Dead Souls
heads, and have not a word to say; whereas the shy man would find
himself able to converse as never in his life before, and would feel,
from the first, as though he had seen her and known her at some previous
period--during the days of some unremembered childhood, when he was at
home, and spending a merry evening among a crowd of romping children.
And for long afterwards he would feel as though his man’s intellect and
estate were a burden.
This was what now befell Tientietnikov; and as it did so a new feeling
entered into his soul, and his dreamy life lightened for a moment.
At first the General used to receive him with hospitable civility, but
permanent concord between them proved impossible; their conversation
always merged into dissension and soreness, seeing that, while the
General could not bear to be contradicted or worsted in an argument,
Tientietnikov was a man of extreme sensitiveness. True, for the
daughter’s sake, the father was for a while deferred to, and thus peace
was maintained; but this lasted only until the time when there arrived,
on a visit to the General, two kinswomen of his--the Countess Bordirev
and the Princess Uziakin, retired Court dames, but ladies who still
kept up a certain connection with Court circles, and therefore were much
fawned upon by their host. No sooner had they appeared on the scene than
(so it seemed to Tientietnikov) the General’s attitude towards the young
man became colder--either he ceased to notice him at all or he spoke to
him familiarly, and as to a person having no standing in society. This
offended Tientietnikov deeply, and though, when at length he spoke out
on the subject, he retained sufficient presence of mind to compress his
lips, and to preserve a gentle and courteous tone, his face flushed and
his inner man was boiling.
“General,” he said, “I thank you for your condescension. By addressing
me in the second person singular, you have admitted me to the circle
of your most intimate friends. Indeed, were it not that a difference of
years forbids any familiarity on my part, I should answer you in similar
fashion.”
The General sat aghast. At length, rallying his tongue and his
faculties, he replied that, though he had spoken with a lack of
ceremony, he had used the term “thou” merely as an elderly man naturally
employs it towards a junior (he made no reference to difference of
rank).
Nevertheless, the acquaintance broke off here, and with it any
possibility of love-making. The light which had shed a momentary gleam
before Tientietnikov’s eyes had become extinguished for ever, and upon
it there followed a darkness denser than before. Henceforth everything
conduced to evolve the regime which the reader has noted--that regime
of sloth and inaction which converted Tientietnikov’s residence into a
place of dirt and neglect. For days at a time would a broom and a heap
of dust be left lying in the middle of a room, and trousers tossing
about the salon, and pairs of worn-out braces adorning the what-not near
the sofa. In short, so mean and untidy did Tientietnikov’s mode of life
become, that not only his servants, but even his very poultry ceased to
treat him with respect. Taking up a pen, he would spend hours in idly
sketching houses, huts, waggons, troikas, and flourishes on a piece of
paper; while at other times, when he had sunk into a reverie, the pen
would, all unknowingly, sketch a small head which had delicate features,
a pair of quick, penetrating eyes, and a raised coiffure. Then suddenly
the dreamer would perceive, to his surprise, that the pen had executed
the portrait of a maiden whose picture no artist could adequately have
painted; and therewith his despondency would become greater than ever,
and, believing that happiness did not exist on earth, he would relapse
into increased ennui, increased neglect of his responsibilities.
But one morning he noticed, on moving to the window after breakfast,
that not a word was proceeding either from the butler or the
housekeeper, but that, on the contrary, the courtyard seemed to smack of
a certain bustle and excitement. This was because through the entrance
gates (which the kitchen maid and the scullion had run to open) there
were appearing the noses of three horses--one to the right, one in the
middle, and one to the left, after the fashion of triumphal groups of
statuary. Above them, on the box seat, were seated a coachman and a
valet, while behind, again, there could be discerned a gentleman in a
scarf and a fur cap. Only when the equipage had entered the courtyard
did it stand revealed as a light spring britchka. And as it came to a
halt, there leapt on to the verandah of the mansion an individual
of respectable exterior, and possessed of the art of moving with the
neatness and alertness of a military man.
Upon this Tientietnikov’s heart stood still. He was unused to receiving
visitors, and for the moment conceived the new arrival to be a
Government official, sent to question him concerning an abortive society
to which he had formerly belonged. (Here the author may interpolate the
fact that, in Tientietnikov’s early days, the young man had become mixed
up in a very absurd affair. That is to say, a couple of philosophers
belonging to a regiment of hussars had, together with an aesthete
who had not yet completed his student’s course and a gambler who had
squandered his all, formed a secret society of philanthropic aims under
the presidency of a certain old rascal of a freemason and the ruined
gambler aforesaid. The scope of the society’s work was to be extensive:
it was to bring lasting happiness to humanity at large, from the banks
of the Thames to the shores of Kamtchatka. But for this much money was
needed: wherefore from the noble-minded members of the society generous
contributions were demanded, and then forwarded to a destination known
only to the supreme authorities of the concern. As for Tientietnikov’s
adhesion, it was brought about by the two friends already alluded to as
“embittered”--good-hearted souls whom the wear and tear of their efforts
on behalf of science, civilisation, and the future emancipation of
mankind had ended by converting into confirmed drunkards. Perhaps it
need hardly be said that Tientietnikov soon discovered how things stood,
and withdrew from the association; but, meanwhile, the latter had had
the misfortune so to have engaged in dealings not wholly creditable
to gentlemen of noble origin as likewise to have become entangled in
dealings with the police. Consequently, it is not to be wondered at
that, though Tientietnikov had long severed his connection with the
society and its policy, he still remained uneasy in his mind as to what
might even yet be the result.)
However, his fears vanished the instant that the guest saluted him with
marked politeness and explained, with many deferential poises of the
head, and in terms at once civil and concise, that for some time past
he (the newcomer) had been touring the Russian Empire on business and
in the pursuit of knowledge, that the Empire abounded in objects
of interest--not to mention a plenitude of manufactures and a great
diversity of soil, and that, in spite of the fact that he was greatly
struck with the amenities of his host’s domain, he would certainly
not have presumed to intrude at such an inconvenient hour but for the
circumstance that the inclement spring weather, added to the state of
the roads, had necessitated sundry repairs to his carriage at the hands
of wheelwrights and blacksmiths. Finally he declared that, even if this
last had NOT happened, he would still have felt unable to deny himself
the pleasure of offering to his host that meed of homage which was the
latter’s due.
This speech--a speech of fascinating bonhomie--delivered, the guest
executed a sort of shuffle with a half-boot of patent leather studded
with buttons of mother-of-pearl, and followed that up by (in spite of
his pronounced rotundity of figure) stepping backwards with all the elan
of an india-rubber ball.
From this the somewhat reassured Tientietnikov concluded that his
visitor must be a literary, knowledge-seeking professor who was engaged
in roaming the country in search of botanical specimens and fossils;
wherefore he hastened to express both his readiness to further the
visitor’s objects (whatever they might be) and his personal willingness
to provide him with the requisite wheelwrights and blacksmiths.
Meanwhile he begged his guest to consider himself at home, and,
after seating him in an armchair, made preparations to listen to the
newcomer’s discourse on natural history.
But the newcomer applied himself, rather, to phenomena of the internal
world, saying that his life might be likened to a barque tossed on the
crests of perfidious billows, that in his time he had been fated to play
many parts, and that on more than one occasion his life had stood
in danger at the hands of foes. At the same time, these tidings were
communicated in a manner calculated to show that the speaker was also
a man of PRACTICAL capabilities. In conclusion, the visitor took out a
cambric pocket-handkerchief, and sneezed into it with a vehemence wholly
new to Tientietnikov’s experience. In fact, the sneeze rather resembled
the note which, at times, the trombone of an orchestra appears to utter
not so much from its proper place on the platform as from the immediate
neighbourhood of the listener’s ear. And as the echoes of the drowsy
mansion resounded to the report of the explosion there followed upon the
same a wave of perfume, skilfully wafted abroad with a flourish of the
eau-de-Cologne-scented handkerchief.
By this time the reader will have guessed that the visitor was none
other than our old and respected friend Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov.
Naturally, time had not spared him his share of anxieties and alarms;
wherefore his exterior had come to look a trifle more elderly, his
frockcoat had taken on a suggestion of shabbiness, and britchka,
coachman, valet, horses, and harness alike had about them a sort of
second-hand, worse-for-wear effect. Evidently the Chichikovian finances
were not in the most flourishing of conditions. Nevertheless, the old
expression of face, the old air of breeding and refinement, remained
unimpaired, and our hero had even improved in the art of walking and
turning with grace, and of dexterously crossing one leg over the
other when taking a seat. Also, his mildness of diction, his discreet
moderation of word and phrase, survived in, if anything, increased
measure, and he bore himself with a skill which caused his tactfulness
to surpass itself in sureness of aplomb. And all these accomplishments
had their effect further heightened by a snowy immaculateness of collar
and dickey, and an absence of dust from his frockcoat, as complete as
though he had just arrived to attend a nameday festival. Lastly, his
cheeks and chin were of such neat clean-shavenness that no one but a
blind man could have failed to admire their rounded contours.
From that moment onwards great changes took place in Tientietnikov’s
establishment, and certain of its rooms assumed an unwonted air of
cleanliness and order. The rooms in question were those assigned to
Chichikov, while one other apartment--a little front chamber opening
into the hall--became permeated with Petrushka’s own peculiar smell.
But this lasted only for a little while, for presently Petrushka was
transferred to the servants’ quarters, a course which ought to have been
adopted in the first instance.
During the initial days of Chichikov’s sojourn, Tientietnikov feared
rather to lose his independence, inasmuch as he thought that his
guest might hamper his movements, and bring about alterations in the
established routine of the place. But these fears proved groundless, for