For some inexplicable reason, this conduct seemed familiar to the prominent personage.

“What, my dear sir!” he said abruptly, “are you not acquainted with etiquette?  To whom have you come?  Don’t you know how such matters are managed?  You should first have presented a petition to the office.  It would have gone to the head of the department, then to the chief of the division, then it would have been handed over to the secretary, and the secretary would have given it to me.”

“But, your excellency,” said Akaky Akakiyevich, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—­are an untrustworthy race.”

“What, what, what!” said the important personage.  “Where did you get such courage?  Where did you get such ideas?  What impudence towards their chiefs and superiors has spread among the young generation!” The prominent personage apparently had not observed that Akaky Akakiyevich was already in the neighbourhood of fifty.  If he could be called a young man, it must have been in comparison with some one who was seventy.  “Do you know to whom you are speaking?  Do you realise who is standing before you?  Do you realise it?  Do you realise it, I ask you!” Then he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakiyevich.

Akaky Akakiyevich’s senses failed him.  He staggered, trembled in every limb, and, if the porters had not run in to support him, would have fallen to the floor.  They carried him out insensible.  But the prominent personage, gratified that the effect should have surpassed his expectations, and quite intoxicated with the thought that his word could even deprive a man of his senses, glanced sideways at his friend in order to see how he looked upon this, and perceived, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uneasy frame of mind, and even beginning on his part, to feel a trifle frightened.

Akaky Akakiyevich could not remember how he descended the stairs, and got into the street.  He felt neither his hands nor feet.  Never in his life had he been so rated by any high official, let alone a strange one.  He went staggering on through the snow-storm, which was blowing in the streets, with his mouth wide open.  The wind, in St. Petersburg fashion, darted upon him from all quarters, and down every cross-street.  In a twinkling it had blown a quinsy into his throat, and he reached home unable to utter a word.  His throat was swollen, and he lay down on his bed.  So powerful is sometimes a good scolding!

The next day a violent fever developed.  Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the malady progressed more rapidly than could have been expected, and when the doctor arrived, he found, on feeling the sick man’s pulse, that there was nothing to be done, except to prescribe a poultice, so that the patient might not be left entirely without the beneficent aid of medicine.  But at the same time, he predicted his end in thirty-six hours.  After this he turned to the landlady, and said, “And as for you, don’t waste your time on him.  Order his pine coffin now, for an oak one will be too expensive for him.”