Sure enough, the Nose did return, two minutes later. It was clad in a gold-braided, high-collared uniform, buckskin breeches, and cockaded hat. And slung beside it there was a sword, and from the cockade on the hat it could be inferred that the Nose was purporting to pass for a State Councilor. It seemed now to be going to pay another visit somewhere. At all events it glanced about it, and then, shouting to the coachman, "Drive up here," reentered the vehicle, and set forth.
This quote is an example of the pinnacle of absurdity that the text reaches in Part II. The narrator describes how Major Kovalev's nose somehow now outranks him, a deeply painful irony for the Major. The irony of this moment is exacerbated by the level of detail that the narrator pays to the nose's uniform, making it seem more luxurious than Major Kovalev's.
Then [Kovalev] halted as though riveted to earth. For in front of the doors of a mansion he saw occur a phenomenon of which, simply, no explanation was possible. Before that mansion there stopped a carriage. And then a door of the carriage opened, and there leapt thence, huddling himself up, a uniformed gentleman, and that uniformed gentleman ran headlong up the mansion's entrance-steps, and disappeared within. And oh, Kovalev's horror and astonishment to perceive that the gentleman was none other than—his own nose!
This quote pinpoints the moment that Major Kovalev realizes that his nose has not only escaped, but also begun assuming the status of a high-ranked official paying social visits. This is surrealism and absurdism at its finest: the equation of "gentleman" with "nose" is given no explanation. In addition, only Major Kovalev seems shocked and dismayed at this strange turn of events; there is a noticeable absence of any other perspectives.
"Even loss of hands or feet would have been better, for a man without a nose is the devil knows what—a bird, but not a bird, a citizen, but not a citizen, a thing just to be thrown out of window. It would have been better, too, to have had my nose cut off in action, or in a duel, or through my own act: whereas here is the nose gone with nothing to show for it—uselessly—for not a groat’s profit!"
A crucial aspect of Major Kovalev's concern with social status is the need to classify. This quote, therefore, illustrates one of the central horrors of the loss of Major Kovalev's nose: it is impossible to classify and designate status to a man without a nose. Crucially, Major Kovalev laments that he is no longer a citizen, illustrating the centrality of his nose to his social and political identity.
