Gógol’s prose-comedy, _The Inspector-General_ (_Revizór_), has become, in its turn, a starting point for the Russian drama--a model which every dramatic writer after Gógol has always kept before his eyes. “Revizór,” in Russian, means some important functionary who has been sent by the ministry to some provincial town to inquire into the conditions of the local administration--an Inspector-General; and the comedy takes place in a small town, from which “you may gallop for three years and yet arrive nowhere.” The little spot--we learn it at the rising of the curtain--is going to be visited by an Inspector-General. The local head of the Police (in those times the head of the Police was also the head of the town)--the Gorodníchiy or Governor--has convoked the chief functionaries of the place to communicate to them an important news. He has had a bad dream; two rats came in, sniffed and then went away; there must be something in that dream, and so there is; he has just got this morning a letter from a friend at St. Petersburg, announcing that an inspector-general is coming, and--what is still worse--is coming incognito! Now, the honourable Governor advises the functionaries to put some order in their respective offices. The patients in the hospital walk about in linen so dirty that you might take them for chimney sweeps. The chief magistrate, who is a passionate lover of sport, has his hunting apparel hanging about in the Court, and his attendants have made a poultry-yard of the entrance hall. In short, everything has to be put in order. The Governor feels very uncomfortable. Up to the present day he has freely levied tribute upon the merchants, pocketed the money destined for building a church, and within a fortnight he has flogged the wife of a non-commissioned officer, which he had no right to do; and now, there’s the Inspector-General coming! He asks the postmaster “just to open a little” the letters which may be addressed from this town to St. Petersburg and, if he finds in them some reports about town matters, to keep them. The postmaster--a great student of human character--has always indulged, even without getting this advice, in the interesting pastime of reading the letters, and he falls in with the Governor’s proposal.