Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/290

280 He burst into tears.

The old man looked at him with an expression of pain and distress and said only: 'Ah, Pavel Ivanovitch! Pavel Ivanovitch, what have you done!'

'I have done everything that the basest man might have done. But judge, judge, can I be treated like this? I am a nobleman. Without trial, without inquiry I have been flung into prison, everything has been taken from me: my things, my case … there is money in it, property, all my property, Afanasy Vassilyevitch, the property I have acquired by blood and sweat …'

And unable to restrain the rush of fresh grief that flooded his heart he sobbed loudly on a note which carried through the thick walls of the prison and resounded with a hollow echo in the distance, he tore off his satin cravat and gripping himself near his collar tore his coat of the 'flame and smoke of Navarino.'

'Pavel Ivanovitch, anyway you must take leave of your property and of everything in the world: you have fallen under the sway of implacable law and not under the authority of any man.'

'I have been my own ruin, I feel that I have been my own ruin. I could not stop in time. But what is such a fearful punishment for, Afanasy Vassilyevitch! Am I a robber? Have I made any one unhappy? By toil and sweat, by bloody sweat I have made my hard-earned kopecks.