Should there be an opportunity, and if a petit comite were called on Thursday, he thought he would tell her the story.  As soon as Nekhludoff had received these two notes, and a note to Mariette from his aunt, he at once set off to these different places.

First he went to Mariette’s.  He had known her as a half-grown girl, the daughter of an aristocratic but not wealthy family, and had heard how she had married a man who was making a career, whom Nekhludoff had heard badly spoken of; and, as usual, he felt it hard to ask a favour of a man he did not esteem.  In these cases he always felt an inner dissension and dissatisfaction, and wavered whether to ask the favour or not, and always resolved to ask.  Besides feeling himself in a false position among those to whose set he no longer regarded himself as belonging, who yet regarded him as belonging to them, he felt himself getting into the old accustomed rut, and in spite of himself fell into the thoughtless and immoral tone that reigned in that circle.  He felt that from the first, with his aunt, he involuntarily fell into a bantering tone while talking about serious matters.

Petersburg in general affected him with its usual physically invigorating and mentally dulling effect.

Everything so clean, so comfortably well-arranged and the people so lenient in moral matters, that life seemed very easy.

A fine, clean, and polite isvostchik drove him past fine, clean, polite policemen, along the fine, clean, watered streets, past fine, clean houses to the house in which Mariette lived.  At the front door stood a pair of English horses, with English harness, and an English-looking coachman on the box, with the lower part of his face shaved, proudly holding a whip.  The doorkeeper, dressed in a wonderfully clean livery, opened the door into the hall, where in still cleaner livery with gold cords stood the footman with his splendid whiskers well combed out, and the orderly on duty in a brand-new uniform.  “The general does not receive, and the generaless does not receive either.  She is just going to drive out.”

Nekhludoff took out Katerina Ivanovna’s letter, and going up to a table on which lay a visitors’ book, began to write that he was sorry not to have been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase the doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly stood up rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a little, slight lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not in keeping with all the grandeur.

Mariette had a large hat on, with feathers, a black dress and cape, and new black gloves.  Her face was covered by a veil.

When she saw Nekhludoff she lifted the veil off a very pretty face with bright eyes that looked inquiringly at him.

“Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff,” she said, with a soft, pleasant voice.  “I should have known—­”

“What! you even remember my name?”