“Never did a lady say, ‘I blew my nose,’ … No, it had to be, ‘I relieved my nose through the expedient of wiping it with my handkerchief,’ and so forth.

This is great not only to reveal what blowhards everyone is, but what inelegant blowhards they are – they aren’t even good at it!

And when Chichikov imagines the lives of the peasants, it’s both touching and sadly naive.