He kept devising new plans of defence against his enemies. He stole the axe from the kitchen and hid it under the bed. He bought a Swedish knife and always carried it about in his pocket. He frequently locked himself in his room. At night he put traps around the house and in the rooms and later he would examine them. These traps were, of course, so constructed that they could not catch anyone. They gripped but could not hold anyone, and it was easy to walk away with them. But Peredonov had no technical knowledge and no common sense. When he saw each morning that no one was caught Peredonov imagined that his enemies had tampered with the traps. This again frightened him. Peredonov watched Volodin with special attention. He frequently went to Volodin when he knew that Volodin would not be at home and rummaged among the papers to see if there were any stolen from himself. * * * * * Peredonov began to suspect what the Princess wanted--it was that he should love her again. She was repugnant to him, a decrepit old woman. "She's a hundred and fifty years old," he thought with vexation. "Yes, she's old, but then how powerful she is!" And his repulsion became mingled with an allurement. "She's an almost cold little old woman, she smells slightly of a corpse," he imagined, and he felt faint with a savage voluptuousness. "Perhaps it would be possible to arrange a meeting, and her heart would be touched. Oughtn't I to send her a letter?" This time Peredonov, with slight hesitation, composed a letter to the Princess. He wrote: "I love you, because you are cold and remote. Varvara perspires, it is hot to sleep with her, it is like the breath of an oven. I would like to have a cold and remote love. Come here and respond to me." He wrote it and posted it--and then repented. "What will come of it?" he thought. "Perhaps I ought not to have written. I should have waited until the Princess came here." This letter was an accidental occurrence, like so much that Peredonov did--he was like a corpse moved by external powers, and moved as if these powers had no desire to busy themselves with him for long: one would play with him and then cast him to another. Soon the nedotikomka reappeared--for a long time it rolled around Peredonov as if it were on the end of a lasso, and kept mocking him. And it was now noiseless, and laughed only with a shaking of its body. The evil, shameless beast flared up with dimly golden sparks--it threatened and burned with an intolerable triumph. And the cat threatened Peredonov; its eyes gleamed and it mewed arrogantly and fiercely. "Why are they so glad?" thought Peredonov dejectedly, and suddenly understood that the end was approaching, that the Princess was already here, close, quite close. Perhaps she was in this very pack of cards.