"At last you are here!" said the Countess. "But why such an elaborate
toilette? Whom do you intend to captivate? What sort of weather is it?
It seems rather windy."

"No, your Ladyship, it is very calm," replied the valet.

"You never think of what you are talking about. Open the window. So it
is: windy and bitterly cold. Unharness the horses. Lizaveta, we won't
go out--there was no need for you to deck yourself like that."

"What a life is mine!" thought Lizaveta Ivanovna.

And, in truth, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a very unfortunate creature. "The
bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard
to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so
well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess
A---- had by no means a bad heart, bat she was capricious, like a
woman who had been spoilt by the world, as well as being avaricious
and egotistical, like all old people who have seen their best days,
and whose thoughts are with the past and not the present. She
participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls,
where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed in old-fashioned style,
like a deformed but indispensable ornament of the ball-room; all the
guests on entering approached her and made a profound bow, as if in
accordance with a set ceremony, but after that nobody took any further
notice of her. She received the whole town at her house, and observed
the strictest etiquette, although she could no longer recognise the
faces of people. Her numerous domestics, growing fat and old in her
ante-chamber and servants' hall, did just as they liked, and vied with