Dead Souls

Still trembling after his escape from Nozdrev, Chichikov mutters imprecations while Selifan mutters his own — both equally furious, Selifan on behalf of the horses, which Nozdrev had failed to feed properly. Then the britchka collides with an oncoming six-horsed carriage. In the entangled harness and pandemonium — which draws the entire population of a nearby village, including Uncles Mitai and Minai, who mount the horses in unsuccessful attempts to separate them — Chichikov observes a golden-haired young woman of about sixteen. She stares at the scene with wide, terrified eyes, as clear and white as a new-laid egg held to the light. When the vehicles finally separate she vanishes. Gogol notes what a younger man would have felt; Chichikov, being middle-aged and cautious, contents himself with reflecting on whether she is a nice damsel as well as a comely one, and what aunts and mothers will probably do to her within the year. Sobakevitch's estate announces itself differently from Manilov's: everything is solid, nothing is decrepit. The owner himself is a moderate-sized bear — brown frockcoat, broad stance, a habit of treading on his guests' toes. His wife holds her head erect as a palm. The walls are hung with robust Greek generals and Bobelina, whose legs appear larger than the whole bodies of modern drawing-room dandies. Over lunch Sobakevitch demolishes every official in the province: the Governor has the face of a robber; the Vice-Governor and Governor are Gog and Magog; the Chief of Police would sell you and cheat you and then dine at your table; the Public Prosecutor is little better than a pig. The food, by contrast, is enormous and serious — niania (sheep's stomach stuffed with black porridge and brains), a half-shoulder of mutton eaten to the last gristle, cutlets the size of plates, a turkey the size of a calf. He mentions Plushkin in passing — eight hundred souls, and yet his serfs die like flies. Chichikov notes this carefully. After lunch, Chichikov raises the dead souls. Sobakevitch, without surprise: "You are after dead souls?" He names a hundred roubles per head. He then praises each dead serf individually by name and trade. They haul each other down to two and a half roubles. Sobakevitch secures twenty-five roubles as earnest money, and writes out the list himself.