At length poor Akaky Akakiyevich breathed his last. They sealed up
neither his room nor his effects, because, in the first place, there
were no heirs, and, in the second, there was very little to inherit
beyond a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper,
three pairs of socks, two or three buttons which had burst off his
trousers, and the mantle already known to the reader. To whom all this
fell, God knows. I confess that the person who told me this tale took
no interest in the matter. They carried Akaky Akakiyevich out, and
buried him.
And St. Petersburg was left without Akaky Akakiyevich, as though he
had never lived there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none,
dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to
himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no
opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly and examining it
under the microscope. A being who bore meekly the jibes of the
department, and went to his grave without having done one unusual
deed, but to whom, nevertheless, at the close of his life, appeared a
bright visitant in the form of a cloak, which momentarily cheered his
poor life, and upon him, thereafter, an intolerable misfortune
descended, just as it descends upon the heads of the mighty of this
world!
Several days after his death, the porter was sent from the department
to his lodgings, with an order for him to present himself there
immediately, the chief commanding it.
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