but more especially those which had suffered from
such unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of
mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at the
lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners haphazard: he
rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly suited to his
taste, or with whom he might with the least possible trouble conclude
identical agreements; though, in the first instance, he always tried, by
getting on terms of acquaintanceship--better still, of friendship--with
them, to acquire the souls for nothing, and so to avoid purchase at all.
In passing, my readers must not blame me if the characters whom they
have encountered in these pages have not been altogether to their
liking. The fault is Chichikov's rather than mine, for he is the master,
and where he leads we must follow. Also, should my readers gird at me
for a certain dimness and want of clarity in my principal characters
and actors, that will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad
tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent.
Similarly does the entry to every town--the entry even to the Capital
itself--convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that
at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky
factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time
there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions,
and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a
medley of steeples, columns, statues, and turrets--the whole framed in
rattle and roar and the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of
men have conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov's first purchases
were made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the
affair progressed, and with what success or failure our hero met,
and how Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more
difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the
levers of his far-flung tale are moved, and how eventually the horizon
will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a lyrical
tendency. Yes, many a verst of road remains to be travelled by a party
made up of an elderly gentleman, a britchka of the kind affected by
bachelors, a valet named Petrushka, a coachman named Selifan, and
three horses which, from the Assessor to the skewbald, are known to us
individually by name. A