'Silence! if you blab--if any one--if I find out--you shall find no
hiding-place even underground! Do you hear? You can go!'

The man vanished.

'Good Heavens, merciful powers! what does it mean?' thought Nikolai
Artemyevitch when he was left alone. 'What did that idiot tell me?
Eh? I shall have to find out, though, what house it is, and who lives
there. I must go myself. Has it come to this! . . . _Un laquais!
Quelle humiliation!_'

And repeating aloud: '_Un laquais!_' Nikolai Artemyevitch shut the
dressing-case up in the bureau, and went up to Anna Vassilyevna. He
found her in bed with her face tied up. But the sight of her
sufferings only irritated him, and he very soon reduced her to tears.




XXX


Meanwhile the storm gathering in the East was breaking. Turkey had
declared war on Russia; the time fixed for the evacuation of the
Principalities had already expired, the day of the disaster of Sinope
was not far off. The last letters received by Insarov summoned him
urgently to his country. His health was not yet restored; he coughed,
suffered from weakness and slight attacks of fever, but he was
scarcely ever at home. His heart was fired, he no longer thought of
his illness. He was for ever rushing about Moscow, having secret