"I am awfully sorry that I cannot engage to be there, my dear. As you are aware, it is my night to visit my grandmother, and when once I am there the dear old lady is sure not to let me come away. She has so much to ask about every one, and at the stroke of midnight she will expect me to take the organ in the chapel adjoining the apartment and sing through the penitential mass; and I cannot refuse her. But if you wish that we should spend the evening together, why not come with me?" "Oh, many thanks. I do not sing in masses." "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. At first she had some society. Three old ladies of her own age used to come to play whist and gossip with her. Gradually they left off coming; first one, then two, at length all three. No one dared to tell her that they were dead; she was told that they found it difficult to mount the stairs. Since then she had played her game of whist alone. The old lady still wears the old-fashioned cotton costume which was so fashionable in 1803, when the Czar Alexander had forbidden the importation of foreign woollen stuffs. She thinks that every lady in society still wears it, and with it a cap and feather, closely resembling a turban. It is now twelve years since the last of her contemporaries visited her. All have now been gathered to their fathers. But Anna Feodorovna must not know this. All are living, and on every great occasion send her their messages and congratulations, exchange consecrated cakes with her, and colored Easter eggs; and on Easter morning she always finds on her table their illuminated visiting-cards, with the inscription in letters of gold, "Christos wosskresz."