“That sounds like a judgment!” muttered the sick woman. “What names! I truly never heard the like. Varadat and Varukh would have been bad enough, but Traphili and Varakhasi!” They turned to another page. The result was: Povsikakhi and Vakhtisi. “Enough,” said the mother. “I now see that it is fate. And since it is so, I think he had better be called after his father. Akaki was his father’s name, let the son too be Akaki.” In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened, at which he wept and made a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would have been impossible. When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as “Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, and whether he had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it. The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him; they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he exclaimed: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”