Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

For am I a brigand? Has anybody suffered because of me? Have I brought misfortune upon anybody? With toil and sweat, with bloody sweat did I acquire each copper; it wasn’t as if I robbed anybody or looted public funds. Why did I acquire it? So that I might finish out the remainder of my days in comfort and leave the rest to my wife, to my children, whom I planned to beget for the good, for the service of my fatherland. I went astray, I won’t dispute it, I went astray .. . what’s to be done? But I went astray upon seeing that one couldn’t get anywhere or anything by following the direct path and that cutting a corner was the shortest way. But when I worked, I used my ingenuity. If I took anything, I took it from the rich. But what about those abominable villains who get theirs through courts, perfectly legally, and not from the public funds, mind you, but who rob the poor, who fleece of their last copper those who have nothing! ... Afanasii Vasilievich, I was not dissolute, I did not drink. [Have I not redeemed myself?] ... Why, how many efforts I have made, how much iron fortitude I have shown! Why, one could say that I have paid for every kopeck with sufferings, sufferings! What misfortune is it, then, that dogs me? Tell me! Every time when one begins to see one’s efforts beginning to bear fruits and, so to say, to stretch one’s hand toward them, a storm unexpectedly springs up, or one strikes an underwater reef, or one’s ship is smashed to smithereens.