en lines; and only when a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown
quarter, over his shoulder, and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck
from his nostrils, did he observe that he was not in the middle of a
page, but in the middle of the street.

On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, supped his cabbage
soup up quickly, and swallowed a bit of beef with onions, never noticing
their taste, and gulping down everything with flies and anything else
which the Lord happened to send at the moment. His stomach filled, he
rose from the table, and copied papers which he had brought home. If
there happened to be none, he took copies for himself, for his own
gratification, especially if the document was noteworthy, not on account
of its style, but of its being addressed to some distinguished person.

Even at the hour when the grey St. Petersburg sky had quite dispersed,
and all the official world had eaten or dined, each as he could, in
accordance with the salary he received and his own fancy; when all were
resting from the departmental jar of pens, running to and fro from their
own and other people's indispensable occupations, and from all the work
that an uneasy man makes willingly for himself, rather than what is
necessary; when officials hasten to dedicate to pleasure the time which
is left to them, one bolder than the rest going to the theatre; another,
into the street looking under all the bonnets; another wasting his
evening in compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official
circle; another--and this is the common case of all--visiting his
comrades on the fourth or third floor, in two small rooms with an
ante-room or kitchen, and some pretensions to fashion, such as a lamp or
some other trifle which has cost many a sacrifice of dinner or pleasure
trip; in a word, at the hour when all officials disperse among the
contracted quarters of their friends, to play whist, as they sip their
tea from glasses with a kopek's worth of sugar, smoke long pipes, relate
at times some bits of gossip which a Russian man can never, under any
circumstances, refrain from, and, when there is nothing else to talk of,
repeat eternal anecdotes about the commandant to whom they had sent word
that the tails of the horses on the Falconet Monument had been cut off,
when all strive to divert themselves, Akakiy Akakievitch indulged in
no kind of diversion. No one could ever say that he had seen him at any
kind of evening party. H