil only knew how he was going to live, it came all the harder to him that he would have no more sweets to look forward to. Remember that a man in the prime of years has an appetite like a wolf, and as he passed a restaurant he could see a round-faced, holland-shirted, snow-white, apron fellow of a French chef, preparing a dish delicious enough to make it turn and eat itself. While again, as he passed a fruit-shop, he could see delicacies looking out of the windows for fools to come and buy them at a hundred rubles apiece. Imagine therefore his position. On the one hand, so to speak, were salmon and watermelons. On the other hand was the bitter fare which passed at tavern for luncheon. Well, he thought to himself, let them do what they like with me at the commission. But I intend to go and raise the whole place, and to tell every blessed functionary there that I have a mind to do as I choose. And in truth this bold impertinence of a man did have the hardy-hood to return to the commission. What do you want, said the President? Why are you here for the third time? You have had your orders given you? I guess I have, he retorted, but I am not going to be put off with them. I want some cutlets to eat, and a bottle of French wine, and a chance to go and amuse myself at the theatre. Pardon me, said the President. What you really need, if I may venture to mention it, is a little patience. You have been given something for food until the military committees shall have met, and then, doubtless, you will receive your proper reward, seeing that it would not be seemingly that a man who has served his country should be left destitute. On the other hand, if in the meanwhile you desire to indulge in cutlets and theatre-going, please understand that we cannot help you, but you must make your own resources and try as best you can to help yourself. You can imagine that this went in at one of Capaykin's ears and out at the other, that it was like shooting peas at a stone wall. Accordingly he raised a turmoil which sent the staff flying. One by one he gave the mob of secretaries and clerks a real good hammering. You, and you, and you, he said, do not even know your duties. You are law-breakers." Yes, he trod any man of them underfoot. At length the General himself arrived from another office and sounded the alarm. What was to be done with a fellow like Capaykin? The President saw that strong measures were imperative. Very well, he said, since you declined to rest satisfied with what has been given you, and quietly to await the decision of your case in St. Petersburg, I must find you a lodging. Here, Constable, remove this man to jail. Then, Constable, who had been called to the door, Constable three elves in height and armed with a carbine, a man well fitted to guard a bank, placed our friend in a police wagon. Well, reflected Capaykin, at least I shan't have to pay my fare for this ride, that's one comfort. Then, after he had ridden a little way, he said to himself, they told me at the commission to go and make my own means of enjoy myself. Very good, I'll do so. However, what became of Capaykin and whether he went is known to no one. He sank, to use the poet's expression, into the waters of leaf, and in doing so now lies buried in oblivion. But allow me, gentlemen, to piece together the further threads of the story. Not two months later there appeared in the forests of Ryazan a band of robbers, and of that band the chieftain was none other than, allow me, put in the head of the police department, you have said that Capaykin has lost an arm and a leg, whereas Chichikov, to say anything more, was unnecessary. The postmaster clapped his hand to his forehead, and publicly called himself a fool, though later he tried to excuse his mistake by saying that in England the science of mechanics had reached such a pitch that wooden legs were manufactured which would enable the wearer, on touching a spring, to vanish instantaneously from sight. Various other theories were then propounded, along the theory that Chichikov was Napoleon, escaped from St. Helena, and travelling about the world in disguise, and if it should be supposed that no such notion could possibly have been broached, yet the reader remembered that these events took place not many years after the French had been driven out of Russia, and that various prophets had since declared that Napoleon was Antichrist, and would one day escape from his island prison to exercise universal sway on earth. Nay, some good folks had even declared the letters from Napoleon's name to constitute the apocalyptic cipher. And, as a last resort, the Genovniks decided to question Nozdrif, since not only had the latter been the first to mention the dead souls, but also he was supposed to stand on terms of intimacy with Chichikov. Accordingly, the chief of police dispatched a note by the hand of a commissioner. At the time Nozdrif was engaged on some very important business, so much so that he had not left his room for four days, and was receiving his meals through his window, and no visitors at all. The business referred to consisted of the marking of several dozen selected cards in such a way as to permit of his relying upon them as upon his bosom friend. Naturally he did not like having his retirement invaded, and at first consigned the commissioner to the devil. But as soon as he learnt from the note that since a novice at cards was to be the guest of the chief of police that evening, a call at the latter's house might prove not wholly unprofitable, he relented, unlocked the door of his room, threw on the first garments that came to hand, and set forth. To every question put to him by the Genovniks, he answered firmly and with assurance. Chichikov, he averred, had indeed purchased dead souls, and to the tune of several thousand rubles. In fact he, Nozdrif, had himself sold him some, and still saw no reason why he should not have done so. Next to the question of whether or not he considered Chichikov to be a spy, he replied in the affirmative, and added that as long ago as his and Chichikov's joint school days, the said Chichikov had been known as the informer, and repeatedly been thrashed by his companions on that account. Again to the question of whether or not Chichikov was a forger of currency notes, the deponent as before responded in the affirmative, and appended there to an anecdote illustrative of Chichikov's extraordinary dexterity of hand, namely an anecdote to the effect that, once upon a time, on learning that two million rubles worth of counterfeit notes were lying in Chichikov's house, the authority had placed seals upon the building, and had surrounded it on every side with an armed guard, whereupon Chichikov had, during the night, changed each of these seals for a new one, and also so arranged matters that when the house was searched, the forged notes were found to be genuine ones. Again to the question of whether or not Chichikov has schemed to abduct the governor's daughter, and also whether it was true that he, Nosdrift, had undertaken to aid and abet him in the act, the witness replied that he had not undertaken to do so. The affair would never have come off. At this point the witness pulled himself up, on realising that he had told a lie, which might get him into trouble, but his tongue was not to be denied. The details trembling on its tip were too alluring, and he even went on to cite the name of the village church, where the pair had arranged to be married. That of the priest who had performed the ceremony, the amount of the fees paid for the same, seventy-five rubles, and statements, one, that the priest had refused to solemnise the wedding until Chichikov had frightened him by threatening to expose the fact that he, the priest, had married Mikhail, the local corn dealer, to his paramour, and two, that Chichikov had ordered both a Kaliysk for the couple's conveyance, and relays of horses from the post houses on the road. Nay, the narrative, as detailed by Nosdrift, even reached the point of his mentioning certain of the Bastylians by name. Next, the Chinovnik sounded him on the question of Chichikov's possible identity with Napoleon, but before long they had reasoned to regret the step, for Nosdrift responded with a rambling rigmarole such as to bore no resemblance to anything possibly conceivable. Finally, the majority of the audience left the room, and only the chief of police remained to listen, in the hope of gathering something more. But at last even he found himself forced to disclaim the speaker with a gesture which said, the devil only knows what the fellow is talking about, and so voiced the general opinion that it was no use trying to gather figs of thistles. Meanwhile, Chichikov knew nothing of these events, for having contracted a slight chill coupled with a sore throat, he had decided to keep his room for three days, during which time he gargled his throat with milk and fig juice, consumed the fruit from which the juice had been extracted, and wore around his neck a poultice of chamomile and camphor. Also, to while away the hours, he made new and more detailed list of the souls which he had bought, perused to work by the duchess de la Valière, rummaged in his portmanteau, looked through various articles and papers which he discovered in his dispatch box, and found every one of these occupations tedious. Nor could he understand why none of his official friends had come to see him and inquire after his health, seeing that not long since there had been standing in front of the inn at Drozkis, both the postmaster, the public prosecutor, and the president of the council. He wandered and wandered, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders, fell to pacing the room. At length he felt better, and his spirits rose at the prospect of once more going out into the fresh air, wherefore having shaved a plentiful growth of hair from his face, he dressed with such a lacquery as almost to cause a split in his trousers, sprinkled himself with odour cologne, and wrapping himself in warm clothes and turning up his collar of his coat, sallied forth into the street. His first destination was intended to be the governor's mansion, and as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to himself. Arriving at the governor's entrance, he was about to divest himself of his scarf when a Swiss footman greeted him with the words, I am forbidden to admit you. What! he exclaimed. You do not know me? Look at me again, and see if you do not recognise me. Of course I recognise you, the footman replied. I have seen you before, but have been ordered to admit anyone else rather than Mr. Chichikov. Indeed, and why so? Those are my orders, and they must be obeyed, said the footman, confronting Chichikov with none of the politeness with which, on former occasions, he had hastened to divest our hero of his wrappings. Evidently he was of the opinion that, since the gentry declined to receive the visitor, the latter must certainly be a rogue. I cannot understand, it said Chichikov to himself. Then he departed, and made his way to the house of the President of the Council. But so put about was that official by Chichikov's entry that he could not utter two consecutive words. He could only murmur some rubbish which lashed both his visitor and himself out of council. Chichikov wondered as he left the house what the President's muttered words could have meant, but failed to make head or tail of them. Next he visited, in turn, the Chief of Police, the Vice-Governor, the Postmaster, and others. But in each case he either failed to be accorded admittance or was received so strangely, and with such a measure of constraint and conversational awkwardness, that absence of mind and embarrassment, that he began to fear for the sanity of his hosts. Again and again did he strive to divine the cause, who could not do so. So he went wandering aimlessly about the town, without succeeding in making up his mind whether he or the officials had gone crazy. At length, in a state bordering upon bewilderment, he returned to the inn. To the establishment went that every afternoon he had set forth in such exuberance of spirits. Feeling the need of something to do, he ordered tea, and, still marveling at the strangeness of his position, was about to pour out the beverage when the door opened and Nosdrift made his appearance. What says the proverb he began? To see a friend, several verses is not too long around to make. I had to be passing the house, or a light in your window and thought to myself, now suppose I were to run up and pay him a visit. It is unlikely that he will be asleep. Aha! I see tea on your table. Good. Then I will drink a cup with you, for I had wretched stuff for dinner, and it is beginning to lie heavy on my stomach. Also, turn your man to fill me a pipe. Where is your own pipe? I never smoke, rejoin Chichikov dryly. Rubbish! And if I did not know what a chimney pot you are, what is your man's name? Hi, Vakrami, come here. Petruska is his name, not Vakrami. Indeed, but you used to have a man called Vakrami, didn't you? And no, never. Oh, well, then it must be Derebin's man, I am thinking of. What a lucky fellow that Derebin is! An aunt of his has gone and quarrelled with her son for marrying a serf woman, and has left all her property to him, to Derebin. What would I have an aunt of that kind to provide against future contingencies? But why have you been hiding yourself away? I suppose the reason has been that you go in for obstruous subjects and a fond of reading. Why, Nostrov should have drawn these conclusions, no one could possibly have said, least of all Chichikov himself. By the way, I can tell you of something that would have found you a scope for your satirical vein. The conclusion as to Chichikov's satirical vein was as before altogether unwarranted on Nostrov's part. That is to say you would have seen the merchant Lykachev losing a pile of money at play. My word you would have laughed. A fellow with me named Peripendev said, would that Chichikov had been here? It would have been the very thing for him. As a matter of fact, never since the day of his birth had Nostrov met any one of the name of Peripendev. However, my friend, you must admit that you treated me rather badly the day that we played the game of chess. But as I won the game, I bear you no malice. I propose I am just from the Presidents, and ought to tell you that the feeling against you in the town is very strong, for everyone believes you to be a forger of currency notes. I myself was sent for and questioned about you, but I stuck up for you through thick and thin, and told the chin-off nicks that I had been at school with you, and had known your father. In fact, I get the fellows a knock or two for themselves. You say that I am believed to be a forger, said Chichikov, starting from his seat? Yes, says Nostrov. Why have you gone and frightened everybody as you have done? Some of our folks are almost out of their mind about it, and declare you to be either a brigand in disguise or a spy. Yesterday the public prosecutor even died of it, and is to be buried tomorrow. This was true insofar as that, on the previous day, the official in question had had a fatal stroke, probably induced by the excitement of the public meeting. Of course, I don't suppose you to be anything of the kind, but you see these fellows are in a blue funk about the new Governor-General, for they think he will make trouble for them over your affair. Apropos, he is believed to be a man who puts on airs and turns up his nose at everything, and if so, he will get on badly with the Dvorayne, seeing that the fellows of that sort need to be humid a bit. Yes, my word, should the new Governor-General shut himself up in his study and give no balls, there will be the very devil to pay. By the way, Chichikov, this is a risky scheme of yours. What scheme do you mean? Chichikov's asked uneasily. Why the scheme of carrying off the Governor's daughter? However, to tell the truth, I was expecting something of the kind. No sooner did I see you and her together at the ball than I said to myself, aha, Chichikov is not here for nothing. For my own part, I think you have made a poor choice, for I can see nothing in her at all. On the other hand, the niece of a friend of mine named Bikyuzov, she is a girl, and no mistake, a regular what you might call medical in Muslim. What on earth are you talking about, asked Chichikov's, with his eyes distended. How could I carry off the Governor's daughter? What on earth do you mean? Come, come, what a secretive fellow you are! My only object, in having come to see you, is to lend you a helping hand in the matter. Look here, on condition that you will lend me three thousand rubles, I will stand you the cost of the wedding, the Koliyska and the Relays of Horses. I must have the money, even if I die for it. Throughout Nosdorff's maunderings, Chichikov's had been rudding his eyes to ascertain whether or not he was dreaming. What, with the charge of being a forger, the accusation of having schemed an abduction, the death of the public prosecutor, whatever might have been its cause, and the advent of a new Governor-General, he felt utterly dismayed. Things having come to their present pass, he reflected, I had better not linger here. I had better be off at once. Getting rid of Nosdorff, as soon as he could, he sent for Celefan, and ordered him to be up at daybreak, in order to clean the Britschka, and to have everything ready for the start at six o'clock. Yet, though Celefan replied, very well, Paul Ivanovich, he hesitated a while by the door. Next, Chichikov bid Petruska get out the dusty portmanteau from under the bed, and then set to work to cram into it pel-mel, socks, shirts, collars, both clean and dirty, boot-trees, a calendar, and a variety of other articles. Everything went into the receptacle just as it came to hand, since his one object was to obviate any possible delay in the morning's departure. Meanwhile, the reluctant Celefan slowly, very slowly, left the room, as slowly descended the staircase, on each separate stair of which he left a muddy footprint, and finally halted to scratch his head. What that scratching may have meant, no one could say. For, with the Russian populace such a scratching may mean any one of a hundred things. This is the end of Part 1, Chapter 10. DEAD SOULS Part 1, Chapter 11, Section 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. DEAD SOULS by Nikolai Vazirievich Gogol Translated by DJ Hogarth Part 1, Chapter 11, Section 1, Read by Anna Simon Nevertheless, events did not turn out as Chichikov had intended they should. In the first place, he overslept himself. That was check number one. In the second place, on his rising and inquiring whether the Britshka had been harnessed and everything got ready, he was informed that neither of those two things had been done. That was check number two. Beside himself with rage, he prepared to give Celophane the waking of his life, and meanwhile waited impatiently to hear what the delinquent had got to say in his defense. It goes without saying that when Celophane made his appearance in the doorway, he had only the usual excuses to offer. The sort of excuses usually offered by servants when a hasty departure has become imperatively necessary. Paul Ivanovich, he said, the horses require shoeing. Blockhead! exclaimed Chichikov. Why did you not tell me of that before, you damn fool? Was there not time enough for them to be shot? Yes, I suppose there was, agreed Celophane. Also, one of the wheels is in want of a new tire, for the roads are so rough that the old tire is worn through. Also, the body of the Britshka is so rickety that probably it will not last more than a couple of stages. Rascal! shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists and approaching Celophane in such a manner that, fearing to receive a blow, the man backed and dodged the side. Do you mean to ruin me and to break all our bones on the road, you cursed idiot? For these three weeks past you've been doing nothing at all, yet now at the last moment you come here stammering and playing the fool. Do you think I keep you just to eat and to drive yourself about? You must have known of this before. Did you or did you not know it? Answer me at once. Yes, I did know it, replied Celophane, hanging his head. Then why didn't you tell me about it? Celophane had no reply immediately ready, so continued to hang his head, while quietly saying to himself, See how well I've managed things. I knew what was the matter, yet I did not say. And now, continued Chichikov, go you at once and fetch a blacksmith. Tell him that everything must be put right within two hours at the most. Do you hear? If that should not be done, I will give you the best flogging that ever you had in your life. Truly Chichikov was almost beside himself with fury, turning towards the door, as though for the purpose of going and carrying out his orders, Celophane hold it and added, That skew-ball, Baron, you might think it well to sell him, seeing that he's nothing but a rascal. A horse like that is more of a hindrance than a help. What? Do you expect me to go now to the marketplace and sell him? Well, Polovanovich, he's good for nothing but show, since by nature he's a most cunning beast. Never in my life have I seen such a horse. Fool! Whenever I may wish to sell him, I shall sell him. Meanwhile don't you trouble your head about what doesn't concern you, but go and fetch a blacksmith and see that everything is put right within two hours. Otherwise I'll take the very hair of your head, and beat you till you haven't a face left. Be off! Hurry! Celophane departed, and Chichikov, his ill-humour-vented, threw down upon the floor the poignard which he always took with him as a means of instilling respect into whomsoever it might concern, and spent the next quarter of an hour in disputing with a couple of blacksmiths, men who, as usual, are rascals of the type which, on perceiving that something is wanted in a hurry, at once multiplies its terms for providing the same. Indeed, for all Chichikov's storming and raging, as he dept the fellow's robbers and extortioners and thieves, he could make no impression upon the pair, since, true to their character, they declined to abate their prices, and, even when they had begun their work, spent upon it not two hours, but five and a half. Meanwhile, he had the satisfaction of experiencing that delightful time with which all travellers are familiar, namely the time during which one sits in a room where, except for a litter of string, waste-paper, and so forth, everything else has been packed. But, to all things, there comes an end, and they arrived also at the long-awaited moment when the Brychka had received the luggage, the faulty wheel had been fitted with a new tire, the horses had been reshot, and the predatory blacksmiths had departed with their gains. Thank God! thought Chichikov, as the Brychka rolled out of the gates of the inn, and the vehicle began to jolt over the cobblestones. Yet a feeling which he could not altogether have defined filled his breast as he gazed upon the houses and the streets and the garden walls which he might never see again. Presently, on turning a corner, the Brychka was brought to a halt through the fact that along the street there was filing a seemingly endless funeral procession. Leaning forward in his Brychka, Chichikov asked Petrushka, whose obsequies the procession represented, and was told that they represented those of the public prosecutor. Disagreeably shocked, our hero hastened to raise the hood of the vehicle, to draw the curtains across the windows and to lean back into a corner. While the Brychka remained thus halted, Salafan and Petrushka, their caps doffed, set watching the progress of the cortege, after they had received strict instructions not to greet any fellow servant whom they might recognise. Behind the hearse walked the whole body of Chinovniks, bear-herd, and though for a moment or two Chichikov feared that some of their number might discern him in his Brychka, he need not have disturbed himself, since their attention was otherwise engaged. In fact they were not even exchanging the small talk customary among members of such processions, but thinking exclusively of their own affairs, of the advent of the new Governor General, and of the probable menna in which he would take up the reins of administration. Next came a number of carriages, from the windows of which peered the ladies in morning-toilets. Yet the movements of their hands and lips made it evident that they were indulging in animated conversation, probably about the Governor General, the bowls which he might be expected to give, and their own eternal fripperies and googas. Lastly came a few emptied Troshkis. As soon as the letter had passed, our hero was able to continue on his way. Throwing back the hood of the Brychka, he said to himself, Ah, good friend, you have lived your life, and now it is over. In the newspapers they will say of you that you died regretted not only by your subordinates, but also by humanity at large, as well as that a respected citizen, a kind father, and a husband beyond reproach, you went to your grave amid the tears of your widow in orphans. Yet should those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance which justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back upon the fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows. With that Chichikov bit Salafan quick in his pace, and concluded, After all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they say that to meet a funeral is lucky. Presently the Brychka turned into some less-frequent streets, lines of wooden fencing of the kind which marked the outskirts of a town began to file by. The cobblestones came to an end. The meccanum of their high road succeeded to them, and once more there began on either side of the term-pike a procession of versed stones, road-menders, and grey villages, inns with samovars and peasant women, and landlords who came running out of yards with sea-fulls of oats, pedestrians in worn shoes which it might be had covered eight hundred versed, little towns bright with boots for the sale of flower and barrels, boots, small loaves, and other trifles, heaps of slag, much-repaired bridges, expanses of field to right and to left, stout landowners, a mounted soldier bearing a green, iron-climbed box inscribed, the ex-battery of artillery, long strips of freshly-tilled earth which gleamed green, yellow, and black on the face of the countryside. With it mingled long-drawn singing, glimpses of elm-tops amid mist, the far-off notes of bells, endless clouds of rocks, and the illimitable line of the horizon. Ah, Russia, Russia, for my beautiful home in a strange land I can still see you. In you everything is poor and is ordered and unhomely. In you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature, which a yet more temerarious art has conquered. In you, one beholds no cities with lofty many-windowed mentions, lofty as crags, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad runes, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and roar, no beatling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open, your towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to you? Why does there cease as the echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which thus painfully caress and embrace my soul and flit, buttering their lamentations around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is the hidden bond which subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you do? Why does everything within you turn upon me, eyes full of yearning? Even at this moment as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly contemplating your vastness, a menacing cloud charged with gathering rain seems to overshadow my head. What is it that your boundless expanse is presage? Do they not presage that one day there will arise in you ideas as boundless as yourself? Do they not presage that one day you too will know no limits? Do they not presage that one day, when again you shall have room for their exploits that will spring to life the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance? Yes, a strange, brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of mine. Stop! Stop you fool! shouted Chichikov to Salafan, and even as he spoke, a troika bound on government business came chattering by and disappeared in a cloud of dust. To Chichikov's cursors at Salafan, for not having drawn out of the way with moral liquidity, a rule constable with moustaches of the length of an archin, added his quota. What a curious and attractive he had also what an unreal fascination the term highway connotes, and how interesting for its own sake is a highway. Should the day be a fine one, though chilly, in mellowing autumn, press closer your traveling cloak and draw down your cap over your ears, and snuggle cosily, comfortably into a corner of the bridge-car before a last shiver shall course through your limbs, and the ensuing warmth shall put to flight the autumnal cold and damp. As the horses gallop on their way, how delightfully will drowsiness come stealing upon you, and make your eyelids droop. For a while, through your somnolence, you will continue to hear the hard breathing of the team and the rumbling of the wheels, but that length, sinking back into your corner, you will relapse into the stage of snoring. And when you awake, behold, you will find that five stages have slipped away, and that the moon is shining, and that you've reached a strange town of churches, and old wooden cupolas, and black inspires, and white half-timbered houses. And as the moonlight glints hither and thither, almost you will believe that the walls and the streets and the pavements of the place are spread with sheets, sheets shot with cold black shadows which make the wooden roofs look all the brighter under the slanting beams of the pill luminary. Nowhere is a soul to be seen, for everyone is plunged in slumber. Yet no, in a solitary window a light is flickering, where some good burger is mending his boots, or a baker drawing a batch of dough. Oh, night and powers of heaven, how perfect is the blackness of your infinite vault! How lofty, how remote its inaccessible depths, where it lies spread in an intangible yet audible silence! Freshly does the lulling breath of night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into snoring oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in its corner as you begin to be conscious of your weight. Then again you'll wake, but this time to find yourself confronted with only fields and steps. Everywhere in the Ascendant is a desolation of space. But suddenly the ciphers on a versed stone leap to the eye, morning is rising, and on the chill, gradually paling line of the horizon you can see gleaming a faint gold streak. The wind freshens and grows keener, and you snuggle closer in your cloak. Yet how glorious is that freshness, and how marvellous the sleep in which once again you become unfolded. A jolt, and for the last time you return to consciousness. By now the sun is high in the heavens, and you hear a voice cry, gently, gently, as a farm wagon issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an ample dyke, stretches a sheet of water which glistens, like copper in the sunlight. Beyond, on the side of a slope, lie some scarred peasants' huts, a manor house, and, flanking the letter, a village church with its cross flashing like a star. There also comes wafted to your ear the sound of peasants' laughter, while in your inner man you are becoming conscious of an appetite which is not to be withstood. Oh long-drawn highway, how excellent you are! How often have I in weariness and despondency set forth upon your length, and found in you salvation and rest? How often, as I followed your leading, have I been visited with wonderful thoughts and poetic dreams and curious wild impressions? At this moment our friend Chichikov also was experiencing visions of a not-holy prosaic nature. Let us peep into his soul and share them. At first he remained unconscious of anything whatsoever, for he was too much engaged in making sure that he was really clear of the town. But, as soon as he saw that it had completely disappeared, with its mills and factories and other urban appurtenances, and that even the steeples of the white-stone churches had sung below the horizon, he turned his attention to the road, and the town of N vanished from his thoughts as completely as though he had not seen it since childhood. Again in its turn the road ceased to interest him, and he began to close his eyes and a lawless head against the cushions. Of this let the author take advantage in order to speak at length concerning his hero. Since hitherto he, the author, has been prevented from so-doing by Nostrev and balls and ladies and local intrigues, by those thousand trifles which seem trifles only when they are introduced into a book but which, in life, figure as affairs of importance. Let us lay them aside, and we take ourselves to business. Whether the character whom I have selected for my hero has pleased my readers is, of course, exceedingly doubtful. At all events, the ladies will have failed to approve him, for the fair sex demands in a hero perfection, and should there be the least mental or physical stain on him? Well, woe be tied! Yes, no matter how profoundly the author may probe that hero's soul, no matter how clearly he may portray his figure as in a mirror, he will be given no credit for the achievement. Indeed, Tretikov's very stoutness and plenitude of years may have militated against him, for never is a hero pardoned for the former, and the majority of ladies will in such a case turn away and mutter to themselves, few were the beast. Yes, the author is well aware of this. Yet, though he could not, to save his life, take a person of virtue for his principal character, it may be that this story contains themes never before selected, and that in it there projects the whole boundless wealth of Russian psychology, that it portrays, as well as Tretikov, the peasant who is gifted with the virtues which God has sent him, and the marvellous maiden of Russia who is not her like in all the world for her beautiful feminine spirituality, the roots of which lie buried in noble aspirations and boundless self-denial. In fact, compared to these types, the virtues of other races seem lifeless, as does an inanimate volume when compared to the living word. Yes, each time that there arises in Russia a movement of thought, it becomes clear that the movement sinks deep into the Slavonic nature, where it would but have skimmed the service of other nations. But why am I talking like this, whither am I tending? It is indeed shameful that an author who long ago reached man's estate, and was brought up to a cause of severe introspection, and sober, solitary self-enlightenment, should give way to such Jejun wandering from the point, to everything its proper time and place and turn. As I was saying, it does not lie in me to take a virtuous character from my hero, and I will tell you why. It is because it is high time that the rest were given to the poor but virtuous individual. It is because the phrase, a man of worth, has grown into a byword. It is because the man of worth has become converted into a horse, and there is not a writer but rides him and flogs him in and out of season. It is because the man of worth has been starved until he has not a shred of his virtue left, and all that remains of his body is but the rips and the hide. It is because the man of worth is for ever being smuggled upon the scene. It is because the man of worth has at length forfeited everyone's respect. For these reasons do I reaffirm that it is high time to yoke a rascal to the shafts. Let us yoke that rascal. Our hero's beginnings were both modest and obscure. True, his parents were Dvorian, but he in no way resembled them. At all events a short, squab of female relative who was present at his birth exclaimed as she lifted up the baby. He is altogether different from what I had expected him to be. He ought to have taken after his maternal grandmother, whereas he has been born as the proverb has it, like not father nor mother, but like a chance passer by. Thus from the first life regarded the little Chechikov with sour distaste, and as through a dim, frost encrusted window. A tiny room with diminutive casements which were never opened, summer or winter. An invalid father in a dressing gown lined with lambskin, and with an ailing foot swothered in bandages. A man who was continually drawing deep breaths and walking up and down the room, and spitting into a sandbox. A period of perpetually sitting on a bench with pen and hand and ink on lips and fingers. A period of being eternally confronted with a copybook maxim, never tell a lie but obey your superiors and cherish virtue in your heart. An everlasting scraping and shuffling of slippers up and down the room. A period of continually hearing a well-known, strident voice exclaim. So you've been playing the fool again. At times where the child wary of the mortal monotony of his task had added a superfluous embellishment to his copy. A period of experiencing the ever familiar but ever unpleasant sensation which ensued upon those words as the boy's ear was painfully twisted between two long fingers bent backwards at the tips, such as the miserable picture of that youth of which, in a later life, Chechikov preserved by the faintest of memories. But in this world, everything is liable to swift and sudden change, and, one day in early spring, when the rivers have melted, the father sets forth with his little son in a telieshka, or four-wheeled open carriage, drawn by a sorrel steed of the kind known to horsey folk as a sarka, and having as coachman the diminutive hunchback who, father of the only serf family belonging to the elder Chechikov, served as general factotum in the Chechikov establishment. For a day and a half, the sarka conveyed them on their way, during which time they spent the night at a roadside inn, crossed the river, dined off cold pie and roast mutton, and eventually arrived to the county town. To the lad, the streets presented a spectacle of unwanted brilliancy, and he gaped with amazement. Turning into a side alley, wherein the mire necessitated both the most strenuous exertions on the sarka's part, and the most vigorous castigation on the part of the driver and the baron, the conveyance eventually reached the gates of a courtyard, which, combined with a small fruit garden containing various bushes, a couple of apple trees in blossom, and a mean dirty little shed constituted the premises attached to an antiquated-looking villa. Here they lived a relative of the Chechikovs, a wizened old lady who went to market in person and dried her stockings at the Samovar. On seeing the boy, she patted his cheek and expressed satisfaction at his physique, whereupon the fact became disclosed that here he was to abide for a while for the purpose of attending a local school. After a night's rest, his father prepared to take himself home with again. But no tears marked the parting between him and his son. He merely gave the lad a copper or two, and, a far more important thing, the following injunctions. See here, my boy, do your lessons well, do not idle or play the fool, and above all things see that you please your teachers. So long as you observe these rules, you will make progress and surpass your fellows, even if God shall have denied you brains, and you should fail in your studies. Also, do not consult over much with your comrades, for they will do you no good. But should you do so, then make friends with the richer of them, since one day they may be useful to you. Also, never entertain or treat anyone but see that everyone entertains and treats you. Lastly, and above all else, keep and save your every coppock. To save money is the most important thing in life. Always a friend or a comrade may fail you, and be the first to desert you in a time of adversity. But never will a coppock fail you, whatever may be your plight. Nothing in the world cannot be done, cannot be attained, without the aid of money. These injunctions, given, the father embraced his son, and set forth on his return, and though the son never again beheld his parent, the latter's words and precepts sank deep into the little Chichikov's soul. The next day, Jung Pavloshka made his first attendance at school. But no special aptitude in any branch of learning did he display. Rather, his distinguishing characteristics were diligence and neatness. On the other hand, he developed great intelligence as regards the practical aspect of life. In a trice he divined and comprehended how things ought to be worked, and from that time forth bore himself to watch his school fellows in such a way that, though they frequently gave him presents, he not only never returned the compliment, but even, on occasions, pocketed the gifts for the mere purpose of selling them again. Also, boy though he was, he acquired the art of self-denial. Of the trifle which his father had given him on parting, he spent not a coppock, but the same year, actually added to his little store by fashioning a bullfinch of wax, painting it, and selling the same at a handsome profit. Next, as time went on, he engaged in other speculations. In particular, the time scheme of buying up eatables, taking his seat in class beside boys who had plenty of pocket money, and, as soon as such opulent individuals showed signs of failing attention, and, therefore, of growing appetite, tendering them from beneath a desk, a roll of pudding, or a piece of gingerbread, and charging according to the degree of appetite and size of portion. He also spent a couple of months in training a mouse which he kept confined in a little wooden cage in his bedroom. At length, when the training had reached the point that, at the several words of command, the mouse would stand upon its hind legs, lie down, and get up again, he sold the creature for a respectable sum. Thus, in time, his gains attained the amount of five roubles, whereupon he made himself a purse, and then started to fill a second receptacle of the kind. Still more studied was his attitude towards the authorities. No one could sit more quietly in his place on the bench than he. In the same connection it may be remarked that his teacher was a man who, above all things, loved peace and good behaviour, and simply could not abide clever witty boys since he suspected him of laughing at him. Consequently, any lad who had once attracted the master's attention with a manifestation of intelligence needed but to shuffle in his place or unintentionally to twitch an eyebrow, for the sad master had once to burst into a rage to turn the supposed offender out of the room and to visit him with unmerciful punishment. Ah, my found fellow, he would say. I'll cure you of your impudence and want of respect. I know you through and through far better than you know yourself, and will take good care that you have to go down upon your knees and curb your appetite. Whereupon the wretched lad would, for no cause of which he was aware, be forced to wear out his breeches on the floor and go hungry for days. Talents and gifts, the schoolmaster would declare, are so much rubbish. I respect only good behaviour, and shall award full marks to those who conduct themselves properly, even if they fail to learn a single letter of their alphabet, or as to those in whom I may perceive a tendency to jocularity, I shall award nothing, even though they should outdo Solon himself. For the same reason he had no great love of the author Krelov, in that the letter says in one of his fables, In my opinion, the more one sings, the better one works. And often the pedagogue would relate how, in a former school of his, the silence had been such that a fly could be heard buzzing on the wing, and for the space of a whole year not a single pupil sneezed or cuffed in class, and so complete with the absence of all sound that no one could have told that there was a soul in the place. Of this mentor, young Chichikov speedily appraised the mentality, wherefore he fashioned his behaviour to correspond with it. Not an eyelid, not an eyebrow, would he stir during school hours, howsoever many pinches he might receive from behind, and only when the bell rang would he run to anticipate his fellows in handing the master the three-cornered cap which that dignitary customarily sported, and then to be the first to leave the classroom, and contrive to meet the master not less than two or three times as the letter walked homeward. In order that, on each occasion, he might doff his cap. And the scheme proved entirely successful. Throughout the period of his attendance at school, he was held in high favour, and, on leaving the establishment, received full marks for every subject, as well as a diploma, and a book inscribed in gilt letters, for exemplary diligence and the perfection of good conduct. By this time he had grown into a fairly good-looking youth of the age when the chin first calls for a razor, and that about the same period his father died, leaving behind him, as his estate, four waistcoats completely worn out, two ancient frockcoats, and a small sum of money. Apparently he had been skilled only in recommending the saving of coppocks, not in actually practising the art. Upon that Chichikov sold the old house and its little parcel of land for a thousand rubles, and removed with his one serve and the serve's family to the capital, where he set about organising a new establishment, and entering the civil service. Simultaneously with his doing so, his old schoolmaster lost, through stupidity or otherwise, the establishment of a which he had hitherto presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left even for that purpose, he retired, ill, helpless and starving, into a broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils, the same clever, witty lads who made once-been-want to accuse of impertinence and evil conduct generally, heard of his pitchable plight, and collected for him what money they could, even to the point of selling their own necessaries. Only Chichikov, when appealed to, pleaded inability, and compromised with the contribution of a single piatak, footnote, silver-five-copic piece, and footnote, which his old schoolfellows straightway returned him, full in the face, and accompanied with a shout of, oh, you skin-flint! As for the poor schoolmaster, when he heard what his former pupils had done, he buried his face in his hands, and the tears gushed from his failing eyes as from those of a helpless infant. God has brought you but to weep over my death-bed, he murmured feebly, and added with a profound sigh on hearing of Chichikov's conduct, ah, Pavlushka, how a human being may become changed, once you were a good lad, and gave me no trouble, but now you become proud indeed. Yet let it not be inferred from this, that our hero's character had grown so blasé and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher, had no great sum been required, or had he not been called upon to touch the fund which had decided to remain intact. In other words, the father's injunction, guard and save every copic, had become a hard and fast rule of the sons. Yet the youth had no particular attachment to money for money's sake. He was not possessed with a true instinct for hoarding and niggardliness. Rather, before his eyes, there floated ever a vision of life and its amenities and advantages, a vision of carriages and an elegantly furnished house, and ratio-shear dinners. And it was in the hope that some day he might attain these things that he saved every copic, and, meanwhile, stint at both himself and others. Whenever a rich man passed him by in a splendid droshki drawn by swift and handsomely comparison horses, he would hold as though deep in thought and say to himself, like a man awakening from a long sleep, that gentleman must have been a financier, he has so little hair on his brow. In short, everything connected with wealth and plenty produced upon him an inner-facable impression. Even when he left school, he took no holiday, so strong in him was a desire to get to work and enter the civil service. Yet, for all the incomiums contained in his diploma, he had much adieu to procure a nomination to a government department, and only after a long time was a minor post found for him at a salary of thirty or forty rubles a year. Nevertheless, wretched though his appointment was, he determined by strict attention to business to overcome all obstacles and to win success. And, indeed, the self-denial, the patience and the economy which he displayed were remarkable. From early morn until late at night, he would, with indefatigable zeal of body and mind, remain immersed in his sordid task of copying official documents, never going home, snatching what sleep he could on tables in the building, and dining with a watchman on duty. Yet, all the while, he contrived to remain clean and neat, to preserve a cheerful expression of countenance, and even to cultivate a certain elegance of movement. In passing, it may be remarked that his fellow chinofnics were peculiarly plain, unsightly lot, some of them having faces like badly baked bread, swollen cheeks, receding chins, and cracked and blistered upper lips. Indeed, not a man of them was handsome. Also, their tone of voice always contained a note of sulleness, as though they had a mind to knock someone on the head, and by their frequent sacrifices to bachas, they showed that even yet there remains in the slovonic nature a certain element of paganism. Nay, the director's room itself they would invade, while still licking their lips, and since their breath was not over aromatic, the atmosphere of the room grew not over-pleasant. Naturally, among such an official staff, a man like Chichikov could not fail to attract attention and remark, since in everything, in cheerfulness of demeanour, in suavity of voice, and in complete neglect of the use of strong potions, he was the absolute antithesis of his companions. Yet his path was not an easy one to tread, for over him he had the misfortune to have placed in authority a chief clerk who was a graven image of elderly insensibility and inertia. Always the same, always unapproachable, this functionary could never in his life have smiled or asked civilly after an acquaintance's health. Nor had anyone ever seen him a bit different in the street or at his own home from what he was in the office, or showing the least interest in anything whatever, or getting drunk and relapsing a duality in his cups, or indulging in that species of wild gaiety which when intoxicated even a burglar affects. No, not a particle of this was there in him, nor for that matter was there in him a particle of anything at all, whether good or bad, which complete negativeness of character produced rather a strange effect. In the same way his wizened, marble-like features reminded one of nothing in particular, so primly proportioned with a. Only the numerous pockmarks and dimples with which they were pitted placed him among the number of those over whose faces, to quote the popular saying, the devil has walked by night to grind peas. In short it would seem that no human agency could have reproached such a man and gained his goodwill. Yet Chichikov made the effort. As a first step he took to consulting the others' convenience in all manner of insignificant trifles, to cleaning his pens carefully, and when they had been prepared exactly to the chief clerk's liking, laying them ready at his elbow, to dusting and sweeping from his table all superfluous sand and tobacco ash, to procuring a new mat for his ink-stand, to looking for his hat, the meanest looking hat that ever the world beheld, and having it ready for him at the exact moment when business came to an end, to brushing his back if it happened to become smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed as though it had never been done. Finally Chichikov sniffed into his superior's family and domestic life and learned that he possessed a grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place an nocturnal, diabolical grinding of peas. Here was a quarter whence a fresh attack might be delivered. After a certaining, what church the daughter attended on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a well-starched dickey, and soon the scheme began to work. The surly chief clerk wavered for a while, then ended by inviting Chichikov to tea. Nor could any man in the office have told you how it came about that before long Chichikov had removed to the chief clerk's house and become a person necessary, indeed indispensable to the household. Seeing that he bought the flour and the sugar, treated the daughter as as protruded, called the chief clerk Popenko, and occasionally kissed Popenko's hand. In fact, every one of the office supposed that at the end of February, that is before the beginning of Lent, that would take place a wedding. Nay, the surly father even began to agitate with the authorities on Chichikov's behalf, and so enabled our hero on a vacancy occurring to attain this tool of a chief clerk. Apparently this marked the consummation of Chichikov's relations with his host, for he hastened stealthily to pack his trunk, and the next day figured in a fresh lodging. Also he ceased to call the chief clerk Popenko or to kiss his hand, and the matter of the wedding came to as abrupt determination as though it had never been mooted. Yet also he never failed to press his late host's hand whenever he met him, and to invite him to tea. While on the other hand, for all his immobility and dry indifference, the chief clerk never failed to shake his head with a method, ah, my fine fellow, you've grown too proud. You've grown too proud. The foregoing constituted the most difficult step that our hero had to negotiate. Thereafter things came with greater ease and swifter success. Everywhere he attracted notice, for he developed within himself everything necessary for this world, namely charm of manner and bearing, and great diligence in business matters. Armed with these resources he next obtained promotion to what is known as a fat post, and used it to the best advantage. And even though at that period strict inquiry had begun to be made into the whole subject of bribes, such inquiry failed to alarm him. Nay, he actually turned it to account, and thereby manifested the Russian resourcefulness which never fails to attain its zenith. The foregoing constituted the most difficult step that our hero had to negotiate. Thereafter things came with greater ease and swifter success. Everywhere he attracted notice, for he developed within himself everything necessary for this world, namely charm of manner and bearing, and great diligence in business matters. Armed with these resources he next obtained promotion to what is known as a fat post, and used it to the best advantage. And even though at that period strict inquiry had begun to be made into the whole subject of bribes, such inquiry failed to alarm him. Nay, he actually turned it to account, and thereby manifested the Russian resourcefulness which never fails to attain its zenith, where extortion is concerned. His method of working was the following. As soon as a petitioner or a suitor put his hand into his pocket to extract thence the necessary letters of recommendation for signature, Chichikov would smilingly exclaim as he detained his interlocutor's hand. No, no, surely you do not think that I? But no, no, it is our duty, it is our obligation, and we do not require rewards for doing our work properly. So far as your matter is concerned you may rest easy, everything shall be carried through tomorrow. But may I have your address? There is no need to trouble yourself, seeing that the documents can easily be brought to you at your residence. Upon which the delighted suitor would return home in raptures, thinking, Here at long last is the sort of man so badly needed, a man of that kind is a jewel beyond price. Yet for a day, for two days, nay, even for three, the suitor would wait in vain so far as any messengers with documents were concerned. Then he would repair to the office, to find that his business had not so much as been entered upon. Lastly he would confront the jewel beyond price. Oh, pardon me, pardon me, Chichikov would exclaim in the politest of tones as he seized and grasped the visitor's hands. The truth is that we have such a quantity of business on hand, but the matter shall be put through tomorrow, and in the meanwhile I am most sorry about it. And with this would go the most fascinating of gestures. Yet neither on the morrow, nor on the day following, nor on the third would documents arrive at the suitor's abode. Upon that he would take thought as to whether something more ought not have been done. And sure enough, on his making inquiry, he would be informed that something will have to be given to the copyists. Well, there can be no harm in that, he would reply. As a matter of fact I have ready a chatvertik or two. Footnote, a silver quarter ruble, and footnote. Oh, no, no, the answer would come. Not a chatvertik per copyist, but a ruble is the fee. What? A ruble per copyist? Certainly. What is there to grumble at in that? After money, the copyists will receive a chatvertik, a piece, and the rest will go to the government. Upon that the disillusioned suitor would fly out upon the new order of things brought about by the inquiry into illicit fees, and curse both the chinostics and their upish, insolent behavior. Once upon a time, with the suitor lament, one did know what to do. Once one had tipped the director a banknote, once a fare was, so to speak, in the hat. But now one has to pay a ruble per copyist after waiting a week, because otherwise it was impossible to guess how the wind might set. The devil fly away with all disinterested and trustworthy chinofnics. And certainly the aggrieved suitor had reason to grumble, seeing that, now that bribe-takers had ceased to exist, and directors had uniformly become men of honour and integrity. Secretaries in Clarks ought not with impunity to have continued their thievish ways. In time they opened out to Chichikov a still wider field, for a commission was appointed to supervise the erection of a government building. And, on his being nominated to that body, he proved himself one of its most active members. The commission got to work without delay, but for a space of six years had some trouble with the building in question. Either the climate, hindered operations, or the materials used were of the kind which prevents official edifices from ever rising higher than the basement. But, meanwhile, other quarters of the town saw a rise for each member of the commission a handsome house of the non-official style of architecture. Clearly the foundation afforded by the soil of those parts was better than that, when a government building was still engaged in hanging fire. Likewise the members of the commission began to look exceedingly prosperous, and to blossom out into family life. And, for the first time in his existence, even Chichikov also departed from the iron laws of a self-imposed restrained and inexorable self-denial, and so far mitigated his heretofore asceticism as to show himself a man not averse to those amenities which, during his youth, he had been capable of renouncing. That is to say, certain superfluities began to make their appearance in his establishment. He engaged a good cook, took to wearing linen shirts, bought for himself cloth of a pattern worn by no one else in the province, figured in checks shot with the brightest of reds and browns, fitted himself out with two splendid horses, which he drove with a single pair of reins added to a ring attachment for the trace-horse, developed a habit of washing with a sponge dipped in odour cologne, and invested in soaps of the most expensive quality in order to communicate to his skin a more elegant polish. But suddenly there appeared upon the scene a new director, a military man, and a martinage as regarded as hostility to bribe takers and anything which might be called irregular. On the very day after his arrival, he struck fear into every breast by calling for accounts, discovering hosts of deficits and missing sums, and directing his attention to the aforesaid fine houses of civilian architecture. Upon that there ensued a complete reshuffling. Chinovniks were retired wholesale, and the houses were secreted to the government, or else converted into various pious institutions and schools for soldiers' children. Thus the whole fabric, and especially Chichikov, came crashing to the ground. Particularly did our hero's agreeable face displease the new director. Why that was so, it is impossible to say, but frequently, in cases of the kind, no reason exists. However, the director conceived a mortal dislike to him, and also extended that enmity to the whole of Chichikov's colleagues. But in as much as the said director was a military man, he was not fully acquainted with the myriad subtleties of the civilian mind. Therefore it was not long before, by dint of maintaining a discreet exterior added to a faculty for humoring all and sundry, a fresh gang of Chinovniks succeeded in restoring him to mildness, and the general found himself in the hands of greater thieves than before, but thieves whom he did not even suspect, seeing that he believed himself to have selected man fit and proper, had even ventured to boast of possessing a keen eye for talent. In a trice that Chinovniks concerned, appraised his spirit and character, with the result that the entire sphere over which he ruled became an agency for the detection of irregularities. Everywhere, and in every case, were those irregularities pursued as a fisherman pursues a fat sturgeon with a gaffe, and to such an extent that this world proved successful that almost in no time each participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several thousand rubles of capital. Upon that a large number of the former band of Chinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude and were allowed to re-enter the service. But not by hook or by crook could Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited there too by sundry items of paper currency, the general's first secretary and principal bear leader did all he could on our here's behalf. It seems that the general was the kind of man who, though easily led by the news, provided it was done without his knowledge, no sooner got an idea into his head than it stuck there like a nail, and could not possibly be extracted. And all that the wily secretary succeeded in procuring was a tearing up of a certain dirty fragment of paper, even that being affected only by an appeal to the general's compassion, on the score of the unhappy fate which otherwise would be for Chichikov's wife and children, who luckily had no existence in fact. Well, such a Chikov to himself, I've done my best, and now everything has failed. Lamenting my misfortune won't help me, but only action. And with that he decided to begin his career anew, and once more to arm himself with the weapons of patience and self-denial. The better to effect this he had, of course, to remove to another town. Yet somehow for a while things miscarried. More than once he found himself forced to exchange one post for another, and at the briefest of notice, and all of them were posts of the meanest, the most wretched order. Yet, being a man of the utmost nice-ty of feeling, the fact that he found himself rubbing shoulders with anything but nice companions did not prevent him from preserving intact his innate love of what was decent and seemly, or from cherishing the instinct which led him to hanker after office fittings of lacquered wood, with neatness and orderliness everywhere. Nor did he at any time permit a foul word to creep into his speech, and would feel hurt even if, in the speech of others, there occurred a scornful reverence to anything which pertained to rank and dignity. Also the reader will be pleased to know that our hero changes linen every other day, and in summer, when the weather was very hot, every day, seeing that the very faintest suspicion of an unpleasant odor offended his fastidiousness. For the same reason it was his custom, before being validated by Patrusca, always to plug his nostrils with a couple of cloves. In short, there were many occasions when his nerves suffered rackings as cruel as the young girls, and so helped to increase his disgust at having once more to associate with men who set no stall by the decencies of life. Yet, though he braced himself to the task, this period of adversity told upon his health, and he even grew a trifle shabby. More than once, unhappening to catch sight of himself in the mirror, he could not forbear exclaiming, Holy Mother of God, but what a nasty looking brood I've become. And for a long while afterwards could not with anything like sang foie contemplate his reflection. Yet throughout he bore up stoutly and patiently, and ended by being transferred to the customs department. It may be said that the department had long constituted the secret goal of his ambition, for yet noted the foreign elegancies with which its officials always contrived to provide themselves, and had always observed that invariably they were able to send presence of China and Cambridge to their sisters and aunts. Well, to the Lady France generally. Yes, more than once he had set himself with a sigh. That is the department to which I ought to belong, for, given a town near the froncher and a sensible set of colleagues, I might be able to fit myself out with excellent linen shirts. Also, it may be said that most frequently of all had his thoughts turned towards a certain quality of French soap which imparted a peculiar whiteness to the skin, and a peerless freshness to the cheeks. Its name is known to God alone, but at least it was to be procured only in the immediate neighbourhood of the froncher. So, as I say, Chechikov had long felt a leaning towards the customs, but for a time had been restrained from applying for the same by the various current advantages of the building commission, since rightly had adjudged the letter to constitute a bird in the hand, and the former to constitute only a bird in the bush. But now he decided that, come what might, into the customs he must make his way. And that way he made, and then applied himself to his new duties with zeal born of the fact that he realised that fortune had especially marked him out for a customs officer. Indeed, such activity, perspicuity and ubiquity as his had never been seen or thought of. Within four weeks at the most he had so thoroughly got his hand in that he was conversant with customs procedure in every detail. Not only could he weigh and measure, but also he could divine from an invoice how many artians of cloth or other material a given piece contained, and then, taking a roll of the letter in his hand, could specified once the number of pounds at which it would tip the scale. As for searchings, well, even his colleagues had to admit that he possessed the nose of a veritable bloodhound, and that it was impossible not to marvel at the patients were with he would try every button of the suspected person. He had preserved throughout a deadly politeness and an icy sound for which surpassed belief. And while the search were raging and foaming at the mouth and feeling that they would give worlds to alter his smiling exterior with a good, resounding slap, he would move not a muscle of his face, nor obeyed by a jot the urbanity of his demeanour, as he murmured. Do you mind so far in combating yourself as to stand up? Or, pray step into the next room, madam, where the wife of one of our staff will attend you. Or, pray allow me to slip this pen-eye of mine into the lining of your coat, after which he would extract dense shawls and towels with as much nonchalance as he would have done from his own travelling trunk. Even his superiors acknowledged him to be a devil at the job, rather than a human being, so perfect was his instinct for looking into cartwheels, carriage-pulls, horse's ears, and places whether an author ought not to peritrate even in thought. Places where only a customs official is permitted to go. The result was that the wretched traveller who had just crossed the front-chair would, within a few minutes, become holy at sea, and, wiping away the perspiration and breaking out into body-fleshes, would be reduced to crossing himself and metering, well, well, well. In fact, such a traveller would feel in the position of a schoolboy, who, having been summoned to the presence of the headmaster for the extensible purpose of being given an order, has found that he receives, instead, a sound flogging. In short, for some time Chichikov made it impossible for Smugglers to earn a living. In particular, he reduced Polish jury almost to despair, so invincible, so almost unnatural was directitude, the incorruptibility which led him to refrain from converting himself into a small capitalist, with the aid of confiscated goods and articles which, to save excessive clerical labour, had failed to be handed over to the government. Also, without saying, it goes that such phenomenally zealous and disinterested service attracted general astonishment, and, eventually, the notice of the authorities, whereupon he received promotion, and followed that up by mooting a scheme for the infallible detection of contrabandists, provided that he could be furnished with the necessary authority for carrying out the same. At once such authority was accorded him, as also unlimited power to conduct every species of search and investigation. And that was all he wanted. It happened that previously they had been formed a well-found association for smuggling on regular, carefully prepared lines, and that this daring scheme seemed to promise profit to the extent of some millions of money. Yet, though he had long had knowledge of it, Chichikov had said to the association's emissaries when sent to buy him over. The time is not yet. But now that he had got all the reins into his hands, he sent word of the fact to the gang, and with it the remark, the time is now. Nor was he wrong in his calculations, for, within the space of a year, he had acquired what he could not have made during twenty years of non-fraudulent service. With similar sagacity he had, during his early days in the department, declined altogether to enter into relations with the association, for the reason that he had then been a mere cipher, and would have come in for nothing large in the way of takings. But now? Well, now it was another matter altogether, and he could dictate what terms he liked. Moreover, that the affair might progress the more smoothly, he suborned a fellow chinophonic of the type which, in spite of grey hairs, stands powerless against temptation. And, the contract concluded, the association duly proceeded to business. Certainly business began brilliantly. But probably most of my readers are familiar with the oft-repeated story of the passage of Spanish sheep across the frontier in double fleeces which carried between their outer layers and their inner, enough lace of brabant to sell to the tune of millions of rubles. Therefore I will not recount the story again, beyond saying that those journeys took place just when Chichikov had become head of the customs, and that, had he not a hand in the enterprise, not all the Jews in the world could have brought it to success. By the time that three or four of these ovine invasions had taken place, Chichikov and his accomplice had come to be the possessors of four hundred thousand rubles apiece, while some even aver that the former's gains totaled half a million, owing to the greater industry which he had displayed in the matter. Nor can anyone but God say to what a figure the fortunes of the pair might not eventually have attained had not an awkward contra-tan cut right across their arrangements. That is to say, for some reason or another, the devils so far deprived these chinophonics conspirators of sense as to make them come to words with one another, and then to engage in a quarrel. Beginning with a heated argument, this quarrel reached the point of Chichikov, who was possibly a trifletypsy, calling his colleague a priest's son, and though that description of the person so addressed was perfectly accurate, he chose to take offence, and to answer Chichikov with the words, loudly and incisively uttered, it is you who have a priest for your father, and to add to that, the more to incend his companion, he asked Mark you, that is how it is. Yet, though he had thus turned the tables upon Chichikov with a two-quoqua, and then kept that exploit, with the words last quoted, the offended chidophonic could not remain satisfied, but went on to send in an anonymous document to the authorities. On the other hand, some of her that it was over a woman that the pair fell out, over a woman who, to quote the phrase then current among the staff of the customs department, was as fresh and as strong as the pulp of a turnip, and that night-birds were hired to assault our hero in a dark alley, and that the scheme miscarried, and that in any case, both Chichikov and his friend had been deceived, seeing that the person to whom the lady had really accorded her favours was a certain staff-captain, named Shamsheref. However, only God knows the truth of the matter, let the inquisitive reader ferried it out for himself. The fact remains that a complete exposure of the dealings with the contrabandists followed, and that the two chinovnics were put to the question, deprived of their property, and made to formulate in writing all that they had done. Against this thunderbolt of fortune the State Councilor could make no headway, and in some retired spot or another sank into oblivion. But Chichikov put a brave face upon the matter, for, in spite of the authority's best efforts to smell out his gains, he had contrived to conceal a portion of them, and also resorted to every subtle trick of intellect which could possibly be employed by an experienced man of the world who has a wide knowledge of his fellows. Nothing which could be affected by pleasantness of demeanor, by moving oratory, by clouds of flattery, and by the occasional insertion of a coin into a palm did he leave undone. With the result that he was retired with less ignominy than was his companion, and escaped actual trial in a criminal charge. Yet he was stripped of all his capital, stripped of his imported effects, stripped of everything. That is to say, all that remained to him consisted of ten thousand rubles which he had stored against the rainy day, two dozen linen shirts, a small britchka of the type used by bachelors, and two serving men named Selefan and Patruska. Yes, and that impulse of kindness moved the chinovniks of the customs also to set aside for him a few cakes of the soap which had found so excellent for the freshness of the cheeks. Thus once more our hero found himself stranded, and while an accumulation of misfortunes had descended upon his head, though true he turned them suffering in the service in the cause of truth. Certainly one would have thought that after these buffettings and priles and changes of fortune, after this taste of the sorrows of life, he and his precious ten thousand rubles would have withdrawn to some peaceful corner in a provincial town where, clad in his tough dressing-gown, he could have set and listened to the peasants quarrelling on festival days, or, for the sake of a breath of fresh air, have gone in person to the polterers to finger chickens for soup, and so have spent a quiet, but not wholly useless existence. But nothing of the kind took place, and therein we must do justice to the strength of his character. In other words, although he had undergone what to the majority of men would have meant ruin and discouragement and a shattering of ideals, he still preserved his energy. True, downcast and angry, and full of resentment against the world in general, he felt furious with the injustice of fate, and dissatisfied with the dealings of men. Yet he could not forbear courting additional experiences. In short, the patience which he displayed was such as to make the wooden persistency of the German, a persistency merely due to the slow, lethargic circulation of the Teutons' blood, seemed nothing at all, seeing that by nature Chechika's blood flowed strongly, and that he had to employ much force of will to curb within himself those elements which longed to burst forth and revel in freedom. He thought things over, and, as he did so, a certain spice of reason appeared in his reflections. "'How have I come to be what I am?' he said to himself. "'Why has misfortune overtaken me in this way? Never have I wronged a poor person, or robbed a widow, or turned anyone out of doors. I've always been careful only to take advantage of those who possess more than their share. Moreover, I've never gleaned anywhere but where everyone else was gleaning, and had I not done so, others would have gleaned in my place. Why, then, should those others be prospering, and I be sunk as low as a worm? What am I? What am I good for? How can I, in future, hope to look any honest father of a family in the face? How shall I escape being tortured with the thought that I am cumbering the ground? What, in the years to come, will my children say, save that, our father was a brute, for he left us nothing to live upon?' "'Here, I may remark, that we have seen how much thought Chechikov devoted to his future descendants. Indeed, had not there been constantly recurring to his mind the insistent question, what will my children say? He might not have plunged into the affair so deeply. Nevertheless, like a wary cat which glances hither and thither to see whether its mistress be not coming before it can make off with whatsoever first force to its paw—but a fat lard, a duck, or anything else—so our future founder of a family continued, though weeping and bewailing as lot, to let not a single detail escape his eye. That is to say, he retained his wits ever in a state of activity, and kept his brain constantly working. All that he required was a plan. Once more, he pulled himself together. Once more, he embarked upon a life of toil. Once more, he stinted himself in everything. Once more, he left clean and decent surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In other words, until something better should turn up, he embraced the calling of an ordinary attorney, a calling which not then possessed of a civic status was jostled on every side, enjoyed little respect at the hands of the minor legal fry, or indeed at its own, and before's met with universal slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity compelled Chichikov to face these things. Among commissions entrusted to him was that of placing in the hands of the public trustee several hundred peasants who belonged to a ruined estate. The estate had reached its parlorous condition through cattle disease, through rascally bailiffs, through failures of the harvest, through such epidemic diseases that had killed off the best workmen, and last but not least through the senseless conduct of the owner himself, who had furnished a house in Moscow in a latest style, and then squandered it every coppick so that nothing was left for his further maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the remains, including the peasants of the estate. In those days, mortgage to the treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to entertain every official concerned. We know that, unless that be previously done, unless a whole bottle of Madeira first be emptied down each clerical throat, not the smallest legal affair can be carried through, and to explain for the barring of future attachments that half of the peasants were dead. And are they entered on the revision lists? asked the secretary. Yes, replied Chichikov. 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 they're 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've got them tucked into my belt. Why, were I myself to buy up a few souls which are dead? To buy them before a newer revision list shall have been made, the Council of Public Trust might pay me two hundred rubles apiece for them, and I might find myself with, say, a capital of two hundred thousand rubles. 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. Nowadays landowners have taken to cart-playing and junketing and wasting their money, or to joining the civil service in St. Petersburg. Consequently their estates are going to reckon ruin, and being managed in any sort of fashion, and succeeding in paying their dues with greater difficulty each year. That being so, not a man of a lot but would gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than continue paying the poll tax. And in this fashion I might make, well, not a few copics. Of course there are difficulties, and to avoid creating a scandal I should need to employ plenty of finesse. But man was given his brain to use, not to neglect. One good point about the scheme is that it will seem so improbable that in case of an accident no one in the world will believe in it. True, it is illegal to buy or mortgage peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying them only for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the provinces of Taurida and Kersen almost for nothing, provided that one undertakes subsequently to colonize it. So to Kersen I will transfer them, and long may they live there, and the removal of my dead souls shall be carried out in the strictest legal form. And if the authorities should want confirmation by testimony I shall produce a letter signed by my own superintendent of the Kersenian rural police. That is to say, by myself. Lastly the supposed village in Kersen shall be called Chichigova. Better still, Pavloskova, according to my Christian name. In this fashion that germinated in our hero's brain that strange scheme for which the reader may or may not be grateful, but for which the author certainly is so, seeing that, had it never occurred to Chichikov, this story would never have seen the light. After crossing himself, according to the Russian custom, Chichikov set about carrying out his enterprise. On pretence of selecting a place wherein to settle, he started forth to inspect various corners of the Russian empire, but more especially those which had suffered from such unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at the lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners haphazard. He rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly suited to his taste, or with whom he might with the least possible trouble conclude identical agreements, though in the first instance he always tried by getting on terms of acquaintanceship, better still of friendship, with them to acquire the souls for nothing, and so to avoid purchase at all. In passing my readers must not blame me if the characters whom they have encountered in these pages have not been altogether to their liking. The fold is Chichikov's rather than mine, for he is the master, and where he leads we must follow. Also shoot my readers girded me for a certain dimness and want of clarity in my principal characters and actors. That will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent. Similarly does the entry to every town, the entry even to the capital itself, convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end. But in time there will be gain also to stand out the outlines of six storied mansions, and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a medley of steeples, columns, statues, and turrets, the whole framed in rattle and roar, and the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of men have conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov's first purchases were made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the affair progressed, and what success or failure our hero met, and how Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the levers of his far-flung tail are moved, and how eventually the horizon will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a lyrical tendency. Yes, many a versed of road remains to be travelled by a party made up of an elderly gentleman, a Britca of the kind affected by bachelors, a valley named Petrushka, a coachman named Selefan, and three horses, which, from the assessor to the skew-bold, are known to us individually by name. Again, although I've given a full description of our hero's exterior, such as it is, I may yet be asked for an inclusive definition also of his moral personality, that he is no hero compounded of virtues and perfections must be already clear. Then what is he? A villain? Why should we call him a villain? Why should we be so hard upon a fellow man? In these days our villains have ceased to exist. Rather it would be fairer to call him an acquirer. The love of acquisition, the love of gain, is a fault common to many, and gives rise to many and many a transaction of the kind generally known as not strictly honourable. True, such a character contains an element of ugliness, and the same reader who, on his journey through life, would sit at the board of a character of this kind, and spend the most agreeable time with him, would be the first to look at him as scantz if he should appear in the guise of the hero of a novel or a play. But wise is the reader who, on meeting such a character, scans him carefully and, instead of shrinking from him with this taste, probes him to the springs of his being. The human personality contains nothing which may not, in a twinkling of an eye, become altogether changed, nothing in which, before you can look around, there may not spring to birth some canker's worm which is destined to suck thence the essential juice. Yes, it is a common thing to see not only an over-mastering passion, but also a passion of the most petty order arise in a man who is born to better things, and lead him both to forget his greatest and most sacred obligations, and to see only in the various trifles the great and the holy. For human passions are as numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on to become his most insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who may choose from among the gamut of human passions one which is noble. Hour by hour will that instinct grow and multiply in his measureless beneficence. Hour by hour will it sink deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his soul. But there are passions of which a man cannot rid himself, seeing that they are born with him at his birth, and he has no power to abjure them. Higher powers govern those passions, and in them is something which will call to him and refuse to be silenced to the end of his life. Yes, whether in a guise of darkness or whether in a guise which will become converted into a light to lighten the world, they will and must attain their consummation on life's field, and in either case they have been evoked for man's good. In the same way may the passion which drew our Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of himself. In the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence something which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust before the infinite wisdom of God. Yet that folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing. What matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to say, had not the author pried over deeply into Chichikov's soul, nor stirred up in his death what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed those of his hero's thoughts which that hero would not have disclosed even to his most intimate friend, had the author indeed exhibited Chichikov just as he exhibited himself to the townsmen of En and Manilov and the rest, well, then we may rest assured that every reader would have been delighted with him, and have voted him a most interesting person, for it is not nearly so necessary that Chichikov should figure before the reader as though his foreman person were actually present to the eye as that, on concluding a perusal of this work, the reader should be able to return, unherald in soul, to that cold of the car-table which is the solace and the light of all good Russians. Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see humanity revealed in its nakedness. Why should we do so, you say? What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not, with our own eyes, have to look upon much that is anything but comforting? Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and attractive so that we might forget ourselves a little. In the same fashion as a land owner say to his bailiff, Why do you come and tell me that the affairs of my estate are in a bad way? I know that without your help. Have you nothing else to tell me? Kindly allow me to forget the fact or else to remain in ignorance of it, and I shall be much obliged to you. Whereafter the said land owner probably proceeds to spend on his diversion the money which ought to have gone towards the rehabilitation of his affairs? Possibly the author may also incur censure at the hands of those so-called patriots who sit quietly in corners and become capitalists through making fortunes at the expense of others. Yes, let but something which they conceive to be derogatory to their country occur. For instance, let there be published some book which voices the bitter truth, and out they will come from their hiding places like a spider which perceives a fly to be caught in its web. Is it well to proclaim this to the world, and to set folk talking about it, they will cry. What you have described such as us is our affair. Is conduct of that kind right? What will foreigners say? Does anyone care calmly to sit by and hear himself produced? Why should you lead foreigners to suppose that all is not well with us, and that we are not patriotic? Well, to these sage remarks no answer can really be returned, especially to such of the above as referred to foreign opinion. But see here, there once lived in a remote corner of Russia, two natives of the region indicated. One of those natives was a good man named Kifar Mokhevich, and a man of kinder disposition, a man who went through life in a dressing gown, and paid no heed to his household for the reason that his whole being was centered upon the province of speculation, and that in particular he was preoccupied with a philosophical problem usually stated by him thus. A beast, he would say, is born naked. Now, why should that be? Why should not a beast be born as a bird is born, there is to say, through the process of being hatched from an egg? Nature it beyond the understanding, however much one may probe her. This was the substance of Kifar Mokhevich's reflections, but herein is not the chief point. The other of the pair was a fellow named Morfi Kifarvich, and son to the first named. He was what we Russians call a hero, and while his father was pondering the parturition of beasts, his, the son's, lusty, twenty-year-old temperament was violently struggling for development. Yet that son could take on nothing without some accident occurring. At one moment would he crack someone's fingers in half, and at another would he raise a bump on somebody's nose, so that both at home and abroad, every one and everything, from the serving-mate to the yard dog, flat on his approach, and even a bed in his bedroom became shattered to splinters. Such was Morfi Kifarvich, and with it all he had a kindly soul. But herein is not the chief point. Good sir, good Kifar Mokhevich, servants and neighbors would come and say to the father, What are you going to do about your Morfi Kifarvich? We get no rest from him, he is so above himself. That is only his play, that is only his play, the father would reply. What else can you expect? It is too late now to start a quarrel with him, and moreover everyone would accuse me of harshness. True, he is a little conceited, but where I to approve him in public the whole thing would become common talk, and folk would begin giving him a dog's name. And if they did that would not their opinion touch me also, seeing that I am his father. Also I am busy with philosophy and have no time for such things. Lastly Morfi Kifarvich is my son, and very dear to my heart. And beating his breast, Kifar Mokhevich again asserted that even though his son should elect to continue his pranks it would not be for him, for the father, to proclaim the fact, or to fall out with his offspring. And this expression of paternal feeling uttered, Kifar Mokhevich left Mokhevich to his heroic exploits, and himself returned to his beloved subject of speculation, which now included also the problem. Suppose elephants were to take to being hatched from eggs, would not the shell of such eggs be of a thickness proof against cannibals, and necessitate the invention of some new type of firearm. Thus at the end of this little story we have these two denizens of a peaceful corner of Russia looking thence as from a window in less terror of doing what was scandalous than of having it said of them that they were acting scandalsily. Yes, the feeling animating our so-called patriots is not true patriotism at all. Something else lies beneath it. Who, if not an author, is to speak aloud the truth. Men like you, my pseudo-patriots, stand in dread of the eye which is able to discern, yet shrink from using your own, and prefer rather to glance at everything unhealingly. Yes, after laughing heartily over Chichikov's misadventures, and perhaps even commanding the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty turn of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a self-satisfied smile and add, well, we agree that in certain parts of the provinces there exist strange and ridiculous individuals as well as unconscionable rascals. Yet which of you went quiet and alone engaged in solitary self-communion would not do well to probe your own souls and to put to yourselves the solemn question, is there not in me an element of Chichikov? For how should there not be? Which of you is not liable at any moment to be passed in the street by an acquaintance who, nudging his neighbour, may say of you with a barely suppressed sneer? Look, there goes Chichikov. That is Chichikov who has just gone by. But here we are talking at the top of our voices, whilst all the time our hero lies slumbering in his britchka. Indeed, his name has been repeated so often during the recital of his life's history that you must almost have heard us. And at any time he is an irritable, irresolable fellow when spoken of with disrespect. True, to the reader Chichikov's displeasure cannot matter a jod, but for the author it would mean ruin to crawl with his hero, seeing that arm in arm Chichikov and he have yet far to go. Tat, tat, tat, came in a shout from Chichikov, hey, Salafan! What is it? came their reply, uttered with a drawl. What is it? Why, how dare you drive like that? Come, bestow yourself a little. And indeed Salafan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes and hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds, save an occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks, whilst Britchikov had lost his cap and was leaning backwards until his head had come to rest against Chichikov's knees, a position which necessitated his being awakened with a cuff. Salafan also aroused himself and a portion to the skew-bould a few cuts across the back of a kind which at least had the effect of inciting that animal to trot. And when, presently, the other two horses followed their companion's example, the little Britchikov moved forward like a piece of thistle down. Salafan flourished his whip and shouted, aye, aye, as the inequalities of the road jerked him vertically on his seat. And meanwhile, reclining against the leather cushions of the vehicle's interior, Chichikov smiled with gratification at the sensation of driving fast. For what Russian does not love to drive fast? Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head and to let them go and to cry to the devil with the world? At such moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings, and one flies, and everything else flies, but contrary wise, both the versed stones and traders riding on the shafts of their wagons and the forest with dark lines of sprues and fur amid which may be heard the axe of the woodcutter and the croaking of the raven. Yes, out of a dim, remote distance, the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving our way seem halted, the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, Troika, Troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you? Only among a hard erase of folk can you have come to birth. Only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versed, the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly fashioned vehicle of the road, a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you're a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yauslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts and flourishes his whip and breaks into a long-drawn song. Away like the wind go the horses, and the wheels where their spokes become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian with a cry of astonishment halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies on its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon, a speck amid a cloud of dust. And you, Russia of mine, are not you also speeding like a troika which naught can overtake? It's not the roads smoking beneath their wheels, and the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in the rear, and the spectators struck with a portent, halting to wonder whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven. What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force which lies within your mysterious deeds? Surely the winds themselves must abide in their mains, and every vein in their bodies be an ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bits them with iron-girded breasts, and hoofs which barely touch the earth as they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God. Wither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Wither, answer me. But no answer comes, only the weird sound of your color-bells. Rent into a thousand shreds the air roars past you, for you're overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires, to stand aside, to give you way.