One day, on entering Varvara Pavlovna's boudoir in her absence, Lavretzky beheld on the floor a tiny, carefully-folded scrap of paper. He mechanically picked it up, mechanically unfolded it, and read the following, written in French: Dear angel Betsy! (I cannot possibly bring myself to call thee Barbe or Varvara). I waited in vain for thee at the corner of the Boulevard; come to-morrow, at half-past one, to our little apartment. Thy good fatty (_ton gros bonhomme de mari_) generally buries himself in his books at that hour; again we will sing the song of your poet Puskin (_de votre poete Pouskine_) which thou hast taught me: 'Old husband, menacing husband!'--A thousand kisses on thy hands and feet! I await thee. "Ernest." Lavretzky did not, on the instant, understand what sort of thing it was he had read; he perused it a second time--and his head reeled, the floor swayed beneath his feet, like the deck of a steamer when it is pitching--he cried out, and sobbed and wept simultaneously. He lost his senses. He had so blindly trusted his wife, that the possibility of deception, of treachery, had never presented itself to his mind. That Ernest, that lover of his wife's was a fair-haired, good-looking boy of three and twenty, with a small snub nose and thin moustache, almost the most insignificant of all her admirers. Several minutes passed, half an hour passed; Lavretzky still stood, crushing the fatal missive in his hand and staring senselessly at the floor; through a sort of dark whirlwind, visions of pale faces flitted before him; his heart sank within him, in anguish; it seemed to him that he was falling, falling, falling ... and that there was no end to it. The light, familiar rustle of a silken robe aroused him from his state of stupefaction; Varvara Pavlovna, in bonnet and shawl, had hastily returned from her stroll. Lavretzky trembled all over, and rushed out of the room; he felt that at that moment he was capable of tearing her to pieces, of beating her until she was half dead, in peasant fashion, of strangling her with his hands. The astonished Varvara Pavlovna tried to stop him; he could only whisper: "Betsy"--and fled from the house.