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

for help in St. Petersburg, seeing that he had risked his life for his country, and had lost much blood in its service. You can imagine him arriving in the capital on a baggage wagon⁠—in the capital which is like no other city in the world! Before him there lay spread out the whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian Nights⁠—a picture made up of the Nevski Prospect, Gorokhovaia Street, countless tapering spires, and a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing⁠—in fact, a regular second Nineveh. Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets and so forth that he saw it would mean throwing away a lot of money. True, as one walks the streets of St. Petersburg one seems to smell money by the thousand roubles, but our friend Kopeikin’s bank was limited to a few score coppers and a little silver⁠—not enough to buy a village with! At length, at the price of a rouble a day, he obtained a lodging in the sort of tavern where the daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a crust of bread; and as he felt that he could not manage to live very long on fare of that kind he asked folk what he had better do. ‘What you had better do?’ they said. ‘Well the government is not here⁠—it is in Paris, and the troops have not yet returned from the war; but there is a temporary Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what it can do for you.’ ‘All right!’ he said. ‘I will go and tell the Commission that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.’ And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand (since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant’s hut, with its glazed windows and great mirrors and statues and lackeys and brass door handles! Rather, it was the sort of place which you would enter only after you had bought a cheap cake of soap and indulged in a two hours’ wash. Also, at the entrance there was posted a grand Swiss footman with a baton and an embroidered collar⁠—a fellow looking like a fat, overfed pug dog. However, friend Kopeikin managed to get himself and his wooden leg into the reception room, and there squeezed himself away into a corner, for fear lest he should knock down the gilded china with his elbow. And he stood waiting in great satisfaction at having arrived before the President had so much as left his bed and been served with his silver washbasin. Nevertheless, it was only when Kopeikin had been waiting four hours that a breakfast waiter entered to say, ‘The President will soon be here.’ By now the room was as full of people as a plate is of beans, and when the President left the breakfast-room he brought with him, oh, such dignity and refinement, and such an air of the metropolis! First he walked up to one person, and then up to another, saying: ‘What do you want? And what do you want? What can I do for you? What is your business?’ And at length he stopped before Kopeikin, and Kopeikin said to him: ‘I have shed my blood, and lost both an arm and a leg, for my country, and am unable to work. Might I therefore dare to ask you for a little help, if the regulations should permit of it, or for a gratuity, or for a pension, or something of the kind?’ Then the President looked at him, and saw that one of his legs was indeed a wooden one, and that an empty right sleeve was pinned to his uniform. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Come to me again in a few days’ time.’ Upon this friend Kopeikin felt delighted. ‘Now I have done my job!’ he thought to himself; and you may imagine how gaily he trotted along the pavement, and how he dropped into a tavern for a glass of vodka, and how he ordered a cutlet and some caper sauce and some other things for luncheon, and how he called for a bottle of wine, and how he went to the theatre in the evening! In short, he did himself thoroughly well. Next, he saw in the street a young English lady, as graceful as a swan, and set off after her on his wooden leg. ‘But no,’ he thought to himself. ‘To the devil with that sort of thing just now! I will wait until I have drawn my pension. For the present I have spent enough.’ (And I may tell you that by now he had got through fully half his money.) Two or three days later he went to see the President of the Commission again. ‘I should be glad to know,’ he said, ‘whether by now you can do anything for me in return for my having shed my blood and suffered sickness and wounds on military service.’ ‘First of all,’ said the President, ‘I must tell you that nothing can be decided in your case without the authority of the Supreme Government. Without that sanction we cannot move in the matter. Surely you see how things stand until the army shall have returned from the war? All that I can advise you to do is wait for the Minister to return, and, in the meanwhile, to have patience. Rest assured that then you will not be overlooked. And if for the moment you have nothing to live upon, this is the best that I can do for you.’ With that he handed Kopeikin a trifle