respectable and well-meaning people were extremely displeased. One gentleman said indignantly that he could not understand how in this enlightened age such senseless stories could spread and that he was surprised at the government’s failure to take heed of it. This gentleman apparently was one of those gentlemen who would like to embroil the government in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives. After that…but here again the whole incident is shrouded in fog, and what happened afterwards is absolutely unknown.

III

Utterly nonsensical things happen in this world. Sometimes there is absolutely no rhyme or reason in them: suddenly the very nose which had been going around with the rank of a state councillor and created such a stir in the city, found itself again, as though nothing were the matter, in its proper place, that is to say, between the two cheeks of Major Kovalyov. This happened on April 7th. Waking up and chancing to look in the mirror, he sees—his nose! He grabbed it with his hand—his nose indeed! “Aha!” said Kovalyov, and in his joy he very nearly broke into a barefooted dance round the room, but Ivan’s entry stopped him. He told Ivan to bring him some water to wash in and, while washing, glanced again at the mirror—his nose! Drying himself with his towel, he again glanced at the mirror—his nose!

“Take a look, Ivan, I think there’s a pimple on my nose,” he said, and in the meantime thought, “How awful if Ivan says: ‘Why, no sir, not only there is no pimple but also the nose itself is gone!’ ”

But Ivan said: “Nothing, sir, no pimple—your nose is fine!”

“That’s great, damn it!” the major said to himself, snapping his fingers. At that moment the barber Ivan Yakovlevich peeped in at the door but as timidly as a cat which had just been whipped for stealing lard.

“First you tell me—are your hands clean?” Kovalyov shouted to him before he had approached.

“They are.”

“You’re lying.”

“I swear they are, sir.”

“Well, we’ll see.”

Kovalyov sat down. Ivan Yakovlevich draped him with a napkin and instantly, with the help of a shaving brush, transformed his chin and part of his cheek into the whipped cream served at merchants’ namesday parties. “Well, I never!” Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, glancing at his nose, and then cocked his head on the other side and looked at it sideways: “Look at that! Just you try and figure that out,” he continued and took a good look at his nose. At last, gently, with the greatest care imaginable, he raised two fingers to grasp it by the tip. Such was Ivan Yakovlevich’s method.

“Now, now, now, look out there!” cried Kovalyov. Dumbfounded and confused as never before in his life, Ivan Yakovlevich let his hands drop. At last he began cautiously tickling him with the razor under the chin, and although it wasn’t at all handy for him and difficult to shave without holding on to the olfactory portion of the face, nevertheless, somehow bracing his gnarled thumb against the cheek and the lower jaw, he finally overcame all obstacles and finished shaving him.

When everything was ready, Kovalyov hastened to dress, hired a cab and went straight to the coffee- house. Before he was properly inside the door he shouted, “Boy, a cup of chocolate!” and immediately made for the mirror: the nose was there. He turned round cheerfully and looked ironically, slightly screwing up one eye, at two military gentlemen one of whom had a nose no bigger than a waistcoat button. After that he set off for the office of the department where he was trying to obtain the post of a vice-governor or, failing that, of a procurement officer. Passing through the reception room, he glanced in the mirror: the