“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki Akakievich, perhaps for the first time since his birth, for he had always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.
“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will mount up to two hundred.”
“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”
“No, it’s of no use—it will only be a waste of time and money,” answered Petrovich.
After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed. As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did not prove a traitor to sartorial art.
Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well, what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even imagined that the matter stood like that!” Another silence followed, after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow unexpected—it’s impossible—a kind of predicament!” Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction, altogether unconscious of the fact.
On the way he collided with a chimney sweep, who blackened his shoulder; a whole hatful of lime fell upon him from the top of an unfinished house. He did not notice the things that happened to him, and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having placed his halberd beside him, was shaking snuff out of a case upon his horny hand, did he become slightly conscious of where he was, and that only because the watchman said: “Why do you push yourself into a man’s very face? What’s a sidewalk for?” This caused him to look around and to turn homeward.
It was only at home that he began to collect his thoughts, and to view the situation in its true and clear aspect. He began to argue with himself no longer in an incoherent manner, but reasonably and frankly, as with a sensible companion, with whom one might discuss any intimate and personal matter.
“Well, no,” said Akaki Akakievich. “Just now Petrovich is not in the right mood to talk with; he now that—his wife, it seems, must have given him a beating. I had better go to him on Sunday morning; after Saturday night he will be cross-eyed and sleepy; he will want to get drunk, and his wife won’t give him the money, and at such a time a ten-copeck piece in his hand—and he will be more sociable, and the cloak then and there——”
So argued Akaki Akakievich with himself. He now felt more cheerful, and waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich’s wife leave the house, he made haste to carry out his plan. Petrovich was, in fact, squint-eyed after Saturday; his head drooped, and he was quite sleepy; notwithstanding all this, the moment he knew what the business was about he at once grew alert, as if the very Satan prompted him.