Higher powers govern those passions, and in them is something which will call to him, and refuse to be silenced, to the end of his life.

Yes, whether in a guise of darkness, or whether in a guise which will become converted into a light to lighten the world, they will and must attain their consummation on life's field: and in either case they have been evoked for man's good.

In the same way may the passion which drew our Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of himself; in the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence something which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust before the infinite wisdom of God.
Yet that folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing.

What matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval could have been taken as a foregone conclusion.

That is to say, had not the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov's soul, nor stirred up in its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed those of his hero's thoughts which that hero would have not have disclosed even to his most intimate friend; had the author, indeed, exhibited Chichikov just as he exhibited himself to the townsmen of N.and Manilov and the rest; well, then we may rest assured that every reader would have been delighted with him, and have voted him a most interesting person.