The next day, as soon as Hermann made his appearance, Lizaveta rose from her embroidery, went into the drawing-room, opened the ventilator and threw the letter into the street, trusting that the young officer would have the perception to pick it up.

Hermann hastened forward, picked it up and then repaired to a confectioner’s shop.  Breaking the seal of the envelope, he found inside it his own letter and Lizaveta’s reply.  He had expected this, and he returned home, his mind deeply occupied with his intrigue.

Three days afterwards, a bright-eyed young girl from a milliner’s establishment brought Lizaveta a letter.  Lizaveta opened it with great uneasiness, fearing that it was a demand for money, when suddenly she recognised Hermann’s hand-writing.

“You have made a mistake, my dear,” said she:  “this letter is not for me.”

“Oh, yes, it is for you,” replied the girl, smiling very knowingly.  “Have the goodness to read it.”

Lizaveta glanced at the letter.  Hermann requested an interview.

“It cannot be,” she cried, alarmed at the audacious request, and the manner in which it was made.  “This letter is certainly not for me.”

And she tore it into fragments.

“If the letter was not for you, why have you torn it up?” said the girl.  “I should have given it back to the person who sent it.”

“Be good enough, my dear,” said Lizaveta, disconcerted by this remark, “not to bring me any more letters for the future, and tell the person who sent you that he ought to be ashamed...”

But Hermann was not the man to be thus put off.  Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that.  They were no longer translated from the German.  Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination.  Lizaveta no longer thought of sending them back to him:  she became intoxicated with them and began to reply to them, and little by little her answers became longer and more affectionate.  At last she threw out of the window to him the following letter: 

“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 ante-room, 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 ante-room, 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.”