'No, Demyan Demyanovich! it is not that sort of affair,' Ivan Ivanovich said with that importance which was always so becoming to him. 'Not the sort of affair that can be resolved in amicable agreement. Good-bye! Good-bye to you, too, gentlemen!' he went on with the same importance, addressing them all. 'I hope my petition will produce the proper effect.' And he walked out, leaving the whole office in amazement.
The judge sat without saying a word; the secretary took some snuff; the office boys overturned the broken piece of bottle they used as an inkstand; and the judge himself absentmindedly smeared the puddle of ink over the table with his finger.
'What do you say to that, Dorofei Trofimovich?' said the judge, turning to the court clerk after some silence.
'I say nothing,' replied the court clerk.
'Such goings-on!' continued the judge.
Before he finished saying it, the door creaked and the front half of Ivan Nikiforovich heaved itself into the office, while the rest remained in the anteroom. The appearance of Ivan Nikiforovich-and, what's more, in court-seemed so extraordinary that the judge cried out; the secretary broke off his reading. One office boy in the frieze likeness of a half-tailcoat put a quill in his mouth; the other swallowed a fly. Even the invalid who fulfilled the functions of both messenger and watchman, who till then had been standing by the door scratching under his dirty shirt with stripes sewn to the shoulder, even this invalid gaped and stepped on somebody's foot.
'What fates bring you here? why and wherefore? How are you, Ivan Nikiforovich?'
But Ivan Nikiforovich was neither dead nor alive, because he had gotten mired in the doorway and could not make a step forward or back. In vain did the judge shout into the anteroom for someone there to shove Ivan Nikiforovich into the office from behind. There was only one petitioner in the anteroom, an old woman, who, despite all the efforts of her bony arms, could do nothing. Then one of the office boys, with fat lips, broad shoulders, a fat nose, and torn elbows, his eyes glancing about slyly and drunkenly, went up to the front part of Ivan Nikiforovich, folded his arms crosswise as if he were a child, and winked to the old invalid, who placed his knee against Ivan Nikiforovich's belly, and, despite his pitiful moans, squeezed him out into the anteroom. Then they slid back the bolts and opened the other half of the door. While they were at it, the office boy and his helper, the invalid, in their concerted efforts, spread such a strong smell with their breath that the office turned for a time into a public house.
'Did they hurt you, Ivan Nikiforovich? I'll tell my mother, she'll send you a tincture-just rub your shoulders and lower back, and it will all go away.'
But Ivan Nikiforovich sank onto a chair and, apart from prolonged oh's, was unable to say anything. Finally, in a weak voice, barely audible from exhaustion, he uttered:
'Will you indulge?' and, taking the snuff bottle from his pocket, added, 'here, help yourselves!'
'I'm very pleased to see you,' answered the judge. 'But, all the same, I can't imagine what made you undertake the effort and present us with such an agreeable unexpectedness.'
'A petition…' was all Ivan Nikiforovich could utter.
'A petition? What sort?'
'A claim…' here breathlessness produced a long pause, 'ohh!… a claim against a crook… Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko.'
'Lord! you too! Such rare friends! A claim against such a virtuous man!…'
'He's Satan in person!' Ivan Nikiforovich said curtly.
The judge crossed himself.
'Take the petition and read it.'
'Nothing to do but read it, Taras Tikhonovich,' said the judge, addressing the secretary with an air of displeasure, and his nose inadvertently sniffed his upper lip, which previously it used to do only from great pleasure. Such willfulness on the part of his nose vexed the judge still more. He took out his handkerchief and swept all the snuff from his upper lip in punishment for its insolence.
The secretary, having performed his usual start-up, which he always resorted to before beginning to read, that is, without the aid of a handkerchief, began in his usual voice, thus:
'A petition from Ivan, son of Nikifor, Dovgochkhun, gentleman of the Mirgorod region, and on what, the points follow herewith:
'1. From his hateful spite and obvious ill will, Ivan, son of Ivan, Pererepenko, who calls himself a gentleman, is causing me various losses, doing me dirt, and performing other devious and terrifying acts, and yesterday, like a robber and a thief, with axes, saws, chisels, and other metalworking tools, got into my yard during the night and with his very own hands and in blameworthy fashion did chop up my very own goose pen located therein. For which, on my part, I never gave any cause for such an illegal and marauding act.
'2. The said gendeman Pererepenko presumes upon my very life and, having kept this intention secret until the 7th day of the last month, came to me and in a friendly and cunning fashion started begging for my gun, which was in my room, offering me, with his particular niggardliness, a lot of worthless things-to wit: a brown sow and two measures of oats. But, divining his criminal intention even then, I made every effort to divert him from it; but the said crook and scoundrel, Ivan, son of Ivan, Pererepenko, did abuse me in a churlish manner, and since then has nursed an irreconcilable enmity toward me. Furthermore, the said oft-mentioned violent gentleman and robber, Ivan, son of Ivan, Pererepenko, is of quite blameworthy origin: his sister was a notorious strumpet who went off with a company of chasseurs that was quartered in Mirgorod five years ago; and she registered her husband as a peasant. His father and mother were also most lawless people, and both were unimaginable drunkards. Yet the above-mentioned gentleman and robber Pererepenko has exceeded all his relations in bestial and blameworthy acts and, in the guise of piety, does the most godless things: does not keep fasts, for on the eve of St. Philip's Day 8 this apostate bought a lamb and ordered his lawless wench Gapka to slaughter it the next day, explaining that he supposedly needed tallow just then for lamps and candles.
'Therefore I request that this gentleman, being a robber, a blasphemer, and a crook, already caught thieving and marauding, be put in irons and conveyed to prison, or to the state jail, and that there, on discretion, being stripped of his ranks and nobility, he be given a good basting with birch rods and be sent to hard labor in Siberia as necessary; that he be made to pay all expenses and losses, and that a decision be forthcoming on this my petition.
