own accord, each more agreeable than the other, giving you no trouble either to drive them away, or seek them.  Fully satisfied, he recalled all the gay features of the evening just passed and all the mots which had made the little circle laugh.  Many of them he repeated in a low voice, and found them quite as funny as before; so it is not surprising that he should laugh heartily at them.  Occasionally, however, he was interrupted by gusts of wind, which, coming suddenly, God knows whence or why, cut his face, drove masses of snow into it, filled out his cloak-collar like a sail, or suddenly blew it over his head with supernatural force, and thus caused him constant trouble to disentangle himself.

Suddenly the important personage felt some one clutch him firmly by the collar.  Turning round, he perceived a man of short stature, in an old, worn uniform, and recognised, not without terror, Akaky Akakiyevich.  The official’s face was white as snow, and looked just like a corpse’s.  But the horror of the important personage transcended all bounds when he saw the dead man’s mouth open, and heard it utter the following remarks, while it breathed upon him the terrible odour of the grave:  “Ah, here you are at last!  I have you, that—­by the collar!  I need your cloak.  You took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me.  So now give up your own.”

The pallid prominent personage almost died of fright.  Brave as he was in the office and in the presence of inferiors generally, and although, at the sight of his manly form and appearance, every one said, “Ugh! how much character he has!” at this crisis, he, like many possessed of an heroic exterior, experienced such terror, that, not without cause, he began to fear an attack of illness.  He flung his cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an unnatural voice, “Home at full speed!” The coachman, hearing the tone which is generally employed at critical moments, and even accompanied by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on like an arrow.  In a little more than six minutes the prominent personage was at the entrance of his own house.  Pale, thoroughly scared, and cloakless, he went home instead of to Karolina Ivanovna’s, reached his room somehow or other, and passed the night in the direst distress; so that the next morning over their tea, his daughter said, “You are very pale to-day, papa.”  But papa remained silent, and said not a word to any one of what had happened to him, where he had been, or where he had intended to go.

This occurrence made a deep impression upon him.  He even began to say, “How dare you?  Do you realise who is standing before you?” less frequently to the under-officials, and, if he did utter the words, it was only after first having learned the bearings of the matter.  But the most noteworthy point was, that from that day forward the apparition of the dead official ceased to be seen.  Evidently the prominent personage’s cloak just fitted his shoulders.  At all events, no more instances of his dragging cloaks from people’s shoulders were heard of.  But many active and solicitous persons could by no means reassure themselves, and asserted that the dead official still showed himself in distant parts of the city.