“Arrest, and in the case of the death of your opponent a maximum of three years’ imprisonment in the fortress.”

“The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul?”

“No, in a military fortress, I believe.”

“Though this fine gentleman ought to have a lesson!”

Behind them on the sea, there was a flash of lightning, which for an instant lighted up the roofs of the houses and the mountains.  The friends parted near the boulevard.  When the doctor disappeared in the darkness and his steps had died away, Von Koren shouted to him: 

“I only hope the weather won’t interfere with us to-morrow!”

“Very likely it will!  Please God it may!”

“Good-night!”

“What about the night?  What do you say?”

In the roar of the wind and the sea and the crashes of thunder, it was difficult to hear.

“It’s nothing,” shouted the zoologist, and hurried home.

XVII

“Upon my mind, weighed down with woe,
Crowd thoughts, a heavy multitude: 
In silence memory unfolds
Her long, long scroll before my eyes. 
Loathing and shuddering I curse
And bitterly lament in vain,
And bitter though the tears I weep
I do not wash those lines away.”

PUSHKIN.

Whether they killed him next morning, or mocked at him—­that is, left him his life—­he was ruined, anyway.  Whether this disgraced woman killed herself in her shame and despair, or dragged on her pitiful existence, she was ruined anyway.

So thought Laevsky as he sat at the table late in the evening, still rubbing his hands.  The windows suddenly blew open with a bang; a violent gust of wind burst into the room, and the papers fluttered from the table.  Laevsky closed the windows and bent down to pick up the papers.  He was aware of something new in his body, a sort of awkwardness he had not felt before, and his movements were strange to him.  He moved timidly, jerking with his elbows and shrugging his shoulders; and when he sat down to the table again, he again began rubbing his hands.  His body had lost its suppleness.

On the eve of death one ought to write to one’s nearest relation.  Laevsky thought of this.  He took a pen and wrote with a tremulous hand: 

“Mother!”

He wanted to write to beg his mother, for the sake of the merciful God in whom she believed, that she would give shelter and bring a little warmth and kindness into the life of the unhappy woman who, by his doing, had been disgraced and was in solitude, poverty, and weakness, that she would forgive and forget everything, everything, everything, and by her sacrifice atone to some extent for her son’s terrible sin.  But he remembered how his mother, a stout, heavily-built old woman in a lace cap, used to go out into the garden in the morning, followed by her companion with the lap-dog; how she used to shout in a peremptory way to the gardener and the servants, and how proud and haughty her face was—­he remembered all this and scratched out the word he had written.