Loathing and shuddering I curse
And bitterly lament in vain,
And bitter though the tears I weep
I do not wash those lines away."

PUSHKIN.

Whether they killed him next morning, or mocked at him--that is,
left him his life--he was ruined, anyway. Whether this disgraced
woman killed herself in her shame and despair, or dragged on her
pitiful existence, she was ruined anyway.

So thought Laevsky as he sat at the table late in the evening, still
rubbing his hands. The windows suddenly blew open with a bang; a
violent gust of wind burst into the room, and the papers fluttered
from the table. Laevsky closed the windows and bent down to pick
up the papers. He was aware of something new in his body, a sort
of awkwardness he had not felt before, and his movements were strange
to him. He moved timidly, jerking with his elbows and shrugging his
shoulders; and when he sat down to the table again, he again began
rubbing his hands. His body had lost its suppleness.

On the eve of death one ought to write to one's nearest relation.
Laevsky thought of this. He took a pen and wrote with a tremulous
hand:

"Mother!"

He wanted to write to beg his mother, for the sake of the merciful
God in whom she believed, that she would give shelter and bring a
little warmth and kindness into the life of the unhappy woman who,
by his doing, had been disgraced and was in solitude, poverty, and
weakness, that she would forgive and forget everything, everything,
everything, and by her sacrifice atone to some extent for her son's
terrible sin. But he remembered how his mother, a stout, heavily-built
old woman in a lace cap, used to go out into the garden in the
morning, followed by her companion with the lap-dog; how she used
to shout in a peremptory way to the gardener and the servants, and
how proud and haughty her face was--he remembered all this and
scratched out the word he had written.

There was a vivid flash of lightning at all three windows, and it
was followed by a prolonged, deafening roll of thunder, beginning
with a hollow rumble and ending with a crash so violent that all
the window-panes rattled. Laevsky got up, went to the window, and
pressed his forehead against the pane. There was a fierce, magnificent
storm. On the horizon lightning-flashes were flung in white streams
from the storm-clouds into the sea, lighting up the high, dark w