"But you have not once been to see the grandmother since our marriage."
"I think you know that I shrink from dead people."
"But the poor old soul is still living."
"So much the worse—a living death! It makes me shudder to look at a mummy, and to think that some day I too shall appear like one!"
"Ah, well! A pleasant evening to you, my love."
"Edifying devotions, your Excellency."
The Prince withdrew. The Princess sent her dwarf after him, that—hidden among the orange-trees in the conservatory—he might find out whether the Prince had actually gone to his grandmother's apartments, and how long he stayed there.
Ivan Maximovitch Ghedimin really did pass through the corridor into his grandmother's apartments. The old lady inhabited the central block of the palace, its windows, on both sides, looking on to the court-yard.
It is twenty years since Anna Feodorovna has left her apartments. Even in the sultry summer heat, a time when all the aristocrats of the capital take refuge in the islands of the Neva, she passes it among her fur-hung walls.
Since the spring of 1804, when she had a critical nervous illness, she has spent her days in a wheel-chair, the being wheeled from the dinner to the card-table and back again her only exercise. She dreads fresh air.