Sergyéy replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else concerned him:
“There was no theatre then.”
“Pierre!” said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:
“Madame Chalmé was in Tverskáya Street—”
Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh.
“Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are.”
The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked around him.
“Do step out!”
He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her son’s arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either side, Natálya Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her laughing and by her calling the old man father.
“Not that way, father—to the right!” she said, taking hold of the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. “To the right.”