[Dark Saint Alaick]

The time passed slowly. All was still. The clock in the drawing-room
struck twelve; the strokes echoed through the room one after the
other, and everything was quiet again. Hermann stood leaning against
the cold stove. He was calm; his heart beat regularly, like that of a
man resolved upon a dangerous but inevitable undertaking. One o'clock
in the morning struck; then two; and he heard the distant noise of
carriage-wheels. An involuntary agitation took possession of him. The
carriage drew near and stopped. He heard the sound of the
carriage-steps being let down. All was bustle within the house. The
servants were running hither and thither, there was a confusion of
voices, and the rooms were lit up. Three antiquated chamber-maids
entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the
Countess who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair.
Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him,
and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral
staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a
pricking of conscience, but the emotion was only transitory, and his
heart became petrified as before.

The Countess began to undress before her looking-glass. Her
rose-bedecked cap was taken off, and then her powdered wig was removed
from off her white and closely-cut hair. Hairpins fell in showers
around her. Her yellow satin dress, brocaded with silver, fell down at
her swollen feet.

Hermann was a witness of the repugnant mysteries of her toilette; at
last the Countess was in her night-cap and dressing-gown, and in this
costume, more suitable to her age, she appeared less hideous and
deformed.

Like all old people in general, the Countess suffered from
sleeplessness. Having undressed, she seated herself at the window in a
Voltaire armchair and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken
away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in
it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her
flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete
vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the
rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was
produced by the action of some concealed galvanic mechanism.