Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

So spoke Koshkarev as he led him into the library. It was a huge room, with books from floor to ceiling. There were even stuffed animals. Books in all fields—forestry, cattle breeding, pig breeding, gardening, thousands of assorted journals, guidebooks, and a multitude of journals presenting the latest developments and improvements in horse breeding and natural science. There were such titles as: Pig Breeding as a Science. Seeing that these things were not for the pleasant passing of time, he turned to another bookcase. From the frying pan into the fire. They were all books of philosophy. One bore the title: Philosophy in a Scientific Sense. There was a row of six volumes entitled: A Preparatory Introduction to the Theory of Thinking in Their Entirety, Totality, Essence, and Application to the Comprehension of the Organic Principles of the Mutual Divarication of Social Production. Whichever book Chichikov opened, there was on every page a manifestation, a development, an abstract, enclosures, disclosures, and devil knows what was not there. "No, this is all not for me," Chichikov said, and turned to the third bookcase, which contained everything in the line of the arts. Here he pulled out some huge book with immodest mythological pictures and began studying them. This was to his taste. Middle-aged bachelors like such pictures. They say that recently they have begun to be liked even by little old men who have refined their taste at the ballet. What can be done about it, in our age mankind likes spicy roots. Having finished studying this book, Chichikov was already pulling out another of the same sort, when suddenly Colonel Koshkarev appeared with a beaming face and a paper.

"It's all done and done splendidly. This man alone decidedly understands enough for all of them. For that I'll set him over them: I'll establish a special higher board and make him president. This is what he has written ..."

"Well, thank God," thought Chichikov, and he got ready to listen. The colonel began to read:

"Setting about the consideration of the assignment I have been charged with by Your Honor, I have the privilege herewith to report on the above: (1) The very request of Mister Collegiate Councillor Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, Esquire, contains a certain misunderstanding: in the explanation of the demand for registered souls overtaken by various unexpectednesses, those who have died were also included. This was most probably meant to indicate those nearing death, and not those who have died; for those who have died are not purchasable. What is there to purchase, if there's nothing? Logic itself tells us as much. And in literary sciences, as is obvious, he never got very far ...” Here Koshkarev paused momentarily and said: "At this point, the slyboots ... he needles you a little. But consider what a glib pen— the style of a state secretary; and he was at the university only three years, and hasn't even finished the course." Koshkarev went on: "... in literary sciences, as is obvious, he never got very far, for he speaks of the souls as dead, while anyone who has taken a course in human knowledge knows for a certainty that the soul is immortal. (2) Of the above-mentioned registered souls, prescribed, or prescinded, or, as he is pleased to put it incorrectly, dead, there are none present who are not mortgaged, for they are not only all mortgaged without exception, in their totality, but they are also re-mortgaged for an additional hundred and fifty roubles per soul, except for the small village of Gurmailovka, which is in dispute on occasion of the lawsuit of the landowner Predishchev, and therefore can be neither purchased nor mortgaged."

"Why, then, did you not declare that to me before? Why have you detained me over nothing?" Chichikov said vexedly.

"But how could I know beforehand? That's the benefit of paperwork, that everything can now be plainly seen in front of our eyes."

"What a fool you are, you stupid brute!" Chichikov thought to himself. "You've rummaged in books, and what have you learned?" Bypassing all courtesy and decency, he grabbed his hat—and left. The coachman stood holding the droshky ready and with the horses still harnessed: to feed them a written request would have been called for, and the decision—to give the horses oats—would have been received only the next day. Rude and discourteous though Chichikov was, Koshkarev, despite all, was remarkably courteous and delicate with him. He squeezed his hand forcibly and pressed it to his heart, and thanked him for giving him an occasion for seeing the course of the paper procedure at work; that a dressing-down and tongue-lashing were undoubtedly needed, because everything was capable of falling asleep, and the springs of estate management would then slacken and rust; that, owing to this event, he had had a happy thought: to set up a new commission which would be called the commission for supervision of the building commission, so that no one would then dare to steal.

"Ass! Fool!" thought Chichikov, angry and displeased all the way back. He was already riding under the stars. Night was in the sky. There were lights in the villages. Driving up to the porch, he saw through the windows that the table was already laid for supper.

"How is it you're so late?" said Kostanzhoglo, when he appeared at the door.

"What were you talking about so long?" said Platonov.

"He's done me in!" said Chichikov. "I've never seen such a fool in all my born days."

"That's still nothing!" said Kostanzhoglo. "Koshkarev is a comforting phenomenon. He's necessary, because the follies of clever people are made more obvious by the caricature of their reflection in him. They've set up offices, and institutions, and managers, and manufactures, and factories, and schools, and commissions, and devil knows what else. As if they had some sort of state of their own! How do you like this, I ask you? A landowner who has arable land and not enough peasants to work it, started a candle factory, invited master candlemakers from London, and became a merchant! There's an even bigger fool: he started a silk factory!"

"But you, too, have factories," Platonov observed.

"And who started them? They started of themselves: wool accumulated, there was nowhere to sell it, so I started weaving broadcloth, simple, heavy broadcloth; I have it all sold for a low price at the markets. Fish scales, for example, have been thrown away on my bank for six years in a row; what was I to do with them? I started boiling them for glue and made forty thousand. With me everything's like that."

"What a devil!" Chichikov thought, staring at him with all his eyes, "he just rakes it in!"

"And I don't build buildings for that; I have no houses with columns and pediments. I don't invite master craftsmen from abroad. And I'll never tear peasants away from tilling the soil. I have people work in my factories only in lean years, and only those from elsewhere, for the sake of bread. There can be many such factories. Just study your management a bit more closely and you'll see—every rag can be of use, every bit of trash can bring income, so much that later you'll just push it away, saying: no need."

"That's amazing! And what's most amazing is that every bit of trash can bring income!" said Chichikov.

"Hm! and not only that! ...” Kostanzhoglo did not finish what he was saying: the bile rose in him, and he wanted to abuse his neighboring landowners. "There's still another clever fellow— what do you think he set up for himself? An almshouse, a stone building on his estate! A pious enterprise! . . . But if you wish to help, help everyone to do his duty, don't tear them away from their Christian duty. Help the son to care for his sick father, don't give him the chance of getting him off his back. Better give him the means of sheltering his neighbor and brother, give him money for that, help him with all your powers, and don't pull him away, or else he'll give up all Christian obligations entirely. Don Quixotes in every sense! ... It comes to two hundred roubles a year for a man in an almshouse! . . . On that money I could keep ten people on my estate!" Kostanzhoglo got angry and spat.