nt personage. The prominent personage was in his cabinet
conversing gaily with an old acquaintance and companion of his childhood
whom he had not seen for several years and who had just arrived when it
was announced to him that a person named Bashmatchkin had come. He asked
abruptly, "Who is he?"--"Some official," he was informed. "Ah, he can
wait! this is no time for him to call," said the important man.

It must be remarked here that the important man lied outrageously:
he had said all he had to say to his friend long before; and the
conversation had been interspersed for some time with very long pauses,
during which they merely slapped each other on the leg, and said, "You
think so, Ivan Abramovitch!" "Just so, Stepan Varlamitch!" Nevertheless,
he ordered that the official should be kept waiting, in order to show
his friend, a man who had not been in the service for a long time, but
had lived at home in the country, how long officials had to wait in his
ante-room.

At length, having talked himself completely out, and more than that,
having had his fill of pauses, and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable
arm-chair with reclining back, he suddenly seemed to recollect, and said
to the secretary, who stood by the door with papers of reports, "So it
seems that there is a tchinovnik waiting to see me. Tell him that he may
come in." On perceiving Akakiy Akakievitch's modest mien and his worn
undress uniform, he turned abruptly to him and said, "What do you want?"
in a curt hard voice, which he had practised in his room in private, and
before the looking-glass, for a whole week before being raised to his
present rank.

Akakiy Akakievitch, who was already imbued with a due amount of fear,
became somewhat confused: and as well as his tongue would permit,
explained, with a rather more frequent addition than usual of the word
"that," that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in the most
inhuman manner; that he had applied to him in order that he might, in
some way, by his intermediation--that he might enter into correspondence
with the chief of police, and find the cloak.

For some inexplicable reason this conduct seemed familiar to the
prominent personage. "What, my dear sir!" he said abruptly, "are you not
acquainted with etiquette? Where have you come from? Don't you know
how such matters are managed? You should first have entered a complaint
about this at the court below: it would have gone to the head of the
dep