Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

A trifle! They're sowing the future harvest! Summer comes—the mowing, the ploughman's greatest feast. A trifle! Then comes harvest after harvest: rye followed by wheat, barley by oats, and then there's the pulling of the hemp. The piling of hayricks, the stacking of sheaves. August is now half over—everything's being brought to the threshing floors. Autumn comes—the ploughing and sowing of winter crops, repairing of granaries, threshing barns, cattle sheds, bundling of grain, and the first threshing. Winter comes—here, too, work doesn't sleep: first deliveries to town, threshing on all the threshing floors, transporting the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns, cutting and sawing of wood in the forests, deliveries of brick and materials for spring construction. But it's simply impossible for me to embrace it all. Such a diversity of work! You go and have a look here and there: to the mill, to the workshops, to the factories, and to the threshing floors! You also go and have a look at the muzhik working for himself. A trifle! But for me it's a feast if a carpenter has good command of his axe, I'm ready to stand there for two hours: such joy work gives me. And if you also see with what purpose it is all being done, and how everything around you brings increase upon increase, producing fruit and profit. I cannot even tell you what a pleasure it is. And not because the money's growing—money is money—but because all this is—your handiwork; because you see yourself being the cause and creator of it all, how from you, as from some sort of magician, abundance and good pour out on everything. No, where can you find me an equal delight?" said Kostanzhoglo, his face looking up, the wrinkles disappearing. He was as radiant as a king on the day of his solemn coronation. "No, you won't find such a delight in the whole world! Here, precisely here, man imitates God: God granted Himself the work of creation, as the highest delight, and He demands that man, too, be a creator of prosperity and the harmonious course of things. And this they call dull!"

As to the singing of a bird of paradise, Chichikov lost himself in listening to the sweet sounds of the proprietor's talk. His mouth was watering. His eyes became unctuous and acquired a sweet expression; he could have gone on listening forever.

"Konstantin! it's time we got up," said the mistress, rising from her chair. Platonov rose, Kostanzhoglo rose, Chichikov rose, though he wanted to go on sitting and listening. Offering her the crook of his arm, he led the mistress back. But his head was not affably inclined to one side, his maneuvering lacked adroitness, because his thoughts were occupied with essential maneuvers and considerations.

"However you describe it, all the same it's boring," Platonov said, walking behind him.

"Our guest seems far from stupid," the host was thinking, "temperate in his speech, and no whippersnapper." And this thought made him still more cheerful, as if he had warmed himself up with his own conversation and rejoiced to find a man ready to listen to intelligent advice.

Later, when they were all settled in a snug little candle-lit room across from the glass balcony door that served as a window, Chichikov felt cozier than he had felt for a long time. It was as if after long peregrinations he had now been received under his own roof, and to crown it all, had now obtained all that he desired and had dropped his pilgrim's staff, saying: "Enough!" So enchanting was the mood brought upon his soul by the host's reasonable talk. For every man there are certain words that are as if closer and more intimate to him than any others. And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was and that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding—the walls, the corners, and every trifle.

So, too, did everything remain in Chichikov's memory that evening: this unpretentiously furnished little room, and the good-natured expression that settled on the host's face, and the pipe brought to Platonov, with its amber mouthpiece, and the smoke that he began blowing into Yarb's fat muzzle, and Yarb's snorting, and the comely mistress's laughter, interrupted by the words: "Enough, don't torment him," and the cheery candles, and the cricket in the corner, and the glass door, and the spring night looking in at them through it, leaning its elbow on the tree-tops, where in the thicket spring nightingales were whistling away.

"Sweet is your talk to me, my esteemed Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov. "I may say that in the whole of Russia I have never met a man to equal you in intelligence."

He smiled.

"No, Pavel Ivanovich," he said, "if you want to know an intelligent man, then we do indeed have one of whom it may truly be said, 'This is an intelligent man,' and of whom I am not worth the shoe sole."

"Who is he?" Chichikov asked in amazement.

"Our tax farmer, Murazov."

"This is the second time I'm hearing about him!" Chichikov exclaimed.

"He's a man who could manage not just a landowner's estate, but a whole country. If I had a country, I'd make him minister of finance at once."

"I've heard. They say he's a man who surpasses all belief, he's made ten million, they say."

"Ten, nothing! it's way over forty. Soon half of Russia will be in his hands."

"You don't say!" Chichikov exclaimed, dumbfounded.

"Quite certainly. His capital must be growing now at an incredible rate. That's clear. Wealth grows slowly only when you have just a few hundred thousand; a man with millions has a big radius; whatever he gets hold of becomes two or three times more than it was. The field, the range is all too vast. There are no rivals here. No one can vie with him. Whatever price he assigns to a thing, so it stays: there's no one to bid higher."

Pop-eyed and openmouthed, Chichikov gazed into Kostanzhoglo's eyes as if rooted to the spot. There was no breath in him.

"The mind boggles!" he said, recovering himself slightly. "Thought is petrified with fear. People are amazed at the wisdom of Providence as they examine a little bug; for me it is more amazing that such enormous sums can pass through a mortal's hands!

Allow me to put a question to you concerning one circumstance; tell me, this, to be sure, was originally acquired not quite sinlessly?"

"In the most irreproachable fashion, and by the most correct means."

"I can't believe it, my esteemed sir, excuse me, but I can't believe it. If it were thousands, very well, but millions . . . excuse me, but I can't believe it."

"Quite the contrary, with thousands it's hard to be quite sinless, but to make millions is easy. A millionaire has no need to resort to crooked ways. Just go on and take the straight road, take all that lies before you! No one else will pick it up."

"The mind boggles! And what's most mind-boggling is that the whole thing started from a kopeck!"

"It never happens otherwise. It's the rightful order of things," said Kostanzhoglo. "He who was born with thousands, who was brought up on thousands, will acquire no more: he already has his whims and whatnot! One ought to begin from the beginning, not from the middle. From below, one ought to begin from below. Only then do you get to know well the people and life amidst which you'll have to make shift afterwards. Once you've suffered this or that on your own hide, and have learned that every kopeck is nailed down with a three-kopeck nail, and have gone through every torment, then you'll grow so wise and well schooled that you won't blunder or go amiss in any undertaking. Believe me, it's the truth. One ought to begin from the beginning, not from the middle. If anyone says to me: 'Give me a hundred thousand and I'll get rich at once'—I won't believe him: he's striking at random, not with certainty. One ought to begin with a kopeck!"