V + 

The cursed nostrum did its evil work with fateful slowness, but inexorably. Saranin became smaller and smaller every day. His clothes dangled round him like a sack. + 

His acquaintances marvelled. They said: + 

“How is it that you seem a bit smaller. Have you stopped wearing heels?” + 

“Yes, and a bit thinner.” + 

“You’re working too hard.” + 

“Fancy taking it out of yourself like that!” + 

Finally, on meeting him, they would sigh: “Whatever is the matter with you?” + 

Behind his back, Saranin’s acquaintances began to make fun of him. + 

“He’s growing downwards.” + 

“He’s trying to break the record for smallness.” + 

His wife noticed it somewhat later. Being always in her sight, he grew smaller too gradually for her to see anything. She noticed it by the baggy look of his clothes. + 

At first she laughed at the queer diminution in size of her husband. Then she began to lose her temper. + 

“This is going from bad to worse,” she said. “And to think that I actually married such a midget.” + 

Soon all his clothes had to be remade⁠—all the old ones were dropping off him; his trousers reached his ears, and his hat fell on to his shoulder. + 

The head porter happened to go into the kitchen. + 

“What’s up here?” he asked the cook, sternly. + 

“Is that any business of mine?” the plump and comely Matrena was on the point of shouting irascibly, but she remembered just in time and said: + 

“There’s nothing up here at all. Everything’s as usual.” + 

“Why, your master’s beginning to carry on like anything. By rights he ought to report himself to the police,” said the porter very sternly. + 

The watch-chain on his paunch heaved indignantly. + 

Matrena suddenly sat down on a box and burst out crying. + 

“Don’t talk about it, Sidor Pavlovitch,” she began. “We’ve really been wondering what’s the matter with him⁠—we can’t make it out.” + 

“What’s the reason? What’s the cause?” exclaimed the porter, indignantly. “Can such things be?” + 

“The only comfort about it,” said the cook, sobbing, “is, that he eats less.” + 

The longer he lived, the smaller he got. + 

And the servants, and the tailors, and all with whom Saranin had to come in contact, treated him with unconcealed contempt. He would race along to business, tiny, hardly managing to lug his huge portfolio with both hands, and behind him he heard the malicious laughter of the hall-porter, the doorkeeper, cabmen, urchins. + 

“Little shrimp,” the head porter would remark. + 

Saranin had to swallow many a bitter draught. He lost his wedding ring. His wife made a fuss about it. She wrote to her parents in Moscow. + 

“Curse that Armenian!” thought Saranin. + 

Often he called to mind the Armenian counting the drops, pouring them out. + 

“Whew!” exclaimed Saranin. + 

“Never mind, my dear, it was my mistake, I won’t do anything for it.” + 

Saranin also went to the doctor, who examined him with jocular remarks. He found nothing wrong. + 

Saranin would go to visit somebody or other⁠—the porter did not let him in at once. + 

“Who may you be?” + 

Saranin told him. + 

“I don’t know,” said the porter. “Mr. So-and-so don’t receive such people.” + 