e downwards on his bed,
wrapped himself convulsively, head and all, in the sheet, and lay so for
two hours--incapable of sleep, incapable of thought, with a load on his
heart and blank, immovable despair in his soul. Now and then he shivered
all over with an agonising, feverish tremor. Disconnected and irrelevant
things kept coming into his mind: at one minute he thought of the old
clock which used to hang on his wall fifteen years ago in Petersburg and
had lost the minute-hand; at another of the cheerful clerk, Millebois,
and how they had once caught a sparrow together in Alexandrovsky
Park and had laughed so that they could be heard all over the park,
remembering that one of them was already a college assessor. I imagine
that about seven in the morning he must have fallen asleep without being
aware of it himself, and must have slept with enjoyment, with agreeable
dreams.

Waking about ten o'clock, he jumped wildly out of bed remembered
everything at once, and slapped himself on the head; he refused his
breakfast, and would see neither Blum nor the chief of the police nor
the clerk who came to remind him that he was expected to preside over
a meeting that morning; he would listen to nothing, and did not want to
understand. He ran like one possessed to Yulia Mihailovna's part of the
house. There Sofya Antropovna, an old lady of good family who had lived
for years with Yulia Mihailovna, explained to him that his wife had set
off at ten o'clock that morning with a large company in three carriages
to Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin's, to Skvoreshniki, to look over the place
with a view to the second fete which was planned for a fortnight later,
and that the visit to-day had been arranged with Varvara Petrovna three
days before. Overwhelmed with this news, Andrey Antonovitch returned to
his study and impulsively ordered the horses. He could hardly wait for
them to be got ready. His soul was hungering for Yulia Mihailovna--to
look at her, to be near her for five minutes; perhaps she would glance
at him, notice him, would smile as before, forgive him... "O-oh! Aren't
the horses ready?" Mechanically he opened a thick book lying on the
table. (He sometimes used to try his fortune in this way with a book,
opening it at random and reading the three lines at the top of the
right-hand page.) What turned up was: _"Tout est pour le mieux dans
le meilleur des mondes possibles."_--Voltaire, _Candide._ He uttered
an ejaculation of contempt a