So powerful is sometimes a good scolding! The next day a violent fever showed itself.

Thanks to the generous assistance of the St.Petersburg climate, the malady progressed more rapidly than could have been expected: and when the doctor arrived, he found, on feeling the sick man's pulse, that there was nothing to be done, except to prescribe a fomentation, so that the patient might not be left entirely without the beneficent aid of medicine; but at the same time, he predicted his end in thirty-six hours.

After this he turned to the landlady, and said, "And as for you, don't waste your time on him: order his pine coffin now, for an oak one will be too expensive for him." Did Akakiy Akakievitch hear these fatal words?
and if he heard them, did they produce any overwhelming effect upon him?
Did he lament the bitterness of his life ?--We know not, for he continued in a delirious condition.

Visions incessantly appeared to him, each stranger than the other.

Now he saw Petrovitch, and ordered him to make a cloak, with some traps for robbers, who seemed to him to be always under the bed; and cried every moment to the landlady to pull one of them from under his coverlet.