“Ada, vois, c’est ton pere,”
said Varvara Pavlovna, removing the curls from the
child’s eyes, and kissing her demonstratively.
“Prie-le avec moi.”
“C’est la, papa?” the little
girl lispingly began to stammer.
“Oui, mon enfant, n’est-ce pas que
tu l’aimes?”
But the interview had become intolerable to Lavretsky.
;’
“What melodrama is it just such a scene occurs;
in?” he muttered, and left the room.
Varvara Pavlovna remained standing where she was for
some time, then she slightly shrugged her shoulders,
took the little girl back into the other room, undressed
her, and put her to bed. Then she took a book
and sat down near the lamp. There she waited about
an hour, but at last she went to bed herself.
“Eh bien, madame?” asked her maid,—a
Frenchwoman whom she had brought with her from Paris,—as
she unlaced her stays.
“Eh bien, Justine!” replied Varvara
Pavlovna. “He has aged a great deal, but
I think he is just as good as ever. Give me my
gloves for the night, and get the gray dress, the
high one, ready for to-morrow morning—and
don’t forget the mutton cutlets for Ada.
To be sure it will be difficult to get them here,
but we must try.”
“A la guerre comme a la guerre!”
replied Justine as she put out the light.
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.
