These delicious hours are disturbed only by such events as an indigestion, or a pain in the bowels. They are filled only by collations and repasts of greater or less degree. They leave room for no other care than that of varying the bill of fare, of bringing into agreement the most diverse viands, of tempting appetites sated but not satiated.
At first thought, nothing seems more commonplace than such a subject. What poetry, what interest even, could be attached to that complaining belly whose ever-recurring pangs must be lulled to sleep the livelong day and a portion of the night? Herein shines forth all the power of Gogol’s talent. He paints egotism for us, double egotism: but he paints it with such delicate shades that the picture excites something more than admiration; it arouses a sort of sympathy.
Gogol knows well that happy people are the best people; that their joy radiates out, as it were, and that it warms, lightens, enlivens, just as sadness, even though legitimate, chills, wounds, warns away, every thing that approaches it. The two old people are happy, not so much by the quality of the pleasures which they taste, or by the value of the goods which they enjoy, as by the assurance which they feel that as long as they live they are not going to see this luxurious abundance disappear, nor these far from ruinous pleasures lose their flavor. Notwithstanding the thefts of the prikashchik, of the housekeeper, of the hands, of the visitors, of their coachman, of their valets, “this fertile and beneficent soil produced all things in such quantity, Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had so few necessities, that all these depredations could have no injurious effect on their well-being.”
These two fortunate people are worshipped for their indulgence, which comes from unconcern; and for their liberality, which takes its rise, if not from the vanity of giving, as La Rochefoucauld would have expressed it, yet at least from the need of feeling further satisfaction, after having taken full enjoyment of what is indispensable, in allowing others to have a certain portion of the superfluous.
In the same way their pity is, above all, a selfish consideration, and a movement of dismay at the idea of falling into such disagreeable or trying situations as they have seen in the cases of others. “Wait,” says Afanasi Ivanovitch to each visitor: “we don’t know what may happen. Robbers may attack you, or you may meet with rascals.” “God protect us from robbers!” said Pulkheria Ivanovna: “why tell such stories when it is night?”
In this association for happiness, which is scarcely any thing else than the joining of two aspirations towards well-being, how did Gogol succeed in bringing about his return to the idea of sacrifice? In point of fact, one of these good old egotists acts to a certain degree in a spirit of self-sacrifice, without ever rising above self-love; becomes partially absorbed in the affection of the companion, who is more indifferent, more inclined to accept fondling without offering return. All love, it has been said, is reduced in last analysis to this: the one kisses, the other offers the cheek. In this case the one who offers the cheek—that is to say, the one who permits the fondling, and limits all manifestations of feeling to not ill-natured but not kindly teasing—is the husband. His wife adores him after her fashion. This adoration it is vain to express in vulgar language, and translate by attentions of far from exalted order: it is real, and it brings to the reader’s lips a smile full of indulgence, even at the moment when it compels from the eyes a tear of a rare quality, the discreet witness of the deepest and purest feeling.
This good old woman feels that she is dying; and at the moment when death “comes to take her,” she knows only one grief,—that of leaving alone, and, as it were, orphaned, this poor old child for whom she has lived, and who without her will not know what to do with his sad life. With prayers, even with threats, good soul that she is, she intrusts him to a maid-servant old as themselves; and after making all arrangements and dispositions, so that her companion “need not feel too sorely her absence,” she goes whither death calls her.
Afanasi Ivanovitch at first is overwhelmed with grief. On his return from the funeral, his solitude comes to him with the sensation of an irreparable void; “and he began to sob bitterly, inconsolably; and the tears flowed,—flowed like two streams from his dull eyes.” Is it not striking to find here the expressions of Homer? “He sat down, pouring forth tears like a stream of dark water, which spreads its shady water along the cliff where even the goats do not climb.” And is there not here, as in the epic tale of Taras Bulba, the power of the pathetic, the savory freshness of emotion, the secret of which is known only to primitive poetry?
But what is not primitive, what, on the contrary, reveals Gogol as a very well-informed writer, a very watchful psychologist, a satirist whose scheme was well thought out in advance, and whose slightest details are calculated with perfect precision, is the little parable which at the most touching moment of this tale interrupts its thread, and brings out its hidden significance, its moral bearing, its psychological lesson.
Gogol leaves the husband and wife at the very hour of their most touching separation, and tells us rapidly the romance of a young man madly in love with a mistress who is dying. In the effervescence of his grief, the lover twice in succession tries to kill himself: the first time, by a pistol-shot in the head; somewhat later, when he is barely recovered, by throwing himself under the wheel of a passing carriage. Again he recovers; “and a year later,” says Gogol, “I met him in a fashionable salon. He was seated at a table, playing boston, and was saying in a free and easy tone, ‘Little Misery.’ Behind him, leaning on his chair, stood his young and pretty wife, toying with the counters in the basket.”