the police because, though it might happen that a policeman, wishing to gain the approval of his superior, would somehow find the overcoat, still the overcoat would remain with the police unless he could present legal proofs that it belonged to him; and the best thing would be to address a certain important person, so that the important person, by writing and referring to the proper quarters, could get things done more successfully. No help for it, Akaky Akakievich decided to go to the important person. What precisely the post of the important person was, and in what it consisted, remains unknown. It should be realized that this certain important person had become an important person only recently, and till then had been an unimportant person. However, his position even now was not considered important in comparison with other, still more important ones. But there will always be found a circle of people for whom something unimportant in the eyes of others is already important. He tried, however, to increase his importance by many other means-namely, he introduced the custom of lower clerks meeting him on the stairs when he came to the office; of no one daring to come to him directly, but everything going in the strictest order: a collegiate registrar should report to a provincial secretary, a provincial secretary to a titular or whatever else, and in this fashion the case should reach him. Thus everything in holy Russia is infected with imitation, and each one mimics and apes his superior. It is even said that some titular councillor, when he was made chief of some separate little chancellery, at once partitioned off a special room for himself, called it his 'office room,' and by the door placed some sort of ushers with red collars and galloons, who held the door handle and opened it for each visitor, though the 'office room' could barely contain an ordinary writing desk. The ways and habits of the important person were imposing and majestic, but of no great complexity. The chief principle of his system was strictness. 'Strictness, strictness, and-strictness,' he used to say, and with the last word usually looked very importantly into the face of the person he was addressing. Though, incidentally, there was no reason for any of it, because the dozen or so clerks who constituted the entire administrative machinery of the office were properly filled with fear even without that; seeing him from far off, they set their work aside and waited, standing at attention, until their superior passed through the room. His usual conversation with subordinates rang with strictness and consisted almost entirely of three phrases: 'How dare you? Do you know with whom you are speaking? Do you realize who is standing before you?' However, he was a kind man at heart, good to his comrades, obliging, but the rank of general had completely bewildered him. On receiving the rank of general, he had somehow become confused, thrown off, and did not know how to behave at all. When he happened to be with his equals, he was as a man ought to be, a very decent man, in many respects even not a stupid man; but as soon as he happened to be in the company of men at least one rank beneath him, he was simply as bad as could be: he kept silent, and his position was pitiable, especially since he himself felt that he could be spending his time incomparably better. In his eyes there could sometimes be seen a strong desire to join in some interesting conversation and circle, but he was stopped by the thought: Would it not be excessive on his part, would it not be familiar, would he not be descending beneath his importance? On account of such reasoning, he remained eternally in the same silent state, only uttering some monosyllabic sounds from time to time, and in this way he acquired the title of a most boring person. It was to this important person that our Akaky Akakievich came, and came at a most unfavorable moment, very inopportune for himself, though very opportune for the important person.
The important person was in his office and was talking away very, very merrily with a recently arrived old acquaintance and childhood friend, whom he had not seen for several years. Just then it was announced to him that a certain Bashrnachkin was there. 'Who's that?' he asked curtly. 'Some clerk,' came the reply. 'Ah! he can wait, now isn't a good time,' said the important man. Here it should be said that the important man was stretching it a bit: the time was good, he had long since discussed everything with his friend and their conversation had long since been interspersed with lengthy silences, while they patted each other lightly on the thigh, saying: 'So there, Ivan Abramovich!' 'So it is, Stepan Varlamovich!' But, for all that, he nevertheless told the clerk to wait, in order to show his friend, a man who had not been in the service and had been living for a long time on his country estate, what lengths of time clerks spent waiting in his anteroom. At last, having talked, or, rather, been silent his fill, and having smoked a cigar in an easy chair with a reclining back, at last he suddenly recollected, as it were, and said to his secretary, who stood in the doorway with papers for a report, 'Ah, yes, it seems there's a clerk standing there. Tell him he may come in.' Seeing Akaky Akakievich's humble look and his old uniform, he turned to him suddenly and said, 'What can I do for you?' in a voice abrupt and firm, which he had purposely studied beforehand in his room, alone and in front of a mirror, a week prior to receiving his present post and the rank of general. Akaky Akakievich, who had been feeling the appropriate timidity for a good while already, became somewhat flustered and explained as well as he could, so far as the freedom of his tongue permitted, adding the words 'sort of' even more often than at other times, that the overcoat was perfectly new and he had been robbed in a brutal fashion, and that he was addressing him so that through his intercession, as it were, he could sort of write to the gentleman police superintendent or someone else and find the overcoat. For some reason, the general took this to be familiar treatment.
'What, my dear sir?' he continued curtly. 'Do you not know the order? What are you doing here? Do you not know how cases are conducted? You ought to have filed a petition about it in the chancellery; it would pass to the chief clerk, to the section chief, then be conveyed to my secretary, and my secretary would deliver it to me…'
'But, Your Excellency,' said Akaky Akakievich, trying to collect the handful of presence of mind he had and feeling at the same time that he was sweating terribly, 'I made so bold as to trouble you, Your Excellency, because secretaries are, sort of… unreliable folk…'
'What, what, what?' said the important person. 'Where did you pick up such a spirit? Where did you pick up such ideas? What is this rebelliousness spreading among the young against their chiefs and higher-ups!'
The important person seemed not to notice that Akaky Akakievich was already pushing fifty. And so, even if he might be called a young man, it was only relatively-that is, in relation to someone who was seventy years old.
'Do you know to whom you are saying this? Do you realize who is standing before you? Do you realize that? Do you realize, I ask you?'
Here he stamped his foot, raising his voice to such a forceful note that even someone other than Akaky Akakievich would have been frightened by it. Akaky Akakievich was simply stricken, he swayed, shook all over, and was quite unable to stand: if the caretakers had not come running at once to support him, he would have dropped to the floor. He was carried out almost motionless. And the important person, pleased that the effect had even surpassed his expectations, and thoroughly delighted by the thought that his word could even make a man faint, gave his friend a sidelong glance to find out how he had taken it all, and saw, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncertain state and was even, for his own part, beginning to feel frightened himself.
How he went down the stairs, how he got outside, nothing of that could Akaky Akakievich remember. He could not feel his legs or arms. Never in his life had he been given such a bad roasting by a general, and not his own general at that. He walked, his mouth gaping, through the blizzard that whistled down the streets, blowing him off the sidewalk; the wind, as always in Petersburg, blasted him from all four sides out of every alley. He instantly caught a quinsy, and he reached home unable to utter a word; he was all swollen and took to his bed. So strong at times is the effect of a proper roasting! The next day he was found to be in a high fever. Owing to the generous assistance of the Petersburg climate, the illness developed more quickly than might have been expected, and when the doctor came, after feeling his pulse, he found nothing else to do but prescribe a poultice, only so as not to leave the sick man without the beneficent aid of medical science; but he nevertheless declared straight off that within a day and a half it would inevitably be kaput for him. After which he turned to the landlady and said, 'And you, dearie, don't waste any time, order him a pine coffin at once, because an oak one will be too expensive for him.' Whether Akaky Akakievich heard these fatal words spoken, and, if he heard them, whether they made a tremendous effect on him, whether he regretted his wretched life-none of this is known, because he was in fever and delirium the whole time. Visions, one stranger than another, kept coming to him: first he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make an overcoat with some sort of snares for thieves, whom he kept imagining under the bed, and he even called the landlady every other minute to get one thief out from under his blanket; then he asked why his old housecoat was
