Captain Kopeikin and Napoleon

The officials, all visibly thinner from worry, gather at the Chief of Police's and settle on nothing. The Postmaster produces the Tale of Captain Kopeikin: a veteran of 1812 who loses an arm and a leg, petitions Petersburg for a pension, is fobbed off past the point of hunger, is deported home under courier escort, and turns up two months later leading robbers in the forests of Ryazan. The Chief of Police points out that Chichikov has both arms and legs, and the Postmaster calls himself a stupid calf. Undeterred, the meeting decides Chichikov may be Napoleon escaped from St Helena, then sends for Nozdryov, who confirms every accusation and invents a wedding village, a priest and a fee. The Public Prosecutor goes home, sits down and dies — and only then does the town learn he had a soul. Chichikov, laid up with an abscessed tooth, knows nothing until the Governor's porter refuses him the door.

The digression that indicts the frame. Kopeikin's tale is irrelevant to Chichikov and exactly relevant to the book — a man destroyed by an administration that cannot see him, told by officials who cannot see themselves. The Prosecutor's pointless death supplies the consequence the comedy has been withholding.