"
"What, what, what!" said the important personage. "Where did you get
such courage? Where did you get such ideas? What impudence towards
their chiefs and superiors has spread among the young generation!" The
prominent personage apparently had not observed that Akaky Akakiyevich
was already in the neighbourhood of fifty. If he could be called a
young man, it must have been in comparison with some one who was
seventy. "Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realise who is
standing before you? Do you realise it? Do you realise it, I ask you!"
Then he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a pitch that it
would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakiyevich.
Akaky Akakiyevich's senses failed him. He staggered, trembled in every
limb, and, if the porters had not run in to support him, would have
fallen to the floor. They carried him out insensible. But the
prominent personage, gratified that the effect should have surpassed
his expectations, and quite intoxicated with the thought that his word
could even deprive a man of his senses, glanced sideways at his friend
in order to see how he looked upon this, and perceived, not without
satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uneasy frame of mind, and
even beginning on his part, to feel a trifle frightened.
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