“Have you asked her to dance the mazurka with you?”
“Just so, indeed!” he said, striking his forehead. “Good-bye... I will go and wait for her at the entrance.”
Half an hour later I also set off. The street was dark and deserted. Around the assembly rooms, or inn--whichever you prefer--people were thronging. The windows were lighted up, the strains of the regimental band were borne to me on the evening breeze. I walked slowly; I felt melancholy.
“Can it be possible,” I thought, “that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and to act, it seems always to have been my fate to play a part in the ending of other people’s dramas, as if, but for me, no one could either die or fall into despair! I have been the indispensable person of the fifth act; unwillingly I have played the pitiful part of an executioner or a traitor. What object has fate had in this?... Surely, I have not been appointed by destiny to be an author of middle-class tragedies and family romances, or to be a collaborator with the purveyor of stories--for the ‘Reader’s Library,’ [272] for example?... How can I tell?... Are there not many people who, in beginning life, think to end it like Lord Byron or Alexander the Great, and, nevertheless, remain Titular Councillors [273] all their days?”
Entering the saloon, I concealed myself in a crowd of men, and began to make my observations.
Grushnitski was standing beside Princess Mary and saying something with great warmth. She was listening to him absent-mindedly and looking about her, her fan laid to her lips. Impatience was depicted upon her face, her eyes were searching all around for somebody. I went softly behind them in order to listen to their conversation.
“You torture me, Princess!” Grushnitski was saying. “You have changed dreadfully since I saw you last”...
“You, too, have changed,” she answered, casting a rapid glance at him, in which he was unable to detect the latent sneer.
“I! Changed?... Oh, never! You know that such a thing is impossible! Whoever has seen you once will bear your divine image with him for ever.”
“But why will you not let me say to-night what you have so often listened to with condescension--and just recently, too?”...