Dead Souls

Of course, as far as believing it went, the officials did not believe it, but nevertheless they did fall to thinking and, each considering the matter in himself, found that Chichikov's face, if he turned and stood sideways, looked a lot like Napoleon's portrait. The police chief, who had served in the campaign of the year 'twelve and had seen Napoleon in person, also could not help admitting that he was no whit taller than Chichikov, and that, concerning his build, it was impossible to say he was too fat, and yet neither was he so very thin. Perhaps some readers will call all this incredible; to please them, the author is also ready to call all this incredible; but, unfortunately, it all happened precisely as it is being told, and what makes it more amazing still is that the town was not in some backwoods, but, on the contrary, no great distance from the two capitals.[50] However, it must be remembered that all this happened shortly after the glorious expulsion of the French. At that time all our landowners, officials, merchants, shop clerks, literate and even illiterate folk of every sort became sworn politicians for a good eight years at least. The Moscow Gazette and the Son of the Fatherland were mercilessly read to pieces and reached their last reader in shreds unfit for any use whatsoever. Instead of such questions as: "Well, my dear, how much did you get for a measure of oats?" or "Did you avail yourself of yesterday's snowfall?" people would say: "And what are they writing in the papers, has Napoleon been let go from his island again?" The merchants were very much afraid of that, because they believed completely in the prediction of a certain prophet who had been put in jail three years before; the prophet had come from no one knew where, in bast shoes and a raw sheepskin coat that stank terribly of rotten fish, and announced that Napoleon was the Antichrist and was kept on a chain of stone beyond the six walls and the seven seas, but afterwards he would break the chain and take possession of the whole world. For this prediction the prophet had landed, quite properly, in jail, but he had done his bit all the same and completely disturbed the merchants. For a long time after, even during the most profitable dealings, as they went to the tavern to wash them down with tea, the merchants kept muttering about the Antichrist. Many of the officials and nobility also kept thinking about it inadvertently and, infected with mysticism, which, as we know, was in great vogue then, saw some special meaning in every letter that made up the word "Napoleon"; many even discovered Apocalyptic numbers in it.[51] And so it is nothing surprising that our officials inadvertently kept pondering this point; soon, however, they checked themselves, noticing that their imaginations were galloping away with them, and that all this was not it. They thought and thought, talked and talked, and finally decided that it would not be a bad idea to question Nozdryov a little better. Since he was the first to bring out the story of the dead souls and was, as they say, in some close relationship with Chichikov, he therefore undoubtedly knew something about the circumstances of his life, so why not try again what Nozdryov would say.