Nozdryov cheats at everything

Stopping at a roadside inn for suckling pig with horseradish and sour cream, Chichikov runs into Nozdryov, fresh from the fair where he has lost everything including his watch and one side-whisker, travelling with his mild brother-in-law Mizhuyev. Nozdryov talks without pause — seventeen bottles of champagne, Lieutenant Kuvshinnikov, a stolen puppy — and bullies Chichikov into visiting his estate. There he is shown a wolf cub fed raw meat, a blind Crimean bitch, a mill missing its flutterer, a forest bought while its owner was at the fair, and a barrel-organ that will not stop playing "Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre". When Chichikov finally asks for the dead souls, Nozdryov refuses to sell and tries instead to trade them against a stallion, dogs, the barrel-organ, cards, then checkers — at which he cheats openly. The row ends with servants called to beat Chichikov, and the arrival of the District Chief of Police to arrest Nozdryov for thrashing the landowner Maksimov.

The manic register, placed between two immovable ones. Nozdryov is the only landowner who cannot be transacted with at all, because he wants play rather than profit, and the chapter's velocity enacts him. Structurally it arms the plot: the one man told the secret is the one man guaranteed to repeat it.