“Mind you are not forestalled”...
“Just so, indeed!” he said, striking his forehead. “Good-bye... I will go and wait for her at the entrance.”
He seized his forage-cap and ran.
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.”