It may even be, as the fashion goes, that the collar can be fastened by silver hooks under a flap." Then Akakiy Akakievitch saw that it was impossible to get along without a new cloak, and his spirit sank utterly.

How, in fact, was it to be done?
Where was the money to come from?
He might, to be sure, depend, in part, upon his present at Christmas; but that money had long been allotted beforehand.

He must have some new trousers, and pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting new tops to his old boots, and he must order three shirts from the seamstress, and a couple of pieces of linen.

In short, all his money must be spent; and even if the director should be so kind as to order him to receive forty-five rubles instead of forty, or even fifty, it would be a mere nothing, a mere drop in the ocean towards the funds necessary for a cloak: although he knew that Petrovitch was often wrong-headed enough to blurt out some outrageous price, so that even his own wife could not refrain from exclaiming, "Have you lost your senses, you fool ?" At one time he would not work at any price, and now it was quite likely that he had named a higher sum than the cloak would cost.
But although he knew that Petrovitch would undertake to make a cloak for eighty rubles, still, where was he to get the eighty rubles from?
He might possibly manage half, yes, half might be procured, but where was the other half to come from?
But the reader must first be told where the first half came from.

Akakiy Akakievitch had a habit of putting, for every ruble he spent, a groschen into a small box, fastened with a lock and key, and with a slit in the top for the reception of money.