Dead Souls
“You are commanded to present yourself before the Governor-General,”
and at the same moment our hero caught sight both of a second apparition
outside the door and of a coach waiting beneath the window. What was
to be done? Nothing whatever was possible. Just as he stood--in his
smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour suit--he had then and there to enter
the vehicle, and, shaking in every limb, and with a gendarme seated by
his side, to start for the residence of the Governor-General.
And even in the hall of that establishment no time was given him to
pull himself together, for at once an aide-de-camp said: “Go inside
immediately, for the Prince is awaiting you.” And as in a dream did our
hero see a vestibule where couriers were being handed dispatches, and
then a salon which he crossed with the thought, “I suppose I am not to
be allowed a trial, but shall be sent straight to Siberia!” And at the
thought his heart started beating in a manner which the most jealous
of lovers could not have rivalled. At length there opened a door,
and before him he saw a study full of portfolios, ledgers, and
dispatch-boxes, with, standing behind them, the gravely menacing figure
of the Prince.
“There stands my executioner,” thought Chichikov to himself. “He is
about to tear me to pieces as a wolf tears a lamb.”
Indeed, the Prince’s lips were simply quivering with rage.
“Once before did I spare you,” he said, “and allow you to remain in the
town when you ought to have been in prison: yet your only return for
my clemency has been to revert to a career of fraud--and of fraud as
dishonourable as ever a man engaged in.”
“To what dishonourable fraud do you refer, your Highness?” asked
Chichikov, trembling from head to foot.
The Prince approached, and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Let me tell you,” he said, “that the woman whom you induced to witness
a certain will has been arrested, and that you will be confronted with
her.”
The world seemed suddenly to grow dim before Chichikov’s sight.
“Your Highness,” he gasped, “I will tell you the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. I am guilty--yes, I am guilty; but I am not so
guilty as you think, for I was led away by rascals.”
“That any one can have led you away is impossible,” retorted the Prince.
“Recorded against your name there stand more felonies than even the most
hardened liar could have invented. I believe that never in your life
have you done a deed not innately dishonourable--that not a kopeck have
you ever obtained by aught but shameful methods of trickery and theft,
the penalty for which is Siberia and the knut. But enough of this! From
this room you will be conveyed to prison, where, with other rogues and
thieves, you will be confined until your trial may come on. And this
is lenient treatment on my part, for you are worse, far worse, than the
felons who will be your companions. THEY are but poor men in smocks and
sheepskins, whereas YOU--” Without concluding his words, the Prince shot
a glance at Chichikov’s smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour apparel.
Then he touched a bell.
“Your Highness,” cried Chichikov, “have mercy upon me! You are the
father of a family! Spare me for the sake of my aged mother!”
“Rubbish!” exclaimed the Prince. “Even as before you besought me for the
sake of a wife and children whom you did not even possess, so now you
would speak to me of an aged mother!”
“Your Highness,” protested Chichikov, “though I am a wretch and the
lowest of rascals, and though it is true that I lied when I told
you that I possessed a wife and children, I swear that, as God is my
witness, it has always been my DESIRE to possess a wife, and to fulfil
all the duties of a man and a citizen, and to earn the respect of my
fellows and the authorities. But what could be done against the force
of circumstances? By hook or by crook I have ever been forced to win
a living, though confronted at every step by wiles and temptations and
traitorous enemies and despoilers. So much has this been so that my
life has, throughout, resembled a barque tossed by tempestuous waves,
a barque driven at the mercy of the winds. Ah, I am only a man, your
Highness!”
And in a moment the tears had gushed in torrents from his eyes, and he
had fallen forward at the Prince’s feet--fallen forward just as he
was, in his smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, his velvet
waistcoat, his satin tie, and his exquisitely fitting breeches, while
from his neatly brushed pate, as again and again he struck his hand
against his forehead, there came an odorous whiff of best-quality
eau-de-Cologne.
“Away with him!” exclaimed the Prince to the gendarme who had just
entered. “Summon the escort to remove him.”
“Your Highness!” Chichikov cried again as he clasped the Prince’s knees;
but, shuddering all over, and struggling to free himself, the Prince
repeated his order for the prisoner’s removal.
“Your Highness, I say that I will not leave this room until you have
accorded me mercy!” cried Chichikov as he clung to the Prince’s leg with
such tenacity that, frockcoat and all, he began to be dragged along the
floor.
“Away with him, I say!” once more the Prince exclaimed with the sort of
indefinable aversion which one feels at the sight of a repulsive
insect which he cannot summon up the courage to crush with his boot. So
convulsively did the Prince shudder that Chichikov, clinging to his leg,
received a kick on the nose. Yet still the prisoner retained his hold;
until at length a couple of burly gendarmes tore him away and,
grasping his arms, hurried him--pale, dishevelled, and in that strange,
half-conscious condition into which a man sinks when he sees before
him only the dark, terrible figure of death, the phantom which is so
abhorrent to all our natures--from the building. But on the threshold
the party came face to face with Murazov, and in Chichikov’s heart
the circumstance revived a ray of hope. Wresting himself with almost
supernatural strength from the grasp of the escorting gendarmes, he
threw himself at the feet of the horror-stricken old man.
“Paul Ivanovitch,” Murazov exclaimed, “what has happened to you?”
“Save me!” gasped Chichikov. “They are taking me away to prison and
death!”
Yet almost as he spoke the gendarmes seized him again, and hurried him
away so swiftly that Murazov’s reply escaped his ears.
A damp, mouldy cell which reeked of soldiers’ boots and leggings, an
unvarnished table, two sorry chairs, a window closed with a grating, a
crazy stove which, while letting the smoke emerge through its cracks,
gave out no heat--such was the den to which the man who had just begun
to taste the sweets of life, and to attract the attention of his fellows
with his new suit of smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour, now found
himself consigned. Not even necessaries had he been allowed to bring
away with him, nor his dispatch-box which contained all his booty. No,
with the indenture deeds of the dead souls, it was lodged in the hands
of a tchinovnik; and as he thought of these things Chichikov rolled
about the floor, and felt the cankerous worm of remorse seize upon and
gnaw at his heart, and bite its way ever further and further into that
heart so defenceless against its ravages, until he made up his mind
that, should he have to suffer another twenty-four hours of this misery,
there would no longer be a Chichikov in the world. Yet over him, as over
every one, there hung poised the All-Saving Hand; and, an hour after his
arrival at the prison, the doors of the gaol opened to admit Murazov.
Compared with poor Chichikov’s sense of relief when the old man entered
his cell, even the pleasure experienced by a thirsty, dusty traveller
when he is given a drink of clear spring water to cool his dry, parched
throat fades into insignificance.
“Ah, my deliverer!” he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had
been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old
man’s hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting
into tears, he added: “God Himself will reward you for having come to
visit an unfortunate wretch!”
Murazov looked at him sorrowfully, and said no more than “Ah, Paul
Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch! What has happened?”
“What has happened?” cried Chichikov. “I have been ruined by an accursed
woman. That was because I could not do things in moderation--I was
powerless to stop myself in time, Satan tempted me, and drove me from
my senses, and bereft me of human prudence. Yes, truly I have sinned, I
have sinned! Yet how came I so to sin? To think that a dvorianin--yes,
a dvorianin--should be thrown into prison without process or trial! I
repeat, a dvorianin! Why was I not given time to go home and collect my
effects? Whereas now they are left with no one to look after them! My
dispatch-box, my dispatch-box! It contained my whole property, all that
my heart’s blood and years of toil and want have been needed to acquire.
And now everything will be stolen, Athanasi Vassilievitch--everything
will be taken from me! My God!”
And, unable to stand against the torrent of grief which came rushing
over his heart once more, he sobbed aloud in tones which penetrated even
the thickness of the prison walls, and made dull echoes awake behind
them. Then, tearing off his satin tie, and seizing by the collar, the
smoked-grey-shot-with-flame-colour frockcoat, he stripped the latter
from his shoulders.
“Ah, Paul Ivanovitch,” said the old man, “how even now the property
which you have acquired is blinding your eyes, and causing you to fail
to realise your terrible position!”
“Yes, my good friend and benefactor,” wailed poor Chichikov
despairingly, and clasping Murazov by the knees. “Yet save me if you
can! The Prince is fond of you, and would do anything for your sake.”
“No, Paul Ivanovitch; however much I might wish to save you, and however
much I might try to do so, I could not help you as you desire; for it is
to the power of an inexorable law, and not to the authority of any one
man, that you have rendered yourself subject.”
“Satan tempted me, and has ended by making of me an outcast from the
human race!” Chichikov beat his head against the wall and struck the
table with his fist until the blood spurted from his hand. Yet neither
his head nor his hand seemed to be conscious of the least pain.
“Calm yourself, Paul Ivanovitch,” said Murazov. “Calm yourself, and
consider how best you can make your peace with God. Think of your
miserable soul, and not of the judgment of man.”
“I will, Athanasi Vassilievitch, I will. But what a fate is mine! Did
ever such a fate befall a man? To think of all the patience with which
I have gathered my kopecks, of all the toil and trouble which I have
endured! Yet what I have done has not been done with the intention of
robbing any one, nor of cheating the Treasury. Why, then, did I gather
those kopecks? I gathered them to the end that one day I might be able
to live in plenty, and also to have something to leave to the wife
and children whom, for the benefit and welfare of my country, I hoped
eventually to win and maintain. That was why I gathered those kopecks.
True, I worked by devious methods--that I fully admit; but what else
could I do? And even devious methods I employed only when I saw that the
straight road would not serve my purpose so well as a crooked. Moreover,
as I toiled, the appetite for those methods grew upon me. Yet what
I took I took only from the rich; whereas villains exist who, while
drawing thousands a year from the Treasury, despoil the poor, and take
from the man with nothing even that which he has. Is it not the cruelty
of fate, therefore, that, just when I was beginning to reap the harvest
of my toil--to touch it, so to speak, with the tip of one finger--there