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

“Are, are⁠—”

“Tell me, tell me, for heaven’s sake!”

“They are an invention to conceal something else. The man’s real object is, is⁠—to abduct the governor’s daughter.”

So startling and unexpected was this conclusion that the guest sat reduced to a state of pale, petrified, genuine amazement.

“My God!” she cried, clapping her hands, “I should never have guessed it!”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I guessed it as soon as ever you opened your mouth.”

“So much, then, for educating girls like the Governor’s daughter at school! Just see what comes of it!”

“Yes, indeed! And they tell me that she says things which I hesitate even to repeat.”

“Truly it wrings one’s heart to see to what lengths immorality has come.”

“Some of the men have quite lost their heads about her, but for my part I think her not worth noticing.”

“Of course. And her manners are unbearable. But what puzzles me most is how a travelled man like Chichikov could come to let himself in for such an affair. Surely he must have accomplices?”

“Yes; and I should say that one of those accomplices is Nozdrev.”

“Surely not?”

“Certainly I should say so. Why, I have known him even try to sell his own father! At all events he staked him at cards.”

“Indeed! You interest me. I should never had thought him capable of such things.”

“I always guessed him to be so.”

The two ladies were still discussing the matter with acumen and success when there walked into the room the Public Prosecutor⁠—bushy eyebrows, motionless features, blinking eyes, and all. At once the ladies hastened to inform him of the events related, adducing therewith full details both as to the purchase of dead souls and as to the scheme to abduct the Governor’s daughter; after which they departed in different directions, for the purpose of raising the rest of the town. For the execution of this undertaking not more than half an hour was required. So thoroughly did they succeed in throwing dust in the public’s eyes that for a while everyone⁠—more especially the army of public officials⁠—was placed in the position of a schoolboy who, while still asleep, has had a bag of pepper thrown in his face by a party of more early-rising comrades. The questions now to be debated resolved themselves into two⁠—namely, the question of the dead souls and the question of the Governor’s daughter. To this end two parties were formed⁠—the men’s party and the feminine section. The men’s party⁠—the more absolutely senseless of the two⁠—devoted its attention to the dead souls: the women’s party occupied itself exclusively with the alleged abduction of the Governor’s daughter. And here it may be said (to the ladies’ credit) that the women’s party displayed far more method and caution than did its rival faction, probably because the function in life of its members had always been that of managing and administering a household. With the ladies, therefore, matters soon assumed vivid and definite shape; they became clearly and irrefutably materialised; they stood stripped of all doubt and other impedimenta. Said some of the ladies in question, Chichikov had long been in love with the maiden, and the pair had kept tryst by the light of the moon, while the Governor would have given his consent (seeing that Chichikov was as rich as a Jew) but for the obstacle that Chichikov had deserted a wife already (how the worthy dames came to know that he was married remains a mystery), and the said deserted wife, pining with love for her faithless husband, had sent the Governor a letter of the most touching kind, so that Chichikov, on perceiving that the father and mother would never give their consent, had decided to abduct the girl. In other circles the matter was stated in a different way. That is to say, this section averred that Chichikov did not possess a wife, but that, as a man of subtlety and experience, he had bethought him of obtaining the daughter’s hand through the expedient of first tackling the mother and carrying on with her an ardent liaison, and that, thereafter, he had made an application for the desired hand, but that the mother, fearing to commit a sin against religion, and feeling in her heart certain gnawings of conscience, had returned a blank refusal to Chichikov’s request; whereupon Chichikov had decided to carry out the abduction alleged. To the foregoing, of course, there became appended various additional proofs and items of evidence, in proportion as the sensation spread to more remote corners of the town. At length, with these perfectings, the affair reached the ears of the Governor’s wife herself. Naturally, as the mother of a family, and as the first lady in the town, and as a matron who had never before been suspected of things of the kind, she was highly offended when she heard the stories, and very justly so: with the result that her poor young daughter, though innocent, had to endure about as unpleasant a tête-à-tête as ever befell a maiden of sixteen, while, for his part, the Swiss footman received orders never at any time to admit Chichikov to the house.

Having done their business with the Governor’s wife, the ladies’ party descended upon the male section, with a view to influencing it to their own side by asserting that the dead souls were an invention used solely for the purpose of diverting suspicion and successfully affecting the abduction. And, indeed, more than one man was converted, and joined the feminine camp, in spite of the fact that thereby such seceders incurred strong names from their late comrades⁠—names such as “old women,” “petticoats,” and others of a nature peculiarly offensive to the male sex.

Also, however much they might arm themselves and take the field, the men could not compass such orderliness within their ranks as could the women. With the former everything was of the antiquated and rough-hewn and ill-fitting and unsuitable and badly-adapted and inferior kind; their heads were full