Chichikov registers his serf purchases at the local office in a scene where a scheme built on dead peasants acquires official force. The transaction depends not simply on the landowners’ signatures but on purchase lists, powers of attorney, witnesses, fees, and the favor of senior officials. Its completion makes administrative paperwork both the instrument of Chichikov’s fraud and a comic portrait of a bureaucracy willing to smooth the path for a well-connected buyer whose supposed acquisitions total nearly a hundred thousand roubles.

From Private Bargain to Official Application

Chichikov arrives at the municipal offices seeking to register peasants he has purchased from landowners in the district. He presents a purchase list and explains that some vendors are present while others have supplied powers of attorney. The transaction has so far taken place privately; registration is the necessary next step in converting those bargains into recognized transfers.

The officials do not immediately process his papers. When Chichikov first asks where serf-indenture business is conducted, a clerk asks what kind of business he has in mind. Once directed to the relevant desk, Chichikov states that he wishes to make an application. He then asks whether the transaction can be completed that day, but Ivan Antonovitch replies that further proof is needed that no impediments exist. The answer makes clear that the purchase list alone cannot carry the deal: the administration must supply its own procedural approval.

Chichikov tries to accelerate matters by invoking his close friendship with Ivan Grigorievitch, the President of the Council. The clerk says that the President alone is not enough and that others are customarily involved. The exchange captures the uneasy overlap between formal procedure and personal connection. Chichikov does not abandon the paperwork; instead, he uses his relationships to move it through the institution.

The Officials Become Participants

A clerk escorts Chichikov and Manilov to the President’s room, where they discover Sobakevitch already present. The President greets Chichikov warmly, and the room’s friendly reunion abruptly exposes the overlap between the supposedly private deals and the public office charged with registering them: two of the sellers, Manilov and Sobakevitch, are now together with their buyer before an official who has already heard about the sale of souls.

The President congratulates Chichikov on the purchases, embarrassing him because he had bargained with the two landowners in strict privacy. Yet the President’s response is not suspicion or investigation. When a letter from Plushkin arrives, the President reads it and agrees to act as his attorney in the transaction. Chichikov asks that the deeds be registered immediately because he plans to leave town the next day. The President agrees to complete them that day but insists that Chichikov remain in town, issuing orders to begin the process.

Sobakevitch identifies the need for witnesses and proposes calling the Public Prosecutor and the Inspector of the Medical Department, describing them as men with little to do. The President sends for them and for other officials. Chichikov also asks that the representative of a landowning lady be summoned. The President promises to accommodate him, specifically asking that he not give the officials gratuities: no friend of his, he says, pays even a copper. The prohibition is delivered as a mark of friendship rather than as a sign that the transaction will be scrutinized more closely.

A Paper Trail for the Dead

The official proceedings give the purchased peasants an elaborate documentary presence. Sobakevitch’s list, which Chichikov had admired for its neatness and accuracy, records each serf’s trade, age, and pedigree, with marginal notes on conduct and sobriety. The detail contrasts sharply with the defining fact of the scheme: these are dead people whose names remain usable within a living administrative system.

When the President asks why Chichikov has bought peasants apart from land, Chichikov says that he intends to transfer them elsewhere. He identifies the destination as Kherson, consistent with the story he has devised to make the purchases appear lawful. The assertion is not supported by an actual settlement; it is the legal-sounding explanation that allows the officials to process a transfer of people without land.

Witnesses arrive in response to the summons, including the Public Prosecutor, the medical inspector, the son of Father Cyril, and Father Cyril himself. Substitutes and supernumeraries are recruited from lower-ranking staff where necessary. Each witness signs with a list of titles and qualifications, and the signatures vary in style from printed characters to flowing and nearly unrecognizable handwriting. Their formal display lends the transaction an imposing documentary surface, even as the procession of available officials and substitute witnesses makes the ceremony feel routine and pliable.

Fees, Favor, and the Transaction’s Consequences

After the deeds have been signed, docketed, and registered, Chichikov pays only a small amount in government percentage and publication fees. Ivan Antonovitch has handled the matter with considerable address, and the President has ordered that Chichikov pay only half the usual charges; the remaining half is somehow debited to another applicant registering serfs. The reduction is more than a courtesy: it shows how administrative costs can be shifted through official discretion, lowering the price of making the fraudulent transaction public in the prescribed form.

The President’s satisfaction grows when he sees the total: nearly a hundred thousand roubles. He praises Chichikov for having made a fine haul, and Chichikov agrees. The large sum is the visible financial consequence of a chain that began with landowners’ willingness to sell names that still carried tax obligations and continued through documents, official witnesses, and favorable fees. Under the periodic census system, owners remain liable for taxes on registered peasants who have died; Chichikov’s plan exploits that interval by acquiring the names and presenting them for transfer as if they represented living settlers.

The registration therefore marks a decisive change in the status of the scheme, not its exposure. What began as a private purchase has been signed, recorded, and entered into official circulation, while the officials who authorize it treat the buyer as a friend and congratulate him on its scale. Later, when town gossip and inquiry turn toward the dead-soul purchases, the same transactions become grounds for alarm: the paperwork that initially gives Chichikov’s plan legitimacy also makes it possible for others to identify and discuss what he has done. The scene’s comedy rests on that reversal. The bureaucracy performs its procedures carefully enough to validate the sale, yet its human network of friendship, convenience, and discretionary fees helps the fiction pass as business.