Murazov advises the Governor and pleads for Chichikov

Murazov advises the Governor and pleads for Chichikov at the point when the fraudulent-will affair has implicated both the prisoner and senior officials. Rather than deny wrongdoing, he asks the Governor-General to judge the evidence carefully, distinguish degrees of culpability, and treat even offenders as human beings capable of better conduct. The intervention turns a confrontation over punishment into a wider argument about equitable judgment and official responsibility; it ends with the Prince pardoning Chichikov but ordering him to depart at once.

The Prince’s Anger and the Case Against Chichikov

The Prince has Murazov admitted and immediately condemns Chichikov. He reminds Murazov that he defended and went bail for a man involved in conduct so disgraceful that, in the Prince’s view, even the lowest thief would not have attempted it. Murazov says he does not understand the reference, prompting the Prince to specify the fraudulent will and to insist that Chichikov deserved a public flogging.

Murazov does not claim that Chichikov is innocent. Instead, he says the case is not proven and that sufficient evidence against him is still lacking. The distinction is central to his intervention: he does not ask the Prince to excuse the alleged fraud, but resists treating accusation as established guilt. The Prince counters that the woman who impersonated the deceased is available as chief witness and orders that she be brought in and questioned before Murazov.

The dispute reaches beyond Chichikov. The Prince calls the affair disgraceful because leading officials, including the town Governor, have become implicated. He objects that Murazov would defend Chichikov from confinement among thieves and rogues when the corruption appears to touch the administration itself. Murazov replies that the Governor is an heir under the will and therefore has a certain right to intervene. He also describes the arrival of fortune hunters after a rich woman’s death without a precise and regular settlement of her property as an unsurprising consequence of human nature, not as proof that every participant has the same guilt.

A Plea to Judge People, Not Only Their Offenses

The Prince broadens his complaint, asking why officials commit fraud and declaring that he feels as though not one honest civil servant is available. Murazov answers with a less absolute view of the administration: the officials are human beings; some are worthy, nearly all are experienced in business, and many are unfortunately related to one another. His qualification acknowledges both competence and compromised connections without collapsing the whole body into a single verdict.

Asked why he has such a habit of defending rogues, Murazov states the principle behind his conduct. A person called a rogue remains a human being, he argues, and many errors arise from ignorance and stupidity rather than evil intent. People cause unhappiness to others through repeated faults even when they do not mean harm. He then turns the judgment back on the Prince, reminding him that he too has committed a grave injustice. The appeal is not simply an argument for leniency toward Chichikov: it asks a powerful judge to recognize his own fallibility before condemning others.

Murazov names the case of Dierpiennikov, whom the Prince had sentenced for treason under the Fundamental Laws. The Prince objects that the young man had violated the law and been found guilty. Murazov does not seek to justify him; he questions whether an inexperienced youth, tempted and led astray by others, should receive the same sentence as the principal participant, Voron-Drianni. Though both received equal punishment, Murazov insists, their criminality was not equal. The contrast gives his appeal a concrete measure: justice should distinguish a subordinate, inexperienced offender from the person who took the leading role.

Judgment, Confession, and the Limits of Punishment

The Prince is startled by the reminder and says that only recently he forwarded a recommendation to Saint Petersburg to remit part of Dierpiennikov’s sentence. Murazov explains that he is not withholding some unknown fact; rather, a circumstance might have helped the young man had he not refused to disclose it because doing so would injure another person. The act of withholding therefore complicates the Prince’s view of the case: the defendant’s silence was not necessarily evidence of indifference or further guilt.

Drawing on his own experience as a former chief of the gendarmery, Murazov urges calm inquiry into an accused person’s past conduct instead of an immediate denunciation. If an examiner alarms a suspect at the outset, he may make a real confession impossible. By contrast, questioning a person as one friend might question another can prompt him to tell everything. In that setting, Murazov says, the accused may neither ask for a reduction in punishment nor bear resentment, because he understands that the punishment comes from the law rather than personal hostility. His account makes the manner of investigation part of justice: a procedure that seeks truth through trust may serve the law more effectively than intimidation.

A young civil servant enters with a portfolio while the Prince falls into thought. The narrative describes him as already marked by care and hard work, and as someone whose greatest pleasure is laboring over a tangled case until he unravels it. His appearance briefly sets painstaking official work beside the surrounding doubts about venality and administrative judgment, though the conversation then moves beyond the evidentiary question to the Prince’s decision about the officials themselves.

Advising the Prince on Official Accountability

The Prince asks whether he has a right to let the case pass over and whether it would be just and honorable to leave the offending officials unpunished. Murazov refuses a definite answer. Human problems, he says, are difficult to solve; some people who act as rogues are inwardly rectitudinous, and a person drawn into a vicious circle may cease to be himself. His response does not erase wrongdoing. It cautions against assuming that a person’s offense exhausts his character or that punishment alone resolves the moral problem.

The Prince worries that leniency will invite contempt. If he allows the affair to pass, officials may say they have intimidated him and will not respect him. Murazov proposes a different exercise of authority: summon them, tell them that he knows everything, explain his own attitude as frankly as he has explained it to Murazov, and ask what each would have done in the same circumstances. This would neither conceal the facts nor simply abandon the case; it would make the officials confront the matter openly and participate in judging it.

The Prince doubts that such an appeal could change venal, meticulous officials, and fears that they would laugh at him. Murazov maintains that even the baser part of humanity retains some sense of equity. He argues that the Prince is currently thought ambitious, proud, inaccessible, and self-assured, and that frankness would give the officials an opportunity to see him differently. Murazov urges him to speak as though delivering not a personal message but one from God. The Prince does not promise an outcome; he says he will think it over and thanks Murazov for the advice.

Relief for the Hungry and Chichikov’s Departure

Murazov’s counsel extends from judgment of officials to practical service. He offers to send grain to the districts suffering most from famine and to oversee each person’s needs himself, saying he understands this work better than the officials. He also proposes speaking with the Old Believers, who may listen more readily to a plain man than to an official. He acknowledges that he may fail to calm them, but contrasts direct personal engagement with bureaucrats who merely draw up reports, lose themselves in documents, and accomplish nothing.

He refuses the Prince’s money for these purposes because he is ashamed to think of his own pocket while people are dying of hunger. He has grain in his own granaries and has already ordered another consignment from Siberia to arrive before the coming summer. The offer gives the scene a material counterpart to its argument about humane judgment: Murazov presents aid as personal responsibility, carried out through grain, attention to individual needs, and a willingness to approach people whom official channels cannot reach.

The Prince thanks Murazov and returns to the unresolved case, asking whether it is right to overlook it and whether the offending officials should go unpunished. Murazov’s answer remains guarded: the Prince cannot settle such questions with a simple formula, because human beings may be compromised yet retain a sense of rectitude. After considering his advice, the Prince accepts one immediate recommendation. Murazov suggests ordering Chichikov to leave town; the Prince agrees, instructs that he depart as quickly and as far away as possible, and says that he has pardoned him only because of Murazov’s efforts. The intervention thus wins Chichikov release without clearing him of the affair or allowing him to remain. It leaves the Prince with a broader, still-unresolved decision about how to confront the officials whose conduct has entangled the case.