This surprised me. I confess, lately I had begun sometimes to hear and see things no one had ever seen or heard before. "I'll just follow that little dog," I said to myself, "and find out what she is and what she thinks."
I opened my umbrella and followed the two ladies. They went down Gorokhovaya, turned onto Meshchanskaya, from there to Stolyarnaya, and finally to the Kokushkin Bridge, where they stopped in front of a big house. "I know that building," I said to myself. "That's Zverkov's building." What a pile! And the sorts that live in it: so many cooks, so many out-of-towners! and our fellow clerks-like pups, one on top of the other. I, too, have a friend there, a very good trumpet player. The ladies went up to the fifth floor. "Very well," I thought, "I won't go up now, but I'll note the place and be sure to make use of it at the first opportunity."
October 4.
Today is Wednesday, and so I was in my superior's study. I came earlier on purpose, sat down to work, and sharpened all the pens. Our director must be a very intelligent man. His whole study is filled with bookcases. I read the titles of some of the books: it's all learning, such learning as our kind can't even come close to: all in French, or in German. And to look at his face: pah, such importance shines in his eyes! I've never yet heard him utter an extra word. Except maybe when I hand him some papers, and he asks, "How is it outside?" "Wet, Your Excellency!" Yes, there's no comparison with our kind! A real statesman. I notice, though, that he has a special liking for me. If only the daughter also… ah, confound it!… Never mind, never mind, silence! I read the little Bee. 1 What fools these Frenchmen are! So, what is it they want? By God, I'd take the lot of them and give them a good birching! I also read a very pleasant portrayal of a ball there, described by a Kursk landowner. Kursk landowners are good writers. After that I noticed it had already struck twelve-thirty, and our man had never left his bedroom. But around one-thirty an event took place which no pen can describe. The door opened, I thought it was the director and jumped up from the chair with my papers; but it was she, she herself! Heavens above, how she was dressed! Her gown was white as a swan, and so magnificent, pah! and her glance-the sun, by God, the sun! She nodded and said, "Papa hasn't been here?" Aie, aie, aie! what a voice! A canary, truly, a canary! "Your Excellency," I almost wanted to say, "don't punish me, but if it is your will to punish me, punish me with Your Excellency's own hand." But, devil take it, my tongue somehow refused to move, and I said only, "No, ma'am." She looked at me, at the books, and dropped her handkerchief. I rushed headlong, slipped on the cursed parquet, almost smashed my nose, nevertheless kept my balance and picked up the handkerchief. Heavens, what a handkerchief! The finest cambric-ambrosia, sheer ambrosia! it simply exuded excellency. She thanked me and just barely smiled, so that her sugary lips scarcely moved, and after that she left. I sat for another hour, when suddenly a lackey came in and said, "Go home, Aksenty Ivanovich, the master has already gone out." I can't stand the lackey circle: there is one always sprawled in the front hall who won't even nod his head. Moreover, one of the knaves decided once to offer me some snuff without getting up. But don't you know, stupid churl, that I am an official, a man of noble birth? However, I took my hat and put my overcoat on by myself- because these gentlemen never help you-and left. At home I lay in bed most of the time. Then I copied out some very nice verses: "I was gone from her an hour, / Yet to me it seemed a year; / Life itself for me turned sour, / And the future dark and drear." Must be Pushkin's writing. 2 In the evening, wrapped in my overcoat, I went to Her Excellency's front gates and waited for a long time to see whether she'd come out for a carriage, to have one more look-but no, she didn't come out.
November 6. Furious with the section chief. When I came to the office, he called me over and started talking to me like this: "Well, pray tell me, what are you up to?" "What am I up to? Why, nothing," I replied. "Well, think a little better! You're over forty-it's time you got smart. What are you dreaming of? Do you think I don't know all your pranks? You're dangling after the director's daughter! Well, take a look at yourself, only think, what are you? You're a zero, nothing more. You haven't got a kopeck to your name. Just look at yourself in the mirror, how can you even think of it!" Devil take him, his face bears a slight resemblance to a druggist's bottle, with a tuft of hair curled into a forelock sticking up, smeared with some pomade, so he thinks he's the only one allowed anything. I see, I see why he's angry with me. He's jealous. Maybe he saw the signs of benevolence preferentially bestowed on me. Well, spit on him! Big deal, a court councillor! hangs a gold watch chain on himself, orders thirty-rouble boots-who the devil cares! Am I some sort of nobody, a tailor's son, or a sergeant's? I'm a nobleman. So, I, too, can earn rank. I'm only forty-two-the age at which service just seriously begins. Wait, friend! we, too, will become a colonel and, God willing, maybe something even higher. We'll get ourselves a reputation even better than yours. What, have you taken it into your head that there are no decent men except you? Just give me a Ruch 3 tailcoat, cut in the latest fashion, and let me have the same kind of necktie as you have-you won't hold a candle to me. No income-that's the trouble.