Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/224

214 luxurious habits and goodness knows what. One must start from the beginning and not from the middle. One must begin from the bottom, quite from the bottom. It is only there that one gets a thorough knowledge of life and men with whom you have to deal later on. When you have to put up with this and that in your own person, and when you find out that you must take care of the kopecks before you can get to the roubles, and when you have been through all sorts of ups and downs, it does train you and teach you sense, so that you are not likely to make a false move and come to grief in any enterprise. Believe me, that's the truth. One must start from the beginning and not from the middle. If any one were to say to me: "Give me a hundred thousand and I'll get rich directly," I shouldn't believe him: he is counting on luck and not on a certainty. One must begin with a farthing.'

'In that case I shall get rich,' said Tchitchikov, 'because I am beginning almost, so to say, from nothing.' He meant, of course, his dead souls.

'Konstantin, it is time for Pavel Ivanovitch to rest and sleep,' said his wife, 'and you keep chattering.'

'And you will certainly get rich,' said Skudronzhoglo, not heeding his wife. 'Rivers and rivers of gold will flow into your hands. You won't know what to do with your income.'

Pavel Ivanovitch sat spellbound in the golden