I swear it as God is holy. In fact, as things have gone so far, I will let you see for yourself."

"Why trouble?" Here the clerk took some snuff before adding with, nevertheless, a certain movement of curiosity: "However, if it really won't trouble you at all, a sight of the spot would gratify me."

The Collegiate Assessor removed the handkerchief.

"Strange indeed! Very strange indeed!" the clerk exclaimed. "And the patch is as uniform as a newly fried pancake, almost unbelievably uniform."

"So you will dispute what I say no longer? Then surely you cannot but put the announcement into print. I shall be extremely grateful to you, and glad that the present occasion has given me such a pleasure as the making of your acquaintance"—whence it will be seen that for once the Major had decided to climb down.

"To print what you want is nothing much," the clerk replied. "Yet frankly I cannot see how you are going to benefit from the step. I would suggest, rather, that you commission a skilled writer to compose an article describing this as a rare product of nature, and have the article published in _The Northern Bee_" (here the clerk took more snuff), "either for the instruction of our young" (the clerk wiped his nose for a finish) "or as a matter of general interest."

This again depressed the Collegiate Assessor: and even though, on his eyes happening to fall upon a copy of the newspaper, and reach the column assigned to theatrical news, and encounter the name of a beautiful actress, so that he almost broke into a smile, and a hand began to finger a pocket for a Treasury note (since he held that only stalls were seats befitting Majors and so forth)—although all this was so, there again recurred to him the thought of the nose, and everything again became spoilt.

Even the clerk seemed touched with the awkwardness of Kovalev's plight, and wishful to lighten with a few sympathetic words the Collegiate Assessor's depression.

"I am sorry indeed that this has befallen," he said. "Should you care for a pinch of this? Snuff can dissipate both headache and low spirits. Nay, it is good for haemorrhoids as well."

And he proffered his box-deftly, as he did so, folding back underneath it the lid depicting a lady in a hat.

Kovalev lost his last shred of patience at the thoughtless act, and said heatedly:

"How you can think fit thus to jest I cannot imagine. For surely you perceive me no longer to be in possession of a means of sniffing? Oh, you and your snuff can go to hell! Even the sight of it is more than I can bear. I should say the same even if you were offering me, not wretched birch bark, but real rappee."

Greatly incensed, he rushed out of the office, and made for the ward police inspector's residence. Unfortunately he arrived at the very moment when the inspector, after a yawn and a stretch, was reflecting: "Now for two hours' sleep!" In short, the Collegiate Assessor's visit chanced to be exceedingly ill-timed. Incidentally, the inspector, though a great patron of manufacturers and the arts, preferred still more a Treasury note.

"That's the thing!" he frequently would say. "It's a thing which can't be beaten anywhere, for it wants nothing at all to eat, and it takes up very little room, and it fits easily to the pocket, and it doesn't break in pieces if it happens to be dropped."

So the inspector received Kovalev very drily, and intimated that just after dinner was not the best moment for beginning an inquiry—nature had ordained that one should rest after food (which showed the Collegiate Assessor that at least the inspector had some knowledge of sages' old saws), and that in any case no one would purloin the nose of a _really_ respectable man.

Yes, the inspector gave it Kovalev between the eyes. And as it should be added that Kovalev was extremely sensitive where his title or his dignity was concerned (though he readily pardoned anything said against himself personally, and even held, with regard to stage plays, that, whilst Staff-Officers should not be assailed, officers of lesser rank might be referred to), the police inspector's reception so took him aback that, in a dignified way, and with hands set apart a little, he nodded, remarked: "After your insulting observations there is nothing which I wish to add," and betook himself away again.

He reached home scarcely hearing his own footsteps. Dusk had fallen, and, after the unsuccessful questings, his flat looked truly dreary. As he entered the hall he perceived Ivan, his valet, to be lying on his back on the stained old leathern divan, and spitting at the ceiling with not a little skill as regards successively hitting the same spot. The man's coolness rearoused Kovalev's ire, and, smacking him over the head with his hat, he shouted:

"You utter pig! You do nothing but play the fool." Leaping up, Ivan hastened to take his master's cloak.

The tired and despondent Major then sought his sitting-room, threw himself into an easy-chair, sighed, and said to himself:

"My God, my God! why has this misfortune come upon me? Even loss of hands or feet would have been better, for a man without a nose is the devil knows what—a bird, but not a bird, a citizen, but not a citizen, a thing just to be thrown out of window. It would have been better, too, to have had my nose cut off in action, or in a duel, or through my own act: whereas here is the nose gone with nothing to show for it—uselessly—for not a groat's profit!—No, though," he added after thought, "it's not likely that the nose is gone for good: it's not likely at all. And quite probably I am dreaming all this, or am fuddled. It may be that when I came home yesterday I drank the vodka with which I rub my chin after shaving instead of water—snatched up the stuff because that fool Ivan was not there to receive me."

So he sought to ascertain whether he might not be drunk by pinching himself till he fairly yelled. Then, certain, because of the pain, that he was acting and living in waking life, he approached the mirror with diffidence, and once more scanned himself with a sort of inward hope that the nose might by this time be showing as restored. But the result was merely that he recoiled and muttered:

"What an absurd spectacle still!"

Ah, it all passed his understanding! If only a button, or a silver spoon, or a watch, or some such article were gone, rather than that anything had disappeared like this—for no reason, and in his very flat! Eventually, having once more reviewed the circumstances, he reached the final conclusion that he should most nearly hit the truth in supposing Madame Podtochina (wife of the Staff-Officer, of course—the lady who wanted him to become her daughter's husband) to have been the prime agent in the affair. True, he had always liked dangling in the daughter's wake, but also he had always fought shy of really coming down to business. Even when the Staff-Officer's lady had said point blank that she desired him to become her son-in-law he had put her off with his compliments, and replied that the daughter was still too young, and himself due yet to perform five years service, and aged only forty-two. Yes, the truth must be that out of revenge the Staff-Officer's wife had resolved to ruin him, and hired a band of witches for the purpose, seeing that the nose could not conceivably have been cut off—no one had entered his private room lately, and, after being shaved by Ivan Yakovlevitch on the Wednesday, he had the nose intact, he knew and remembered well, throughout both the rest of the Wednesday and the day following. Also, if the nose had been cut off, pain would have resulted, and also a wound, and the place could not have healed so quickly, and become of the uniformity of a pancake.

Next, the Major made his plans. Either he would sue the Staff-Officer's lady in legal form or he would pay her a surprise visit, and catch her in a trap. Then the foregoing reflections were cut short by a glimmer showing through the chink of the door—a sign that Ivan had just lit a candle in the hall: and presently Ivan himself appeared, carrying the candle in front of him, and throwing the room into such clear radiance that Kovalev had hastily to snatch up the handkerchief again, and once more cover the place where the nose had been but yesterday, lest the stupid fellow should be led to stand gaping at the monstrosity on his master's features.

Ivan had just returned to his cupboard when an unfamiliar voice in the hall inquired:

"Is this where Collegiate Assessor Kovalev lives?"

"It is," Kovalev shouted, leaping to his feet, and flinging wide the door. "Come in, will you?"

Upon which there entered a police-officer of smart exterior, with whiskers neither light nor dark, and cheeks nicely plump. As a matter of fact, he was the police-officer whom Ivan Yakovlevitch had met at the end of the Isaakievsky Bridge.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but have you lost your nose?"

"I have—just so."

"Then the nose is found."

"What?" For a moment or two joy deprived Major Kovalev of further speech. All that he could do was to stand staring, open-eyed, at the officer's plump lips and cheeks, and at the tremulant beams which the candlelight kept throwing over them. "Then how did it come about?"

"Well, by the merest chance the nose was found beside a roadway. Already it had entered a stage-coach, and was about to leave for Riga with a passport made out in the name of a certain chinovnik. And, curiously enough, I myself, at first, took it to be a gentleman. Luckily, though, I had my eyeglasses on me.