Happening to go one day in Varvara Pavlovna’s
absence into her boudoir, Lavretsky saw on the floor
a carefully folded little paper. He mechanically
picked it up, unfolded it, and read the following note,
written in French:
“Sweet angel Betsy (I never can make up my mind
to call you Barbe or Varvara), I waited in vain for
you at the corner of the boulevard; come to our little
room at half-past one to-morrow. Your stout good-natured
husband (ton gros bonhomme de mari) is usually buried
in his books at that time; we will sing once more
the song of your poet Pouskine (de botre poete Pouskine)
that you taught me: ‘Old husband, cruel
husband!’ A thousand kisses on your little hands
and feet. I await you.
Ernest.”
Lavretsky did not at once understand what he had read;
he read it a second time, and his head began to swim,
the ground began to sway under his feet like the deck
of a ship in a rolling sea. He began to cry out
and gasp and weep all at the same instant.
He was utterly overwhelmed. He had so blindly
believed in his wife; the possibility of deception,
of treason, had never presented itself to his mind.
This Ernest, his wife’s lover, was a fair-haired
pretty boy of three-and-twenty, with a little turned-up
nose and refined little moustaches, almost the most
insignificant of all her acquaintances. A few
minutes passed, half an hour passed, Lavretsky still
stood, crushing the fatal note in his hands, and gazing
senselessly at the floor; across a kind of tempest
of darkness pale shapes hovered about him; his heart
was numb with anguish; he seemed to be falling, falling—and
a bottomless abyss was opening at his feet. A
familiar light rustle of a silk dress roused him from
his numbness; Varvara Pavlovna in her hat and shawl
was returning in haste from her walk. Lavretsky
trembled all over and rushed away; he felt that at
that instant he was capable of tearing her to pieces,
beating her to death, as a peasant might do, strangling
her with his own hands. Varvara Pavlovna in amazement
tried to stop him; he could only whisper, “Betsy,”—and
ran out of the house.
Lavretsky took a cab and ordered the man to drive
him out of town. All the rest of the day and
the whole night he wandered about, constantly stopping
short and wringing his hands, at one moment he was
mad, and the next he was ready to laugh, was even
merry after a fashion. By the morning he grew
calm through exhaustion, and went into a wretched tavern
in the outskirts, asked for a room and sat down on
a chair before the window. He was overtaken by
a fit of convulsive yawning. He could scarcely
stand upright, his whole body was worn out, and he
did not even feel fatigue, though fatigue began to
do its work; he sat and gazed and comprehended nothing;
he did not understand what had happened to him, why
he found himself alone, with his limbs stiff, with
