Tentetnikov wakes very slowly

Part II opens on a magnificent estate above a thousand versts of hill country, where every visitor can only say "Lord, look at all the space here!" Its owner is Andrey Ivanovich Tentetnikov, a couch-warmer who spends two hours rubbing his eyes and two more over breakfast while his servants abuse one another below. A long retrospect explains him: the incomparable schoolmaster Aleksandr Petrovich, who demanded intelligence and never good deportment, died just as Tentetnikov reached his select class and was replaced by a man who demanded nothing else. A Petersburg department, a quarrel with his department head and a resignation followed; back on the estate, his reforms baffled his peasants and his zeal cooled. Love for Ulinka, the General's fierce daughter, was killed by the General's condescending use of the familiar form. Into this Chichikov arrives, older and shabbier but more polished than ever, proves the perfect houseguest, and sets off to call on the General.

Part II restarts the book in a different key: a beautiful estate, a sympathetic owner, a narrator who explains where he used to mock. Tentetnikov is the first soul Gogol means to save rather than exhibit, and the long pedagogic backstory shows the strain — Purgatorio needs argument where Inferno needed only portraiture.