Tables, chairs and benches stood about in great disorder. This courtyard was normally a barren place of cobblestones, but the Princess had given an entertainment the night before for which the flowers and grass had been raised in hot-houses in the country. Katerina gave her wards no time to look or to think. She hurried them through the court and down a stone staircase to the basement, which consisted of endless halls, rooms and kitchens. Here Katerina left the blonde girl with a woman who seemed to be an overseer of this underground labyrinth. She then took Grushenka by the hand and marched on with her. This time she led her up a small and winding wooden staircase, which ended at the second floor. Thick Turkish carpets covered the light hallway and Grushenka soon saw a room which she was going to know very thoroughly afterwards. It was the try-on room of the Princess, fitted with a big oak table in the middle of the room and huge chestnut closets and presses along the walls, between which mirrors of all kinds and dimensions were installed. On a curt order from Katerina the girl took all her clothes off and, entirely nude, was dragged by the old housekeeper through other rooms, which were magnificently adorned with silks and brocades. Katerina led the substitute of Madame through the half open door of her mistress' boudoir, in her excitement not waiting for permission to enter. The Princess was sitting before a mirror at her toilet table. Boris, the coiffeur, was busy curling her long, dark brown hair. A young serf girl knelt on the floor and put rouge on her mistress' toe-nails. In the corner, near a window, sat “Fraulein,” an elderly spinster who had been a German governess in different houses of the great, and who was now reading aloud in a dry and monotonous voice some French poetry. The Princess listened with only slight understanding or interest. The French poet had worked into his fable all kinds of persons from the Greek and Latin mythology, which meant nothing to the capricious listener.