ficult to get them here, but we must try."

"_A la guerre comme a la guerre_!" replied Justine as she put out the
light.

XXXV.

For more than two hours Lavretsky wandered about the streets. The
night he had spent in the suburbs of Paris came back into his mind.
His heart seemed rent within him, and his brain felt vacant and as it
were numbed, while the same set of evil, gloomy, mad thoughts went
ever circling in his mind. "She is alive; she is here," he whispered
to himself with constantly recurring amazement. He felt that he had
lost Liza. Wrath seemed to suffocate him. The blow had too suddenly
descended upon him. How could he have so readily believed the foolish
gossip of a _feuilleton_, a mere scrap of paper? "But if I had not
believed it," he thought, "what would have been the difference? I
should not have known that Liza loves me. She would not have known it
herself." He could not drive the thought of his wife out of his mind;
her form, her voice, her eyes haunted him. He cursed himself, he
cursed every thing in the world.

Utterly tired out, he came to Lemm's house before the dawn. For a
long time he could not get the door opened; at last the old man's
nightcapped head appeared at the window. Peevish and wrinkled, his
face bore scarcely any resemblance to that which, austerely inspired,
had looked royally down upon Lavretsky twenty-four hours before, from
all the height of its artistic grandeur.

"What do you want?" asked Lemm. "I cannot play every night. I have
taken a _tisane_."

But Lavretsky's face wore a strong expression which could not escape
notice. The old man shaded his eyes with his hand, looked hard at his
nocturnal visitor, and let him in.

Lavretsky came into the room and dropped on a chair. The old man
remained standing before him, wrapping the skirts of his motley old
dressing-gown around him, stooping very much, and biting his lips.

"My wife has come," said Lavretsky, with drooping head, and then he
suddenly burst into a fit of involuntary laughter.

Lemm's face expressed astonishment, but he preserved a grave silence,
only wrapping his dressing-gown tighter around him.

"I suppose you don't know," continued Lavretsky. "I supposed--I saw in
a newspaper that she was dead."

"O--h! Was it lately you saw that?" asked Lemm.

"Yes."

"O--h!" repeated the old man, raising his eyebrows, "and she has come
here?"

"Yes. She is now in my house, and I--I am a most unfortunate ma