“Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the day by wearying one out. He talked and talked without end.”
“Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will become real obstructionists.”
CHAPTER XXXVI. NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.
From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary detention prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and the inspector explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be in the old temporary prison. Nekhludoff went there.
Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.
The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff only reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to the door of the large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped him and rang. A warder came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff showed him his order of admittance, but the warder said he could not let him in without the inspector’s permission. Nekhludoff went to see the inspector. As he was going up the stairs he heard distant sounds of some complicated bravura, played on the piano. When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye, opened the door to him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room and to strike his car. It was a rhapsody of Liszt’s, that everybody was tired of, splendidly played but only to one point. When that point was reached the same thing was repeated. Nekhludoff asked the bandaged maid whether the inspector was in. She answered that he was not in.
“Will he return soon?”
The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly again up to the same charmed point.
“I will go and ask,” and the servant went away.