Dead Souls - By Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol Page 0,70

profit. But those boots split within a fortnight, and brought down upon your head dire showers of maledictions; with the result that gradually your shop grew empty of customers, and you fell to roaming the streets and exclaiming, 'The world is a very poor place indeed! A Russian cannot make a living for German competition.' Well, well! 'Elizabeta Vorobei!' But that is a WOMAN'S name! How comes SHE to be on the list? That villain Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my knowing it."

"'Grigori Goiezhai-ne-Doiedesh,'" he went on. "What sort of a man were YOU, I wonder? Were you a carrier who, having set up a team of three horses and a tilt waggon, left your home, your native hovel, for ever, and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death when it comes!"

"And you, my friends?" continued Chichikov, turning to the sheet whereon were inscribed the names of Plushkin's absconded serfs. "Although you are still alive, what is the good of you? You are practically dead. Whither, I wonder, have your fugitive feet carried you? Did you fare hardly at Plushkin's, or was it that your natural inclinations led you to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering travellers? Are you, by this time, in gaol, or have you taken service with other masters for the tillage of their lands? 'Eremei Kariakin, Nikita Volokita and Anton Volokita (son of the foregoing).' To judge from your surnames, you would seem to have been born gadabouts 29. 'Popov, household serf.' Probably you are an educated man, good Popov, and go in for polite thieving, as distinguished from the more vulgar cut-throat sort. In my mind's eye I seem to see a Captain of Rural Police challenging you for being without a passport; whereupon you stake your all upon a single throw. 'To whom do you belong?' asks the Captain, probably adding to his question a forcible expletive. 'To such and such a landowner,' stoutly you reply. 'And what are you doing here?' continues the Captain. 'I have just received permission to go and earn my obrok,' is your fluent explanation. 'Then where is your passport?' 'At Miestchanin 30 Pimenov's.' 'Pimenov's? Then are you Pimenov himself?' 'Yes, I am Pimenov himself.' 'He has given you his passport?' 'No, he has not given me his passport.' 'Come, come!' shouts the Captain with another forcible expletive. 'You are lying!' 'No, I am not,' is your dogged reply. 'It is only that last night I could not return him his passport, because I came home late; so I handed it to Antip Prochorov, the bell-ringer, for him to take care of.' 'Bell-ringer, indeed! Then HE gave you a passport?' 'No; I did not receive a passport from him either.' 'What?'—and here the Captain shouts another expletive—'How dare you keep on lying? Where is YOUR OWN passport?' 'I had one all right,' you reply cunningly, 'but must have dropped it somewhere on the road as I came along.' 'And what about that soldier's coat?' asks the Captain with an impolite addition. 'Whence did you get it? And what of the priest's cashbox and copper money?'' 'About them I know nothing,' you reply doggedly. 'Never at any time have I committed a theft.' 'Then how is it that the coat was found at your place?' 'I do not know. Probably some one else put it there.' 'You rascal, you rascal!' shouts the Captain, shaking his head, and closing in upon you. 'Put the leg-irons upon him, and off with him to prison!' 'With pleasure,' you reply as, taking a snuff-box from your pocket, you offer a pinch to each of the two gendarmes who are manacling you, while also inquiring how long they have been discharged from the army, and in what wars they may have served. And in prison you remain until your case comes on, when the justice orders you to be removed from Tsarev-Kokshaika to such and such another prison, and a second justice orders you to be transferred thence to Vesiegonsk or somewhere else, and you go