th houses barely visible on its farther side,
a square which seemed a fearful desert.

Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman's-box, which seemed to
stand en the edge of the world. Ahaky Akakiyevich's cheerfulness
diminished at this point in a marked degree. He entered the square,
not without an involuntary sensation of fear, as though his heart
warned him of some evil. He glanced back, and on both sides it was
like a sea about him. "No, it is better not to look," he thought, and
went on, closing his eyes. When he opened them, to see whether he was
near the end of the square, he suddenly beheld, standing just before
his very nose, some bearded individuals of precisely what sort, he
could not make out. All grew dark before his eyes, and his heart
throbbed.

"Of course, the cloak is mine!" said one of them in a loud voice,
seizing hold of his collar. Akaky Akakiyevich was about to shout
"Help!" when the second man thrust a fist, about the size of an
official's head, at his very mouth, muttering, "Just you dare to
scream!"

Akaky Akakiyevich felt them strip off his cloak, and give him a kick.
He fell headlong upon the snow, and felt no more.

In a few minutes he recovered consciousness, and rose to his feet, but
no one was there. He felt that it was cold in the square, and that his
cloak was gone. He began to shout, but his voice did not appear to
reach the outskirts of the square. In despair, but without ceasing to
shout, he started at a run across the square, straight towards the
watch-box, beside which stood the watchman, leaning on his halberd,
and apparently curious to know what kind of a customer was running
towards him shouting. Akaky Akakiyevich ran up to him, and began in a
sobbing voice to shout that he was asleep, and attended to nothing,
and did not see when a man was robbed. The watchman replied that he
had seen two men stop him in the middle of the square, but supposed
that they were friends of his, and that, instead of scolding vainly,
he had better go to the police on the morrow, so that they might make
a search for whoever had stolen the cloak.

Akaky Akakiyevich ran home and arrived in a state of complete
disorder, his hair which grew very thinly upon his temples and the
back of his head all tousled, his body, arms and legs, covered with
snow. The old woman, who was mistress of his lodgings, on hearing a
terrible knocking, sprang hastily from her bed, and, with only one
shoe on, ran to ope