Dead Souls
should have arisen a sudden storm which has sent my barque to pieces on
a rock? My capital had nearly reached the sum of three hundred thousand
roubles, and a three-storied house was as good as mine, and twice over
I could have bought a country estate. Why, then, should such a tempest
have burst upon me? Why should I have sustained such a blow? Was not my
life already like a barque tossed to and fro by the billows? Where
is Heaven’s justice--where is the reward for all my patience, for my
boundless perseverance? Three times did I have to begin life afresh, and
each time that I lost my all I began with a single kopeck at a moment
when other men would have given themselves up to despair and drink. How
much did I not have to overcome. How much did I not have to bear! Every
kopeck which I gained I had to make with my whole strength; for though,
to others, wealth may come easily, every coin of mine had to be ‘forged
with a nail worth three kopecks’ as the proverb has it. With such a
nail--with the nail of an iron, unwearying perseverance--did _I_ forge
my kopecks.”
Convulsively sobbing with a grief which he could not repress, Chichikov
sank upon a chair, tore from his shoulders the last ragged, trailing
remnants of his frockcoat, and hurled them from him. Then, thrusting his
fingers into the hair which he had once been so careful to preserve, he
pulled it out by handfuls at a time, as though he hoped through physical
pain to deaden the mental agony which he was suffering.
Meanwhile Murazov sat gazing in silence at the unwonted spectacle of
a man who had lately been mincing with the gait of a worldling or a
military fop now writhing in dishevelment and despair as he poured out
upon the hostile forces by which human ingenuity so often finds itself
outwitted a flood of invective.
“Paul Ivanovitch, Paul Ivanovitch,” at length said Murazov, “what
could not each of us rise to be did we but devote to good ends the same
measure of energy and of patience which we bestow upon unworthy objects!
How much good would not you yourself have effected! Yet I do not grieve
so much for the fact that you have sinned against your fellow as I
grieve for the fact that you have sinned against yourself and the rich
store of gifts and opportunities which has been committed to your care.
Though originally destined to rise, you have wandered from the path and
fallen.”
“Ah, Athanasi Vassilievitch,” cried poor Chichikov, clasping his friend’s
hands, “I swear to you that, if you would but restore me my freedom, and
recover for me my lost property, I would lead a different life from this
time forth. Save me, you who alone can work my deliverance! Save me!”
“How can I do that? So to do I should need to procure the setting aside
of a law. Again, even if I were to make the attempt, the Prince is a
strict administrator, and would refuse on any consideration to release
you.”
“Yes, but for you all things are possible. It is not the law that
troubles me: with that I could find a means to deal. It is the fact that
for no offence at all I have been cast into prison, and treated like
a dog, and deprived of my papers and dispatch-box and all my property.
Save me if you can.”
Again clasping the old man’s knees, he bedewed them with his tears.
“Paul Ivanovitch,” said Murazov, shaking his head, “how that property
of yours still seals your eyes and ears, so that you cannot so much as
listen to the promptings of your own soul!”
“Ah, I will think of my soul, too, if only you will save me.”
“Paul Ivanovitch,” the old man began again, and then stopped. For a
little while there was a pause.
“Paul Ivanovitch,” at length he went on, “to save you does not lie
within my power. Surely you yourself see that? But, so far as I can,
I will endeavour to, at all events, lighten your lot and procure your
eventual release. Whether or not I shall succeed I do not know; but I
will make the attempt. And should I, contrary to my expectations, prove
successful, I beg of you, in return for these my efforts, to renounce
all thought of benefit from the property which you have acquired.
Sincerely do I assure you that, were I myself to be deprived of my
property (and my property greatly exceeds yours in magnitude), I should
not shed a single tear. It is not the property of which men can deprive
us that matters, but the property of which no one on earth can deprive
or despoil us. You are a man who has seen something of life--to use
your own words, you have been a barque tossed hither and thither by
tempestuous waves: yet still will there be left to you a remnant of
substance on which to live, and therefore I beseech you to settle down
in some quiet nook where there is a church, and where none but plain,
good-hearted folk abide. Or, should you feel a yearning to leave behind
you posterity, take in marriage a good woman who shall bring you,
not money, but an aptitude for simple, modest domestic life. But
this life--the life of turmoil, with its longings and its
temptations--forget, and let it forget YOU; for there is no peace in
it. See for yourself how, at every step, it brings one but hatred and
treachery and deceit.”
“Indeed, yes!” agreed the repentant Chichikov. “Gladly will I do as you
wish, since for many a day past have I been longing to amend my life,
and to engage in husbandry, and to reorder my affairs. A demon, the
tempter Satan himself, has beguiled me and led me from the right path.”
Suddenly there had recurred to Chichikov long-unknown, long-unfamiliar
feelings. Something seemed to be striving to come to life again in
him--something dim and remote, something which had been crushed out of
his boyhood by the dreary, deadening education of his youthful days, by
his desolate home, by his subsequent lack of family ties, by the poverty
and niggardliness of his early impressions, by the grim eye of fate--an
eye which had always seemed to be regarding him as through a misty,
mournful, frost-encrusted window-pane, and to be mocking at his
struggles for freedom. And as these feelings came back to the penitent
a groan burst from his lips, and, covering his face with his hands, he
moaned: “It is all true, it is all true!”
“Of little avail are knowledge of the world and experience of men unless
based upon a secure foundation,” observed Murazov. “Though you have
fallen, Paul Ivanovitch, awake to better things, for as yet there is
time.”
“No, no!” groaned Chichikov in a voice which made Murazov’s heart bleed.
“It is too late, too late. More and more is the conviction gaining upon
me that I am powerless, that I have strayed too far ever to be able to
do as you bid me. The fact that I have become what I am is due to my
early schooling; for, though my father taught me moral lessons, and beat
me, and set me to copy maxims into a book, he himself stole land from
his neighbours, and forced me to help him. I have even known him to
bring an unjust suit, and defraud the orphan whose guardian he was!
Consequently I know and feel that, though my life has been different
from his, I do not hate roguery as I ought to hate it, and that my
nature is coarse, and that in me there is no real love for what is good,
no real spark of that beautiful instinct for well-doing which becomes
a second nature, a settled habit. Also, never do I yearn to strive for
what is right as I yearn to acquire property. This is no more than the
truth. What else could I do but confess it?”
The old man sighed.
“Paul Ivanovitch,” he said, “I know that you possess will-power, and
that you possess also perseverance. A medicine may be bitter, yet the
patient will gladly take it when assured that only by its means can he
recover. Therefore, if it really be that you have no genuine love for
doing good, do good by FORCING yourself to do so. Thus you will benefit
yourself even more than you will benefit him for whose sake the act
is performed. Only force yourself to do good just once and again, and,
behold, you will suddenly conceive the TRUE love for well-doing. That
is so, believe me. ‘A kingdom is to be won only by striving,’ says the
proverb. That is to say, things are to be attained only by putting forth
one’s whole strength, since nothing short of one’s whole strength will
bring one to the desired goal. Paul Ivanovitch, within you there is a
source of strength denied to many another man. I refer to the strength
of an iron perseverance. Cannot THAT help you to overcome? Most men are
weak and lack will-power, whereas I believe that you possess the power
to act a hero’s part.”
Sinking deep into Chichikov’s heart, these words would seem to have
aroused in it a faint stirring of ambition, so much so that, if it was
not fortitude which shone in his eyes, at all events it was something
virile, and of much the same nature.
“Athanasi Vassilievitch,” he said firmly, “if you will but petition
for my release, as well as for permission for me to leave here with a
portion of my property, I swear to you on my word of honour that I will
begin a new life, and buy a country estate, and become the head of a
household, and save money, not for myself, but for others, and do good
everywhere, and to the best of my ability, and forget alike myself and
the feasting and debauchery of town life, and lead, instead, a plain,
sober existence.”
“In that resolve may God strengthen you!” cried the old man with
unbounded joy. “And I, for my part, will do my utmost to procure
your release. And though God alone knows whether my efforts will be
successful, at all events I hope to bring about a mitigation of your
sentence. Come, let me embrace you! How you have filled my heart with
gladness! With God’s help, I will now go to the Prince.”
And the next moment Chichikov found himself alone. His whole nature felt
shaken and softened, even as, when the bellows have fanned the furnace
to a sufficient heat, a plate compounded even of the hardest and most
fire-resisting metal dissolves, glows, and turns to the liquefied state.
“I myself can feel but little,” he reflected, “but I intend to use my
every faculty to help others to feel. I myself am but bad and worthless,
but I intend to do my utmost to set others on the right road. I myself
am but an indifferent Christian, but I intend to strive never to yield
to temptation, but to work hard, and to till my land with the sweat of
my brow, and to engage only in honourable pursuits, and to influence my
fellows in the same direction. For, after all, am I so very useless?
At least I could maintain a household, for I am frugal and active and
intelligent and steadfast. The only thing is to make up my mind to it.”
Thus Chichikov pondered; and as he did so his half-awakened energies of
soul touched upon something. That is to say, dimly his instinct
divined that every man has a duty to perform, and that that duty may
be performed here, there, and everywhere, and no matter what the
circumstances and the emotions and the difficulties which compass a man
about. And with such clearness did Chichikov mentally picture to himself
the life of grateful toil which lies removed from the bustle of towns
and the temptations which man, forgetful of the obligation of labour,
has invented to beguile an hour of idleness that almost our hero forgot
his unpleasant position, and even felt ready to thank Providence for
the calamity which had befallen him, provided that it should end in his
being released, and in his receiving back a portion of his property.
Presently the massive door of the cell opened to admit a tchinovnik
named Samosvitov, a robust, sensual individual who was reputed by his
comrades to be something of a rake. Had he served in the army, he
would have done wonders, for he would have stormed any point, however
dangerous and inaccessible, and captured cannon under the very noses