Dead Souls
of the foe; but, as it was, the lack of a more warlike field for his
energies caused him to devote the latter principally to dissipation.
Nevertheless he enjoyed great popularity, for he was loyal to the point
that, once his word had been given, nothing would ever make him break
it. At the same time, some reason or another led him to regard his
superiors in the light of a hostile battery which, come what might, he
must breach at any weak or unguarded spot or gap which might be capable
of being utilised for the purpose.
“We have all heard of your plight,” he began as soon as the door had
been safely closed behind him. “Yes, every one has heard of it. But
never mind. Things will yet come right. We will do our very best for
you, and act as your humble servants in everything. Thirty thousand
roubles is our price--no more.”
“Indeed?” said Chichikov. “And, for that, shall I be completely
exonerated?”
“Yes, completely, and also given some compensation for your loss of
time.”
“And how much am I to pay in return, you say?”
“Thirty thousand roubles, to be divided among ourselves, the
Governor-General’s staff, and the Governor-General’s secretary.”
“But how is even that to be managed, for all my effects, including my
dispatch-box, will have been sealed up and taken away for examination?”
“In an hour’s time they will be within your hands again,” said
Samosvitov. “Shall we shake hands over the bargain?”
Chichikov did so with a beating heart, for he could scarcely believe his
ears.
“For the present, then, farewell,” concluded Samosvitov. “I have
instructed a certain mutual friend that the important points are silence
and presence of mind.”
“Hm!” thought Chichikov. “It is to my lawyer that he is referring.”
Even when Samosvitov had departed the prisoner found it difficult to
credit all that had been said. Yet not an hour had elapsed before a
messenger arrived with his dispatch-box and the papers and money therein
practically undisturbed and intact! Later it came out that Samosvitov
had assumed complete authority in the matter. First, he had rebuked the
gendarmes guarding Chichikov’s effects for lack of vigilance, and then
sent word to the Superintendent that additional men were required for
the purpose; after which he had taken the dispatch-box into his own
charge, removed from it every paper which could possibly compromise
Chichikov, sealed up the rest in a packet, and ordered a gendarme to
convey the whole to their owner on the pretence of forwarding him sundry
garments necessary for the night. In the result Chichikov received not
only his papers, but also some warm clothing for his hypersensitive
limbs. Such a swift recovery of his treasures delighted him beyond
expression, and, gathering new hope, he began once more to dream of such
allurements as theatre-going and the ballet girl after whom he had for
some time past been dangling. Gradually did the country estate and the
simple life begin to recede into the distance: gradually did the town
house and the life of gaiety begin to loom larger and larger in the
foreground. Oh, life, life!
Meanwhile in Government offices and chancellories there had been set
on foot a boundless volume of work. Clerical pens slaved, and brains
skilled in legal casus toiled; for each official had the artist’s liking
for the curved line in preference to the straight. And all the while,
like a hidden magician, Chichikov’s lawyer imparted driving power to
that machine which caught up a man into its mechanism before he could
even look round. And the complexity of it increased and increased, for
Samosvitov surpassed himself in importance and daring. On learning
of the place of confinement of the woman who had been arrested, he
presented himself at the doors, and passed so well for a smart young
officer of gendarmery that the sentry saluted and sprang to attention.
“Have you been on duty long?” asked Samosvitov.
“Since this morning, your Excellency.”
“And shall you soon be relieved?”
“In three hours from now, your Excellency.”
“Presently I shall want you, so I will instruct your officer to have you
relieved at once.”
“Very good, your Excellency.”
Hastening home, thereafter, at top speed, and donning the uniform of
a gendarme, with a false moustache and a pair of false whiskers--an
ensemble in which the devil himself would not have known him, Samosvitov
then made for the gaol where Chichikov was confined, and, en route,
impressed into the service the first street woman whom he encountered,
and handed her over to the care of two young fellows of like sort
with himself. The next step was to hurry back to the prison where the
original woman had been interned, and there to intimate to the sentry
that he, Samosvitov (with whiskers and rifle complete), had been sent
to relieve the said sentry at his post--a proceeding which, of course,
enabled the newly-arrived relief to ensure, while performing his
self-assumed turn of duty, that for the woman lying under arrest there
should be substituted the woman recently recruited to the plot, and that
the former should then be conveyed to a place of concealment where she
was highly unlikely to be discovered.
Meanwhile, Samosvitov’s feats in the military sphere were being rivalled
by the wonders worked by Chichikov’s lawyer in the civilian field of
action. As a first step, the lawyer caused it to be intimated to the
local Governor that the Public Prosecutor was engaged in drawing up a
report to his, the local Governor’s, detriment; whereafter the lawyer
caused it to be intimated also to the Chief of Gendarmery that a certain
confidential official was engaged in doing the same by HIM; whereafter,
again, the lawyer confided to the confidential official in question
that, owing to the documentary exertions of an official of a still
more confidential nature than the first, he (the confidential official
first-mentioned) was in a fair way to find himself in the same boat as
both the local Governor and the Chief of Gendarmery: with the result
that the whole trio were reduced to a frame of mind in which they were
only too glad to turn to him (Samosvitov) for advice. The ultimate and
farcical upshot was that report came crowding upon report, and that such
alleged doings were brought to light as the sun had never before beheld.
In fact, the documents in question employed anything and everything as
material, even to announcing that such and such an individual had an
illegitimate son, that such and such another kept a paid mistress, and
that such and such a third was troubled with a gadabout wife; whereby
there became interwoven with and welded into Chichikov’s past history
and the story of the dead souls such a crop of scandals and innuendoes
that by no manner of means could any mortal decide to which of these
rubbishy romances to award the palm, since all of them presented an equal
claim to that honour. Naturally, when, at length, the dossier reached
the Governor-General himself it simply flabbergasted the poor man; and
even the exceptionally clever and energetic secretary to whom he deputed
the making of an abstract of the same very nearly lost his reason with
the strain of attempting to lay hold of the tangled end of the skein. It
happened that just at that time the Prince had several other important
affairs on hand, and affairs of a very unpleasant nature. That is to
say, famine had made its appearance in one portion of the province, and
the tchinovniks sent to distribute food to the people had done their
work badly; in another portion of the province certain Raskolniki [51]
were in a state of ferment, owing to the spreading of a report than
an Antichrist had arisen who would not even let the dead rest, but was
purchasing them wholesale--wherefore the said Raskolniki were summoning
folk to prayer and repentance, and, under cover of capturing the
Antichrist in question, were bludgeoning non-Antichrists in batches;
lastly, the peasants of a third portion of the province had risen
against the local landowners and superintendents of police, for the
reason that certain rascals had started a rumour that the time was come
when the peasants themselves were to become landowners, and to wear
frockcoats, while the landowners in being were about to revert to the
peasant state, and to take their own wares to market; wherefore one of
the local volosts[52], oblivious of the fact that an order of things
of that kind would lead to a superfluity alike of landowners and
of superintendents of police, had refused to pay its taxes, and
necessitated recourse to forcible measures. Hence it was in a mood
of the greatest possible despondency that the poor Prince was sitting
plunged when word was brought to him that the old man who had gone bail
for Chichikov was waiting to see him.
“Show him in,” said the Prince; and the old man entered.
“A fine fellow your Chichikov!” began the Prince angrily. “You defended
him, and went bail for him, even though he had been up to business which
even the lowest thief would not have touched!”
“Pardon me, your Highness; I do not understand to what you are
referring.”
“I am referring to the matter of the fraudulent will. The fellow ought
to have been given a public flogging for it.”
“Although to exculpate Chichikov is not my intention, might I ask
you whether you do not think the case is non-proven? At all events,
sufficient evidence against him is still lacking.”
“What? We have as chief witness the woman who personated the deceased,
and I will have her interrogated in your presence.”
Touching a bell, the Prince ordered her to be sent for.
“It is a most disgraceful affair,” he went on; “and, ashamed though I am
to have to say it, some of our leading tchinovniks, including the local
Governor himself, have become implicated in the matter. Yet you tell me
that this Chichikov ought not to be confined among thieves and rascals!”
Clearly the Governor-General’s wrath was very great indeed.
“Your Highness,” said Murazov, “the Governor of the town is one of the
heirs under the will: wherefore he has a certain right to intervene.
Also, the fact that extraneous persons have meddled in the matter is
only what is to be expected from human nature. A rich woman dies, and
no exact, regular disposition of her property is made. Hence there comes
flocking from every side a cloud of fortune hunters. What else could one
expect? Such is human nature.”
“Yes, but why should such persons go and commit fraud?” asked the
Prince irritably. “I feel as though not a single honest tchinovnik were
available--as though every one of them were a rogue.”
“Your Highness, which of us is altogether beyond reproach? The
tchinovniks of our town are human beings, and no more. Some of them are
men of worth, and nearly all of them men skilled in business--though
also, unfortunately, largely inter-related.”
“Now, tell me this, Athanasi Vassilievitch,” said the Prince, “for you
are about the only honest man of my acquaintance. What has inspired in
you such a penchant for defending rascals?”
“This,” replied Murazov. “Take any man you like of the persons whom you
thus term rascals. That man none the less remains a human being. That
being so, how can one refuse to defend him when all the time one
knows that half his errors have been committed through ignorance and
stupidity? Each of us commits faults with every step that we take;
each of us entails unhappiness upon others with every breath that we
draw--and that although we may have no evil intention whatever in our
minds. Your Highness himself has, before now, committed an injustice of
the gravest nature.”
“_I_ have?” cried the Prince, taken aback by this unexpected turn given
to the conversation.
Murazov remained silent for a moment, as though he were debating