All at once, you see, I find you—_where_? Do you not feel as I do about it?"

"Pardon me, but I cannot apprehend your meaning. Pray explain further."

"Yes, but how, I should like to know?" Kovalev thought to himself. Then, again taking courage, he went: on:

"I am, you see—well, in point of fact, you see, I am a Major. Hence you will realise how unbecoming it is for me to have to walk about without a nose. Of course, a peddler of oranges on the Vozkresensky Bridge could sit there noseless well enough, but I myself am hoping soon to receive a——Hm, yes. Also, I have amongst my acquaintances several ladies of good houses (Madame Chektareva, wife of the State Councillor, for example), and you may judge for yourself what that alone signifies. Good sir"—Major Kovalev gave his shoulders a shrug—"I do not know whether you yourself (pardon me) consider conduct of this sort to be altogether in accordance with the rules of duty and honour, but at least you can understand that——"

"I understand nothing at all," the Nose broke in. "Explain yourself more satisfactorily."

"Good sir," Kovalev went on with a heightened sense of dignity, "the one who is at a loss to understand the other is I. But at least the immediate point should be plain, unless you are determined to have it otherwise. Merely—you are my own nose."

The Nose regarded the Major, and contracted its brows a little.

"My dear sir, you speak in error," was its reply. "I am just myself—myself separately. And in any case there cannot ever have existed a close relation between us, for, judging from the buttons of your undress uniform, your service is being performed in another department than my own."

And the Nose definitely turned away.

Kovalev stood dumbfounded. What to do, even what to think, he had not a notion.

Presently the agreeable swish of ladies' dresses began to be heard. Yes, an elderly, lace-bedecked dame was approaching, and, with her, a slender maiden in a white frock which outlined delightfully a trim figure, and, above it, a straw hat of a lightness as of pastry. Behind them there came, stopping every now and then to open a snuffbox, a tall, whiskered beau in quite a twelve-fold collar.

Kovalev moved a little nearer, pulled up the collar of his shirt, straightened the seals on his gold watch-chain, smiled, and directed special attention towards the slender lady as, swaying like a floweret in spring, she kept raising to her brows a little white hand with fingers almost of transparency. And Kovalev's smiles became broader still when peeping from under the hat he saw there to be an alabaster, rounded little chin, and part of a cheek flushed like an early rose. But all at once he recoiled as though scorched, for all at once he had remembered that he had not a nose on him, but nothing at all. So, with tears forcing themselves upwards, he wheeled about to tell the uniformed gentleman that he, the uniformed gentleman, was no State Councillor, but an impostor and a knave and a villain and the Major's own nose. But the Nose, behold, was gone! That very moment had it driven away to, presumably, pay another visit.

This drove Kovalev to the last pitch of desperation. He went back to the mansion, and stationed himself under its portico, in the hope that, by peering hither and thither, hither and thither, he might once more see the Nose appear. But, well though he remembered the Nose's cockaded hat and gold-braided uniform, he had failed at the time to note also its cloak, the colour of its horses, the make of its carriage, the look of the lackey seated behind, and the pattern of the lackey's livery. Besides, so many carriages were moving swiftly up and down the street that it would have been impossible to note them all, and equally so to have stopped any one of them. Meanwhile, as the day was fine and sunny, the Prospekt was thronged with pedestrians also—a whole kaleidoscopic stream of ladies was flowing along the pavements, from Police Headquarters to the Anitchkin Bridge. There one could descry an Aulic Councillor whom Kovalev knew well. A gentleman he was whom Kovalev always addressed as "Lieutenant-Colonel," and especially in the presence of others. And there there went Yaryzhkin, Chief Clerk to the Senate, a crony who always rendered forfeit at "Boston" on playing an eight. And, lastly, a like "Major" with Kovalev, a like "Major" with an Assessorship acquired through Caucasian service, started to beckon to Kovalev with a finger!

"The devil take him!" was Kovalev's muttered comment. "Hi, cabman! Drive to the Police Commissioner's direct."

But just when he was entering the drozhki he added:

"No. Go by Ivanovskaia Street."

"Is the Commissioner in?" he asked on crossing the threshold.

"He is not," was the doorkeeper's reply. "He's gone this very moment."

"There's luck for you!"

"Aye," the doorkeeper went on. "Only just a moment ago he was off.