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Updated: May 8, 2025
Thompson, and put Clare's prospectus in his pocket-book; and, having got somewhat at home in his new business, settling the most urgent matters connected with the transferment, started on a visit to Helpston, in company with a friend. Entering the little cottage, the two visitors, though they expected to see poverty, were greatly surprised at the look of extreme destitution visible everywhere.
"But," inquired the President further, "how comes it about, Paul Ivanovitch, that you have purchased peasants apart from land? Is it for transferment elsewhere that you need them?" "Yes." "Very well, then. That is quite another matter. To what province of the country?" "To the province of Kherson." "Indeed?
Indeed, might it not be that Chichikov was neither more nor less than an emissary of the said Governor-General, sent to conduct a secret inquiry? "What if the souls purchased by Chichikov should REALLY be dead ones?" a terrible thought considering that he, the President, had permitted their transferment to be registered, and had himself acted as Plushkin's representative!
Indeed such was the interest taken by certain citizens in the matter that they advised the purchaser to provide himself and his convoy with an escort, in order to ensure their safe arrival at the appointed destination; but though Chichikov thanked the donors of this advice for the same, and declared that he should be very glad, in case of need, to avail himself of it, he declared also that there was no real need for an escort, seeing that the peasants whom he had purchased were exceptionally peace-loving folk, and that, being themselves consenting parties to the transferment, they would undoubtedly prove in every way tractable.
True, it is illegal to buy or mortgage peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying them only for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the provinces of Taurida and Kherson almost for nothing, provided that one undertakes subsequently to colonise it; so to Kherson I will 'transfer' them, and long may they live there!
Well, my purpose in wanting it is this that I desire to purchase a few peasants." And he broke off in a gulp. "But may I ask HOW you desire to purchase those peasants?" asked Manilov. "With land, or merely as souls for transferment that is to say, by themselves, and without any land?" "I want the peasants themselves only," replied Chichikov. "And I want dead ones at that." "What?
It was not long before Chichikov's purchases had become the talk of the town; and various were the opinions expressed as to whether or not it was expedient to procure peasants for transferment.
Chichikov's discomfiture was complete. "And, would you believe it, your Excellency," went on Nozdrev, "but this fellow actually said to me, 'Sell me your dead souls! Why, I laughed till I nearly became as dead as the souls. And, behold, no sooner do I arrive here than I am told that he has bought three million roubles' worth of peasants for transferment! For transferment, indeed!
As for Sobakevitch, that landowner replied that he considered Chichikov an excellent fellow, as well as that the souls whom he had sold to his visitor had been in the truest sense of the word alive, but that he could not answer for anything which might occur in the future, seeing that any difficulties which might arise in the course of the actual transferment of souls would not be HIS fault, in view of the fact that God was lord of all, and that fevers and other mortal complaints were so numerous in the world, and that instances of whole villages perishing through the same could be found on record.
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