At last he returned to Paris, went to a hotel, and sent Varvara Pavlovna M. Ernest’s note with the following letter:—­

“The scrap of paper which accompanies this will explain every thing to you.  I may as well tell you that you do not seem to have behaved in this matter with your usual tact.  You, so careful a person, to drop such important papers (poor Lavretsky had been preparing this phrase, and fondling it, as it were, for several hours).  I can see you no more, and I suppose that you too can have no wish for an interview with me.  I assign you fifteen thousand roubles a year.  I cannot give you more.  Send your address to the steward of my estate.  And now do what you like; live where you please.  I wish you all prosperity.  I want no answer.”

Lavretsky told his wife that he wanted no answer; but he did expect, he even longed for an answer—­an explanation of this strange, this incomprehensible affair.  That same day Varvara Pavlovna sent him a long letter in French.  It was the final blow.  His last doubts vanished, and he even felt ashamed of having retained any doubts.  Varvara Pavlovna did not attempt to justify herself.  All that she wanted was to see him; she besought him not to condemn her irrevocably.  The letter was cold and constrained, though marks of tears were to be seen on it here and there.  Lavretsky smiled bitterly, and sent a message by the bearer, to the effect that the letter needed no reply.

Three days later he was no longer in Paris; but he went to Italy, not to Russia.  He did not himself know why he chose Italy in particular.  In reality, it was all the same to him where he went—­so long as he did not go home.  He sent word to his steward about his wife’s allowance, ordering him, at the same time, to withdraw the whole management of the estate from General Korobine immediately, without waiting for any settlement of accounts, and to see to his Excellency’s departure from Lavriki.  He indulged in a vivid picture of the confusion of the expelled general, the useless airs which he would put on, and, in spite of his sorrow, he was conscious of a certain malicious satisfaction.  At the same time he wrote to Glafira Petrovna, asking her to return to Lavriki, and drew up a power-of-attorney in her name.  But Glafira Petrovna would not return to Lavriki; she even advertised in the newspapers that the power-of-attorney was cancelled,—­a perfectly superfluous proceeding on her part.

Lavretsky hid himself in a little Italian town; but for a long time he could not help mentally following his wife’s movements.  He learned from the newspapers that she had left Paris for Baden, as she had intended.  Her name soon appeared in a short article signed by the M. Jules of whom we have already spoken.  The perusal of that article produced a very unpleasant effect on Lavretsky’s mind.  He detected in it, underneath the writer’s usual sprightliness, a sort of tone of charitable commiseration.