Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers--indeed, all the work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure--the more alert going to the theatre; those on the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this being the more frequent rule--visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps a dinner or an outing; in a word, at the very hour that all the officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about, repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party. Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send him for the next day’s copying? So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and various other councillors, even for those who render counsel unto no one, and take none themselves.