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.

Suddenly the death-like face assumed an inexplicable expression.  The lips ceased to tremble, the eyes became animated:  before the Countess stood an unknown man.

“Do not be alarmed, for Heaven’s sake, do not be alarmed!” said he in a low but distinct voice.  “I have no intention of doing you any harm, I have only come to ask a favour of you.”

The old woman looked at him in silence, as if she had not heard what he had said.  Hermann thought that she was deaf, and bending down towards her ear, he repeated what he had said.  The aged Countess remained silent as before.

“You can insure the happiness of my life,” continued Hermann, “and it will cost you nothing.  I know that you can name three cards in order—­”