It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but as it is customary that in a story the character of each person be clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf; he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again, he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice. Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses--ascending the staircase, Akaki Akakievich was thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job, and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian! You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”