This train of tchinovniks has its counterpart full of eloquent, and even melancholy, humor. Kléstakof has just finished counting his money; he finds the part easy to play, and full of profit. But Osip, whose dull head contains more sense than his master’s giddy pate, advises him to have his post-horses put in, and to pack off while yet there is time. Kléstakof admits that his reasoning is good; still, the farce is so pleasant that he cannot refrain from writing to one of his friends, a Petersburg journalist. It is easy to conjecture that this letter will never reach its destination, and that it will serve to bring about the dénoûment.
Suddenly voices are heard outside the house. It is the merchants, the hatter at their head, coming to bring their complaints before the revizor. The mayor steals from them shamelessly: when they complain, he slams the door in your face, saying, “I will not apply the knout, for that’s against the law; but I will make you eat humble pie.” A woman comes, complaining that her husband had been forcibly conscripted as a soldier, in place of two others who had escaped service through the aid of bribes. “Your husband is a thief: he is already, or he will be,”—that is the excuse offered her by this “blackguard of a mayor.”
But it is a real inspector-general’s business to perform the functions of his office. Kléstakof has enjoyed the profits, and thinks that he can confine his duties to that. At this moment the sick appear in their hospital dressing-gowns, fever and pestilence in their faces: the false revizor rudely drives away all this importunate throng, and shuts the door fast.
In happy contrast to the lugubrious impression of these scenes, the author introduces some inventions of charming buffoonery. The mayor’s daughter enters. To beguile the time, Kléstakof makes love to her, kisses her, falls on his knees before her. The mother appears, and expresses her astonishment—but in the fashion of Bélise, in the “Femmes Savantes;” such homage as that is befitting. The daughter departs after a sharp reprimand. The extempore lover, now addressing the mother, continues the wooing which he had begun with the daughter, who returns just as he throws himself on his knees for the second time. The mayor comes in unexpectedly, and almost chokes with surprise to hear an inspector-general ask for his daughter’s hand. How can he deny himself such an honor? The agreement is made on the spot, and the two lovers fall into each other’s arms.
Just at this moment the valet Osip comes, and, twitching his master by the tail of his coat, announces that the horses are ready. The adventurer, recalled to reality, ventures a brief explanation: a very wealthy uncle to visit, a day’s journey distant. The post-chaise departs; and the act ends with the postilion’s command to his horses, “Off with you, on wings!”
The dénoûment has been unnecessarily anticipated. It has a gayety, a dash, a variety in its detail, which make it amusing, fascinating, rich in surprises. Nevertheless it is only the identical dénoûment of our “Misanthrope,” the all-revealing letter in which each character of the drama receives his share of epigrams. Gogol’s humor is given free play in this series of rapidly sketched portraits, the originals of which are united around the reader, who is spared no more than the rest. The development of the idea has an inexhaustible verve; but the idea itself belongs to Molière, and Merimée long ago ascribed to him all the honor of it.
What belongs to Gogol, what gives the dénoûment of “The Revizor” an original coloring, is the mayor’s comic fury at finding that he has been cheated in such a fine fashion. His new title of father-in-law of an inspector-general had already begun to exalt him, to intoxicate him. He has crushed the merchants with it. He has overwhelmed them with the lightning of his glance. He has dismissed them with one of those deep phrases, such as paint the Russian tchinovnik with his redoubtable hypocrisy: “God commands us to forgive: I have no spite against you. You will only be good enough to remember that I am giving my daughter in marriage, and not to the first noble that comes along. Endeavor to have your congratulations suitable to the occasion. Don’t expect to get off with a smoked salmon or a sugar-loaf. Do you hear me? Go, and God protect you!” The sly old dog has already begun to dream of a general’s epaulets: it can be seen how he is puffed up; he receives with the air of a prince the unctuous compliments of the other tchinovniks. Suddenly the pail of milk falls, and the milk is spilt; the balloon bursts! In all that comes to pass, there is only sheer comedy; a skilful sharper, and duped rascals. The one who is most duped of all, the mayor, gives himself up to a storm of the most amusing frenzy. “You great fool!” he says to himself, pounding himself, “idiot! you have taken a dish-clout for a great personage! And this very moment he is galloping off down the road to the sound of the bells. He will tell the story to everybody. Worse than all, he will find some penny-a-liner, some scribbler, to cover you with ridicule! Behold the disgrace of it! He will not spare your rank or your office, and he will find people to applaud him with their voices and their hands. You laugh? Laugh at yourselves, yes. [He stamps with passion.] If I only had ’em! these scribblers! Cursed liberals! Spawn of the Devil! I’d put a bit on ’em! I’d put a curb on ’em! I’d crush the whole brood of ’em.”
And behold what adds a still keener flavor to this adventure.
At the very moment when the mayor, out of his wits at having been capable of mistaking this fop for an inspector-general, is trying to find the one who egged him on to commit this blunder, a policeman enters, and says, “You are requested to repair instantly to the revizor, who has come on a mission from Petersburg. He has just arrived at the hotel.” The whole company are, as it were, thunderstruck; and the curtain falls on a scene of silence, the arrangement of which Gogol provided for with the minute accuracy of a realistic writer, for whom attitudes and facial expression are the indispensable complement of a moral painting. In point of fact, they are, especially at times when a lively emotion tears away all masks, the faithful and legible translation of character.