In the 1942 English translation by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, the protagonist, a bureaucrat, settles into "a very dark cubbyhole, whither he had already brought his overcoat, and together with it, a certain odor all his own, which had been imparted to the bag brought in next, containing sundry
flunkeyish effects." "Sundry
flunkeyish effects" is true to the spirit of Gogol, Morson asserts, since "Gogol often chooses words less for their meaning than for their humorous sound and resonances." Guerney also stays true to Gogol by ending the passage with a funny image, as in the Russian.