N. City officials panic and investigate Chichikov's identity when talk of his purchases of dead souls converges with official warnings about a note-forger and a fugitive. The inquiry is meant to establish who he is and what he has bought, but instead multiplies rumors: each witness supplies a fragment or distortion, and Nozdrev’s confident inventions overwhelm what little the officials know. The episode makes bureaucratic uncertainty itself the engine of alarm, while the threatened arrival of a new Governor-General gives the town’s private suspicions the force of a public crisis.

Rumor and the divided town

The inquiry grows from a dispute that has already spread beyond the transactions. After the women’s party argues that the dead souls are a diversion concealing an attempted abduction of the Governor’s daughter, some men join that side despite being insulted by their former allies. The men’s group, by contrast, insists the abduction story is false and turns its attention to the dead souls, which it regards as a threat to good order. The competing explanations do not clarify events; they expose how readily the town’s social factions turn uncertainty into accusation.

The male officials’ attention is sharpened by the appointment of a new Governor-General. They anticipate transfers, censures, and the official dinners that accompany a new superior’s arrival, and fear that the rumors may provoke an unwelcome investigation. The Director of the Medical Department imagines that talk of dead people might refer to hospital patients who died during an outbreak of fever. The President of the Local Council, who had allowed the transfers to be registered and represented Plushkin, suddenly wonders whether the souls really are dead and whether his own role will become incriminating. Panic passes from one official to another, replacing the question of what happened with the fear of what the new authority might conclude.

Official warnings and a search for identity

Two documents intensify the alarm. One reports that a forger of banknotes, using several aliases, is operating in the province; the other warns that a criminal who escaped arrest in a neighboring province should be apprehended if a suspicious, undocumented person appears. Neither document identifies Chichikov. Yet the officials recall that they do not know who he really is, and that his vague account of a career injured in the service of Truth and of enemies seeking his life could be fitted to the new suspicions. They do not establish that he is a forger or brigand; they become unable to dismiss either possibility.

The officials question the landowners who sold him souls, hoping to learn what the transactions involved and whether Chichikov disclosed his purpose. Korobotchka reports a price of fifteen roubles per soul, mentions feathers and a possible future purchase of lard, and thereby leaves the investigators with a jumble of unrelated commercial details rather than an explanation. Manilov praises Chichikov’s character and friendship but says nothing that illuminates the deal. Sobakevitch calls him an excellent fellow and insists that the souls he sold were alive, while disclaiming responsibility for what might happen during the transfer. Each answer reflects its speaker’s interests and understanding; none gives the officials a dependable account of Chichikov’s identity or scheme.

The servants are approached indirectly through their attendants, another sign that the investigation proceeds by improvised channels. Petrushka yields little beyond the smell of his living quarters, while Selifan says only that his master had worked in government service and in Customs. After these inquiries, the officials still do not know who Chichikov is. Their remaining question is whether he should be arrested as a disreputable person—or whether he might himself have grounds to detain them for their own lack of respectability. They arrange a final debate at the Chief of Police’s residence.

The meeting and the Captain Kopeikin theory

When the officials assemble, the strain of the rumors and documents is visible in their altered appearance: several have grown thinner, and their clothes hang loosely. The Postmaster is among the few who remain composed, recalling that he has seen several Governor-Generals come and go while he has stayed in his post. But the meeting lacks a guiding intelligence. Speakers contradict themselves, and the officials’ shared first impression—that Chichikov looks and speaks too respectably to be a forger or disguised brigand—gives way when the Postmaster announces that he knows the answer.

He identifies Chichikov as Captain Kopeikin, then tells the story of a wounded veteran of the 1812 campaign. Kopeikin had lost an arm and a leg, received no state provision, and went to St. Petersburg to seek assistance after his father could not support him. The account ends with Kopeikin being taken away by police; the Postmaster then speculates that a band of robbers appeared in the forests of Riazan less than two months later and begins to connect its leader with the captain. The theory is an attempted explanation, not a confirmed identification. The Head of the Police Department points out the decisive mismatch: Kopeikin had lost limbs, whereas Chichikov had not. The Postmaster recognizes his mistake and tries to rescue it with a fanciful appeal to mechanical wooden legs that could make their wearer vanish at the touch of a spring.

The officials do not return to reliable evidence after that failure. Another theory makes Chichikov Napoleon, escaped from St. Helena and traveling in disguise. The narrator places this speculation against the recent memory of the French invasion of Russia and popular prophecies that Napoleon was Antichrist and would escape to rule the world. The notion shows how the town’s fear can recruit even grand, far-fetched beliefs when ordinary facts have ceased to satisfy it.

Nozdrev’s testimony and the failure of the inquiry

As a last resort, the officials summon Nozdrev, who had first spoken of the dead souls and is believed to be intimate with Chichikov. He has spent four days shut in his room marking cards, but agrees to come when he learns that a novice card-player will be at the Chief of Police’s house. His testimony is delivered with assurance and cannot be treated as dependable. He confirms that Chichikov bought dead souls, claims to have sold him some himself, and calls him a spy, asserting that Chichikov had been known as an informer at school. He also says Chichikov forged banknotes and invents a story in which sealed counterfeit notes become genuine while a house is under guard.

Asked about the supposed abduction, Nozdrev claims that he had agreed to help Chichikov and then embellishes the story with a church, a priest, a fee of seventy-five roubles, a carriage, and arrangements for relays of horses. He recognizes that the claim may get him into trouble but continues adding details. When the officials ask whether Chichikov could be Napoleon, his answer wanders so far from the question that most of the audience leaves. The Chief of Police eventually dismisses the account as useless. Nozdrev has supplied a profusion of particulars, but their abundance does not make them evidence; his testimony deepens confusion rather than resolving it.

Consequences and narrative significance

The investigation ends without identifying Chichikov. The officials’ procedures—questioning sellers, probing servants, convening a debate, and consulting a supposed intimate—produce no sound conclusion because fear has made speculation seem as persuasive as fact. The episode’s comedy rests on the disproportion between the gravity with which the officials treat their theories and the weakness of their grounds: Captain Kopeikin, Napoleon, a forger, and a brigand can all briefly occupy the same empty space where knowledge should be.

That uncertainty also has a social consequence. The officials are not only afraid of Chichikov; they fear that the new Governor-General may scrutinize their own conduct, including the registration of the transfers. Their attempts to discover whether Chichikov is dangerous therefore shade into anxiety about whether they themselves may be exposed. The inquiry does not solve the mystery, but it reveals the town’s susceptibility to rumor, its dependence on an authority expected from outside, and the ease with which official procedure becomes a theater of collective alarm.