From the station book he discovered that Captain Minsky had left Smolensk for Petersburg. The coachman who drove him said that Dunia had wept all the way, though she seemed to be going of her own free will.
"Perhaps," thought the station master, "I shall bring back my strayed lamb." With this idea he reached St. Petersburg, and stopped with the Ismailovsky regiment, in the quarters of a non-commissioned officer, his old comrade in arms. Beginning his search he soon found out that Captain Minsky was in Petersburg, living at Demuth's Hotel. The Postmaster determined to see him.
Early in the morning he went to Minsky's antechamber, and asked to have his nobility informed that an old soldier wished to see him. The military attendant, in the act of cleaning a boot on a boot-tree, informed him that his master was asleep, and never received anyone before eleven o'clock. The Postmaster left to return at the appointed time. Minsky came out to him in his dressing gown and red skull cap.
"Well, my friend, what do you want?" he inquired.
The old maids heart boiled, tears started to his eyes, and in a trembling voice he could only say, "Your nobility; be divinely merciful!"
Minsky glanced quickly at him, flushed, and seizing him by the hand, led him into his study and locked the door.
"Your nobility!" continued the old man, "what has fallen from the cart is lost; give me back, at any rate, my Dunia. Let her go. Do not ruin her entirely."
"What is done cannot be undone," replied the young man, in extreme confusion. "I am guilty before you, and ready to ask your pardon. But do not imagine that I could neglect Dunia. She shall be happy, I give you my word of honour. Why do you want her? She loves me; she has forsaken her former existence. Neither you nor she can forget what has happened." Then, pushing something up his sleeve, he opened the door, and the Postmaster found himself, he knew not how, in the street.
He stood long motionless, at last catching sight of a roll of papers inside his cuff, he pulled them out and unrolled several crumpled-up fifty ruble notes. His eyes again filled with tears, tears of indignation! He crushed the notes into a ball, threw them on the ground, and, stamping on them with his heel, walked away. After a few steps he stopped, reflected a moment, and turned back.
But the notes were gone. A well-dressed young man, who had observed him, ran towards an isvoshtchick, got in hurriedly, and called to the driver to be "off."