Chichikov’s arrest is the abrupt collapse of the respectability he has fashioned through fraud. The authorities’ investigation brings his earlier dead-soul purchases and customs dealings into view, while a separate charge involving a woman induced to witness a will confronts him with evidence of a new fraud. Summoned before the Governor-General and ordered to prison, he loses his freedom, his papers, and the confidence that had carried him through provincial society. In the cell, remorse takes hold: the man who had just been admiring his new clothes now fears that another day of confinement will destroy him. The arrest turns a comic performance of prosperity into a crisis of judgment and punishment, and sets the stage for Murazov’s intervention.

Causes and the Gathering Investigation

The immediate arrest follows a broad inquiry into the affairs surrounding Madam Khanasarov’s immense estate. Relatives appeared to press claims, while rumors multiplied about the validity of two wills, larceny, concealment of funds, Chichikov’s purchases of dead souls, and his collusion in contraband during his service in the Customs Department. The investigation reached into episodes he believed known only to himself and the four walls. For a time he remained unaware that the authorities possessed such information; a confidential friend’s letter hinted at possible legal trouble but reassured him that matters would be handled. Chichikov took comfort in that assurance rather than recognizing the danger.

His confidence was reinforced by a more immediate and visible preoccupation: a new suit. When his tailor arrived, Chichikov examined a smoked-grey frockcoat shot with flame colour and breeches that concealed the deficiencies of his legs, then posed before a mirror in a carefully coordinated outfit. The tailor’s claim that no one outside Saint Petersburg could have made the clothes better, and his own advertising as a foreign costumer from London and Paris, extend the episode’s satire of borrowed prestige. Chichikov is absorbed in the appearance of advancement just as the concealed record of his conduct is being assembled against him.

The Summons and Confrontation

The change from self-display to state coercion comes without warning. A gendarme enters with the order that Chichikov present himself before the Governor-General. In full uniform, with helmet plume, crossed shoulder-belts, and a huge sword, the messenger appears to him like an entire army embodied in one man. A second gendarme waits outside, and a coach is ready beneath the window. Chichikov cannot prepare or negotiate: still wearing his fashionable suit, he is taken away with an escort beside him.

At the Governor-General’s residence, an aide-de-camp sends him directly in to meet the Prince. Passing couriers and dispatches, Chichikov imagines that he may be sent to Siberia without a trial. The Prince, standing among portfolios, ledgers, and dispatch-boxes, tells him that he had once spared him and allowed him to remain in town instead of going to prison, but that he has answered this clemency by returning to fraud. The specific charge now put to him is that the woman he induced to witness a certain will has been arrested and will confront him. Chichikov’s sight dims at the revelation.

The Prince’s Judgment and Chichikov’s Plea

Chichikov first asks what dishonourable fraud the Prince means, trembling as he does so. Once the charge is stated, he offers to tell the whole truth and admits guilt, but tries to limit his responsibility by claiming that rascals led him astray. The Prince rejects this defense. In his judgment, Chichikov’s record contains more felonies than even a hardened liar could invent, and his gains have come through trickery and theft. The Prince orders that he be conveyed to prison and kept there with other rogues and thieves until trial. His rebuke makes social rank part of the indictment: the poor men in smocks and sheepskins who will share Chichikov’s confinement are contrasted with the well-dressed prisoner before him.

Chichikov answers the order with increasingly desperate pleas for mercy. He invokes the Prince’s family and asks to be spared for his aged mother; then he admits that his earlier claim to have a wife and children was false. He insists that he had always desired family life and the respect of his fellows, but presents himself as driven by circumstances and beset by temptations, enemies, and despoilers. The speech attempts to recast a long pattern of calculated wrongdoing as a struggle imposed on him by the world. His tears and fall at the Prince’s feet do not change the decision. When the Prince calls for the escort, Chichikov clings to his knees and then to his leg, insisting that he will not leave until mercy is granted. The polished clothes that had been the focus of his private admiration now drag across the floor with him.

Imprisonment and Immediate Consequences

The gendarmes remove Chichikov despite his resistance. In the prison cell, the change in circumstance is rendered through concrete deprivation: the room is damp and mouldy, the window barred, the table unvarnished, and the stove so defective that smoke escapes without bringing warmth. He has not been allowed to take even the necessities with him. His dispatch-box, containing his booty, is also out of reach; the deeds recording the dead-soul transactions have been left in a functionary’s hands.

The loss of the box and deeds gives the imprisonment an immediate material as well as personal force. Chichikov rolls about the floor, and remorse gnaws at him as he considers what has happened. He concludes that if he must endure another twenty-four hours of this misery, there will no longer be a Chichikov in the world. The man who had trusted a reassuring letter and delighted in a new suit is now reduced to fear, confinement, and the prospect of personal ruin. Yet the arrest does not end in isolation: an hour after his arrival, Murazov enters the cell. His appearance brings Chichikov intense relief and opens the next stage of the narrative, in which the prisoner’s crisis becomes the occasion for an appeal to moral change.

Narrative Significance

The arrest converts the story’s recurring traffic in reputation and appearance into a direct confrontation with the state. Chichikov had become the talk of the town after his purchases and enjoyed the standing of a millionaire; the investigation now uncovers a past broader and more compromising than the public had understood. His new clothes cannot protect him from the documents, testimony, and official authority assembled against him. The contrast between the fashionable suit and the prison’s damp cell makes the reversal visible: what had signified his imagined ascent becomes part of the spectacle of his humiliation.

The scene also draws a distinction between admission and transformation. Chichikov confesses to particular lies and says he is guilty, but his plea still shifts responsibility onto circumstances and other people. The Prince’s decision is therefore not altered by tears or elaborate self-explanation. At the same time, the final entrance of Murazov keeps the arrest from being only a closing punishment: confinement and remorse create the conditions for the spiritual intervention that follows, without yet proving that Chichikov has changed.