must be spent. And even if the director should be so kind as to order
him to receive forty-five or even fifty rubles instead of forty, it
would be a mere nothing, a mere drop in the ocean towards the funds
necessary for a cloak, although he knew that Petrovich was often
wrong-headed enough to blurt out some outrageous price, so that even
his own wife could not refrain from exclaiming, "Have you lost your
senses, you fool?" At one time he would not work at any price, and now
it was quite likely that he had named a higher sum than the cloak
would cost.

But although he knew that Petrovich would undertake to make a cloak
for eighty rubles, still, where was he to get the eighty rubles from?
He might possibly manage half. Yes, half might be procured, but where
was the other half to come from? But the reader must first be told
where the first half came from.

Akaky Akakiyevich had a habit of putting, for every ruble he spent, a
groschen into a small box, fastened with lock and key, and with a slit
in the top for the reception of money. At the end of every half-year
he counted over the heap of coppers, and changed it for silver. This
he had done for a long time, and in the course of years, the sum had
mounted up to over forty rubles. Thus he had one half on hand. But
where was he to find the other half? Where was he to get another forty
rubles from? Akaky Akakiyevich thought and thought, and decided that
it would be necessary to curtail his ordinary expenses, for the space
of one year at least, to dispense with tea in the evening, to burn no
candles, and, if there was anything which he must do, to go into his
landlady's room, and work by her light. When he went into the street,
he must walk as lightly as he could, and as cautiously, upon the
stones, almost upon tiptoe, in order not to wear his heels down in too