In this dilemma, he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors of mediocre probity all their "souls" which are dead, though still nominally alive, and are taxed as such.

Land is being given away gratuitously in the southern governments of Kherson and Tauris to any one who will settle on it.

This is a matter of public knowledge, and Tchitchikoff's plan consists in buying a thousand non-existent serfs--"dead souls"-- at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece, for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south.

He will then mortgage them to the loan bank of the nobility, known as the Council of Guardians, and obtain a capital.

In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Pushkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the phenomenal opportunities which this plot of Tchitchikoff's wanderings offered for setting forth Russian manners, characters, customs, all Russian life, in town and country, as Gogol did.