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One evening in late December, as he was walking the hallway to the Piazza, the Count distinctly felt a gust of frozen air, despite being fifty yards from the nearest exit to the street. It brushed past him with all the freshness and clarity of a starlit winter's night. After pausing and searching about, he realized that the draft was coming. from the coatroom. Which Tanya, the attendant, had left unattended. So, with a look to his left and a look to his right, the Count stepped within.
In the preceding minutes, there must have been such a rush of parties arriving for dinner that the winter air had yet to dissipate from the fabric of their coats. Here was the greatcoat of a soldier with a dusting of snow on its shoulders; here the woolen jacket of a bureaucrat still damp; and here was a black mink coat with a collar of ermine (or was it sable? ) that was in all probability worn by the mistress of a commissar.