But Hermann would not quiet down. Lizaveta Ivanovna received letters from him each day, by one means or another. They were no longer translations from the German. Hermann wrote them, inspired by passion, and spoke a language that was all his own: in them were expressed both the inflexibility of his desires and the disorder of an unbridled imagination. Lizaveta Ivanovna no longer thought of sending them back: she reveled in them; she started replying to them—and her notes grew longer and tenderer by the hour. Finally, she threw the following letter to him from the window:
Tonight there is a ball at the * * * Embassy. The countess will be there. We will stay till about two o’clock. This is your chance to see me alone. As soon as the countess goes out, her servants will probably retire; there will be a doorman in the entryway, but he, too, usually goes to his closet. Come at 11:30. Go straight up the stairs. If you meet someone in the front hall, ask if the countess is at home. The answer will be no—and there will be nothing to do. You will have to go away. But you will probably not meet anyone. The maids stay in their quarters, all in one room. From the front hall turn left and go straight on to the countess’s bedroom. In the bedroom, behind the screen, you will see two small doors: the right one to the study, where the countess never goes; the left one to a corridor, where there is a narrow winding stairway: it leads to my room.
Hermann trembled like a tiger, waiting for the appointed time. By ten o’clock in the evening he was already standing in front of the countess’s house. The weather was awful: wind howled, wet snow fell in big flakes; the streetlamps shone dimly; the streets were deserted. Now and then a cabby dragged by with his scrawny nag, looking for a late customer. Hermann stood in nothing but his frock coat, feeling neither wind nor snow. At last the countess’s carriage was brought. Hermann saw how the lackeys carried the bent old woman out under the arms, wrapped in a sable fur coat, and how, after her, her ward flashed by in a light cloak, her head adorned with fresh flowers. The doors slammed. The carriage rolled off heavily over the loose snow. The doorman shut the front door. The windows went dark. Hermann started pacing around by the now deserted house: he went up to a streetlamp, looked at his watch—it was twenty past eleven. He stayed under the streetlamp, his eyes on the hands of the watch, counting the remaining minutes. At exactly half past eleven, Hermann stepped onto the countess’s porch and went into the brightly lit entryway. The doorman was not there. Hermann ran up the stairs, opened the door to the front hall, and saw a servant sleeping under a lamp in an old, soiled armchair. Hermann walked past him with a light and firm step. The reception room and drawing room were dark. The lamp in the front hall shone faintly on them. Hermann went into the bedroom. Before a stand filled with old icons flickered a golden lamp. Faded damask armchairs and sofas with down cushions and worn-off gilding stood in mournful symmetry against the walls covered with Chinese silk. On the walls hung two portraits painted in Paris by Mme Lebrun.7 One of them portrayed a man of about forty, red-cheeked and portly, in a light green uniform and with a decoration; the other a young beauty with an aquiline nose, her hair brushed back at the temples, powdered and adorned with a rose. Every corner was jammed with porcelain shepherdesses, table clocks made by the famous Leroy, little boxes, bandalores, fans, and various ladies’ knickknacks, invented at the end of the last century along with Montgolfier’s balloon and Mesmer’s magnetism.8 Hermann went behind the screen. There stood a small iron bed; to the right was the door leading to the study; to the left the other, to the corridor. Hermann opened it, saw the narrow winding stairway leading to the poor ward’s room…But he came back and went into the dark study.
Time passed slowly. All was quiet. In the drawing room it struck twelve; in all the rooms one after another the clocks rang twelve—and all fell silent again. Hermann stood leaning against the cold stove. He was calm; his heart beat regularly, as in a man who has ventured upon something dangerous but necessary. The clocks struck one and then two in the morning—and he heard the distant clatter of a carriage. An involuntary agitation came over him. The carriage drove up and stopped. He heard the clatter of the flipped-down steps. There was bustling in the house. Servants ran, voices rang out, and the house lit up. Three elderly maids rushed into the bedroom, and the countess, barely alive, came in and sank into the Voltaire armchair. Hermann watched through a chink: Lizaveta Ivanovna walked past him. Hermann heard her hurrying steps on the stairs. Something like remorse of conscience stirred in his heart and died down again. He turned to stone.
