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 bank, giving his fictitious property as security; but he was quickly caught, and his audacious scheme came to nothing. The story stuck in Gogol's mind, and he conceived the idea of a vast novel, in which the travels of the collector of dead souls should serve as a panorama of the Russian people. Both Gogol and Pushkin thought of "Don Quixote," the spirit of which is evident enough in this book. Not long after their interview, Gogol wrote to Pushkin: "I have begun to write "Dead Souls." The subject expands into a very long novel, and I think it will be amusing, but now I am only at the third chapter. . . . I wish to show, at least from one point of view, all Russia." Gogol declared that he did not write a single line of these early chapters without thinking how Pushkin would judge it, at what he would laugh, at what he would applaud. When he read aloud from the manuscript, Pushkin, who had listened with growing seriousness, cried, "God! what a sad country is Russia!" and later be added, "Gogol invents nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible truth."

The first part of his work, containing the first eleven chapters, or "songs," was published in May 1842. For the rest of his life, largely spent abroad, Gogol worked fitfully at the continuation of his masterpiece. Ill health, nervous depression, and morbid asceticism preyed upon his mind; in 1845