Dead Souls

"So you pray in order to please the one you pray to, in order to save your soul, and this gives you strength and makes you get up early from your bed. Believe me, if you were to undertake your work in the same fashion, as if in the certainty that you are serving the one you pray to, you would become active and no man among us would be able to cool you down."

"Afanasy Vassilyevich! I tell you again that this is something different. In the first case I see that anyway I'm doing something. I tell you that I'm ready to go to the monastery, and I'll do whatever labors and deeds they impose on me there, even the heaviest. I'm sure that it's not my business to reason about what will be asked of those who make me do it; there I obey and know that I'm obeying God."

"And why don't you reason that way in worldly matters as well? In the world we must also serve God and no one else. Even if we serve another, we do it only while being convinced that God tells us to do so, and without that we would not serve. What else are all our abilities and gifts, which vary from one person to another? They are tools for our prayer: the one is in words, and the other is in deeds. You cannot go to a monastery: you're tied to the world, you have a family."

Here Murazov fell silent. Khlobuev also fell silent.

"So you suppose that if you had, for instance, two hundred thousand, you would be able to shore up your life and live more economically therafter?"

"That is, at least I would occupy myself with what I would be able to do—my children's upbringing; it would be possible for me to provide them with good teachers."

"And shall I tell you this, Pyotr Petrovich, that in two years you'd again be over your head in debt, as in a net?"

Khlobuev was silent for a while, and then began measuredly:

"Not really, though, after such experience ..."

"What's experience?" said Murazov. "You see, I know you. You're a man with a good heart: a friend will come to borrow money from you—you'll give it to him; you'll see a poor man and want to help; a nice guest will come—you'll want to receive him better, and you'll obey that first good impulse and forget your accounting. And allow me finally to tell you in all sincerity that you are unable to bring up your own children. Children can be brought up only by a father who has already done his own duty. And your wife . . . she, too, is good-hearted . . . she wasn't brought up at all so as to be able to bring up children. I even think—forgive me, Pyotr Petrovich—mightn't it even be harmful for the children to be with you?"

Khlobuev thought a little: he began to examine himself mentally on all sides and finally felt that Murazov was partly right.

"You know what, Pyotr Petrovich? hand it all over to me— your children, your affairs; leave your family, and the children: I'll take care of them. Your circumstances are such that you are in my hands; you're heading for starvation. Here you must be prepared to do anything. Do you know Ivan Potapych?"

"And respect him greatly, even though he goes around in a sibirka."

"Ivan Potapych was a millionaire, got his daughters married to officials, lived like a tsar; but once he was bankrupt—what to do?

He went and became a shop clerk. It was no fun for him going from a silver platter to a simple bowl: it seemed he couldn't set a hand to anything. Now Ivan Potapych could gobble from a silver platter, but he no longer wants to. He could save it all up again, but he says: 'No, Afanasy Ivanovich, [Thus in the manuscript; it should be Vassilyevich.— Trans.] now I do not serve myself or for myself, but because God has judged so. I don't wish to do anything of my own will. I listen to you, because I wish to obey God and not people, and because God speaks only through the mouths of the best people. You are more intelligent than I am, and therefore it is not I who answer, but you.' That is what Ivan Potapych says; and he, if the truth be told, is many times more intelligent than I am."

"Afanasy Vassilyevich! I, too, am ready to acknowledge your power over me, I am your servant and whatever you want: I give myself to you. But don't give me work beyond my strength: I'm no Potapych, and I tell you that I'm not fit for anything good."

"It is not I, Pyotr Petrovich, who will impose it on you, but since you wish to serve, as you yourself say, sir, here is a God-pleasing deed for you. There is a church being built in a certain place on voluntary donations from pious people. There's not enough money, a collection must be taken. Put on a simple sibirka. . . you see, you're a simple man now, a ruined nobleman, the same as a beggar: why pretend? With ledger in hand, in a simple cart, go around to the towns and villages. You'll get a blessing and a loose-leaf ledger from the bishop, and go with God."