Chichikov was not interested in the almshouse: he wanted to talk about how every bit of trash could bring income. But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.
"And here's another Don Quixote of enlightenment: he's set up schools! Now, what, for instance, is more useful to a man than literacy? And how did he handle it? Muzhiks from his estate come to me. 'What's going on, my dear?' they say. 'Our sons have got completely out of hand, don't want to help us work, they all want to become scriveners, but there's need for only one scrivener.' That's what came of it!"
Chichikov had no use for schools either, but Platonov took up the subject:
"But that should be no hindrance, that there's no need for scriveners now: there will be later. We must work for posterity."
"But you at least be intelligent, brother! What do you care about this posterity? Everyone thinks he's some kind of Peter the Great! Look under your feet, don't gaze into posterity; make it so that the muzhik is well off, even rich, so that he has time to study of his own will, but don't take a stick in your hand and say: 'Study!' Devil knows which end they start from! . . . Listen, now, I'll let you be the judge now..." Here Kostanzhoglo moved closer to Chichikov and, to give him a better grasp of the matter, boarded him with a grapnel—in other words, put a finger in the buttonhole of his tailcoat. "Now, what could be clearer? You have peasants, so you should foster them in their peasant way of life. What is this way of life? What is the peasant's occupation? Ploughing? Then see to it that he's a good ploughman. Clear? No, clever fellows turn up who say: 'He should be taken out of this condition. The life he leads is too crude and simple: he must be made acquainted with the objects of luxury' They themselves, owing to this luxury, have become rags instead of people, and got infested with devil knows what diseases, and there's no lad of eighteen left who hasn't already tried everything: he's toothless and bald behind—so now they want to infect these others with it all. Thank God we have at least this one healthy stratum left, as yet unacquainted with such whimsies! We must simply be grateful to God for that. Yes, for me the ploughmen are worthiest of all. God grant that all become ploughmen!"
"So you suppose that ploughing is the most profitable occupation?" asked Chichikov.
"The most rightful, not the most profitable. Till the soil in the sweat of your face. [63] That is said to us all; it is not said in vain. Age-old experience has proven that man in his agricultural quality has the purest morals. Where ploughing lies at the basis of social life, there is abundance and well-being; there is neither poverty nor luxury, but there is well-being. Till the soil, man was told, labor ... no need to be clever about it! I say to the muzhik: 'Whoever you work for, whether me, or yourself, or a neighbor, just work. If you're active, I'll be your first helper. You have no livestock, here's a horse for you, here's a cow, here's a cart. . . Whatever you need, I'm ready to supply you with, only work. It kills me if your management is not well set up, and I see disorder and poverty there. I won't suffer idleness. I am set over you so that you should work.' Hm! they think to increase their income with institutions and factories! But think first of all to make every one of your muzhiks rich, and then you yourself will be rich without factories, mills, or foolish fancies."
"The more one listens to you, most honored Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov, "the more one has a wish to listen. Tell me, my esteemed sir: if, for example, I should have the intention of becoming a landowner in, say, this province, what should I pay most attention to? what should I do, how should I act in order to become rich in a short period of time, and thereby, so to speak, fulfill the essential duty of a citizen?"
"What you should do in order to become rich? Here's what..." said Kostanzhoglo.
"Time for supper!" said the mistress, rising from the sofa, and she stepped into the middle of the room, wrapping a shawl around her chilled young limbs.
Chichikov popped up from his chair with the adroitness of an almost military man, flew over to the mistress with the soft expression of a delicate civilian in his smile, offered her the crook of his arm, and led her gala-fashion through two rooms into the dining room, all the while keeping his head agreeably inclined a bit to one side. The servant took the lid off the tureen; they all moved their chairs up to the table, and the slurping of soup began.
Having polished off his soup and washed it down with a glass of liqueur (the liqueur was excellent), Chichikov spoke thus to Kostanzhoglo:
"Allow me, most honored sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. I was asking you what to do, how to act, how best to go about...” [iv]
"An estate for which, if he were to ask even forty thousand, I'd count it out to him at once."
"Hm!" Chichikov fell to pondering. "And why is it," he spoke somewhat timidly, "that you don't buy it yourself?"
"But one needs finally to know one's limits. I have plenty to keep me busy around my own properties without that. Besides, our gentry are shouting at me without that, saying I supposedly take advantage of their extremities and their ruined estates to buy up land for next to nothing. I'm sick of it, finally."
"The gentry are quite capable of wicked talk!" said Chichikov.
"And with us, in our own province . . . You can't imagine what they say about me. They don't even call me anything else but a skinflint and a first-degree niggard. They excuse themselves for everything: 'I did squander it all, of course,' they say, 'but it was for the higher necessities of life. I need books, I must live in luxury, so as to encourage industry; but one may, perhaps, live without squandering all, if one lives like that swine Kostanzhoglo.' That's how it is!"
"I wish I were such a swine!" said Chichikov.
"And all that because I don't give dinners and don't lend them money. I don't give dinners because it would be oppressive for me, I'm not used to it. But to come and eat what I eat—you're quite welcome! I don't lend money—that's nonsense. If you're truly in need, come to me and tell me in detail how you'll make use of my money. If I see from your words that you'll dispose of it intelligently, and the money will clearly bring a profit—I won't refuse you, and won't even take interest on it. But I won't throw money to the winds. Let me be excused for that. He's planning some sort of dinner for his ladylove, or furnishing his house on a crazy footing, and I should lend him money! ..."
Here Kostanzhoglo spat and almost uttered several indecent and abusive words in the presence of his spouse. The stern shadow of gloomy hypochondria darkened his lively face. Down and across his forehead wrinkles gathered, betraying the wrathful movement of stirred bile.
Chichikov drank off a glass of raspberry liqueur and spoke thus:
"Allow me, my esteemed sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. Supposing I were to acquire that same estate you were pleased to mention, in how much time and how quickly can one get rich to such an extent..."
"If what you want," Kostanzhoglo picked up sternly and curtly, still full of ill humor, "is to get rich quickly, then you'll never get rich; but if you want to get rich without asking about time, you'll get rich quickly."
"So that's it!" said Chichikov.
"Yes," Kostanzhoglo said curtly, as if he were angry with Chichikov himself. "One must have a love of work; without it nothing can be done. One must come to love management, yes! And, believe me, there's nothing dull about it. They've invented the idea that country life is boring . . . but I'd die of boredom if I spent even one day in the city the way they do. A proprietor has no time to be bored. There's no emptiness in his life—everything is fullness. One need only consider this whole varied cycle of yearly occupations—and what occupations! occupations that truly elevate the spirit, to say nothing of their diversity. Here man walks side by side with nature, side by side with the seasons, a participant and conversant with everything that is accomplished in creation. Spring has not yet come, but work is already under way: supplies of firewood and everything for the floodtime; preparing seed; sorting and measuring grain in the granaries, and drying it; establishing new rents. The snow and floods are over— work is suddenly at the boil: here boats are being loaded, there forests are being thinned out, trees replanted in gardens, and the soil dug up everywhere. The spade is at work in the kitchen gardens, in the fields the plough and harrow. And the sowing begins.
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