a taste of bitterness in his mouth, with a load on his heart, in an empty unfamiliar room; he did not understand what had impelled her, his Varya, to give herself to this Frenchman, and how, knowing herself unfaithful, she could go on being just as calm, just as affectionate, as confidential with him as before!  “I cannot understand it!” his parched lips whispered.  “Who can guarantee now that even in Petersburg” . . .  And he did not finish the question, and yawned again, shivering and shaking all over.  Memories—­bright and gloomy—­fretted him alike; suddenly it crossed his mind how some days before she had sat down to the piano and sung before him and Ernest the song, “Old husband, cruel husband!” He recalled the expression of her face, the strange light in her eyes, and the colour on her cheeks—­and he got up from his seat, he would have liked to go to them, to tell them:  “You were wrong to play your tricks on me; my great-grandfather used to hang the peasants up by their ribs, and my grandfather was himself a peasant,” and to kill them both.  Then all at once it seemed to him as if all that was happening was a dream, scarcely even a dream, but some kind of foolish joke; that he need only shake himself and look round . . .  He looked round, and like a! hawk clutching its captured prey, anguish gnawed deeper and deeper into his heart.  To complete it all Lavretsky had been hoping in a few months to be a father . . . .  The past, the future, his whole life was poisoned.  He went back at last to Paris, stopped at an hotel and sent M. Ernest’s note to Varvara Pavlovna with the following letter:—­

“The enclosed scrap of paper will explain everything to you.  Let me tell you by the way, that I was surprised at you; you, who are always so careful, to leave such valuable papers lying about.” (Poor Lavretsky had spent hours preparing and gloating over this phrase.) “I cannot see you again; I imagine that you, too, would hardly desire an interview with me.  I am assigning you 15,000 francs a year; I cannot give more.  Send your address to the office of the estate.  Do what you please; live where you please.  I wish you happiness.  No answer is needed.”

Lavretsky wrote to his wife that he needed no answer . . . but he waited, he thirsted for a reply, for an explanation of this incredible, inconceivable thing.  Varvara Pavlovna wrote him the same day a long letter in French.  It put the finishing touch; his last doubts vanished,—­and he began to feel ashamed that he had still had any doubt left.  Varvara Pavlovna did not attempt to defend herself; her only desire was to see him, she besought him not to condemn her irrevocably.  The letter was cold and constrained, though here and there traces of tears were visible.  Lavretsky smiled bitterly, and sent word by the messenger that it was all right.  Three days later he was no longer in Paris; but he did not go to Russia, but to Italy.  He did not know himself why he fixed upon Italy; he did not really care where he went—­so