On getting home to Piotr Oblonsky's, where he was staying, Stepan Arkadyevich found a note from Betsy. She wrote to him that she was very anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, and begged him to come the next day. He had scarcely read this note, and frowned at its contents, when he heard below the ponderous tramp of the servants carrying something heavy.

Stepan Arkadyevich went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Piotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs; but he told them to set him on his legs when he saw Stepan Arkadyevich, and, clinging to him, walked with him into his room, and there began telling him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so.

Stepan Arkadyevich was in very low spirits, which happened rarely with him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he could recall to his mind, everything was disgusting; but, most disgusting of all, as if it were something shameful, was the memory of the evening he had spent at Countess Lidia Ivanovna's.

Next day he received from Alexei Alexandrovich a final answer, refusing to grant Anna's divorce, and he understood that his decision was based on what the Frenchman had said in his real or pretended trance.