Two ladies invent an elopement

Two ladies — the Lady Pleasant in All Respects and the Merely Pleasant Lady — meet over scallops and a dress pattern, then get to the news. Korobochka has been to the Arch-priest's wife with her story: a man came in the night demanding her dead souls. From this the Lady Pleasant in All Respects deduces the truth in one stroke — the dead souls are a cover, and Chichikov means to elope with the Governor's daughter. They demolish the girl's complexion, decide Nozdryov is an accomplice, and stir up the whole town within half an hour. The town splits into a men's party worrying at the dead souls and a women's at the elopement, and the women's version is far better organised. The Governor's wife reduces her daughter to tears and bars Chichikov the house. Then two documents arrive — a counterfeiter at large, a brigand at large — and the officials remember that nobody knows who Chichikov is.

Method as subject. Two women reason from one fact to an elopement, and the town adopts it because it has no instrument for distinguishing a true story from a usable one. Gogol pauses to compare their procedure to scholarship, which makes the chapter an argument about knowledge rather than a satire on gossip.