Central heating, draughts with timing-clocks, a buffet, theatre; you aren't allowed inside in your galoshes."
Ippolit Matveyevich stiffened and, without moving, ran his eyes over the ledges.
So that was where it was. Madame Petukhov's treasure.
There. All of it. A hundred and fifty thousand roubles, zero zero kopeks, as Ostap Suleiman Bertha Maria Bender used to say.
The jewels had turned into a solid frontage of glass and ferroconcrete floors. Cool gymnasiums had been made from the pearls.
The diamond diadem had become a theatre-auditorium with a revolving stage; the ruby pendants had grown into chandeliers; the serpent bracelets had been transformed into a beautiful library, and the clasp had metamorphosed into a creche, a glider workshop, a chess and billiards room.
The treasures remained; it had been preserved and had even grown.
It could be touched with the hand, though not taken away.
It had gone into the service of new people.
Ippolit Matveyevich felt the granite facing.
The coldness of the stone penetrated deep into his heart.
And he gave a cry.
It was an insane, impassioned wild cry-the cry of a vixen shot through the body-it flew into the centre of the square, streaked under the bridge, and, rebuffed everywhere by the sounds of the waking city, began fading and died away in a moment.
A marvellous autumn morning slipped from the wet roof-tops into the Moscow streets.
The city set off on its daily routine.