The Overcoat

Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as all sorts of rubbish were being flung out of it: hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds and other such articles.

En sus ojos se leía a menudo el ardiente deseo de tomar parte en alguna conversación interesante o de juntarse a otro grupo, pero se retenía al pensar que aquello podía parecer excesivo por su parte o demasiado familiar, y que con ello rebajaría su dignidad. Y por eso permanecía eternamente solo, en la misma actitud silenciosa, emitiendo de cuando en cuando un sonido monótono, con lo cual llegó a pasar por un hombre de lo más aburrido.

In one of our government departments . . . but perhaps I had better not say exactly which one. For no one's more touchy than people in government departments, regiments, chancelleries or, in short, any kind of official body. Nowadays every private citizen thinks the whole of society is insulted when he himself is.

His collar was very short and narrow, so that, although his neck was not particularly long, yet standing out of the collar, it looked as immensely long as those of the plaster kittens that wag their heads and are carried about on trays on the heads of dozens of foreigners living in Russia.

Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and in those heart-rending words he heard others: "I am your brother.

Of this tailor I ought not, of course, to say much, but since it is now the rule that the character of every person in a novel must be completely drawn, well, there is no help for it, here is Petrovich too.

His whole existence had in a sense become fuller, as though he had married, as though some other person were present with him, as though he were no longer alone, but an agreeable companion had consented to walk the path of life hand in hand with him, and that companion was no other than the new overcoat with its thick wadding and its strong, durable lining.

It must be noted that this Person of Consequence had only lately become a person of consequence, and until recently had been a person of no consequence. Though, indeed, his position even now was not reckoned of consequence in comparison with others of still greater consequence.