“This evening there is going to be a ball at the Embassy.  The Countess will be there.  We shall remain until two o’clock.  You have now an opportunity of seeing me alone.  As soon as the Countess is gone, the servants will very probably go out, and there will be nobody left but the Swiss, but he usually goes to sleep in his lodge.  Come about half-past eleven.  Walk straight upstairs.  If you meet anybody in the anteroom, ask if the Countess is at home.  You will be told ‘No,’ in which case there will be nothing left for you to do but to go away again.  But it is most probable that you will meet nobody.  The maidservants will all be together in one room.  On leaving the anteroom, turn to the left, and walk straight on until you reach the Countess’s bedroom.  In the bedroom, behind a screen, you will find two doors:  the one on the right leads to a cabinet, which the Countess never enters; the one on the left leads to a corridor, at the end of which is a little winding staircase; this leads to my room.”

Hermann trembled like a tiger as he waited for the appointed time to arrive.  At ten o’clock in the evening he was already in front of the Countess’s house.  The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great violence, the sleety snow fell in large flakes, the lamps emitted a feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by on the lookout for a belated passenger.  Hermann was enveloped in a thick overcoat, and felt neither wind nor snow.

At last the Countess’s carriage drew up.  Hermann saw two footmen carry out in their arms the bent form of the old lady, wrapped in sable fur, and immediately behind her, clad in a warm mantle, and with her head ornamented with a wreath of fresh flowers, followed Lizaveta.  The door was closed.  The carriage rolled heavily away through the yielding snow.  The porter shut the street door, the windows became dark.

Hermann began walking up and down near the deserted house; at length he stopped under a lamp, and glanced at his watch:  it was twenty minutes past eleven.  He remained standing under the lamp, his eyes fixed upon the watch impatiently waiting for the remaining minutes to pass.  At half-past eleven precisely Hermann ascended the steps of the house and made his way into the brightly-illuminated vestibule.  The porter was not there.  Hermann hastily ascended the staircase, opened the door of the anteroom, and saw a footman sitting asleep in an antique chair by the side of a lamp.  With a light, firm step Hermann passed by him.  The drawing-room and dining-room were in darkness, but a feeble reflection penetrated thither from the lamp in the anteroom.