Текст книги "Dead Souls"

Автор книги: Николай Гоголь

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

It is highly doubtful that readers will like the hero we have chosen. The ladies will not like him, that can be said positively, for the ladies demand that a hero be a decided perfection, and if there is any little spot on his soul or body, it means trouble! However deeply the author peers into his soul, reflecting his image more purely than a mirror, it will be of no avail. The very plumpness and middle age of Chichikov will do him great harm: plumpness will in no way be forgiven a hero, and a great many ladies will turn away, saying: "Fie, ugly thing!" Alas! all this is known to the author, yet for all that he cannot take a virtuous man as his hero, but . . . perhaps in this same story some other, as yet untouched strings will be felt, the inestimable wealth of the Russian spirit will step forth, a man endowed with divine valor will pass by, or some wondrous Russian maiden such as can be found nowhere in the world, with all the marvelous beauty of a woman's soul, all magnanimous aspiration and self-denial. And all virtuous people of other tribes will seem dead next to them, as a book is dead next to the living word! Russian movements will arise . . . and it will be seen how deeply that which has only grazed the nature of other peoples has sunk into the Slavic nature . . . But wherefore and why speak of what lies ahead? It is unbecoming for the author, a man long since taught by a stern inner life and the refreshing sobriety of solitude, to forget himself like a youth. Everything in its turn, its place, its time! But all the same the virtuous man has not been taken as a hero. And it is even possible to say why he has not been taken. Because it is time finally to give the poor virtuous man a rest, because the phrase "virtuous man" idly circulates on all lips; because the virtuous man has been turned into a horse, and there is no writer who has not driven him, urging him on with a whip and whatever else is handy; because the virtuous man has been so worn out that there is not even the ghost of any virtue left in him, but only skin and ribs instead of a body; because the virtuous man is invoked hypocritically; because the virtuous man is not respected! No, it is time finally to hitch up a scoundrel. And so, let us hitch up a scoundrel.

Obscure and modest was our hero's origin. His parents were of the nobility, but whether ancient or honorary—God knows; in appearance he did not resemble them: at least the relation who was present at his birth, a short, brief woman of the kind usually called a wee thing, on taking the child in her arms, exclaimed: "Quite different than I thought! He should have taken after his grandmother on his mother's side, that would have been best, but he came out just as the saying goes: 'Not like mother, not like father, but like Roger the lodger.'" Life, at its beginning, looked upon him somehow sourly, inhospitably, through some dim, snow-covered window: not one friend, not one childhood companion. A small room with small windows, never opened winter or summer, the father an ailing man, in a long frock coat trimmed with lambskin and with knitted slippers on his bare feet, who sighed incessantly as he paced the room, spitting into a box of sand that stood in the corner, the eternal sitting on the bench, pen in hand, ink-stained fingers and even lips, the eternal maxim before his eyes: "Do not lie, obey your elders, keep virtue in your heart"; the eternal shuffling and scraping of the slippers in the room, the familiar but ever stern voice: "Fooling again!" that resounded whenever the child, bored with the monotonous work, attached some flourish or tail to a letter; and the eternally familiar, ever unpleasant feeling when, after these words, the edge of his ear was rolled up very painfully by the nails of long fingers reaching from behind: this is the poor picture of his early childhood, of which he barely preserved a pale memory. But in life everything changes swiftly and livelily: and one day, with the first spring sun and the flooding streams, the father, taking his son, drove off with him in a cart, dragged by a runty piebald horse known among horse traders as a magpie; she was driven by a coachman, a hunchbacked little man, progenitor of the only serf family belonging to Chichikov's father, who filled almost all the positions in the house. This magpie dragged them for a little over a day and a half; they slept on the road, crossed a river, lunched on cold pie and roast lamb, and only on the morning of the third day did they reach town. In unsuspected magnificence the town streets flashed before the boy and left him gaping for a few minutes. Then the magpie plopped together with the cart into a hole at the head of a narrow lane, all straining downhill and clogged with mud; she toiled there for a long time, using all her strength and kneading away with her legs, urged on by the hunchback and by the master himself, and finally dragged them into a little yard that sat on a slope, with two flowering apple trees in front of a little old house, and with a garden behind, low, puny, consisting only of a mountain ash, an elder, and, hidden in its depths, a little wooden shed, roofed with shingles, with a narrow matte window. Here lived their relative, a wobbly little crone, who still went to market every morning and then dried her stockings by the samovar. She patted the boy on the cheek and admired his plumpness. Here he was to stay and go every day to study at the town school. The father, after spending the night, set out on the road the very next day. On parting, the parental eyes shed no tears; fifty kopecks in copper were given for expenses and treats, and, which was more important, a wise admonition: "Watch out, then, Pavlusha, study, don't be a fool or a scapegrace, and above all try to please your teachers and superiors. If you please your superior, then even if you don't succeed in your studies and God has given you no talent, you will still do well and get ahead of everybody. Don't keep company with your schoolmates, they won't teach you any good; but if you do, then keep company with the richer ones, on the chance that they may be useful to you. Do not regale or treat anyone, but rather behave in such a way that they treat you, and above all keep and save your kopeck: it is the most reliable thing in the world. A comrade or companion will cheat you and be the first to betray you in trouble; but a kopeck will never betray you, whatever trouble you get into. You can do everything and break through everything with a kopeck." Having delivered this admonition, the father parted from his son and dragged himself back home with his magpie, and after that he never saw him again, but his words and admonitions sank deeply into his soul.

Pavlusha started going to school the very next day. It turned out that there were no special abilities in him for any subject; he was rather distinguished for his diligence and neatness; but instead there turned out to be great intelligence in him on the other side, the practical one. He suddenly grasped and understood things and behaved himself with regard to his comrades precisely in such a way that they treated him, while he not only never treated them, but even sometimes stashed away the received treat and later sold it to them. While still a child he knew how to deny himself everything. Of the fifty kopecks his father had given him, he did not spend even one; on the contrary, that same year he already made additions to them, showing a resourcefulness that was almost extraordinary: he made a bullfinch out of wax, painted it, and sold it for a good profit. Then, over a certain course of time, he got into other speculations, namely the following: having bought some food at the market, he would sit in class near those who were better off, and as soon as he noticed some queasiness in his comrade—a sign of approaching hunger—he would show him from under the bench, as if accidentally, a wedge of gingerbread or a roll, and, after getting him all excited, would charge a price commensurate with his appetite. He spent two months in his room fussing tirelessly over a mouse that he kept in a small wooden cage, and finally managed to get the mouse to stand on its hind legs, lie down and get up on command, and then he sold it, also for a good profit. When he had accumulated as much as five roubles, he sewed up the little bag and started saving in another one. With respect to the authorities he behaved still more cleverly. No one could sit so quietly on a bench. It should be noted that the teacher was a great lover of silence and good conduct and could not stand clever and witty boys; it seemed to him that they must certainly be laughing at him. It was enough for one who had drawn notice with regard to wit, it was enough for him merely to stir or somehow inadvertently twitch his eyebrow, to suddenly fall under his wrath. He would persecute him and punish him unmercifully. "I'll drive the defiance and disobedience out of you, my boy!" he would say. "I know you through and through, as you hardly know yourself. You're going to go on your knees for me! you're going to go hungry for me!" And the poor lad, not knowing why himself, would get sores on his knees and go hungry for days. "Abilities and talents? That's all nonsense," he used to say "I look only at conduct. I'll give top grades in all subjects to a boy who doesn't know afrom b,if his conduct is praiseworthy; and if I see a bad spirit or any mockery in a one of you, I'll give him a zero, even if he outshines Solon himself!" So spoke the teacher, who had a mortal hatred of Krylov for saying: "Better a drunken slob, if he knows his job," [56]56
  Solon (630?-560? B.C.), the lawgiver of Athens, was one of the seven sages of Greece. The quotation is from Krylov's fable The Musicians.


[Закрыть]and always used to tell, with delight in his face and eyes, that in the school where he taught previously there was such silence that you could hear a fly buzz; that not one pupil the whole year round either coughed or blew his nose in class, and until the bell rang it was impossible to tell whether anyone was there or not. Chichikov suddenly comprehended the superior's spirit and how to behave accordingly. He never moved an eye or an eyebrow all through class time, however much he was pinched from behind; as soon as the bell rang, he rushed headlong and was the first to offer the teacher his fur hat (the teacher wore a fur hat with ear flaps); after offering him the hat, he left class ahead of him, trying two or three times to cross paths with him, incessantly tipping his cap. The thing was a complete success. All the while he was at school, he was in excellent repute, and at graduation he received full honors in all subjects, a diploma, and an album with For Exemplary Diligence and Good Conductstamped on it in gold. On leaving school, he turned out to be already a young man of rather attractive appearance, with a chin calling for a razor. Just then his father died. The inheritance was found to consist of four irretrievably worn-out jerkins, two old frock coats trimmed with lambskin, and an insignificant sum of money. The father evidently was competent only to advise on saving kopecks, but saved very few himself. Chichikov straightaway sold the decrepit little farmstead with its worthless bit of land for a thousand roubles, and moved with his family of serfs to town, intending to settle there and enter the civil service. Just at that time the poor teacher, the lover of silence and praiseworthy conduct, was thrown out of the school for stupidity or some other fault. He took to drinking from grief; in the end he had nothing left even to buy drink with; ill, helpless, without a crust of bread, he was perishing somewhere in an unheated, abandoned hovel. His former pupils, the clever and witty, whom he had constantly suspected of disobedience and defiant conduct, on hearing of his pitiful plight, straightaway collected money for him, even selling much that was needed; only Pavlusha Chichikov pleaded want and gave them a silver five-kopeck piece, which his comrades there and then threw back at him, saying: "Eh, you chiseler!" The poor teacher buried his face in his hands when he heard of this act of his former pupils; tears gushed from his fading eyes, as if he were a strengthless child. "On my deathbed God has granted me to weep!" he said in a weak voice, and on hearing about Chichikov, he sighed deeply, adding straightaway: "Eh, Pavlusha! how a man can change! He was so well-behaved, no rowdiness, like silk! Hoodwinked, badly hoodwinked ...”

It is impossible, however, to say that our hero's nature was so hard and callous and his feelings were so dulled that he did not know either pity or compassion; he felt both the one and the other, he would even want to help, but only provided it was not a significant sum, provided the money he had resolved not to touch remained untouched; in short, the fatherly admonition—"Keep and save your kopeck"—proved beneficial. But he was not attached to money for its own sake; he was not possessed by stinginess and miserliness. No, they were not what moved him: he pictured ahead of him a life of every comfort, of every sort of prosperity; carriages, an excellently furnished house, tasty dinners—this was what constantly hovered in his head. So as to be sure ultimately, in time, to taste all that—this was the reason for saving kopecks, stingily denied in the meantime both to himself and to others. When a rich man raced by him in a pretty, light droshky, his trotters richly harnessed, he would stand rooted to the spot, and then, coming to, as if after a long sleep, would say: "Yet he used to be a clerk and had a bowl haircut!" And whatever there was that smacked of wealth and prosperity produced an impression on him inconceivable to himself. On leaving school he did not even want to rest: so strong was his desire to get quickly down to business and start in the service. However, despite his honors diploma, it was with great difficulty that he found himself a place in the treasury. Even in a remote backwoods one needs patronage! The little post he got was a wretched one, the salary thirty or forty roubles a year. But he resolved to engage himself ardently in his service, to conquer and overcome all. And indeed he displayed unheard-of self-denial, patience, and restriction of needs. From early morning till late evening, tireless of both body and soul, he kept writing, all buried in office papers, did not go home, slept on tables in office rooms, ate on occasion with the caretakers, and for all that managed to keep himself tidy, to dress decently, to give his face an agreeable expression, and even a certain nobility to his gestures. It must be said that the treasury clerks were particularly distinguished by their unsightliness and unattractiveness. Some had faces like badly baked bread: a cheek bulging out on one side, the chin skewed to the other, the upper lip puffed into a blister, and cracked besides—in short, quite ugly. They all talked somehow harshly, in such tones as if they were about to give someone a beating; sacrifices were frequently offered to Bacchus, thereby showing that many leftovers of paganism still persist in the Slavic nature; occasionally they even came to the office soused, as they say, for which reason the office was not a very nice place and the air was far from aromatic. Among such clerks Chichikov could not fail to be noticed and distinguished, presenting a complete contrast to them in all ways, by the attractiveness of his face, and the amiableness of his voice, and his total abstention from all strong drink. Yet, for all that, his path was difficult; his superior was an elderly department chief, who was the image of some stony insensibility and unshakableness: eternally the same, unapproachable, never in his life showing a smile on his face, never once greeting anyone even with an inquiry after their health. No one had ever seen him, even once, be other than he always was, either in the street or at home; if only he had once shown sympathy for something or other, if only he had gotten drunk and in his drunkenness burst out laughing; if only he had even given himself to wild gaiety, as a robber will in a drunken moment—but there was not even a shadow of anything of the sort in him. There was precisely nothing in him, neither villainy nor goodness, and something frightful showed itself in this absence of everything. His callously marble face, with no sharp irregularity, did not hint at any resemblance; his features were in strict proportion to each other. Only the quantity of pocks and pits that mottled it included it in the number of those faces on which, according to the popular expression, the devil comes at night to thresh peas. It seemed beyond human power to suck up to such a man and win his favor, but Chichikov tried. To begin with, he set about pleasing him in various inconspicuous trifles: he made a close study of how the pens he wrote with were sharpened, and, preparing a few in that way, placed them at his hand each day; he blew and brushed the sand and tobacco from his desk; he provided a new rag for his inkstand; he found his hat somewhere, the vilest hat that ever existed in the world, and placed it by him each day a minute before the end of office hours; he cleaned off his back when he got whitewash on it from the wall—but all this went decidedly unnoticed, the same as if none of it had been done. Finally he sniffed out his home and family life, and learned that he had a grown-up daughter whose face also looked as if the threshing of peas took place on it nightly. It was from this side that he decided to mount his assault. Learning what church she went to on Sundays, he would stand opposite her each time, in clean clothes, his shirtfront stiffly starched– and the thing proved a success: the stern department chief wavered and invited him to tea! And before anyone in the office had time to blink, things got so arranged that Chichikov moved into his house, became a necessary and indispensable man, purchased the flour and the sugar, treated the daughter as his fiancée, called the department chief papa, and kissed his hand; everyone in the office decided that at the end of February, before the Great Lent, there would be a wedding. [57]57
  The Orthodox Church does not celebrate marriages during the Great Lent, the forty-day fast preceding Holy Week and Easter.


[Закрыть]The stern department chief even began soliciting the authorities, and in a short time Chichikov himself was installed as a department chief in a vacancy that had come open. In this, it seemed, the main purpose of his connection with the old department chief consisted, because he straightaway sent his trunk home in secret, and the next day was already settled in other quarters. He stopped calling the department chief papa and no longer kissed his hand, and the matter of the wedding was hushed up, as if nothing had ever happened. However, on meeting him, he amiably shook his hand each time and invited him to tea, so that the old department chief, despite his eternal immobility and callous indifference, shook his head each time and muttered under his breath: "Hoodwinked, hoodwinked—that devil's son!"

This was the most difficult threshold he had to cross. After that it went more easily and successfully. He became a man of note. There was everything in him needed for this world: agreeableness of manner and behavior, and briskness in the business of doing business. By these means he obtained before too long what is known as a cushy billet, and he made excellent use of it. It should be known that at that very time the strictest persecution of every sort of bribery was begun; he did not let the persecution frighten him, but at once turned it to his own profit, thereby showing a truly Russian inventiveness, which emerges only under pressure. This is how it was set up: as soon as a petitioner appeared and thrust his hand into his pocket to produce from it the familiar letters of reference from Prince Khovansky, as we say in Russia [58]58
  A euphemism for bribes. Prince Alexander N. Khovansky (1771-1857) was director of the state bank from 1818 until his death; his signature was reproduced on all state banknotes. Ironically, the name Khovansky comes from the Ukrainian word khovat,meaning "to hide" or "to secret away."


[Закрыть]– "No, no," he would say with a smile, restraining his hand, "you think that I . . . no, no. This is our duty, our responsibility, we must do it without any rewards! Rest assured in that regard: by tomorrow everything will be done. Give me your address, please, no need to trouble yourself, everything will be brought to your house." The charmed petitioner would return home almost in ecstasy, thinking: "Here at last is the sort of man we need more of– simply a priceless diamond!" But the petitioner waits a day, then another day, nothing is brought to his house, nor on the third day. He comes to the office, nothing has even begun yet: he goes to the priceless diamond. "Ah, forgive me!" Chichikov would say very politely, seizing both his hands, "we've been so busy; but by tomorrow everything will be done, tomorrow without fail, really, I'm so ashamed!" And all this would be accompanied by the most charming gestures. If the flap of some caftan should fly open just then, a hand would try at the same moment to set things straight and hold the flap. But neither the next day, nor the day after, nor the third day is anything brought to the house. The petitioner reconsiders: really, maybe there's something behind it? He makes inquiries; they say you must give something to the scriveners. "Why not? I'm prepared to give twenty-five kopecks or so." "No, not twenty-five kopecks, but twenty-five roubles each." "Twenty-five roubles to each scrivener!" the petitioner cries out. "Why get so excited," comes the reply, "it amounts to the same thing—the scriveners will get twenty-five kopecks each, and the rest will go to the superiors." The slow-witted petitioner slaps himself on the forehead, calls down all plagues upon the new order of things, the persecution of bribery, and the polite, gentilized manners of the officials. Before, one at least knew what to do: bring the chief clerk a ten-rouble bill and the thing was in the bag, but now it's a twenty-fiver and a week of fussing besides before you figure it out—devil take disinterestedness and official gentility! The petitioner, of course, is right, but, on the other hand, now there are no more bribe takers: all the chief clerks are most honest and genteel people, only the secretaries and scriveners are crooks. Soon a much vaster field presented itself to Chichikov: a commission was formed for the building of some quite capital government building. He, too, got himself into this commission and ended up being one of its most active members. The commission immediately set to work. For six years they fussed over the edifice; but maybe the climate interfered, or there was something about the materials, in any case the government edifice simply would not get higher than its foundations. And meanwhile, in other parts of town, each of the members turned out to have a beautiful house of civil architecture: evidently the subsoil was somewhat better there. The members were already beginning to prosper and started raising families. Only here and only now did Chichikov begin gradually to extricate himself from the stern law of temperance and his own implacable self-denial. Only here was his long-lasting fast finally relaxed, and it turned out that he had never been a stranger to various pleasures, from which he had been able to abstain in the years of his ardent youth, when no man is completely master of himself. Some indulgences turned up: he acquired a rather good cook, fine Holland shirts. Already he had bought himself such flannel as no one in the entire province wore, and from then on began keeping more to brown and reddish colors, with flecks; already he had acquired an excellent pair of horses, and would hold one of the reins himself, making the outrunner twist and turn; already he had begun the custom of sponging himself with water mixed with eau de cologne; already he had bought himself a certain far-from-inexpensive soap for imparting smoothness to his skin, already . . .

But suddenly, to replace the former old doormat, a new superior was sent, a military man, strict, the enemy of bribe takers and of everything known as falsehood. The very next day he threw a scare into one and all, demanded the accounts, found missing amounts, sums omitted at every step, noticed straight off the houses of beautiful civil architecture, and the sorting out began. The officials were dismissed from their posts; the houses of civil architecture were made government property and turned into various almshouses and schools for cantonists; [59]59
  Cantonists were the children of soldiers, who were assigned to the department of the army from birth and educated at state expense in special schools.


[Закрыть]everywhere the feathers flew, and with Chichikov more than the rest. Despite its agreeableness, the superior suddenly took a dislike to his face, God knows why exactly—sometimes it is even simply for no reason at all—and conceived a mortal hatred for him. And to everyone this implacable superior was a great terror. But since he was anyhow a military man, and consequently did not know all the subtleties of civilian capers, in a short time certain other officials wormed their way into his graces, by means of a truthful appearance and a skill in ingratiating themselves with everyone, and the general soon wound up in the hands of still greater crooks, whom he by no means regarded as such; he was even pleased that he had finally made a proper choice of people, and seriously boasted of his fine skill in discerning abilities. The officials suddenly comprehended his spirit and character. All that were under his command became terrible persecutors of falsehood; everywhere, in all things, they pursued it as a fisherman with a harpoon pursues some meaty sturgeon, and they pursued it so successfully that in a short while each of them turned out to have several thousand in capital. At that time many of the former officials returned to the right way and were taken back into the service. But Chichikov simply could not worm his way in, despite all the efforts of the general's first secretary to stand up for him, instigated by letters from Prince Khovansky, for though he comprehended perfectly the art of directing the general's nose, in this case he could do decidedly nothing. The general was the kind of man who, while he could be led by the nose (though without his knowing it), yetif some thought lodged itself in his head, it was the same as an iron nail: there was no way of getting it out. All that the clever secretary managed to do was to have the tarnished service record destroyed, and he moved the superior to that only by compassion, portraying for him in vivid colors the touching plight of Chichikov's unfortunate family, which he, fortunately, did not have.

"Well, so what!" said Chichikov. "There was a nibble—I pulled, lost it—no more questions. Crying won't help, I must get to work." And so he decided to start his career over again, fortify himself again with patience, limit himself again in everything, however freely and fully he had expanded before. He had to move to another town, and still make himself known there. Somehow nothing worked. In a very short period of time he had to change posts two or three times. The posts were somehow dirty, mean. It should be known that Chichikov was the most decent man who ever existed in the world. Although he did have to start by working himself through dirty society, in his soul he always maintained cleanliness, liked office desks to be of lacquered wood and everything to be genteel. He never allowed himself an indecent word in his speech and always became offended when he noticed in the words of others an absence of due respect for rank or title. The reader will, I think, be pleased to know that he changed his linen every other day, and in summer, when it was hot, even every day: every unpleasant smell, however slight, offended him. For this reason, every time Petrushka came to undress him and take his boots off, he put a clove in his nose, and in many cases his nerves were as ticklish as a girl's; and therefore it was hard finding himself again in those ranks where everything smacked of cheap vodka and unseemly behavior. However firm he was in spirit, he grew thin and even turned green in this time of such adversities. Already he had begun to gain weight and to acquire those round and seemly forms in which the reader found him on first making his acquaintance, and already more than once, glancing in the mirror, he had had thoughts of many pleasant things—a little woman, a nursery—and these thoughts would be followed by a smile; but now, when he once accidentally glanced at himself in the mirror, he could not help crying out: "Holy mother mine! how repulsive I've become!" And then for a long time he would not look at himself. But our hero endured it all, endured staunchly, patiently endured, and—at last went to work in customs. It must be said that this work had long constituted the secret object of his thoughts. He saw what stylish foreign things the customs officials acquired, what china and cambric they sent to their sweeties, aunties, and sisters. Long since he had said more than once with a sigh: "That's the place to get to: the border's close, the people are enlightened, and what fine Holland shirts one can acquire!" It should be added that at the same time he was also thinking about a particular kind of French soap that imparted an extraordinary whiteness to the skin and freshness to the cheeks; what it was called, God only knows, but, by his reckoning, it was sure to be found at the border. And so he had long wanted to work in customs, but was kept from it by the various ongoing profits of the building commission, and he rightly reasoned that, in any case, customs was no more than two birds in the bush, while the commission was already one in the hand. But now he resolved at all costs to get into customs, and get there he did. He tackled his work with extraordinary zeal. It seemed that fate itself had appointed him to be a customs official. Such efficiency, perceptivity, and perspicacity had been not only never seen, but never even heard of. In three or four weeks he became such a skilled hand at the customs business that he knew decidedly everything: he did not weigh or measure, but could tell by the feel of it how many yards of flannel or other fabric were in each bolt; taking a parcel in his hand, he could say at once how much it weighed. As for searches, here, as even his colleagues put it, he simply had the nose of a hound: one could not help being amazed, seeing him have patience enough to feel every little button, and all of it performed with deadly coldbloodedness, polite to the point of incredibility. And while those being searched became furious, got beside themselves, and felt a spiteful urge to give the back of their hand to his agreeable appearance, he, changing neither his countenance nor his polite demeanor, merely kept murmuring: "Would you kindly take the trouble to get up a little?" or "Would you kindly proceed to the other room, madam? The spouse of one of our officials will speak with you there" or "Excuse me, I'll just unstitch the lining of your overcoat a bit with my penknife"—and, so saying, he would pull shawls and kerchiefs out of it as coolly as out of his own trunk. Even his superiors opined that this was a devil, not a man: he found things in wheels, shafts, horses' ears, and all sorts of other places where no author would even dream of going, and where no one but customs officials are allowed to go. So that the poor traveler, once past the border, would not recover himself for several minutes, and, mopping the sweat that had broken out in small droplets all over his body, could only cross himself, murmuring: "My, oh, my!" His position rather resembled that of a schoolboy who comes running from a private room to which the headmaster summoned him in order to deliver some admonition, instead of which he quite unexpectedly gave him a caning. In a short while he made life simply impossible for the smugglers. He was the terror and despair of all Polish Jewry. His honesty and incorruptibility were insurmountable, almost unnatural. He did not even amass a small capital for himself from various confiscated goods and objects of all sorts, seized but not turned over to the treasury so as to save unnecessary paperwork. Such zealously unmercenary service could not but become an object of general amazement and be brought finally to the notice of the superiors. He was given more rank and promotion, after which he presented a plan for catching all the smugglers, asking only for the means of implementing it himself. He was straightaway given command and an unlimited authority to perform all searches. This was just what he wanted. At that time a powerful company of smugglers had been formed in a carefully planned way; the bold undertaking promised millions in profit. He had long been informed of it and had even turned away those sent to bribe him, saying dryly: "It's not time yet." Once everything was put at his disposal, he immediately sent word to the company, saying: "The time has now come." The calculation was only too correct. Here he could get in one year what he could not gain in twenty years of the most zealous service. Prior to this he had not wanted to enter into any relations with them, because he was no more than a mere pawn, which meant that he would not get much; but now. . . now it was quite a different matter: he could offer any conditions he liked. To smooth the way, he won over another official, a colleague of his, who could not resist the temptation despite his gray hairs. The conditions were agreed to, and the company went into action. The action began brilliantly: the reader has undoubtedly heard the oft-repeated story of the clever journey of the Spanish sheep that crossed the border in double fleeces, carrying in between a million roubles' worth of Brabant lace. This event occurred precisely when Chichikov was serving in customs. If he himself had not participated in this undertaking, no Jews in the world could have succeeded in bringing off such a thing. After three or four sheep-crossings at the border, each of the officials found himself with four hundred thousand in capital. With Chichikov, they say, it even went over five hundred thousand, because he was a bit quicker. God knows what enormous figures the blessed sums might have grown to, if some deuced beast had not crossed paths with it all. The devil befuddled both officials; to speak plainly, the officials went berserk and quarreled over nothing. Once, in a heated conversation, and perhaps being a bit tipsy, Chichikov called the other official a parson's kid, and the man, though he was indeed a parson's kid, for no reason at all became bitterly offended and straightaway answered him strongly and with extraordinary sharpness, namely thus: "No, lies, I'm a state councillor, not a parson's kid, it's you who are a parson's kid!" And then added, to pique him to greater vexation: "So there!" Although he told him off thus roundly, turning back on him the very title he had bestowed, and although the expression "So there!" may have been a strong one, he was not satisfied with that and also sent in a secret denunciation against him. However, they say that, to begin with, they had quarreled over some wench, fresh and firm as a ripe turnip, in the custom officials' expression; that some people were even paid to give our hero a little beating at night in a dark alley; but that both officials were played for fools, and the wench went to the use of a certain Captain Shamsharev. How it was in reality, God only knows; better let the inventive reader think up his own ending. The main thing was that the secret connections with the smugglers became manifest. The state councillor, though ruined himself, also cooked his colleague's goose. The officials were brought to trial, everything they had was confiscated, perquisitioned, and it all suddenly broke like thunder over their heads. They recovered as if from a stupor and saw with horror what they had done. The state councillor, following Russian custom, took to drinking from grief, but the collegiate one withstood. He managed to hide away part of the cash, despite the keen scent of the authorities who came for the investigation. He used all the subtle wiles of his mind, only too experienced by then, only too knowledgeable of people: at one point he acted by means of an agreeable manner, at another by moving speeches, at another by the incense of flattery, which never does any harm, at another by dropping a bit of cash—in short, he handled things so as to be retired with less dishonor than his colleague, and to dodge criminal proceedings. But no capital, no foreign-made trinkets, nothing was left to him; other lovers of such things had come along. All that remained to him was some ten thousand stashed away for a rainy day, that and two dozen Holland shirts, and a small britzka such as bachelors drive around in, and two serfs—the coachman Selifan and the lackey Petrushka—and the customs officials, out of the kindness of their hearts, left him five or six pieces of soap for preserving the freshness of his cheeks—that was all. And so, this was the position our hero again found himself in! This was the immense calamity that came crashing down on his head! This was what he called suffering for the truth in the service. Now it might be concluded that after such storms, trials, vicissitudes of fate, and sorrows of life, he would retire with his remaining ten thousand to the peaceful backwoods of some provincial town and there wither away forever in a chintz dressing gown at the window of a low house, on Sundays sorting out a fight between muzhiks that started up outside his windows, or refreshing himself by going to the chicken coop and personally inspecting the chicken destined for the soup, thus passing his none-too-noisy but in its own way also not quite useless life. But it did not happen so. One must do justice to the invincible force of his character. After all this, which was enough, if not to kill, then at least to cool down and subdue a man forever, the inconceivable passion did not die in him. He was aggrieved, vexed, he murmured against the whole world, was angry at the injustice of fate, indignant at the injustice of men, and, nevertheless, could not renounce new attempts. In short, he showed a patience compared with which the wooden patience of the German is nothing, consisting as it does of a slow, sluggish circulation of the blood. Chichikov's blood, on the contrary, ran high, and much reasonable will was needed to bridle all that would have liked to leap out and play freely. He reasoned, and a certain aspect of justice could be seen in his reasoning: "Why me? Why should the calamity have befallen me? Who just sits and gapes on the job?—everybody profits. I didn't make anyone unhappy: I didn't rob a widow, I didn't send anyone begging, I made use of abundance, I took where anyone else would have taken; if I hadn't made use of it, others would have. Why, then, do others prosper, and why must I perish like a worm? What am I now? What good am I? How will I look any respectable father of a family in the eye now? How can I not feel remorse, knowing that I'm a useless burden on the earth, and what will my children say later? There, they'll say, is a brute of a father, he didn't leave us any inheritance!"