The true envoy arrived and summoned the officials

The true inspector’s arrival and summons bring the central deception of The Government Inspector to an abrupt halt. After the town’s officials have mistaken Khlestakov for an investigator from Saint Petersburg, a gendarme announces that an imperial official has reached the inn and requires them all to appear immediately. The revelation turns their anxious expectations into a final stage picture: they remain standing, each caught in a distinct gesture, as the curtain falls before the real inspector is seen or the summons answered.

The Mistaken Expectation

The announcement overturns an error prepared by the officials themselves. At the outset, Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky reports that an inspector has come from Saint Petersburg incognito and with secret instructions. That description gives the officials a ready-made reason to fear scrutiny, but it does not identify the young man they later encounter as the genuine official. Their suspicion instead settles on Khlestakov, whose circumstances seem ominous to them: he is travelling toward the Saratov Governorate, has remained at the inn for a second week, has not paid his bills, and has scarcely left his room. Piotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky recounts these details as evidence of hidden importance; Anton Antonovich, alarmed, asks whether the stranger can really be the inspector.

The mistaken identification gathers force because the officials interpret ordinary evidence through their fear of an investigation. Khlestakov initially speaks haltingly to Anton Antonovich and says that he expects money from home and intends to pay. Later, his account of an imagined elevation to a department directorship—complete with thirty-five thousand couriers and trembling office staff—makes the officials more awed, not less. His boast gives them an extravagant picture of authority, while their own expectation supplies the connection to the feared inspector. The true arrival exposes the gap between the rank they have projected onto Khlestakov and the official who has actually been sent.

The Summons

The final announcement is delivered by a gendarme, not by the new official himself. He reports that an official from Saint Petersburg, sent by imperial order, has arrived and wants to see everyone at once. The official is stopping at the inn, the same kind of lodging that figured in the earlier suspicion surrounding Khlestakov. The detail makes the reversal immediate: the place associated with the false identification is now the stated location of the genuine authority.

The gendarme’s brief message changes the officials’ situation without showing what will happen after they obey. Until then, their attention has been captured by Khlestakov’s supposed connections and their own hopes of advancement. Anton Antonovich has even imagined that association with a man close to the ministers and court might carry him from his governorship toward the rank of general. The imperial summons replaces that fantasy with a demand from an authority whose arrival is no longer inferred from unpaid bills, travel plans, or boasts. It is announced as fact, and it leaves no time for the officials to manage the encounter on their own terms.

The Silent Tableau

The announcement produces a collective shock, and the stage direction converts it into stillness. The group shifts position and remains as if petrified; the final tableau then holds for almost a minute and a half. Anton Antonovich stands rigid at the center, hands extended and head thrown back. His wife and daughter strain toward him on one side, while the Postmaster turns toward the audience in a posture likened to a question mark. The arrangement makes bewilderment visible across the group rather than assigning it to a single speaker.

The other officials are fixed in similarly telling poses. Artemy Filippovich Zemlianika inclines his head as though listening. The Judge crouches with outspread hands, his lips pursed as if he might whistle or speak. Korobkin faces the audience with narrowed eyes and a hostile gesture directed at Anton Antonovich. At the edge of the group, Piotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky and Piotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky gesture toward one another, open-mouthed and wide-eyed; the other guests also remain stiff. Their positions preserve the officials’ different reactions within one shared paralysis: alarm, disbelief, attention, hostility, and mutual agitation all become visible, but none can yet alter the outcome.

Consequence and Dramatic Design

The true inspector’s arrival resolves the question of whether the suspected visitor was genuine, but the play withholds the inspection itself. No interview with the new official, response to his order, or account of punishment follows onstage. Instead, the curtain falls on the moment when the officials must confront the reality their misidentification had displaced. The summons confirms that the feared authority exists and is present in the town; the frozen tableau makes the consequences imminent without narrating them.

That ending gives the arrival its force as a reversal rather than a completed reckoning. The officials’ conduct has already been exposed to the audience through their fear, their efforts to secure favor, and their deference to Khlestakov’s invented grandeur. Now the genuine representative of imperial power is at the inn, and the group that had tried to anticipate and manipulate an inspection cannot move beyond its first response. The sustained silence turns their failure of judgment into the final image of the comedy: the machinery of local authority is momentarily immobilized by the arrival of the authority it had mistaken, feared, and tried to flatter.