Dead Souls

"Beat him!" shouted Nozdryov, charging forward with his cherrywood chibouk, all hot and sweaty, as if he were assaulting an impregnable fortress. "Beat him!" he shouted in the same voice in which some desperate lieutenant, during a major assault, shouts "Forward, boys!" to his detachment, his extravagant valor already of such renown that a special order has been issued to hold him by the arms when things get hot. But the lieutenant has already caught the feeling of martial fervor, his head is all in a whirl; Suvorov[17] hovers before his eyes, he pushes on towards a great deed. "Forward, boys!" he shouts, charging, not thinking of how he is damaging the already worked-out plan for the general assault, of the millions of gun barrels thrust through the embrasures of the fortress walls, impregnable, soaring beyond the clouds, of how his powerless detachment will be blown into the air like swansdown, or of the fatal bullet already whistling and about to slam shut his clamorous gullet. But if Nozdryov himself represented the desperate, lost, fortress-assaulting lieutenant, the fortress he was attacking in no way resembled an impregnable one. On the contrary, the fortress was so afraid that its heart sank right into its shoes. Already the chair with which he had thought to defend himself had been torn from his hands by the serfs, already, with eyes shut, more dead than alive, he was preparing to get a taste of his host's Circassian chibouk, and God knows what was going to happen to him; but it pleased the fates to spare the ribs, the shoulders, and all the polite parts of our hero. Unexpectedly, there suddenly came a clinking, as if from the clouds, a jingling sound of bells, there was a rattle of wheels as a cart flew up to the porch, and even into the room itself came the heavy snorting and heavy breathing from the overheated horses of the stopped troika. Everyone involuntarily glanced at the window: someone, with a mustache, in a half-military frock coat, was getting out of the cart. After making inquiries in the front hall, he entered at the very moment when Chichikov, having not yet managed to collect himself after his fear, was in the most pitiful position a mortal had ever been in.

"May I know which of you here is Mr. Nozdryov?" said the stranger, looking in some perplexity at Nozdryov, who was standing with the chibouk in his hand, and at Chichikov, who was barely beginning to recover from his unprofitable position.

"May I first know to whom I have the honor of speaking?" said Nozdryov, going up closer to him.

"The district captain of police."

"And what would you like?"

"I have come to announce to you the notification which has been communicated to me that you are under arrest until the decision of your case is concluded."

"Nonsense, what case?" said Nozdryov.

"You have been implicated in an episode on the occasion of the inflicting of a personal offense upon the landowner Maximov with birch rods in a drunken state."

"You're lying! I've never laid eyes on any landowner Maximov!" "My dear sir! Allow me to report to you that I am an officer.

You may say that to your servant, but not to me!"

Here Chichikov, without waiting for Nozdryov's response to that, quickly took hat in hand, and behind the police captain's back, slipped out to the porch, got into his britzka, and told Selifan to whip up the horses to full speed.

Chapter Five

Our hero, however, had turned quite properly chicken. Though the britzka was racing along like wildfire, and Nozdryov's estate had long since rushed from sight, covered by fields, slopes, and hummocks, he still kept looking back in fear, as if he expected at any moment to be swooped upon by the pursuit. He had difficulty catching his breath, and when he tried putting his hand to his heart, he felt it fluttering like a quail in a cage. "Eh, what a hot time he gave me! just look at him!" Here all sorts of unholy and strong wishes were vowed upon Nozdryov; occasionally even in not very nice words. No help for it! A Russian man, and in a temper besides! Moreover, it was by no means a laughing matter. "Say what you like," he said to himself, "if the police captain hadn't shown up, I might not have been granted another look at God's world! I'd have vanished like a bubble on water, without a trace, leaving no posterity, providing my future children with neither fortune nor an honest name!" Our hero was very much concerned with his posterity.

"What a bad master!" Selifan was thinking to himself. "I've never yet seen such a master. I mean, spit on him for that! Better not give a man food to eat, but a horse must be fed, because a horse likes oats. It's his victuals: what provender is to us, for instance, oats is to him, it's his victuals."