Dead Souls

"No good, no good," said Sobakevich, shaking his head. "Consider for yourself, Ivan Grigorievich: I'm in my forties, and never once have I been sick; never even a sore throat, never even a pimple or a boil breaking out . . . No, it doesn't bode well! Some day I'll have to pay for it." Here Sobakevich sank into melancholy.

"Eh, you," Chichikov and the magistrate thought simultaneously, "what a thing to bemoan!"

"I've got a little letter for you," Chichikov said, taking Plyush-kin's letter from his pocket.

"From whom?" the magistrate said and, opening it, exclaimed:

"Ah! from Plyushkin. So he's still vegetating in this world. What a fate! Once he was an intelligent, wealthy man, and now ..."

"A sonofabitch," said Sobakevich, "a crook, starved all his people to death."

"If you please, if you please," said the magistrate, "I'm ready to act as his attorney. When do you want to execute the deed, now or later?"

"Now," said Chichikov. "I will even ask you to do it, if possible, today, because I would like to leave town tomorrow. I've brought the deed and the application."

"That's all very well, only, like it or not, we won't let you go so soon. The deeds will be executed today, but all the same you must stay on with us a bit. Here, I'll give the order at once," he said, and opened the door to the chancellery, all filled with clerks, who could be likened to industrious bees scattered over a honeycomb, if a honeycomb may be likened to chancellery work. "Is Ivan Antonovich here?"

"Here," responded a voice from inside.

"Send him in."

Ivan Antonovich, the jug mug, already known to our readers, appeared in the front office and bowed reverently.

"Here, Ivan Antonovich, take these deeds of his ..."

"And don't forget, Ivan Grigorievich," Sobakevich picked up, "there must be witnesses, at least two on each side. Send for the prosecutor right now, he's an idle man and must be sitting at home, everything's done for him by the attorney Zolotukha, the world's foremost muckworm. The inspector of the board of health is also an idle man and must be at home, unless he went somewhere to play cards, and there's a lot more around—Trukhachevsky, Be-gushkin, all of them a useless burden on the earth!"

"Precisely, precisely!" said the magistrate, and he at once dispatched a clerk to fetch them all.

"And I will ask you," said Chichikov, "to send for the attorney of a lady landowner with whom I also concluded a deal, the son of the archpriest Father Kiril; he works with you here."

"Well, so, we'll send for him, too!" said the magistrate. "It will all get done, and you are to give nothing to any of the clerks, that I beg of you. My friends should not pay." Having said this, he straightaway gave some order to Ivan Antonovich, which he evidently did not like. The deeds seemed to make a good impression on the magistrate, especially when he saw that the purchases added up to almost a hundred thousand roubles. For several minutes he gazed into Chichikov's eyes with an expression of great contentment, and finally said:

"So that's how! That's the way, Pavel Ivanovich! That's how you've acquired!"

"Acquired," replied Chichikov.

"A good thing, truly, a good thing."

"Yes, I myself can see that I could not have undertaken any better thing. However it may be, a man's goal is never defined until he finally sets a firm foot on solid ground, and not on some freethinking chimera of youth." Here he quite appropriately denounced all young people, and rightly so, for liberalism. Yet, remarkably, there was still some lack of firmness in his words, as if he were saying to himself at the same time: "Eh, brother, you're lying, and mightily, too!" He did not even glance at Sobakevich and Manilov, for fear of encountering something on their faces. But he need not have feared: Sobakevich's face did not stir, and Manilov, enchanted by the phrase, just kept shaking his head approvingly, immersed in that state in which a music lover finds himself when the soprano has outdone the fiddle itself and squeaked on such a high note as is even too much for the throat of a bird.

"But why don't you tell Ivan Grigorievich," Sobakevich responded, "precisely what you've acquired; and you, Ivan Grigorievich, why don't you ask what acquisitions he has made? Such folk they are! Pure gold! I even sold him the cartwright Mikheev."

"No, you mean you sold him Mikheev?" said the magistrate. "I know the cartwright Mikheev: a fine craftsman; he rebuilt my droshky. Only, excuse me, but how . . . Didn't you tell me he died ..."

"Who died? Mikheev?" said Sobakevich, not in the least embarrassed. "It's his brother who died, but he's as alive as can be and healthier than ever. The other day he put together such a britzka as they can't make even in Moscow. He ought, in all truth, be working just for the sovereign alone."

"Yes, Mikheev's a fine craftsman," said the magistrate, "and I even wonder that you could part with him."