In the street all was still bright.  Some petty shops, those permanent clubs of servants and all sorts of folks, were open.  Others were shut, but, nevertheless, showed a streak of light the whole length of the door-crack, indicating that they were not yet free of company, and that probably some domestics, male and female, were finishing their stories and conversations, whilst leaving their masters in complete ignorance as to their whereabouts.  Akaky Akakiyevich went on in a happy frame of mind.  He even started to run, without knowing why, after some lady, who flew past like a flash of lightning.  But he stopped short, and went on very quietly as before, wondering why he had quickened his pace.  Soon there spread before him these deserted streets which are not cheerful in the daytime, to say no thing of the evening.  Now they were even mere dim and lonely.  The lanterns began to grow rarer, oil, evidently, had been less liberally supplied.  Then came wooden houses and fences.  Not a soul anywhere; only the snow sparkled in the streets, and mournfully veiled the low-roofed cabins with their dosed shutters.  He approached the spot where the street crossed a vast square with houses barely visible on its farther side, a square which seemed a fearful desert.

Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman’s-box, which seemed to stand en the edge of the world.  Ahaky Akakiyevich’s cheerfulness diminished at this point in a marked degree.  He entered the square, not without an involuntary sensation of fear, as though his heart warned him of some evil.  He glanced back, and on both sides it was like a sea about him.  “No, it is better not to look,” he thought, and went on, closing his eyes.  When he opened them, to see whether he was near the end of the square, he suddenly beheld, standing just before his very nose, some bearded individuals of precisely what sort, he could not make out.  All grew dark before his eyes, and his heart throbbed.

“Of course, the cloak is mine!” said one of them in a loud voice, seizing hold of his collar.  Akaky Akakiyevich was about to shout “Help!” when the second man thrust a fist, about the size of an official’s head, at his very mouth, muttering, “Just you dare to scream!”

Akaky Akakiyevich felt them strip off his cloak, and give him a kick.  He fell headlong upon the snow, and felt no more.

In a few minutes he recovered consciousness, and rose to his feet, but no one was there.  He felt that it was cold in the square, and that his cloak was gone.  He began to shout, but his voice did not appear to reach the outskirts of the square.  In despair, but without ceasing to shout, he started at a run across the square, straight towards the watch-box, beside which stood the watchman, leaning on his halberd, and apparently curious to know what kind of a customer was running towards him shouting.  Akaky Akakiyevich ran up to him, and began in a sobbing voice to shout that he was asleep, and attended to nothing, and did not see when a man was robbed.  The watchman replied that he had seen two men stop him in the middle of the square, but supposed that they were friends of his, and that, instead of scolding vainly, he had better go to the police on the morrow, so that they might make a search for whoever had stolen the cloak.