Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/316

304 to be made at once. The other was a despatch from the governor of a neighbouring province, and was concerned with the escape from justice of a brigand, and directed that if any suspicious person who could not produce a passport or give a good account of himself were to be found in the province, he was to be at once arrested. These two documents had a shattering effect on everyone. Their previous conclusions and surmises were completely checkmated. Of course it could not be supposed that there was any reference to Tchitchikov; all of them, however, as they pondered, each from his own point of view, realised that they did not know what sort of man Tchitchikov was, that he had been very vague in his account of himself, that he had indeed said that he had suffered in the cause of justice, but that was all very indefinite, and when they remembered at the same time that he had actually said that he had many enemies who had attempted his life, they wondered all the more: his life, then, was in danger; he was, then, being pursued; so he must have done something. … And who was he in reality? Of course it could not be thought that he had forged counterfeit notes and still less that he was a brigand—his appearance was most respectable; but with all that, what sort of person could he be? And now the officials asked themselves the question which they ought to have asked themselves in the first chapter of my poem. It was decided to make inquiries of the persons from whom the dead souls had been