Answer:
A. He has to gather his courage before he is able to speak to the nose.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the Nose, the strange and humorous story written by Gogol, the main character (Kovaloff) wakes up one day to find that he no longer is in possession of his own nose and, later, he finds out that the nose has been around in town and, socially, it seems to be more successful than Kovaloff himself. In the passage above, one can see that Kovaloff is intimidated by the nose since he ponders the social standing that the nose seems to have earned so quickly, and this makes him nervous and insecure, so much so that he has to gather his courage to barely mutter a few questions to it.