Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/28

16 stout know better how to manage their affairs in this world than the thin. The thin serve rather on special commissions or are mere supernumeraries, sent here and there. Their existence is somehow too light and airy and not to be depended upon. The stout never go by by-paths but always keep to the main road, and if they seat themselves anywhere they sit firmly and reliably, so that their seat is more likely to give way under them than they are to be dislodged from it. They are not fond of external display. Their coats are not so smartly cut as the thin man's; their wardrobe is better stocked however. The thin man will in three years' time not have a single serf left unmortgaged: while, if you take a quiet look round, the fat man has a house at the end of the town bought in the name of his wife; later on, at the other end of the town, another one, then a little village near the town, then an estate with all the conveniences. In the end the fat man, after serving God and his Tsar and winning universal respect, leaves the service, moves away and becomes a landowner, a hearty hospitable Russian gentleman,—he gets on, and indeed gets on very well. And when he has gone, his thin heirs in accordance with the Russian tradition make ducks and drakes of all their father's property. I cannot disguise the fact that such were the reflections which occupied Tchitchikov's mind while he was scrutinising the company, and the result of them was that he finally joined the fat ones, among whom he found all the personages he knew: the public prosecutor with very black