Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/278

268 voluntary offerings of good people. There is not enough money, it must be collected. Put on the humble coat of a peasant. … You know you are a humble man now, a ruined nobleman is no better than a beggar: what's the use of standing on your dignity—with a book in your hand get into a humble cart and go about the towns and the villages; from the bishop you will receive a blessing and a book with numbered pages, and so God be with you.'

Pyotr Petrovitch was amazed at this perfectly new occupation. For him, who was anyway a nobleman of ancient lineage, to set off with a book in his hands, begging for a church and jolting in a cart! But it was impossible to refuse and get out of it; it was a godly work.

'You hesitate?' said Murazov. 'You'll be doing two services in this: one a service to God, and another a service to me.'

'What is the service to you?'

'This is it. Since you will be travelling about those parts where I have not been, you will find out everything on the spot, how the peasants are living, where they are better off, where they are in need, and in what condition they all are. I must tell you that I love the peasants, perhaps because I've come from the peasantry myself. But the trouble is that all sorts of wickedness have become common among them. The heretics and vagrants of all sorts confound them, and some are even rising up in rebellion against those in authority over them, and if a man is oppressed