A man of that kind chatters away, and touches lightly upon every conceivable subject, and talks in smooth, fluent phrases which he has culled from books without grazing their substance; whereas go and have a chat with a tradesman who knows at least ONE thing thoroughly, and through the medium of experience, and see whether his conversation will not be worth more than the prattle of a thousand chatterboxes.

For what good does one get out of balls?
Suppose that a competent writer were to describe such a scene exactly as it stands?
Why, even in a book it would seem senseless, even as it certainly is in life.

Are, therefore, such functions right or wrong?
One would answer that the devil alone knows, and then spit and close the book." Such were the unfavourable comments which Chichikov passed upon balls in general.

With it all, however, there went a second source of dissatisfaction.

That is to say, his principal grudge was not so much against balls as against the fact that at this particular one he had been exposed, he had been made to disclose the circumstance that he had been playing a strange, an ambiguous part.