Lavretzky enjoyed himself, and rejoiced at his enjoyment. "Come, life is still before us," he thought:--"it has not been completely ruined yet by...." He did not finish his sentence, and say who or what had ruined it.... Then he began to think of Liza, that it was hardly likely that she loved Panshin; that had he met her under different circumstances,--God knows what might have come of it; that he understood Lemm, although she had no "words of her own." Yes, but that was not true: she had words of her own.... "Do not speak lightly of that," recurred to Lavretzky's memory. He rode for a long time, with drooping head, then he straightened himself up, and slowly recited: "And I have burned all that I worshipped, I have worshipped all that I burned...." but immediately gave his horse a cut with the whip, and rode at a gallop all the rest of the way home. As he alighted from his horse, he cast a last glance around him, with an involuntary, grateful smile. Night, the speechless, caressing night, lay upon the hills and in the valleys; from afar, from its fragrant depths, God knows whence,--whether from heaven or earth,--emanated a soft, quiet warmth. Lavretzky wafted a last salutation to Liza, and ran up the steps. The following day passed rather languidly. Rain fell from early morning; Lemm cast furtive glances from beneath his eyebrows, and pursed up his lips more and more tightly, as though he had vowed to himself never to open them again. On lying down to sleep, Lavretzky had taken to bed with him a whole pile of French newspapers, which had already been lying on his table for two weeks, with their wrappers unbroken. He set to work idly to strip off the wrappers, and glance through the columns of the papers, which, however, contained nothing new. He was on the point of throwing them aside,--when, all of a sudden, he sprang out of bed as though he had been stung. In the feuilleton of one of the papers, M'sieu Jules, already known to us, imparted to his readers "a sad bit of news": "The charming, bewitching native of Moscow," he wrote, "one of the queens of fashion, the ornament of Parisian salons, Madame de Lavretzki, had died almost instantaneously,--and this news, unhappily only too true, had only just reached him, M. Jules. He was,"--he continued,--"he might say, a friend of the deceased...." Lavretzky dressed himself, went out into the garden, and until morning dawned, he paced back and forth in one and the same alley. XXVIII