eally 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.

Several minutes passed; a half hour passed. Lavretsky still stood
there, clenching the fatal note in his hand, and gazing unmeaningly on
the floor. A sort of dark whirlwind seemed to sweep round him, pale
faces to glimmer through it.

A painful sensation of numbness had seized his heart. He felt as if he
were falling, falling, falling--into a bottomless abyss.

The soft rustle of a silk dress roused him from his torpor by its
familiar sound. Varvara Pavlovna came in hurriedly from out of doors.
Lavretsky shuddered all over and rushed out of the room. He felt that
at that moment he was ready to tear her to pieces, to strangle her
with his own hands, at least to beat her all but to death in peasant
fashion. Varvara Pavlovna, in her amazement, wanted to stay him. He
just succeeded in whispering "Betty"--and then he fled from the house.

Lavretsky took a carriage and drove outside the barriers. All the rest
of the day, and the whole of the night he wandered about, constantly
stopping and wringing his hands above his head. Sometimes he was
frantic with rage, at others every thing seemed to move him to
laughter, even to a kind of mirth. When the morning dawned he felt
half frozen, so he entered a wretched little suburban tavern, asked
for a room, and sat down on a chair before the window. A convulsive
fit of yawning seized him. By tha