“Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? Do you realize it? Answer me!”
At this point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a high pitch that even a man different from Akakievich would have been frightened. Akaki Akakievich grew faint; he reeled; trembled from head to foot; then his legs gave way under him; if several attendants had not run in to support him, he would have fallen to the floor. They carried him out more dead than alive. The important personage, much gratified that the effect he produced far exceeded all expectation, and thoroughly intoxicated with the thought that even a word from him could deprive a man of his senses, looked askance at his friend, to see how that individual regarded the matter, and observed, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncomfortable state, and was beginning to show on his part certain signs of fear.
How he managed to descend the stairway and into the street—of this Akaki Akakievich remembered nothing. He was unconscious of either hands or feet. Never before in his life had he been so reprimanded by a superior, let alone an unfamiliar one. He walked in the snow-storm which whistled through the streets; his mouth open, he staggered along the sidewalks; the wind blew upon him in St. Petersburg fashion from all four sides and every crossing. In an instant it had blown a quinsy down his throat, and he arrived at home all swollen and too weak to utter a word. He lay down on his bed.
The next day a high fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness advanced more rapidly than could be expected; and when the doctor appeared and felt his pulse, there was nothing for him to do except to prescribe a poultice, for no other reason but that the patient be not deprived of the beneficent aid of medicine; at the same time he predicted his inevitable end in thirty-six hours, after which he turned to the landlady and said: “And you, my woman, had better not lose any time about it, and order a pine coffin for him, as an oak one will be too expensive.”
Did Akaki Akakievich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them, did they agitate him? Did he bewail the bitterness of his life? It is uncertain, because he spent his last hours in fever and delirium. Visions, one stranger than the other, continued to appear before him. Now he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make a cloak with traps for thieves who he imagined were constantly under his bed; and he more than once called for his landlady to drag a thief from under his bed-cover. Then he inquired why the old cloak hung in front of him when he had a new one. Several times he fancied himself as standing before the general, addressing him as “Your Excellency,” and pleading with him after the reprimand; and finally he began to utter imprecations, employing the most terrible words, so that the aged housekeeper, never before having heard the like, made a sign of the cross, all the more since these curses usually followed after the words “Your Excellency.” Later he began to utter sheer nonsense; one thing, however, was evident: all his incoherent words and thoughts hovered around the one and the same cloak.
At last poor Akaki Akakievich gave up his spirit. The usual legal procedure with regard to his room and his effects was not followed, because in the first place there were no heirs, and in the second, because he left so little property, namely, a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons that had come off his trousers, and the cape already familiar to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows; this, I must confess, did not interest even him who relates this story.
They bore Akaki Akakievich away and buried him. And so St. Petersburg was left without Akaki Akakievich, as though he had never been there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who did not even attract to himself the attention of the student who does not let an opportunity slip by to put a pin through a common fly and to examine it under the microscope—a being who endured humbly the ridicule of his brother officials and went to his grave without having experienced a single notable event, but for whom nevertheless, at the very close of his life, came a radiating guest in the shape of a cloak, which cheered for an instant his sorry existence; and upon whom there afterwards descended an intolerable misfortune, such as descends even on the heads of the mighty of this world!
A few days after his death, an attendant was sent to his house to request him to report immediately at the department; but the attendant returned to his chief with the rather unsatisfactory answer that he could not come, and to the question, “Why?” replied, “Well, you see, he’s dead. He was buried four days ago.” In this manner did they hear of Akaki Akakievich’s death in the department, and the next day, in his place sat a new official, much taller in stature, and forming his letters not quite so upright, but very much inclined and aslant.
But who could have imagined that this was not the end of Akaki Akakievich, and that he was destined to live through several stirring days after his death, in compensation, as it were, for his unnoticed life? But it so happened, and our poor history takes an unexpectedly fantastic conclusion.
St. Petersburg was suddenly startled by rumors that on the Kalinkin Bridge and in its vicinity there had begun to appear nightly a corpse, in the shape of an official, seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under the pretense that it was the stolen cloak, he dragged off, regardless of rank or calling, every one’s cloak from his shoulders, whether it was cat-skin, beaver, raccoon, fox, or bear—in short, every variety of fur and skin which man had thought of for his covering. One of the department officials saw the dead with his own eyes, and immediately recognized in him Akaki Akakievich; this, however, so frightened him that he began to run with all his might, and was therefore unable to observe him closely, but only saw him raise a threatening finger from afar.