‘When supper was over I danced the promised quadrille with her. And although it seemed to me that I was already infinitely happy, my happiness kept on growing and growing. We neither of us mentioned love; I did not ask her, or indeed ask myself, whether she loved me. It was sufficient for me that I loved her. My only fear was that something might come and spoil my happiness.
‘When I had got home, undressed, and thought about going to sleep, I realized that sleep was quite out of the question. In my hand was the feather from her fan and one of her gloves, which she had given me on leaving just as I was helping first her mother and then her into their carriage. I gazed at these objects, and without closing my eyes saw her standing there before me just as she had looked at the moment when, faced with a choice between two partners, she had been trying to guess the quality I represented, and I had heard her lovely voice say “
‘At that time I was living with my brother, who has since died. My brother in general had no time for society life and did not go to balls, and now he was preparing for his final examinations and leading a very regular life. He was asleep. I looked at his head buried in the pillow, half-hidden beneath the flannel blanket, and felt affectionately sorry for him – sorry that he neither knew nor shared the happiness I was experiencing. Our household serf Petrusha came in with a candle to help me undress, but I sent him away. The sight of my brother’s sleepy face and tousled hair seemed to me deeply touching. Trying not to make a noise, I tiptoed to my room and sat down on the bed. No, I was too happy, I could not possibly sleep. What was more I felt too warm in the heated rooms, and without taking off my uniform I went quietly into the hallway, put on my overcoat, opened the front door and went out into the street.
‘It was after 4 A.M. when I had left the ball, and what with the journey home and the time spent in the house, two hours had gone by, so that now, when I went out, it was already light. It was regular Shrovetide weather: it was foggy, the snow, saturated with water, was thawing on the roads, and water dripped from every roof. At that time the B—–s lived at the far end of the town next to a large meadow, one end of which was used as a public pleasure-ground and the other was the site of an institute for young ladies. I walked along the deserted lane where our house stood and emerged into the main street, where I began to meet people on foot and draymen with loads of firewood on their sledges, which grazed the underlying surface of the roadway with their runners. And the horses rhythmically swaying their sopping wet heads under the glistening shaft-bows, and the cab-drivers with bast matting on their backs trudging along in enormous boots beside their vehicles, and the houses on each side of the street looming tall in the fog – all this seemed to me extraordinarily precious and filled with meaning.
‘When I came out on to the field where their house was situated I saw at the far end, towards the pleasure-ground, something large and black, and I heard the sounds of fife and drum coming to me from that direction. All this time my mind was still full of music, and now and again I could still hear the melody of the mazurka. But this music was of quite a different kind – harsh and unpleasant.
‘ “Whatever is it?” I wondered as I made my way along the slippery path which had been beaten across the middle of the field, towards the place the sounds were coming from. When I had gone some hundred yards I managed to make out through the fog a crowd of dark figures. They were obviously soldiers. “Most likely a training exercise,” I thought, and I went closer, walking just behind a blacksmith in a greasy sheepskin jacket and an apron, who was carrying something. Some soldiers in black uniforms were standing quite still in two rows facing one another, their rifles at the rest position. Behind them were some drummers, and a fife-player who kept on playing the same shrill and unpleasant tune over and over without a break.
‘ “What are they up to?” I asked the blacksmith, who had stopped beside me.
