Dead Souls

"Allow me, my esteemed sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. Supposing I were to acquire that same estate you were pleased to mention, in how much time and how quickly can one get rich to such an extent..."

"If what you want," Kostanzhoglo picked up sternly and curtly, still full of ill humor, "is to get rich quickly, then you'll never get rich; but if you want to get rich without asking about time, you'll get rich quickly."

"So that's it!" said Chichikov.

"Yes," Kostanzhoglo said curtly, as if he were angry with Chichikov himself. "One must have a love of work; without it nothing can be done. One must come to love management, yes! And, believe me, there's nothing dull about it. They've invented the idea that country life is boring . . . but I'd die of boredom if I spent even one day in the city the way they do. A proprietor has no time to be bored. There's no emptiness in his life—everything is fullness. One need only consider this whole varied cycle of yearly occupations—and what occupations! occupations that truly elevate the spirit, to say nothing of their diversity. Here man walks side by side with nature, side by side with the seasons, a participant and conversant with everything that is accomplished in creation. Spring has not yet come, but work is already under way: supplies of firewood and everything for the floodtime; preparing seed; sorting and measuring grain in the granaries, and drying it; establishing new rents. The snow and floods are over— work is suddenly at the boil: here boats are being loaded, there forests are being thinned out, trees replanted in gardens, and the soil dug up everywhere. The spade is at work in the kitchen gardens, in the fields the plough and harrow. And the sowing begins.

A trifle! They're sowing the future harvest! Summer comes—the mowing, the ploughman's greatest feast. A trifle! Then comes harvest after harvest: rye followed by wheat, barley by oats, and then there's the pulling of the hemp. The piling of hayricks, the stacking of sheaves. August is now half over—everything's being brought to the threshing floors. Autumn comes—the ploughing and sowing of winter crops, repairing of granaries, threshing barns, cattle sheds, bundling of grain, and the first threshing. Winter comes—here, too, work doesn't sleep: first deliveries to town, threshing on all the threshing floors, transporting the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns, cutting and sawing of wood in the forests, deliveries of brick and materials for spring construction. But it's simply impossible for me to embrace it all. Such a diversity of work! You go and have a look here and there: to the mill, to the workshops, to the factories, and to the threshing floors! You also go and have a look at the muzhik working for himself. A trifle! But for me it's a feast if a carpenter has good command of his axe, I'm ready to stand there for two hours: such joy work gives me. And if you also see with what purpose it is all being done, and how everything around you brings increase upon increase, producing fruit and profit. I cannot even tell you what a pleasure it is. And not because the money's growing—money is money—but because all this is—your handiwork; because you see yourself being the cause and creator of it all, how from you, as from some sort of magician, abundance and good pour out on everything. No, where can you find me an equal delight?" said Kostanzhoglo, his face looking up, the wrinkles disappearing. He was as radiant as a king on the day of his solemn coronation. "No, you won't find such a delight in the whole world! Here, precisely here, man imitates God: God granted Himself the work of creation, as the highest delight, and He demands that man, too, be a creator of prosperity and the harmonious course of things. And this they call dull!"

As to the singing of a bird of paradise, Chichikov lost himself in listening to the sweet sounds of the proprietor's talk. His mouth was watering. His eyes became unctuous and acquired a sweet expression; he could have gone on listening forever.

"Konstantin! it's time we got up," said the mistress, rising from her chair. Platonov rose, Kostanzhoglo rose, Chichikov rose, though he wanted to go on sitting and listening. Offering her the crook of his arm, he led the mistress back. But his head was not affably inclined to one side, his maneuvering lacked adroitness, because his thoughts were occupied with essential maneuvers and considerations.

"However you describe it, all the same it's boring," Platonov said, walking behind him.

"Our guest seems far from stupid," the host was thinking, "temperate in his speech, and no whippersnapper." And this thought made him still more cheerful, as if he had warmed himself up with his own conversation and rejoiced to find a man ready to listen to intelligent advice.