nose was there. Then he went to visit another collegiate assessor or major, a great wag, to whom he often said in reply to various derisive remarks: “Oh, come off it, I know you, you’re a kidder.” On the way there he thought: “If the major doesn’t explode with laughter on seeing me, it’s a sure sign that everything is in its proper place.” The collegiate assessor did not explode. “That’s great, that’s great, damn it!” Kovalyov thought to himself. On the street he met Mrs. Podtochina, the field officer’s wife, together with her daughter, bowed to them and was hailed with joyful exclamations, and so everything was all right, no part of him was missing. He talked with them a very long time and, deliberately taking out his snuff- box, right in front of them kept stuffing his nose with snuff at both entrances for a very long time, saying to himself: “So much for you, you women, you stupid hens! I won’t marry the daughter all the same. Anything else, par amour—by all means.” And from that time on, Major Kovalyov went strolling about as though nothing had happened, both on Nevsky Avenue, and in the theaters, and everywhere. And his nose too, as though nothing had happened, stayed on his face, betraying no sign of having played truant. And thereafter Major Kovalyov was always seen in good humor, smiling, running after absolutely all the pretty ladies, and once even stopping in front of a little shop in Gostinny Dvor and buying himself the ribbon of some order, goodness knows why, for he hadn’t been decorated with any order.

That is the kind of affair that happened in the northern capital of our vast empire. Only now, on second thoughts, can we see that there is much that is improbable in it. Without speaking of the fact that the supernatural detachment of the nose and its appearance in various places in the guise of a state councillor is indeed strange, how is it that Kovalyov did not realize that one does not advertise for one’s nose through the newspaper office? I do not mean to say that advertising rates appear to me too high: that’s nonsense, and I am not at all one of those mercenary people. But it’s improper, embarrassing, not nice! And then again—how did the nose come to be in a newly baked loaf, and how about Ivan Yakovlevich? … No, this is something I can’t understand, positively can’t understand. But the strangest, the most incomprehensible thing of all, is how authors can choose such subjects. I confess that this is quite inconceivable; it is indeed … no, no, I just can’t understand it at all! In the first place, there is absolutely no benefit in it for the fatherland; in the second place … but in the second place, there is no benefit either. I simply don’t know what to make of it. …

And yet, in spite of it all, though, of course, we may assume this and that and the other, perhaps even … And after all, where aren’t there incongruities?—But all the same, when you think about it, there really is something in all this. Whatever anyone says, such things happen in this world; rarely, but they do.