salary of four hundred rubles a year, or there-abouts. This foe is no
other than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very healthy.
At nine o'clock in the morning, at the very hour when the streets are
filled with men bound for the various official departments, it begins
to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially,
that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them. At an
hour, when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions
ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular
councillors are sometimes quite unprotected. Their only salvation lies
in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little cloaks,
five or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porter's room,
and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official
service, which had become frozen on the way.

Akaky Akakiyevich had felt for some time that his back and shoulders
were paining with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the fact that he
tried to traverse the distance with all possible speed. He began
finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. He
examined it thoroughly at home, and discovered that in two places,
namely, on the back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze. The
cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the
lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akaky Akakiyevich's
cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials. They even
refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it
was of singular make, its collar diminishing year by year to serve to
patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the
part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the
matter stood, Akaky Akakiyevich decided that it would be necessary to
take the cloak to Petrovich, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the
fourth floor up a dark staircase, and who, in spite of his having but