Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

In morals the ladies of the town of N. were strict, filled with noble indignation against all vice and any temptation, and they punished any weaknesses without any mercy.

To ennoble the Russian language still more, almost half of its words were banished from conversation altogether, and therefore it was quite often necessary to have recourse to the French language, although there, in French, it was a different matter: there such words were allowed as were much coarser than those aforementioned. And so, that is what can be told about the ladies of the town of N., speaking superficially.

The millionaire has this advantage, that he is able to observe meanness, a perfectly disinterested, pure meanness, not based on any calculations:

“What is our life? A vale wherein grief dwells. What is this world? A crowd of people who do not feel.”

in short, one does all sorts of things when one is left alone, feels oneself a fine fellow besides, and is also certain that no one is peeking through a crack.

There was not a face that did not express pleasure, or at least a reflection of the general pleasure. The same thing takes place on the faces of officials when a superior arrives to inspect the work entrusted to their management: once the initial fear has passed,

they see that there is much that pleases him, and he himself finally deigns to make a joke—that is, to utter a few words with an agreeable smile.

each one bared her possessions to the point to which she felt convinced in herself that they could be the ruin of a man; the rest was all secreted away with extraordinary taste:

Each lady inwardly vowed to herself to be as charming as possible while dancing and show

in all its splendor the excellence of that which was most excellent in her.

too much into her head. But all this in no way produced the intended effect on Chichikov. He was not even looking at the turns produced by the ladies, but was constantly getting on tiptoe to seek over the heads where the engaging blonde might have gotten to;

Our hero, however, did not notice it at all, telling a multitude of pleasant things, which he had already had

the chance to utter on similar occasions in various places:

The ladies were all thoroughly displeased with Chichikov’s behavior.

But either he actually did not hear, or he pretended not to hear, though that was not good, because the opinion of the ladies must be appreciated: he repented of it, but only afterwards, and therefore too late.

Indignation, justified in all respects, showed on many faces. However great Chichikov’s weight in society might be, though he were a millionaire and with an expression of majesty, even of something Mars-like and military, in his face, still there are things that ladies will not forgive anyone, whoever he may be, and then he can simply be written off.

The scorn displayed almost inadvertently by Chichikov even restored the harmony among the ladies, which had been on the brink of ruin since the occasion of the capturing of the chair.

The indignation was mounting, and ladies in different corners began to speak of him in a most unfavorable way; while the poor boarding-school graduate was totally annihilated and her sentence was already sealed.

Spotting him from afar, Chichikov resolved even upon sacrifice, that is, upon abandoning his enviable place and withdrawing at all possible speed: for him their meeting boded no good.

But, as ill luck would have it, at that same moment the governor turned up, expressing extraordinary joy at having found Pavel Ivanovich, and stopped him, asking him to arbitrate in his dispute with two ladies over whether woman’s love is lasting or not; and meanwhile Nozdryov had already seen him and was walking straight to meet him.

“Would you believe it, Your Excellency,” Nozdryov went on, “when he said ‘Sell me dead souls,’ I nearly split with laughter. I come here, and they tell me he’s bought up three million worth of peasants for resettlement—resettlement, hah! he was trying to buy dead ones from me. Listen, Chichikov, you’re a brute, by God, a brute, and His Excellency here, too, isn’t that right, prosecutor?”

Nozdryov was pushed away with his baisers, so hard that he almost went sprawling on the floor: everyone left him and no longer listened to him; but all the same his words about the buying of dead souls had been uttered at the top of his voice and accompanied by such loud laughter that they had attracted the attention even of those in the farthest corners of the room. This news seemed so strange that everyone stopped with some sort of wooden, foolishly quizzical expression. Chichikov noticed that many of the ladies winked at each other with a sort of spiteful, caustic grin, and certain faces bore an expression of something so

ambiguous that it further increased his confusion.

This apparently absurd occurrence noticeably upset our hero.

but he was like a man worn-out or broken by a long journey, whose mind is closed to everything and who is unable to enter into anything. He did not even wait until supper was over, and went home incomparably earlier than was his custom.

Everyone knows why you take bribes and bend the truth: so as to pay for your wife’s shawl or hoopskirt or whatever they’re called, confound them. And what for? So that some strumpet Sidorovna won’t say the postmaster’s wife’s dress was better,

So unfavorable was Chichikov’s opinion of balls in general; but it seems another reason for indignation was mixed in here. He was mainly vexed not at the ball, but at the fact that he had happened to trip up, that he had suddenly appeared before everyone looking like God knows what, that he had played some strange, ambiguous role.

But man is strange: he was greatly upset by the ill disposition of those very people whom he did not respect and with regard to whom he had spoken so sharply, denouncing their vanity and finery.

This was the more vexatious to him since, on sorting out the matter clearly, he saw that he himself was partly the cause of it. He

did not, however, get angry with himself, and in that, of course, he was right. We all have a little weakness for sparing ourselves somewhat, and prefer to...

our vex...

during this time, at the other end of town, an event was taking place which was about to increase the unpleasantness of our hero’s situation. Namely, through the remote streets and alleys of the town there came clattering a rather strange vehicle, causing bewilderment with regard to its name.

The vehicle drove into a small yard cluttered with firewood, chicken coops, and all sorts of sheds; out of the vehicle climbed a lady: this lady was a landowner, the widow of a collegiate secretary, Korobochka. Soon after our hero’s departure, the old woman had become so worried with regard to the possible occurrence of deceit on his side that, after three sleepless nights in a row, she had resolved to go to town, even though the horses were not shod, and there find out for certain what was the going price for dead souls, and whether she had, God forbid, gone amiss, having perhaps sold them dirt cheap.

In this house lived the bosom friend of the arriving lady.

And therefore, to avoid all this, we shall refer to the lady who received the visit as she was referred to almost unanimously in the town of N.—namely, as a lady agreeable in all respects.

“I will say straight out, and say it to his face, that he is a worthless man, worthless, worthless, worthless.”

‘And now,’ says Korobochka, ‘I don’t know what I’m to do. He made me sign some false paper,’ she says, ‘threw down fifteen roubles in banknotes. I’m an inexperienced, helpless widow,’ she says, ‘I know nothing …’ Such goings-on!

“The dead souls!…” “Ah, speak, for God’s sake!” “That was simply invented as a cover, and here’s the real thing: he wants to carry off the governor’s daughter.”

With that the two ladies left him and set out each in her own direction to rouse the town. They managed to accomplish this enterprise in a little over half an hour. The town was decidedly aroused; all was in ferment, though no one could understand anything.

suddenly turned out that the town’s wits were divided into two completely opposite opinions, and suddenly two opposite parties were formed—the men’s party and the women’s party. The men’s party, the more witless of the two, paid attention to the dead souls. The women’s party occupied itself exclusively with the abduction of the governor’s daughter.

In Russia, the lower society likes very much to discuss the gossip that occurs in high society, and so people started discussing it all in such hovels as had never known or set eyes on Chichikov, and there were additions and still further explanations. The subject became more entertaining every moment, assumed more definitive forms every day, and finally, just as it was, in all its definitiveness, was delivered into the very ears of the governor’s wife.

They said it was all nonsense, that the abduction of the governor’s daughter was more a hussar’s affair than a civilian’s, that Chichikov would not do it, that the women were lying, that a woman is like a sack—it holds whatever you put in it, that the main subject to pay attention to was the dead souls, which, however, meant devil knows what, but anyhow there was something quite nasty and none too good about them.

It also happened, as if by design, that just when the gentlemen officials were in a difficult position to begin with, two documents came to the governor simultaneously. The content of one was that, according to evidence and reports received, there was in their province a maker of forged banknotes, hiding under various names, and that the strictest investigation should immediately be undertaken. The second document contained a request from the governor of a neighboring province concerning a robber fleeing legal prosecution, that if any suspicious man

were to turn up in their province, unable to produce any certificates or passports, he should be detained without delay. These two documents simply stunned everyone.

Of course, it was impossible to think of him as a maker of forged bills, still less as a robber: his appearance was trustworthy; but still, for all that, who in fact could he be?

was decided to make a few more inquiries of those from whom the souls had been bought, in order to find out at least what sort of purchases they were, and what precisely these dead souls could mean, and whether he had somehow explained to anyone, be it only by chance, in passing, his true intentions, and had told anyone who he was.

In the council that gathered this time, the absence of that necessary thing which simple folk call sense was very noticeable. Generally we are somehow not made for representative meetings.

In all our gatherings, from the peasant community level up to all possible learned and other committees, unless they have one head to control everything, there is a great deal of confusion.

It is even hard to say why this is so; evidently the nation is like that, since the only meetings that succeed are those arranged for the sake of carousing or dining, to wit: club...

“Who?” “He, gentlemen, my dear sir, is none other than Captain Kopeikin!”