t sort of thing it was
he had read; he perused it a second time--and his head reeled, the floor
swayed beneath his feet, like the deck of a steamer when it is
pitching--he cried out, and sobbed and wept simultaneously.

He lost his senses. He had so blindly trusted his wife, that the
possibility of deception, of treachery, had never presented itself to his
mind. That Ernest, that lover of his wife's was a fair-haired,
good-looking boy of three and twenty, with a small snub nose and thin
moustache, almost the most insignificant of all her admirers. Several
minutes passed, half an hour passed; Lavretzky still stood, crushing the
fatal missive in his hand and staring senselessly at the floor; through a
sort of dark whirlwind, visions of pale faces flitted before him; his
heart sank within him, in anguish; it seemed to him that he was falling,
falling, falling ... and that there was no end to it. The light, familiar
rustle of a silken robe aroused him from his state of stupefaction;
Varvara Pavlovna, in bonnet and shawl, had hastily returned from her
stroll. Lavretzky trembled all over, and rushed out of the room; he felt
that at that moment he was capable of tearing her to pieces, of beating
her until she was half dead, in peasant fashion, of strangling her with
his hands. The astonished Varvara Pavlovna tried to stop him; he could
only whisper: "Betsy"--and fled from the house.

Lavretzky took a carriage, and ordered the man to drive him out of town.
The entire remainder of the day, and the whole night long until the
morning, he roamed about, incessantly halting and wringing his hands: now
he raged, again it seemed rather ridiculous to him, even rather amusing.
In the morning he was chilled through, and entered a wretched suburban
inn, asked for a room, and seated himself on a chair by the window. A
convulsive yawning seized hold upon him. He could hardly stand on his
feet, his body was exhausted,--but he was conscious of no fatigue,--yet
fatigue claimed its rights: he sat and stared, and understood nothing; he
did not understand what had happened to him, why he found himself alone,
with benumbed limbs, with a bitterness in his mouth, with a stone on his
breast, in a bare, strange room; he did not understand what had made her,
Varya, give herself to that Frenchman, and how she had been able,
knowing herself to be unfaithful, to be as calm, amiable, and confiding
toward him as before! "I understand nothing!" whispered his