It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for his duties.  It is not enough to say that Akaky laboured with zeal; no, he laboured with love.  In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment.  Enjoyment was written on his face; some letters were even favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it.  If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councillor of state.  But he worked, as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.

However, it would be untrue to say that no attention was paid to him.  One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his long service, ordered him to be given something more important than mere copying.  So he was ordered to make a report of an already concluded affair, to another department; the duty consisting simply in changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the third person.  This caused him so much toil, that he broke into a perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, “No, give me rather something to copy.”  After that they let him copy on forever.

Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him.  He gave no thought to his clothes.  His uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty-meal colour.  The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged from it, like the necks of the plaster cats which pedlars carry about on their heads.  And something was always sticking to his uniform, either a bit of hay or some trifle.  Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as all sorts of rubbish was being flung out of it; hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds, and other such articles.  Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day to the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials trained the range of their glances till they could see when any one’s trouser-straps came undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always brought a malicious smile to their faces.  But Akaky Akakiyevich saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines; and only when a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter, over his shoulder, and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck from his nostrils, did he observe that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of the street.

On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, sipped his cabbage-soup up quickly, and swallowed a bit of beef with onions, never noticing their taste, and gulping down everything with flies and anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.  When he saw that his stomach was beginning to swell, he rose from the table, and copied papers which he had brought home.  If there happened to be none, he took copies for himself, for his own gratification, especially if the document was noteworthy, not on account of its style, but of its being addressed to some distinguished person.