Three landowners, three ruinations

Sent to find Colonel Koshkaryov, Chichikov arrives instead at Pyotr Petrovich Petukh, whom he first meets tangled in a fishing net in his own lake, "a perfect watermelon or a barrel". Petukh has mortgaged his estate and lives for food: through the wall Chichikov is kept awake by his instructions for a four-cornered fish pie. The neighbour Platon Platonov, bored to the bone, takes him on to Kostanzhoglo, who has raised an estate from thirty thousand to two hundred thousand a year by wasting nothing — forests that water the fields, glue boiled from fish scales. Chichikov finally reaches Koshkaryov, who has reorganised his village into a parody of ministries: an office that exists only as a sign, a Building Commission that empties every other department, and a report proving the souls are mortgaged twice over. He storms out. Kostanzhoglo tells him to begin with the kopeck, and Chichikov lies awake hearing "rivers and rivers of gold".

Three landowners as a single argument. Petukh consumes, Koshkaryov administers, Kostanzhoglo produces — and Gogol's difficulty shows in how much better he draws the first two. The reform programme arrives as a lecture rather than a portrait, and Chichikov absorbs it as one more scheme.