Mademoiselle Mars had by that time quitted the stage, and Mademoiselle Rachel had not yet appeared there; but for all that Varvara Pavlovna none the less assiduously attended the theatres.  She went into raptures about Italian music, and laughed over the ruins of Odry, yawned in a becoming manner at the legitimate drama, and cried at the sight of Madame Dorval’s acting in some ultra-melodramatic piece.  Above all, Liszt played at her house twice, and was so gracious, so unaffected!  It was charming!

Amid such pleasurable sensations passed the winter, at the end of which Varvara Pavlovna was even presented at Court.  As for Fedor Ivanovich, he was not exactly bored, but life began to weigh heavily on his shoulders at times—­heavily because of its very emptiness.  He read the papers, he listened to the lectures at the Sorbonne and the College de France, he followed the debates in the Chambers, he occupied himself in translating a famous scientific work on irrigation.  “I am not wasting my time,” he thought; “all this is of use; but next winter I really must return to Russia, and betake myself to active business.”  It would be hard to say if he had any clear idea of what were the special characteristics of that business, and only Heaven could tell whether he was likely to succeed in getting back to Russia in the winter.  In the meanwhile he was intending to go with his wife to Baden.  But an unexpected occurrence upset all his plans.

XVI.

One day when he happened to go into Varvara Pavlovna’s boudoir during her absence, Lavretsky saw a carefully folded little piece of paper lying on the floor.  Half mechanically he picked it up and opened it—­and read the following lines written in French:—­

* * * * *

“MY DEAR ANGEL BETTY,

“(I really cannot make up my mind to call you Barbe or Varvara).  I have waited in vain for you at the corner of the Boulevard.  Come to our rooms to-morrow at half-past one.  That excellent husband of yours is generally absorbed in his books at that time—­we will sing over again that song of your poet Pushkin which you taught me, ’Old husband, cruel husband!’ A thousand kisses to your dear little hands and feet.  I await you.

“ERNEST.”

* * * * *

At first Lavretsky did not comprehend the meaning of what he had read.  He read it a second time—­and his head swam, and the ground swayed beneath his feet like the deck of a ship in a storm, and a half-stifled sound issued from his lips, that was neither quite a cry nor quite a sob.

He was utterly confounded.  He had trusted his wife so blindly; the possibility of deceit or of treachery on her part had never entered into his mind.  This Ernest, his wife’s lover, was a pretty boy of about three-and-twenty, with light hair, a turned-up nose, and a small moustache—­probably the most insignificant of all his acquaintances.