The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their
official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted
about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared
that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits
of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakiyevich
answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there
besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work. Amid all these
annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the
joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his head, and
prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim:

"Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?"

And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which
they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so
much so that one young man, a newcomer, who, taking pattern by the
others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akaky, suddenly stopped
short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and
presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him
from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition
that they were decent, well-bred men. Long afterwards, in his gayest
moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald
forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you
insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded--"I am thy
brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a
time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how
much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is
concealed beneath refined, cultured, worldly refinement, and even, O
God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and
upright.