In the department there served a clerk whom one could not call very remarkable. He was short of stature, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired, somewhat even short-sighted. His name was Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, and his rank was that of a titular councillor. He had been christened in a fashion truly strange. His poor mother, still weak upon her bed, was offered the calendar and bidden to choose; but every name that met her eye seemed so outlandish that at last she sighed, "Plainly such is his fate; then let him be called after his father." The father was Akaky, and so the son became Akaky too. He had served in this same department longer than anyone could remember, and in the whole world he loved nothing but the copying of documents. There existed for him no life beyond his clean, even, beautiful hand. Indeed, he copied with love. There were among the letters certain favourites of his, and whenever he reached them he was beside himself, chuckling and winking and helping them on with his lips, so that upon his face one might read every letter his pen was tracing. Once a kindly director, wishing to reward his long service, bade him undertake something more important than mere copying. But this threw him into such confusion that the sweat broke upon his brow, until at last he said, "No, better let me copy something." Thenceforth they left him to copy forever. The younger clerks mocked him in every way that idle office wit could invent. They showered torn papers upon his head and called it snow. Yet Akaky answered not a single word, as though no one stood before him. Only when the jesting grew quite unbearable would he murmur, "Leave me alone. Why do you insult me?" And in those words there sounded something so strange, something so piteous, that one young man, but lately come, stopped short. From that hour everything seemed changed before him, and long afterward the little clerk would rise before him with his penetrating words, "I am your brother."