Chichikov’s release and departure from town end his immediate imprisonment but not the crisis that has exposed his fraud and entangled officials. The Governor-General grants a pardon at Murazov’s urging, with a strict condition: Chichikov must leave at once. The departure is both practical expulsion and an unsettled moral threshold. Chichikov regains his liberty, yet the narrative presents him not as his former self restored, but as a man diminished and suspended between an old life and a possible new one.

The pardon and its condition

The decisive turn comes when Murazov asks the Prince whether the case against the offending officials can be passed over. Murazov does not claim that the matter is simple: he argues that some scoundrels may nevertheless be rectifiable, and that people caught in a vicious circle can cease to act as themselves. The Prince remains concerned with the consequences of leniency, including whether the officials will mistake it for intimidation. Murazov urges him instead to conceal nothing and speak plainly, as if delivering a message beyond private interest.

The Prince then authorizes Chichikov’s release, but couples mercy to removal. Murazov is to tell him to depart as quickly as possible, and the farther away he goes, the better. The Prince also makes clear that Chichikov has been pardoned only through Murazov’s efforts. The order is therefore not acquittal or reconciliation: liberty is granted under a boundary, and Chichikov must leave the town in which the scandal has gathered around him.

A compromised freedom

When Murazov reaches the prisoner, Chichikov is enjoying a hearty dinner delivered hot from an excellent kitchen. That comfort sits uneasily beside the urgency of his release. Murazov has learned that Chichikov has been dealing with the bribery network and that his lawyer played the leading part in those transactions. He warns that the conspiracy may be exposed; if it is, the person who acted on Chichikov’s behalf could drag others down rather than accept blame alone. Chichikov’s freedom thus arrives with a renewed threat of consequences for the corruption he has continued to rely on.

Murazov also turns the moment into an appeal about the difference between material wealth and spiritual life. He asks why people struggle and even kill for riches while neglecting the world to come, and tells Chichikov to cease thinking of dead souls and attend instead to his living one. The advice echoes the repentance Chichikov had earlier professed, but the present scene shows that his conduct has not simply followed that declaration: he has returned to dealings with bribe-takers. Murazov warns him not to trifle with the chance before him and says that he himself will leave the town the next day.

From prison to the road

Murazov’s words leave Chichikov thoughtful. He acknowledges to himself that it is time to move, and leaves the prison with a warder carrying his effects. Selifan and Petrushka are overjoyed to see their master free. Chichikov speaks kindly to them and tells them to pack. Selifan agrees, noting that the heavy snowfall will have made the roads firmer and that he is weary of the town. The practical details give the departure its immediate shape: a prisoner becomes a traveler again, his belongings carried out behind him and his household ready to follow.

Before leaving, Chichikov makes an unobtrusive trip into town—not to say farewell, which recent events might have made awkward, but to visit the shop where he bought the cloth for his latest suit. He purchases four more arshins of the same smoked-grey material shot with flame colour and pays the tailor double to finish the garments quickly. The coat and breeches are ready by the following morning. While the horses are being put to, he tries them on and notices a bald patch where he has torn out his hair in despair. Even as he prepares to depart, attention to his clothes and appearance persists; the old habits of self-presentation have not vanished with the prison door opening.

Departure and moral suspension

After paying the tailor, Chichikov leaves town. The narrator stresses the change in him: he is no longer the old Chichikov, but a ruin of what he had been. His condition is compared to a building recently demolished for a replacement that has not yet begun because the architect’s plans have not arrived. The image makes the ending provisional. Something has been pulled down, but no firm design for what should take its place is yet available. Murazov, too, has departed earlier, traveling in a tilt-waggon with Ivan Potapitch.

Chichikov’s departure also marks a transition in the public crisis rather than its resolution. An hour after he leaves, the Governor-General summons officials to a private meeting before his own departure for Saint Petersburg. He tells them that a scandal has exposed further dishonourable matters and that he knows the identity of the ringleader. He acknowledges the danger of seeming severe, but says he must act as an instrument of justice. He then offers to intercede with the Throne if the officials grant his request, framing the appeal around the country’s need for service and sacrifice.

The Governor-General recognizes that bribery cannot be eradicated by penalties alone: its roots have gone deep, and dishonest traffic has become a mainstay even for people not innately venal. He describes an unlawful second administration that has grown beside the legal one and acquired greater practical power. This speech widens the meaning of Chichikov’s exit. The individual fraudster is sent away, but the system that made his dealings possible remains under scrutiny. His release closes one immediate episode; his altered state, his unbroken attachment to worldly advantage, and the officials’ entrenched shadow administration leave the larger moral and political reckoning unresolved.