all of them had white teeth which gleamed beneath rosy lips,--and how they did understand the art of smiling! Every one of them brought his friends, and "la belle Madame de Lavretzki" soon became known from the Chaussee d'Antin to the Rue de Lille. In those days (this took place in 1836), that tribe of feuilleton and chronicle writers, which now swarm everywhere, like ants in an ant-hill which has been cut open, had not multiplied; but even then, a certain M----r Jules presented himself in Varvara Pavlovna's salon, a gentleman of insignificant appearance, with a scandalous reputation, insolent and base, like all duellists and beaten men. This M--r Jules was extremely repulsive to Varvara Pavlovna, but she received him because he scribbled for various journals, and incessantly alluded to her, calling her now _"Mme. de L * * * tzki_," now "_Mme. de * * * cette grande dame Russe si distinguee, qui demeure rue de P._"; narrating to all the world, that is to say, to a few hundred subscribers, who cared nothing whatever about "_Mme. de L * * * tzki_," how that pretty and charming lady was a real Frenchwoman in mind (_une vraie francaise par l'esprit_),--there is no higher encomium for the French,--what a remarkable musician she was, and how wonderfully she waltzed (Varvara Pavlovna, in reality, did waltz in such a manner as to draw all hearts after the hem of her light, fluttering gown) ... in a word, he spread her fame throughout the world,--and assuredly that is agreeable, say what you will. Mlle. Mars had already left the stage, and Mlle. Rachel had not yet made her appearance; nevertheless, Varvara Pavlovna diligently frequented the theatres. She went into ecstasies over Italian music, and laughed at the ruins of Odra, yawned decorously at the Comedie Francaise, and wept at the acting of Mme. Dorval in some ultra-romantic melodrama or other; but, chief of all, Liszt played a couple of times at her house, and was so nice, so simple--it was delightful! In such pleasant sensations passed a winter, at the end of which Varvara Pavlovna was even presented at Court. Feodor Ivanitch, on his side, was not bored, although life, at times, weighed heavily on his shoulders,--heavily, because it was empty. He read the newspapers, he listened to lectures at the Sorbonne and the College de France, he kept track of the debates in parliament, he undertook the translation of a well-known scientific work on irrigation. "I am not wasting time,"--he said to himself,--"all this is useful; but next winter I must, without fail, return to Russia and set to work." It is difficult to say, whether he was clearly conscious in what that work consisted, and God knows whether he would have succeeded in returning to Russia for the winter,--in the meantime, he went with his wife to Baden-Baden.... An unexpected event destroyed all his plans. XVI