Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol [best biographies to read .TXT] 📗

“Hold on, hold on!” exclaimed Sobakevitch, retaining his guest’s hand, and at the same moment treading heavily upon his toes⁠—so heavily, indeed, that Chichikov gasped and danced with the pain.

“I beg your pardon!” said Sobakevitch hastily. “Evidently I have hurt you. Pray sit down again.”

“No,” retorted Chichikov. “I am merely wasting my time, and must be off.”

“Oh, sit down just for a moment. I have something more agreeable to say.” And, drawing closer to his guest, Sobakevitch whispered in his ear, as though communicating to him a secret: “How about twenty-five roubles?”

“No, no, no!” exclaimed Chichikov. “I won’t give you even a quarter of that. I won’t advance another kopeck.”

For a while Sobakevitch remained silent, and Chichikov did the same. This lasted for a couple of minutes, and, meanwhile, the aquiline-nosed Bagration gazed from the wall as though much interested in the bargaining.

“What is your outside price?” at length said Sobakevitch.

“Two and a half roubles.”

“Then you seem to rate a human soul at about the same value as a boiled turnip. At least give me three roubles.”

“No, I cannot.”

“Pardon me, but you are an impossible man to deal with. However, even though it will mean a dead loss to me, and you have not shown a very nice spirit about it, I cannot well refuse to please a friend. I suppose a purchase deed had better be made out in order to have everything in order?”

“Of course.”

“Then for that purpose let us repair to the town.”

The affair ended in their deciding to do this on the morrow, and to arrange for the signing of a deed of purchase. Next, Chichikov requested a list of the peasants; to which Sobakevitch readily agreed. Indeed, he went to his writing-desk then and there, and started to indite a list which gave not only the peasants’ names, but also their late qualifications.

Meanwhile Chichikov, having nothing else to do, stood looking at the spacious form of his host; and as he gazed at his back as broad as that of a cart horse, and at the legs as massive as the iron standards which adorn a street, he could not help inwardly ejaculating:

“Truly God has endowed you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety, at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that, even if you had received a fashionable education, and had mixed with society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just the kulak26 that you are. The only difference is that circumstances, as they stand, permit of your polishing off a stuffed shoulder of mutton at a meal; whereas in St. Petersburg you would have been unable to do so. Also, as circumstances stand, you have under you a number of peasants, whom you treat well for the reason that they are your property; whereas, otherwise, you would have had under you tchinovniks:27 whom you would have bullied because they were not your property. Also, you would have robbed the Treasury, since a kulak always remains a moneygrubber.”

“The list is ready,” said Sobakevitch, turning round.

“Indeed! Then please let me look at it.” Chichikov ran his eye over the document, and could not but marvel at its neatness and accuracy. Not only were there set forth in it the trade, the age, and the pedigree of every serf, but on the margin of the sheet were jotted remarks concerning each serf’s conduct and sobriety. Truly it was a pleasure to look at it.

“And do you mind handing me the earnest money?” said Sobakevitch.

“Yes, I do. Why need that be done? You can receive the money in a lump sum as soon as we visit the town.”

“But it is always the custom, you know,” asserted Sobakevitch.

“Then I cannot follow it, for I have no money with me. However, here are ten roubles.”

“Ten roubles, indeed? You might as well hand me fifty while you are about it.”

Once more Chichikov started to deny that he had any money upon him, but Sobakevitch insisted so strongly that this was not so that at length the guest pulled out another fifteen roubles, and added them to the ten already produced.

“Kindly give me a receipt for the money,” he added.

“A receipt? Why should I give you a receipt?”

“Because it is better to do so, in order to guard against mistakes.”

“Very well; but first hand me over the money.”

“The money? I have it here. Do you write out the receipt, and then the money shall be yours.”

“Pardon me, but how am I to write out the receipt before I have seen the cash?”

Chichikov placed the notes in Sobakevitch’s hand; whereupon the host moved nearer to the table, and added to the list of serfs a note that he had received for the peasants, therewith sold, the sum of twenty-five roubles, as earnest money. This done, he counted the notes once more.

“This is a very old note,” he remarked, holding one up to the light. “Also, it is a trifle torn. However, in a friendly transaction one must not be too particular.”

“What a kulak!” thought Chichikov to himself. “And what a brute beast!”

“Then you do not want any women souls?” queried Sobakevitch.

“I thank you, no.”

“I could let you have some cheap⁠—say, as between friends, at a rouble a head?”

“No, I should have no use for them.”

“Then, that being so, there is no more to be said. There is no accounting for tastes. ‘One man loves the priest, and another the priest’s wife,’ says the proverb.”

Chichikov rose to take his leave. “Once more I would request of you,” he said, “that the bargain be left as it is.”

“Of course, of course. What is done between friends holds good because of their mutual friendship. Goodbye, and thank you for your visit. In advance I