Nozdrev exposes Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov’s trade in dead serfs at the Governor’s ball, abruptly turning a private, carefully obscured transaction into a public scandal. The disclosure is both an exposure and a distortion: Nozdrev blurts out the essential fact while behaving so absurdly that the listeners know his reputation as a liar, yet cannot simply dismiss what he says. The scene converts Chichikov’s social success into humiliation and gives the town a new, bewildering subject to circulate and investigate.

The Ball Before the Outburst

Chichikov enters the episode with an advantageous public reputation. After his purchases have become the town’s talk, he is regarded as a millionaire, and the inhabitants’ earlier liking for him has grown stronger. At the Governor’s ball, however, his conduct unsettles the company. He devotes himself to the Governor’s daughter, recounting adventures from different parts of the world and touching on Greek philosophy, while the young woman yawns. The other women take offense: one deliberately brushes past and jostles the daughter, while another delivers a sarcastic remark. Chichikov either fails to hear it or pretends not to, a choice the narration marks as unwise.

Dissatisfaction spreads across the women’s faces, and the ball’s observers compose verses at Chichikov’s expense. A tacit proscription comes to include both him and the young woman. This social chill forms the immediate backdrop to the disclosure: Chichikov is already losing command of the room when the man most likely to make a scene appears. His apparent ascent as a rich, admired guest is poised to turn into exposure.

Nozdrev Names the Trade

Nozdrev enters from an adjoining room in an elevated, apparently tipsy state, leading the Public Prosecutor by the arm. He has been drinking tea mixed with rum and is described as lying without restraint. Chichikov sees him from a distance and decides to leave, but the Governor catches him and asks him to arbitrate a dispute between two ladies over whether a woman’s love lasts. Before he can escape, Nozdrev spots him and approaches.

Calling Chichikov the landowner of Kherson, Nozdrev asks whether he has recently been trading in departed souls. He then turns to the Governor and announces that Chichikov traffics in dead peasants, adding that he himself would hang him if he had his way. Nozdrev presses the charge with a specific recollection: Chichikov had asked him to sell his dead souls. He also connects that request to the news that Chichikov has purchased peasants worth three million roubles for transfer. The distinction between the dead people and their proposed transfer is precisely what makes the scheme so strange to the listeners; Nozdrev’s blustering manner does not make the underlying subject any less startling.

The disclosure is not delivered as a calm accusation or a carefully supported account. Nozdrev repeatedly calls Chichikov a swine, insists that the two men were once inseparable, and claims that he would have named Chichikov above his own father if forced to choose between them. He then tries to kiss him, calling the kisses baisers, and nearly falls to the floor in the attempt. The professed intimacy and the denunciation collide in the same breath: his claim to be Chichikov’s best friend lends the outburst a personal, theatrical force, even as his drunkenness and habitual lying make him an unreliable witness.

Public Reaction and Immediate Reversal

The Governor, the Public Prosecutor, and Chichikov are too taken aback to answer. Nozdrev continues speaking, but the company edges away and turns a deaf ear to his further babbling. His loud laughter and repeated references to dead souls have already carried across the ballroom, however, catching the attention of people in its remote corners. The guests stand in dumb wonder, confronted with a commodity they do not understand. Some women exchange knowing, ill-natured winks and sarcastic smiles; that visible response deepens Chichikov’s confusion even though everyone knows Nozdrev as a notorious liar.

The scene reverses the value of Chichikov’s carefully cultivated standing. He had been treated as a millionaire and welcomed into the town’s social circle; now he is exposed as occupying an ambiguous, suspect role. The public has not established the mechanics of his purchase, but it has heard enough to doubt him. As the narration observes, even a madman’s foolish words can sow suspicion among more sensible people. The scandal’s force therefore lies not in a proof completed at the ball, but in the dangerous fact that a memorable accusation has been spoken aloud before an audience already primed to wonder about Chichikov’s purchases.

The Ball’s Aftermath

Chichikov tries to put the incident aside and recover his composure. He takes part in whist, but twice blunders; the President of the Local Council is surprised that a player who had been so careful could throw away a particular king of spades that he had been trusting. At supper, Nozdrev has been removed after his conduct becomes intolerable to the ladies: he has seated himself on the floor and tugged at the skirts of women passing by. Chichikov finds the remaining company uncomfortable and leaves before the meal is finished, earlier than he usually returns to the inn.

Alone in his room, whose communicating door is blocked by a wardrobe, he remains distressed, with an aching heart and a sense of oppressive emptiness. His response is not simply fear of legal consequences; he is pained by being publicly made to reveal that he has been playing a strange and ambiguous part. Later, he recognizes that the ball itself is not his chief grievance. What vexes him is the exposure, the cold-shouldering of people whose vanity he had just been criticizing, and his sense that he himself contributed to the catastrophe. Yet he does not direct his anger at himself. Instead, he makes Nozdrev a scapegoat and mentally abuses him and his ancestors.

From Scandal to Townwide Rumor

The public exposure becomes part of a broader wave of speculation. Two women give the Public Prosecutor accounts of both the dead-soul purchases and a supposed plan to abduct the Governor’s daughter, then leave to spread the story through the town. Within half an hour, the town is stirred up. The men’s faction focuses on the dead souls, while the women’s faction concentrates on the alleged abduction, embellishing it into competing stories about Chichikov’s supposed love affair, a deserted wife, and the Governor’s family. The rumor about the daughter is not established as fact; it shows how quickly the ball’s scandal becomes entangled with invented explanations.

The officials’ subsequent inquiries do not immediately resolve who Chichikov is or what his dealings mean. When questioned, Manilov offers an extravagant eulogy of him but does not clarify the transaction; Sobakevitch says the souls he sold had been alive, while disclaiming responsibility for what might happen later. Efforts to obtain information from Chichikov’s servants produce little: Petrushka gives the officials the smell of his living quarters, and Selifan says only that his master had served the state and worked in Customs. The investigation leaves the officials still uncertain about Chichikov’s identity, while the dead-soul trade has become one of the two central questions animating the town.

The larger consequences continue beyond the ball. Later, amid legal claims and rumors surrounding the Khanasarov inheritance, information about Chichikov’s purchases of dead souls and his earlier collusion in contraband reaches the authorities. The ball does not itself settle those matters, but it marks a decisive break in his ability to keep his scheme socially invisible. Its grotesque comedy—an accusation delivered by a drunken liar, accompanied by unwanted kisses and public laughter—also makes the disclosure memorable. The absurd performance does not cancel the truth it blurts out; it gives the truth a form that the town cannot stop repeating.