"And I have burnt all that I used to worship,
I worship all that I used to burn—"
then he suddenly struck his horse with his whip and and galloped straight away home.
On alighting from his horse he gave a final look round, a thankful smile playing involuntarily on his lips. Night—silent, caressing night—lay on the hills and dales. From its fragrant depths afar—whether from heaven or from earth could not be told—there poured a soft and quiet warmth. Lavretsky wished a last farewell to Liza—and hastened up the steps.
The next day went by rather slowly, rain setting in early in the morning. Lemm looked askance, and compressed his lips even tighter and tighter, as if he had made a vow never to open them again. When Lavretsky lay down at night he took to bed with him a whole bundle of French newspapers, which had already lain unopened on his table for two or three weeks. He began carelessly to tear open their covers and to skim the contents of their columns, in which, for the matter of that, there was but little that was new. He was just on the point of throwing them aside, when he suddenly bounded out of bed as if something had stung him. In the feuilleton of one of the papers our former acquaintance, M. Jules, communicated to his readers a "painful piece of intelligence." "The fascinating, fair Muscovite," he wrote, "one of the queens of fashion, the ornament of Parisian salons, Madame de Lavretski," had died almost suddenly. And this news, unfortunately but too true, had just reached him, M. Jules. He was, so he continued, he might say, a friend of the deceased—
Lavretsky put on his clothes, went out into the garden, and walked up and down one of its alleys until the break of day.
At breakfast, next morning, Lemm asked Lavretsky to let him have horses in order to get back to town.
"It is time for me to return to business, that is to lessons," remarked the old man. "I am only wasting my time here uselessly."
Lavretsky did not reply at once. He seemed lost in a reverie.
"Very good," he said at last; "I will go with you myself."
Refusing the assistance of a servant, Lemm packed his little portmanteau, growing peevish the while and groaning over it, and then tore up and burnt some sheets of music paper. The carriage came to the door. As Lavretsky left his study he put in his pocket the copy of the newspaper he had read the night before. During the whole of the journey neither Lavretsky nor Lemm said much. Each of them was absorbed in his own thoughts, and each was glad that the other did not disturb him. And they parted rather coldly, an occurrence which, for the matter of that, often occurs among friends in Russia. Lavretsky drove the old man to his modest dwelling. Lemm took his portmanteau with him as he got out of the carriage, and, without stretching out his hand to his friend, he held the portmanteau before him with both hands, and, without even looking at him, said in Russian, "Farewell!" "Farewell!" echoed Lavretsky, and told the coachman to drive to his apartments; for he had taken lodgings in O.