Chichikov–Prince legal confrontation

The legal confrontation between Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov and the Governor-General (the Prince) brings the fugitive’s self-justifying story face to face with an authority that has already shown him clemency. Its decisive movement is from accusation to attempted plea: Chichikov admits guilt but claims diminished responsibility, while the Prince treats his record as proof of a settled career of fraud and sends him to prison. Their conflict is at once legal and theatrical, staged around the contrast between the Prince’s command and Chichikov’s increasingly desperate performance of remorse.

Summons and Prior Clemency

The confrontation begins abruptly, interrupting Chichikov as he admires his new clothes before a mirror. A gendarme announces that he must present himself before the Governor-General. The elaborate uniform—helmet, horsehair plume, crossed shoulder-belts, and gigantic sword—makes the order seem less like an invitation than an overwhelming display of state power. Chichikov has no opportunity to change or prepare: still wearing his fashionable smoked-grey suit, he is taken by coach with a gendarme beside him.

At the Prince’s residence, an aide-de-camp ushers him straight into the study. Chichikov passes through rooms where dispatches are being handled, then finds the Prince among portfolios, ledgers, and dispatch-boxes. The setting makes the encounter unmistakably official: the Prince’s authority is backed by records and administration, while Chichikov arrives under escort, fearful that he will be sent to Siberia without a trial.

The Prince’s opening accusation reaches back to an earlier act of mercy. He says that he had previously allowed Chichikov to remain in town instead of sending him to prison, but that Chichikov repaid this clemency by returning to fraud. That history makes the summons more than a first reckoning. In the Prince’s view, Chichikov has been given an opportunity and has answered it by repeating the conduct that brought him under suspicion.

The Will and the Charges

The specific new charge concerns a woman whom Chichikov induced to witness a will. The Prince tells him that she has been arrested and that he will be confronted with her. At this disclosure, Chichikov’s vision seems to darken. The accusation converts a general suspicion of dishonesty into a case tied to an identifiable witness and an alleged fraudulent act.

Chichikov asks what dishonourable fraud the Prince means, trembling as he speaks. When the charge is made explicit, he promises to tell the whole truth and admits that he is guilty, but immediately qualifies the admission: he says that he is not as guilty as the Prince believes because rascals led him astray. His answer thus combines confession with an attempt to redirect responsibility. He acknowledges wrongdoing without accepting the Prince’s account of its extent or source.

The Prince rejects that distinction. He says that Chichikov cannot have been led astray and points to the felonies recorded against his name, declaring that he believes Chichikov has never obtained a kopeck except by trickery and theft. His judgment is sweeping: instead of treating the will affair as an isolated lapse, he presents it as one instance in a lifelong pattern. He orders Chichikov held in prison with other accused rogues and thieves until trial, calling even this a lenient response.

Pleading and Rejection

As the Prince orders the proceedings, Chichikov changes from denial and qualification to direct entreaty. He asks for mercy by invoking an aged mother and calls upon the Prince as a father of a family. The appeal fails because the Prince recalls Chichikov’s earlier plea on behalf of a wife and children he did not possess. To the Prince, the new claim is not a credible disclosure but another expedient use of family feeling.

Chichikov then admits that he lied about having a wife and children. He nevertheless insists that he had always desired a wife and wished to fulfil the duties of a man and citizen and earn the respect of his fellows and the authorities. He attributes his course to circumstances, describing a life in which he had to make a living amid wiles, temptations, enemies, and despoilers. The image he offers is of a barque tossed by tempestuous waves: it recasts a career of deception as a struggle against forces that overwhelmed him. The Prince, however, has already interpreted the pattern as evidence of deliberate and habitual dishonour.

The scene sharpens that disagreement through the difference between what Chichikov says and what he does. He weeps, falls at the Prince’s feet, and begs for mercy while still dressed in the polished, expensive-looking clothes in which he had been admiring himself. The image of a self-fashioned gentleman collapsing into a supplicant complicates his appeal: his language asks to be judged as a man driven by hardship, while his visible finery and the record the Prince cites make that self-presentation difficult to accept.

Removal and the Limits of Mercy

The Prince rings for assistance and orders Chichikov taken away. Chichikov clutches his knees and insists that he will not leave until mercy is granted; when the Prince repeats the order, Chichikov hangs onto his leg so tenaciously that he is dragged along the floor. The plea becomes a physical obstruction to the sentence, but it does not alter the Prince’s decision. The Prince struggles to free himself and again orders the prisoner removed.

Two gendarmes eventually tear Chichikov away and carry him out, pale and dishevelled. The contrast between the official command and the desperate grip gives the confrontation its final shape: Chichikov can still plead and cling, but the state’s agents can remove him. His earlier clemency has not been renewed, and the immediate outcome is imprisonment pending trial. At the threshold, the party encounters Murazov, and the sight revives a ray of hope in Chichikov; in this scene, however, that encounter only marks the boundary of the Prince’s failed mercy and the beginning of a possible appeal elsewhere.

Dramatic and Moral Stakes

The exchange is built around competing accounts of agency. Chichikov describes himself as a flawed man pressed by circumstance, capable of wishing for an honourable domestic and civic life even while admitting that he lied and acted wrongly. The Prince reads the accumulated record as a stable moral identity: not a single fraud committed under pressure, but a succession of crimes and a life in which honest gain is absent. Their disagreement therefore concerns not only what happened in the will affair but how the evidence of a person’s past should govern judgment in the present.

The episode also turns official power into physical staging. The Prince stands behind administrative papers; Chichikov enters under guard, dressed for display rather than prepared for arrest. He then falls at the Prince’s feet and clings to his leg, trying to convert proximity and personal supplication into clemency. The attempt fails, and the gendarmes carry him away. The movement from escorted arrival to bodily resistance makes the legal confrontation concrete: the conflict over whether Chichikov deserves mercy ends, for now, with an order enforced rather than an argument resolved.