Dead Souls — Part II, Chapter IV - Section 3
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 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 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.
