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

On the following morning, at tea, Lemm requested Lavretzky to furnish him
with horses, that he might return to town. "It is time that I should set
about my work,--that is to say, my lessons," remarked the old man:--"but
here I am only wasting time in vain." Lavretzky did not immediately reply
to him: he seemed preoccupied. "Very well,"--he said at last;--"I will
accompany you myself."--Without any aid from the servants, grunting and
fuming, Lemm packed his small trunk, and tore up and burned several sheets
of music-paper. The horses were brought round. As he emerged from his
study, Lavretzky thrust into his pocket the newspaper of the day before.
Dur