him the way if he had seen his valet. The Swiss said his valet had only just gone out. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch ordered tea to be brought, and sitting down at the table opened a railway guide and began to study the departure of trains for his journey.
"Two telegrams," said his valet, returning and coming into the room. "Will your Excellency please excuse me, I have only just stepped out?"
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them; the first announced the nomination of Stremof to the place for which he had been ambitious.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch threw down the despatch, and with a flushed face began to walk back and forth through the room.
"Quos vult perdere dementat," said he, applying quos to all those who had taken part in this nomination. He was not disturbed by the fact that he himself had not been nominated, that he had evidently been outwitted; but it was incomprehensible to him—amazing—that they could not see that Stremof, that babbler, that speechifier, was the least fitted of all men for the place. Could they not understand that they were ruining themselves, that they were destroying their prestige, by such a choice?
"Some more news of the same sort," he thought with bitterness as he opened the second telegram. It was from his wife; her name, "Anna," in blue pencil, was the first thing that struck his eyes.
I am dying. I beg you to come; I shall die easier if I have your forgiveness.
He read these words with scorn, and threw the paper on the floor.
That there was some piece of trickery, some deception, in this, admitted of no doubt in his mind at first thought.
"There is no deceitfulness of which she is not capable. She must be on the eve of her confinement, and it is her sickness. But what can be her object? To legalize the child? to compromise me? to prevent the divorce? But what does it mean, 'I am dying'?"
