Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/291

Rh What have I made my money for? To live out the remnant of my days in comfort, to leave something to my wife and the children whom I had intended to have for the welfare, for the service of my country. I have not been straightforward, I admit it … what could I do? for I saw that I could never get there by the straight road, and that the shortest way was by the crooked path. But I have toiled, I have exerted myself. While those blackguards who take thousands in the courts—and not as though it were from the government—they rob poor people of their last kopeck, they fleece those who have nothing! Afanasy Vassilyevitch, I have not been profligate, I've not been drunken. … And what toil, what iron endurance I have shown! Yes, I have, I may say, paid for every kopeck I have gained by suffering, suffering! Let any one of them endure what I have! What, what has all my life been? A bitter struggle, a ship tossing in the waves. And all at once to be deprived of what I have earned, Afanasy Vassilyevitch, of what I have won by such struggles …' He could not finish but broke into loud sobs with an unbearable ache in his heart. He sank on to a chair and tore the rent skirt of his smart coat completely off, flung it to a distance and putting both hands up to his hair, of which he had always taken such scrupulous care, tore it mercilessly, taking pleasure in the pain by which he hoped to stifle the insufferable ache in his heart.