how you came to meet your end; whether in a tavern, or whether through
going to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train
of waggons. Again, I see the name, 'Probka Stepan, carpenter, very
sober.' That must be the hero of whom the Guards would have been so
glad to get hold. How well I can imagine him tramping the country with
an axe in his belt and his boots on his shoulder, and living on a few
groats'-worth of bread and dried fish per day, and taking home a
couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into
his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you
by your end, Probka Stepan? Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold
around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the
cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none
at hand but Uncle Michai--the good uncle who, scratching the back of
his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for once you have been too
clever!' straightway lashed himself to a rope, and took your place?
'Maksim Teliatnikov, shoemaker.' A shoemaker, indeed? 'As drunk as a
shoemaker,' says the proverb. _I_ know what you were like, my friend.
If you wish, I will tell you your whole history. You were apprenticed
to a German, who fed you and your fellows at a common table, thrashed
you with a strap, kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake,
and spoke of you in uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends. At
length, when your apprenticeship was over, you said to yourself, 'I am
going to set up on my own account, and not just to scrape together a
kopeck here and a kopeck there, as the Germans do, but to grow rich
quick.' Hence you took a shop at a high rent, bespoke a few orders,
and set to work to buy up some rotten leather out of which you could
make, on each pair of boots, a double profit. But those boots split
within a fortnight, and brought down upon your head dire showers of
maledictions; with the result that gradually your shop grew empty of
customers, and you fell to roaming the streets and exclaiming, 'The
world is a very poor place indeed! A Russian cannot make a living for
German competition.' Well, well! 'Elizabeta Vorobei!' But that is a
WOMAN'S name! How comes SHE to be on the list? That villain
Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my knowing it."
"'Grigori Goiezhai-ne-Doiedesh,'" he went on. "What sort of a man were
YOU, I wonder? Were you a carrier who, having set up a team of three
horses and a tilt waggon, left your home, your native hovel, for ever,
and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that
you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you
to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness
and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and
you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you
felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter
blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you
welcome death when it comes!"
"And you, my friends?" continued Chichikov, turning to the sheet
whereon were inscribed the names of Plushkin's absconded serfs.
"Although you are still alive, what is the good of you? You are
practically dead. Whither, I wonder, have your fugitive feet carried
you? Did you fare hardly at Plushkin's, or was it that your natural
inclinations led you to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering
travellers? Are you, by this time, in gaol, or have you taken service
with other masters for the tillage of their lands? 'Eremei Kariakin,
Nikita Volokita and Anton Volokita (son of the foregoing).' To judge
from your surnames, you would seem to have been born gadabouts[1].