ON 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Vozkresensky Prospekt (his name is lost now — it no longer figures on a signboard bearing a portrait of a gentleman with a soaped cheek, and the words: “Also, Blood Let Here”)— for that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch awoke early, and caught the smell of newly baked bread. Raising himself a little, he perceived his wife (a most respectable dame, and one especially fond of coffee) to be just in the act of drawing newly baked rolls from the oven.

“Prascovia Osipovna,” he said, “I would rather not have any coffee for breakfast, but, instead, a hot roll and an onion,”— the truth being that he wanted both but knew it to be useless to ask for two things at once, as Prascovia Osipovna did not fancy such tricks.

“Oh, the fool shall have his bread,” the dame reflected. “So much the better for me then, as I shall be able to drink a second lot of coffee.”

And duly she threw on to the table a roll.

Ivan Yakovlevitch donned a jacket over his shirt for politeness’ sake, and, seating himself at the table, poured out salt, got a couple of onions ready, took a knife into his hand, assumed an air of importance, and cut the roll asunder. Then he glanced into the roll’s middle. To his intense surprise he saw something glimmering there. He probed it cautiously with the knife — then poked at it with a finger.

“Quite solid it is!” he muttered. “What in the world is it likely to be?”

He thrust in, this time, all his fingers, and pulled forth — a nose! His hands dropped to his sides for a moment. Then he rubbed his eyes hard. Then again he probed the thing. A nose! Sheerly a nose! Yes, and one familiar to him, somehow! Oh, horror spread upon his feature! Yet that horror was a trifle compared with his spouse’s overmastering wrath.

“You brute!” she shouted frantically. “Where have you cut off that nose? You villain, you! You drunkard! Why, I’ll go and report you to the police myself. The brigand, you! Three customers have told me already about your pulling at their noses as you shaved them till they could hardly stand it.”

But Ivan Yakovlevitch was neither alive nor dead. This was the more the case because, sure enough, he had recognised the nose. It was the nose of Collegiate Assessor Kovalev — no less: it was the nose of a gentleman whom he was accustomed to shave twice weekly, on each Wednesday and each Sunday!

“Stop, Prascovia Osipovna!” at length he said. “I’ll wrap the thing in a clout, and lay it aside awhile, and take it away altogether later.”

“But I won’t hear of such a thing being done! As if I’m going to have a cut-off nose kicking about my room! Oh, you old stick! Maybe you can just strop a razor still; but soon you’ll be no good at all for the rest of your work. You loafer, you wastrel, you bungler, you blockhead! Aye, I’ll tell the police of you. Take it away, then. Take it away. Take it anywhere you like. Oh, that I’d never caught the smell of it!”

Ivan Yakovlevitch was dumbfounded. He thought and thought, but did not know what to think.

“The devil knows how it’s happened,” he said, scratching one ear. “You see, I don’t know for certain whether I came home drunk last night or not. But certainly things look as though something out of the way happened then, for bread comes of baking, and a nose of something else altogether. Oh, I just can’t make it out.”

So he sat silent. At the thought that the police might find the nose at his place, and arrest him, he felt frantic. Yes, already he could see the red collar with the smart silver braiding — the sword! He shuddered from head to foot.

But at last he got out, and donned waistco............