Dead Souls

"The most rightful, not the most profitable. Till the soil in the sweat of your face.[63] That is said to us all; it is not said in vain. Age-old experience has proven that man in his agricultural quality has the purest morals. Where ploughing lies at the basis of social life, there is abundance and well-being; there is neither poverty nor luxury, but there is well-being. Till the soil, man was told, labor ... no need to be clever about it! I say to the muzhik: 'Whoever you work for, whether me, or yourself, or a neighbor, just work. If you're active, I'll be your first helper. You have no livestock, here's a horse for you, here's a cow, here's a cart. . . Whatever you need, I'm ready to supply you with, only work. It kills me if your management is not well set up, and I see disorder and poverty there. I won't suffer idleness. I am set over you so that you should work.' Hm! they think to increase their income with institutions and factories! But think first of all to make every one of your muzhiks rich, and then you yourself will be rich without factories, mills, or foolish fancies."

"The more one listens to you, most honored Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov, "the more one has a wish to listen. Tell me, my esteemed sir: if, for example, I should have the intention of becoming a landowner in, say, this province, what should I pay most attention to? what should I do, how should I act in order to become rich in a short period of time, and thereby, so to speak, fulfill the essential duty of a citizen?"

"What you should do in order to become rich? Here's what..." said Kostanzhoglo.

"Time for supper!" said the mistress, rising from the sofa, and she stepped into the middle of the room, wrapping a shawl around her chilled young limbs.

Chichikov popped up from his chair with the adroitness of an almost military man, flew over to the mistress with the soft expression of a delicate civilian in his smile, offered her the crook of his arm, and led her gala-fashion through two rooms into the dining room, all the while keeping his head agreeably inclined a bit to one side. The servant took the lid off the tureen; they all moved their chairs up to the table, and the slurping of soup began.

Having polished off his soup and washed it down with a glass of liqueur (the liqueur was excellent), Chichikov spoke thus to Kostanzhoglo:

"Allow me, most honored sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. I was asking you what to do, how to act, how best to go about...” [Two pages are missing from the manuscript. In them the subject of Khlobuev's estate, mentioned in what follows, was introduced.—Trans.]

"An estate for which, if he were to ask even forty thousand, I'd count it out to him at once."

"Hm!" Chichikov fell to pondering. "And why is it," he spoke somewhat timidly, "that you don't buy it yourself?"

"But one needs finally to know one's limits. I have plenty to keep me busy around my own properties without that. Besides, our gentry are shouting at me without that, saying I supposedly take advantage of their extremities and their ruined estates to buy up land for next to nothing. I'm sick of it, finally."

"The gentry are quite capable of wicked talk!" said Chichikov.

"And with us, in our own province . . . You can't imagine what they say about me. They don't even call me anything else but a skinflint and a first-degree niggard. They excuse themselves for everything: 'I did squander it all, of course,' they say, 'but it was for the higher necessities of life. I need books, I must live in luxury, so as to encourage industry; but one may, perhaps, live without squandering all, if one lives like that swine Kostanzhoglo.' That's how it is!"

"I wish I were such a swine!" said Chichikov.

"And all that because I don't give dinners and don't lend them money. I don't give dinners because it would be oppressive for me, I'm not used to it. But to come and eat what I eat—you're quite welcome! I don't lend money—that's nonsense. If you're truly in need, come to me and tell me in detail how you'll make use of my money. If I see from your words that you'll dispose of it intelligently, and the money will clearly bring a profit—I won't refuse you, and won't even take interest on it. But I won't throw money to the winds. Let me be excused for that. He's planning some sort of dinner for his ladylove, or furnishing his house on a crazy footing, and I should lend him money! ..."

Here Kostanzhoglo spat and almost uttered several indecent and abusive words in the presence of his spouse. The stern shadow of gloomy hypochondria darkened his lively face. Down and across his forehead wrinkles gathered, betraying the wrathful movement of stirred bile.

Chichikov drank off a glass of raspberry liqueur and spoke thus: