The interest of "The Inspector" is perennial and universal; official negligence, corruption, bribery, masculine vanity and boastfulness, and feminine failings to match, are the exclusive prerogatives of no one nation or epoch. The comedy is not a caricature, but it is a faithful society portrait and satire, with intense condensation of character, and traits which are not only truly and typically Russian, but come within the ken of all fair-minded persons of other lands. The scene opens in a room at the house of the Chief of Police in a provincial town. Those present are: The Chief himself, the Curator of the Board of Benevolent Institutions, the Superintendent of Schools, the Judge, the Commissioner of Police, the Doctor, and two policemen. CHIEF.--I have summoned you hither, gentlemen, in order to communicate to you an unpleasant piece of news. An Inspector is coming. JUDGE.--What! An Inspector? CHIEF.--An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito, and with secret orders, to boot. JUDGE.--I thought so! CURATOR.--If there's not trouble, I'm mistaken! CHIEF.--I have warned you, gentlemen. See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artemy Philipp'itch! Without a doubt, this traveling official will wish, first of all, to inspect your institutions, and therefore, you must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps should be clean, and the sick people should not look like blacksmiths, as they usually do in private. CURATOR.--Well, that is a mere trifle. We can put clean nightcaps on them. CHIEF.--Moreover, you ought to have written up, over the head of each bed, in Latin or some other language--that's your affair--the name of each disease; when each patient was taken sick, the day and the hour. It is not well that your sick people should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there were fewer of them; it will be set down at once to bad supervision, or to lack of skill on the doctor's part. CURATOR.--Oh, so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christian Ivan'itch and I have already taken measures; the nearer to nature, the better--we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a simple creature; if he dies, why then, he dies; if he gets well, why then, he gets well; and moreover, it would have been difficult for Christian Ivan'itch to make them understand him; he doesn't know one word of Russian.