Nikolai Gogol

“ The tavern-keepers sell us such liquor that, before a man knows where he is, a glassful of it has eaten a hole through his stomach, and made him feel as though he could drink a pail of water. Yes, it knocks a man over before he can look around. Everywhere temptation lies in wait for the peasant, and he needs to be cunning if he is to get through the world at all. In fact, things seem to be contrived for nothing but to make us peasants lose our wits, even to the tobacco which they sell us. What are folk like ourselves to do, Constantine Thedorovitch? ”

“ Yes, no one can compete with him, and, whatsoever price he may fix for a given commodity, at that price it will have to remain, nor will any man be able to outbid it."
"My God!" muttered Chichikov, crossing himself, and staring at Kostanzhoglo with his breath catching in his throat. "The mind cannot grasp it--it petrifies one's thoughts with awe. You see folk marvelling at what Science has achieved in the matter of investigating the habits of cowbugs, but to me it is a far more marvellous thing that in the hands of a single mortal there can become accumulated such gigantic sums of money. ”

“ The beginning, and not the middle, is the right starting point. No one who comes to me and says, 'Give me a hundred thousand roubles, and I will grow rich in no time,' do I believe, for he is likely to meet with failure rather than with the success of which he is so assured. 'Tis with a kopeck, and with a kopeck only, that a man must begin."
"If that is so, _I_ shall grow rich," said Chichikov, involuntarily remembering the dead souls. ”

“ As he spoke, Kostanzhoglo raised his face, and it became clear that the wrinkles had fled from it, and that, like the Tsar on the solemn day of his crowning, Kostanzhoglo's whole form was diffusing light, and his features had in them a gentle radiance. "In all the world," he repeated, "you will find no joys like these, for herein man imitates the God who projected creation as the supreme happiness, and now demands of man that he, too, should act as the creator of prosperity. ”

“ Wisdom only can direct the management of a great estate, that can derive a sound income from the same, that can acquire wealth of a real, not a fictitious, order while also fulfilling the duties of a citizen and thereby earning the respect of the Russian public. All this I pray you to teach me."
"I tell you what," said Kostanzhoglo, looking meditatively at his guest. "You had better stay with me for a few days, and during that time I can show you how things are managed here, and explain to you everything. Then you will see for yourself that no great wisdom is required for the purpose." ”

“ Instead of galloping over the countryside on frisky cobs, Nikolasha and Aleksasha were engaged in dreaming of Moscow, with its confectioners' shops and the theatres of which a cadet, newly arrived on a visit from the capital, had just been telling them; while their father had his mind full of how best to stuff his guests with yet more food, and Platon was given up to yawning. Only in Chichikov was a spice of animation visible. "Yes," he reflected, "some day I, too, will become lord of such a country place." ”

“ I myself am determined never to establish any manufacture, however profitable, which will give rise to a demand for 'higher things,' such as sugar and tobacco--no not if I lose a million by my refusing to do so. If corruption MUST overtake the MIR, it shall not be through my hands. And I think that God will justify me in my resolve. Twenty years have I lived among the common folk, and I know what will inevitably come of such things."
"But what surprises me most," persisted Chichikov, "is that from refuse it should be possible, with good management, to make such an immensity of profit." ”

“ On the contrary, to make thousands honestly is a far more difficult matter than to make millions. Millions are easily come by, for a millionaire has no need to resort to crooked ways; the way lies straight before him, and he needs but to annex whatsoever he comes across. No rival will spring up to oppose him, for no rival will be sufficiently strong, and since the millionaire can operate over an extensive radius, he can bring (as I have said) two or three roubles to bear upon any one else's one. Consequently, what interest will he derive from a thousand roubles? ”

“ Next, he opened a gate into a large vegetable enclosure, and thence the koliaska emerged into a square near a wooden church, with, showing beyond the latter, the roofs of the manorial homestead.
"A queer fellow, that Koshkarev!" said Chichikov to himself.
"Well, whatever I may be, at least I'm here," said a voice by his side. Chichikov looked round, and perceived that, in the meanwhile, the barin had dressed himself and overtaken the carriage. With a pair of yellow trousers he was wearing a grass-green jacket, and his neck was as guiltless of a collar as Cupid's. ”

“ Chichikov hastened to remark, "it becomes plain to me that you have penetrated into the meaning of life, and laid your finger upon the essential root of the matter. Yet supposing, for a moment, we leave the affairs of humanity in general, and turn our attention to a purely individual affair, might I ask you how, in the case of a man becoming a landowner, and having a mind to grow wealthy as quickly as possible (in order that he may fulfil his bounden obligations as a citizen) , he can best set about it?"
"How he can best set about growing wealthy?" repeated Kostanzhoglo. ”

“ And as soon as ever the ice shall have melted, and the rivers be flowing, and the land have dried sufficiently to be workable, the spade will begin its task in kitchen and flower garden, and the plough and the harrow their tasks in the field; until everywhere there will be tilling and sowing and planting. And do you understand what the sum of that labour will mean? It will mean that the harvest is being sown, that the welfare of the world is being sown, that the food of millions is being put into the earth. ”

“ Whether a peasant be working for himself or for me, never do I let him waste time. I myself toil like a bullock, and I force my peasants to do the same, for experience has taught me that that is the only way to get through life. All the mischief in the world comes through lack of employment. Now, do you go and consider the matter, and talk it over with your mir [8] ."
"We have done that already, Constantine Thedorovitch, and our elders' opinion is: 'There is no need for further talk. Every peasant belonging to Constantine Thedorovitch is well off, and hasn't to work for nothing. ”

“ Yes, already could he taste the pleasure which would be his when he had built up a complete industrial organisation, and the springs of the industrial machine were in vigorous working order, and each had become able to reinforce the other. Labour should be kept in active operation, and, even as, in a mill, flour comes flowing from grain, so should cash, and yet more cash, come flowing from every atom of refuse and remnant. ”

“ Chichikov's business had nothing to do with the spread of enlightenment, he was but seeking an opportunity to inquire further concerning the putting of refuse to lucrative uses; but Kostanzhoglo would not let him get a word in edgeways, so irresistibly did the flow of sarcastic comment pour from the speaker's lips.
"Yes," went on Kostanzhoglo, "folk are always scheming to educate the peasant. But first make him well-off and a good farmer. THEN he will educate himself fast enough. As things are now, the world has grown stupid to a degree that passes belief. ”

“ For only thus will a man get to know the men and conditions among which his career will have to be carved. That is to say, through encountering the rough and the tumble of life, and through learning that every kopeck has to be beaten out with a three-kopeck nail, and through worsting knave after knave, he will acquire such a degree of perspicuity and wariness that he will err in nothing which he may tackle, and never come to ruin. ”

“ Nevertheless, personally I find what he does uninteresting."
"Truly an astonishing fellow!" reflected Chichikov with a glance at his companion. "It is sad indeed to see a man so superficial as to be unable to explain matters of this kind."
At length the manor appeared in sight--an establishment looking almost like a town, so numerous were the huts where they stood arranged in three tiers, crowned with three churches, and surrounded with huge ricks and barns. "Yes," thought Chichikov to himself, "one can see what a jewel of a landowner lives here." ”

“ What good can they do to any one? Even if a landowner of the day sets up a library, he never looks at a single book in it, but soon relapses into card-playing--the usual pursuit. Yet folk call me names simply because I do not waste my means upon the giving of dinners! ”

“ Again, for six years on end did the fish factories keep dumping their offal on my bank of the river; wherefore, at last, as there was nothing to be done with it, I took to boiling it into glue, and cleared forty thousand roubles by the process."
"The devil!" thought Chichikov to himself as he stared at his host. "What a fist this man has for making money!"
"Another reason why I started those factories," continued Kostanzhoglo, "is that they might give employment to many peasants who would otherwise have starved. ”

“ Nevertheless, though relatives are relatives, I may say that I am travelling on my own account as well, in that, in addition to possible benefit to my health, I desire to see the world and the whirligig of humanity, which constitute, so to speak, a living book, a second course of education. ”

“ Similarly will you find folk saying: 'The peasant leads an over-simple life. He ought to be familiarised with luxuries, and so led to yearn for things above his station.' And the result of such luxuries will be that the peasant will become a rag rather than a man, and suffer from the devil only knows what diseases, until there will remain in the land not a boy of eighteen who will not have experienced the whole gamut of them, and found himself left with not a tooth in his jaws or a hair on his pate. Yes, that is what will come of infecting the peasant with such rubbish. ”

“ To think of lending money to a man who is merely devising a dinner for his mistress, or planning to furnish his house like a lunatic, or thinking of taking his paramour to a masked ball or a jubilee in honour of some one who had better never have been born! ”

“ And everything will be teeming with life, and not a moment will there need to be lost, seeing that, had you even twenty eyes, you would have need for them all. And after the harvest festivities there will be grain to be carted to byre or stacked in ricks, and stores to be prepared for the winter, and storehouses and kilns and cattle-sheds to be cleaned for the same purpose, and the women to be assigned their tasks, and the totals of everything to be calculated, so that one may see the value of what has been done. ”

“ Yet I do not find that to do all this I require to build a mansion with facades and pillars!"
"Marvellous!" exclaimed Chichikov. "Beyond all things does it surprise me that refuse can be so utilised."
"Yes, and that is what can be done by SIMPLE methods. But nowadays every one is a mechanic, and wants to open that money chest with an instrument instead of simply. For that purpose he hies him to England. Yes, THAT is the thing to do. What folly!" Kostanzhoglo spat and added: "Yet when he returns from abroad he is a hundred times more ignorant than when he went." ”

“ Take Murazov, the tax-farmer--he, again, must be worth ten millions. What a fortune!"
"Do you mind where we drive?" asked Platon. "I should like first to go and take leave of my sister and my brother-in-law."
"With pleasure," said Chichikov.
"My brother-in-law is the leading landowner hereabouts. At the present moment he is drawing an income of two hundred thousand roubles from a property which, eight years ago, was producing a bare twenty thousand."
"Truly a man worthy of the utmost respect! ”

“ It is to my house, not to his, that you have come; and I am Peter Petrovitch Pietukh--yes, Peter Petrovitch Pietukh."
Chichikov, dumbfounded, turned to Selifan and Petrushka.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I told you to drive to the house of Colonel Koshkarev, whereas you have brought me to that of Peter Petrovitch Pietukh."
"All the same, your fellows have done quite right," put in the gentleman referred to. "Do you" (this to Selifan and Petrushka) "go to the kitchen, where they will give you a glassful of vodka apiece. Then put up the horses, and be off to the servants' quarters." ”

“ You see, the year happened to have been a lean one--thanks to those same industry-mongering landowners, in that they had neglected to sow their crops; and now my factories keep growing at the rate of a factory a year, owing to the circumstance that such quantities of remnants and cuttings become so accumulated that, if a man looks carefully to his management, he will find every sort of rubbish to be capable of bringing in a return--yes, to the point of his having to reject money on the plea that he has no need of it. ”

“ Nor is it an uncommon occurrence that in the most unexpected fashion, and in the most retired of retreats, one will suddenly come face to face with a man whose burning periods will lead one to forget oneself and the tracklessness of the route and the discomfort of one's nightly halting-places, and the futility of crazes and the falseness of tricks by which one human being deceives another. ”

“ And of this seductive frame of mind the true source had been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host. Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. ”

“ Next, Chichikov and his escort rapped at the doors of the Department of Estate Affairs; but that Department's quarters happened to be in a state of repair, and no one could be made to answer the summons save a drunken peasant from whom not a word of sense was to be extracted. At length the escort felt himself removed to remark:
"There is a deal of foolishness going on here. Fellows like that drunkard lead the barin by the nose, and everything is ruled by the Committee of Management, which takes men from their proper work, and sets them to do any other it likes. ”