as you wish, eh?”
“I take them back, I take them back!” said Pierre, “and I ask you to forgive me.” Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. “And if you require money for your journey …”
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
“Oh, vile and heartless brood!” he exclaimed, and left the room.
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
XXI
Pierre drove to Márya Dmítrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her wish that Kurágin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natásha was very ill, having, as Márya Dmítrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily procured. After