Mademoiselle Mars had by that time quitted the stage,
and Mademoiselle Rachel had not yet appeared there;
but for all that Varvara Pavlovna none the less assiduously
attended the theatres. She went into raptures
about Italian music, and laughed over the ruins of
Odry, yawned in a becoming manner at the legitimate
drama, and cried at the sight of Madame Dorval’s
acting in some ultra-melodramatic piece. Above
all, Liszt played at her house twice, and was so gracious,
so unaffected! It was charming!
Amid such pleasurable sensations passed the winter,
at the end of which Varvara Pavlovna was even presented
at Court. As for Fedor Ivanovich, he was not
exactly bored, but life began to weigh heavily on
his shoulders at times—heavily because of
its very emptiness. He read the papers, he listened
to the lectures at the Sorbonne and the College
de France, he followed the debates in the Chambers,
he occupied himself in translating a famous scientific
work on irrigation. “I am not wasting my
time,” he thought; “all this is of use;
but next winter I really must return to Russia, and
betake myself to active business.” It would
be hard to say if he had any clear idea of what were
the special characteristics of that business, and only
Heaven could tell whether he was likely to succeed
in getting back to Russia in the winter. In the
meanwhile he was intending to go with his wife to
Baden. But an unexpected occurrence upset all
his plans.
XVI.
One day when he happened to go into Varvara Pavlovna’s
boudoir during her absence, Lavretsky saw a carefully
folded little piece of paper lying on the floor.
Half mechanically he picked it up and opened it—and
read the following lines written in French:—
* * * *
*
“MY DEAR ANGEL BETTY,
“(I really 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.
