here on one shoulder it's a bit worn, and on this shoulder a little bit-you see, that's all. Not much work…'
Petrovich took the housecoat, laid it out on the table first, examined it for a long time, shook his head, and reached his hand out to the windowsill to get his round snuffbox with the portrait of some general on it-which one is not known, because the place where the face was had been poked through by a finger and then pasted over with a rectangular piece of paper. Having taken a pinch, Petrovich stretched the housecoat on his hands and examined it against the light and again shook his head. Then he turned it inside out and shook his head once more, once more opened the lid with the general pasted over with paper, and, having filled his nose with snuff, closed the box, put it away, and finally said:
'No, impossible to fix it-bad wardrobe.'
At these words, Akaky Akakievich's heart missed a beat.
'Why impossible, Petrovich?' he said, almost in a child's pleading voice. 'It's only a bit worn on the shoulders- surely you have some little scraps…'
'Little scraps might be found, we might find some little scraps,' said Petrovich, 'but it's impossible to sew them on-the stuff's quite rotten, touch it with a needle and it falls apart.'
'Falls apart, and you patch it over.'
'But there's nothing to put a patch on, nothing for it to hold to, it's too worn out. They pass it off as broadcloth, but the wind blows and it flies to pieces.'
'Well, you can make it hold. Otherwise, really, it's sort of…!'
'No,' Petrovich said resolutely, 'it's impossible to do anything. The stuff's no good. You'd better make yourself foot cloths out of it when the winter cold comes, because socks don't keep you warm. It's Germans invented them so as to earn more money for themselves.' (Petrovich liked needling the Germans on occasion.) 'And it appears you'll have to have a new overcoat made.'
At the word 'new' all went dim in Akaky Akakievich's eyes, and everything in the room became tangled before him. The only thing he saw clearly was the general with paper pasted over his face who was on the lid of Petrovich's snuffbox.
'How's that-new?' he said, still as if in sleep. 'I have no money for that.'
'Yes, new,' Petrovich said with barbaric calm.
'Well, if it must be a new one, what would it, sort of…'
'You mean, how much would it cost?'
'Yes.'
'Three times fifty and then some would have to go into it,' Petrovich said and pressed his lips together meaningfully. He very much liked strong effects, liked somehow to confound one completely all of a sudden and then glance sideways at the face the confounded one pulls at such words.
'A hundred and fifty roubles for an overcoat?' poor Akaky Akakievich cried out-cried out, perhaps, for the first time in all his born days, for he was always distinguished by the softness of his voice.
'Yes, sir,' said Petrovich, 'depending also on the overcoat. If we put a marten on the collar, plus a hood with silk lining, it may come to two hundred.'
'Please, Petrovich,' Akaky Akakievich said in a pleading voice, not hearing and not trying to hear all Petrovich's words and effects, 'fix it somehow, so that it can serve a while longer at least.'
'Ah, no, that'll be work gone for naught and money wasted,' said Petrovich, and after these words Akaky Akakievich left, totally annihilated.
And Petrovich, on his departure, stood for a long time, his lips pressed together meaningfully, without going back to work, feeling pleased that he had not lowered himself or betrayed the art of tailoring.
When he went outside, Akaky Akakievich was as if in a dream. 'So it's that, that's what it is,' he said to himself. 'I really didn't think it would come out sort of…' and then, after some silence, he added, 'So that's how it is! that's what finally comes out! and I really never would have supposed it would be so.' Following that, a long silence again ensued, after which he said, 'So that's it! Such an, indeed, altogether unexpected, sort of… it's altogether… such a circumstance!' Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the entirely opposite direction, without suspecting it himself. On the way, a chimney sweep brushed against him with his whole dirty flank, blackening his whole shoulder; a full hat-load of lime poured down on him from the top of a house under construction. He did not notice any of it, and only later, when he ran into an on-duty policeman who, having set aside his halberd, was shaking snuff from his snuff bottle onto his callused fist, only then did he recover his senses slightly, and that only because the policeman said, 'What're you doing, barging into my mug! Don't you have enough sidewalk?' This made him look around and turn back home. Only here did he begin to collect his thoughts, see his situation clearly for what it was, and start talking to himself, not in snatches now but sensibly and frankly, as with a reasonable friend with whom one could discuss the most heartfelt and intimate things. 'Ah, no,' said Akaky Akakievich, 'it's impossible to talk with Petrovich now: now he's sort of… his wife must somehow have given him a beating. I'll do better to come to him on Sunday morning: he'll be cockeyed and sleepy after Saturday night, and he'll need the hair of the dog, and his wife won't give him any money, and just then I'll sort of… ten kopecks in his hand, he'll be more tractable then, and then the overcoat sort of…' So Akaky Akakievich reasoned with himself, encouraged himself, and waited for the next Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich's wife leave the house for somewhere, he went straight to him. Petrovich was indeed badly cockeyed after Saturday, could hardly hold his head up, and was quite sleepy; but for all that, as soon as he learned what it was about, it was as if the devil gave him a nudge. 'Impossible,' he said, 'be so good as to order a new one.' Here Akaky Akakievich gave him a ten-kopeck piece. 'Thank you, sir, I'll fortify myself a bit for your health,' said Petrovich, 'but concerning the overcoat, please don't trouble yourself-it's no good for anything good. I'll make you a new overcoat, I'll do it up famously, that I will.'
Akaky Akakievich tried to mention mending again, but Petrovich did not listen to the end and said, 'I'll make you a new one without fail, please count on me for that, I'll do my best. It may even be in today's fashion, the collar fastened by little silver clasps with applique.'
Here Akaky Akakievich saw that he could not get around a new overcoat, and his spirits wilted completely. How, indeed, with what, with what money to make it? Of course, he could count partly on his future holiday bonus, but that money had been placed and distributed long ago. He needed to get new trousers, to pay an old debt to the shoemaker for putting new vamps on his old boot tops, and he had to order three shirts from the seamstress and a couple of pairs of that item of underwear which it is indecent to mention in print-in short, absolutely all the money was to be spent; and even if the director was so gracious as to allot him a forty-five- or fifty-rouble bonus, instead
