"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" and the black pole
smiled and bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed to
a sitting posture, leaning his face on the palms of his hands-he
positively could not sleep on that dreadful night.

Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed palms, he pictured to
himself with horrifying clearness how on the following morning, not
knowing anything of the plot against his life, he would have risen,
would have drunk his coffee, not knowing anything, and then would have
put on his coat in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorkeeper who
would have handed him his fur coat, nor the lackey who would have
brought him the coffee, would have known that it was utterly useless
to drink coffee, and to put on the coat, since a few instants later,
everything- the fur coat and his body and the coffee within it-would
be destroyed by an explosion, would be seized by death. The doorkeeper
would have opened the glass door. ... He, the amiable, kind, gentle
doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals
across his breast- he himself with his own hands would have opened the
terrible door, opened it because he knew nothing. Everybody would have
smiled because they did not know anything. "Oho!" he suddenly said
aloud, and slowly removed his hands from his face. Peering into the
darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, strained look, he
outstretched his hand just as slowly, felt the button on the wall and
pressed it. Then he arose, and without putting on his slippers, walked
in his bare feet over the rug in the strange, unfamiliar bedroom,
found the button of another lamp upon the wall and pressed it. It
became light and pleasant, and only the disarranged bed with the
blanket, which had slipped off to the floor, spoke of the horror, not
altogether past.