And your short jacket wasn’t made so very long ago – you can’t throw it away yet.’

‘Visitors are coming,’ I murmured, almost in despair.

‘ What nonsense! Visitors indeed!’

I had to give in. I replaced the jacket with a short coat, but did not take off the neck-tie.

The old princess and her daughter appeared half an hour before dinner. The old woman had put a yellow shawl over the green dress in which I had seen her before, and wore an old-fashioned bonnet with flame-coloured ribbons. She began talking at once about her debts and bills, moaning and complaining about her poverty; evidently she felt completely at ease. She took snuff as noisily as ever, and fidgeted and turned about on her chair as much as before. It never seemed to have entered her head that she was a princess.

On the other hand, Zinaida was very stiff, almost haughty – a real princess. Her face remained coldly immobile and solemn. I saw no trace of the glances and smile that I knew, although in this new aspect, too, she seemed to me very beautiful. She wore a light barège dress with pale blue flowers on it. Her hair fell in long curls down her cheeks in the English fashion. This style went well with the cold expression on her face. My father sat beside her during dinner, and entertained his neighbour with his usual calm and elegant courtesy. Now and then, he glanced at her, and from time to time she looked at him – but so strangely, almost with hostility. Their conversation was in French – I remember that I was surprised by the purity of Zinaida’s accent.

During the meal, the old princess behaved as before, without ceremony, eating a great deal and praising the dishes. My mother obviously found her very tedious and replied to her with a kind of sad disdain. Now and then my father frowned a little.

My mother did not like Zinaida either. ‘She seems terribly conceited,’ she said on the next day. ‘And what has she to be so very proud about, avec sa mine de grisette?’

‘You’ve evidently never seen grisettes,’ observed my father.

‘No, thank God.’

‘Yes, indeed, thank God; only in that case how can you have views about them ?’

To me, Zinaida had pointedly paid not the slightest attention.

Soon after dinner the old princess began to take her leave.

‘I shall hope for your kind aid and protection, Maria Nicolayevna and Pyotr Vassilitch,’ she said in a sing-song to my mother and father. ‘What can one do? Time was…but it is over, and here I am, a princess’ – and she added with a disagreeable laugh, ‘a title’s no good without any food!’

My father made an elaborate bow and accompanied her to the door of the hall. There I stood, in my short little jacket, staring at the floor like a prisoner condemned to death. Zinaida’s treatment of me had utterly killed me. What then was my astonishment when, as she passed by me, her face wearing its former warm expression, she whispered quickly to me, ‘Come and see us at eight o’clock, do you hear? Don’t fail me.’

I threw up my hands, but already she was gone, flinging a white scarf round her head.

7

Punctually at eight o’clock, in my frock-coat, and with my hair brushed into a coxcomb, I walked into the hall of the lodge where the old princess was living. The old servant gave me a sour look, and rose unwillingly from the bench.

The sound of gay voices reached me from the drawingroom. I opened the door and stopped short in amazement. In the middle of the room on a chair stood the young princess, holding out a man’s hat. Five young men clustered round the chair. They were trying to put their hands into the hat, but she kept it above their heads, shaking it violently every now and then. On seeing me, she cried, ‘Stop, stop, another guest! We must give him a ticket, too!’ and, leaping lightly from the chair, took me by the cuff of my coat.

‘Come along,’ she said, ‘why are you all standing about? Messieurs, may I introduce you? This is M’sieu Woldemar, our neighbour’s son, and these,’ she added, turning to me and pointing to the guests as she named them, ‘are Count Malevsky, Doctor Looshin, the poet Maidanov, retired Captain Nirmatsky, and Byelovzorov the hussar, whom you have seen already – you will all be friends, I hope.’

I was so acutely embarrassed that I did not even bow. In Dr Looshin I recognized the same swarthy man who had humiliated me so cruelly in the garden. The others I did not know.

‘Count,’ Zinaida continued, ‘write out a ticket for M’sieu Woldemar.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said the count, with a slight Polish accent.