so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born
in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the
department. The porter not only did not rise from his seat when he
passed, but never even glanced at him, any more than if a fly had flown
through the reception-room. His superiors treated him in coolly despotic
fashion. Some sub-chief would thrust a paper under his nose without
so much as saying, "Copy," or "Here's a nice interesting affair," or
anything else agreeable, as is customary amongst well-bred officials.
And he took it, looking only at the paper and not observing who handed
it to him, or whether he had the right to do so; simply took it, and set
about copying it.

The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their
official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted
about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared
that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of
paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akakiy Akakievitch answered
not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides
himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances
he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the joking became
wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his hand and prevented his
attending to his work, he would exclaim, "Leave me alone! Why do you
insult me?" And there was something strange in the words and the voice
in which they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to
pity; so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by
the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly
stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation,
and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled
him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition
that they were well-bred and polite men. Long afterwards, in his gayest
moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald
forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you
insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded--"I am thy
brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a
time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how
much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed
beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom
the w