Nafanail thought a little and took refuge behind his father’s back.

“Well, how are you doing my friend?” the fat man asked, looking enthusiastically at his friend.  “Are you in the service?  What grade have you reached?”

“I am, dear boy!  I have been a collegiate assessor for the last two years and I have the Stanislav.  The salary is poor, but that’s no great matter!  The wife gives music lessons, and I go in for carving wooden cigarette cases in a private way.  Capital cigarette cases!  I sell them for a rouble each.  If any one takes ten or more I make a reduction of course.  We get along somehow.  I served as a clerk, you know, and now I have been transferred here as a head clerk in the same department.  I am going to serve here.  And what about you?  I bet you are a civil councillor by now?  Eh?”

“No dear boy, go higher than that,” said the fat man.  “I have risen to privy councillor already . . .  I have two stars.”

The thin man turned pale and rigid all at once, but soon his face twisted in all directions in the broadest smile; it seemed as though sparks were flashing from his face and eyes.  He squirmed, he doubled together, crumpled up. . . .  His portmanteaus, bundles and cardboard boxes seemed to shrink and crumple up too. . . .  His wife’s long chin grew longer still; Nafanail drew himself up to attention and fastened all the buttons of his uniform.

“Your Excellency, I . . . delighted!  The friend, one may say, of childhood and to have turned into such a great man!  He—­he!”

“Come, come!” the fat man frowned.  “What’s this tone for?  You and I were friends as boys, and there is no need of this official obsequiousness!”

“Merciful heavens, your Excellency!  What are you saying. . . ?” sniggered the thin man, wriggling more than ever.  “Your Excellency’s gracious attention is like refreshing manna. . . .  This, your Excellency, is my son Nafanail, . . . my wife Luise, a Lutheran in a certain sense.”

The fat man was about to make some protest, but the face of the thin man wore an expression of such reverence, sugariness, and mawkish respectfulness that the privy councillor was sickened.  He turned away from the thin man, giving him his hand at parting.

The thin man pressed three fingers, bowed his whole body and sniggered like a Chinaman:  “He—­he—­he!” His wife smiled.  Nafanail scraped with his foot and dropped his cap.  All three were agreeably overwhelmed.

THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK

ONE fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called Ivan Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the Cloches de Corneville.  He gazed and felt at the acme of bliss.  But suddenly. . . .  In stories one so often meets with this “But suddenly.”  The authors are right:  life is so full of surprises!  But suddenly his