She died in Paris after three years' separation from him, leaving him a son of five years old; "the fruit of our first, joyous, and unclouded love," were the words the sorrowing father once let fall in my presence.
The child had, from the first, been sent back to Russia, where he was brought up in the charge of distant cousins in some remote region.
Stepan Trofimovitch had declined Varvara Petrovna's proposal on that occasion and had quickly married again, before the year was over, a taciturn Berlin girl, and, what makes it more strange, there was no particular necessity for him to do so.

But apart from his marriage there were, it appears, other reasons for his declining the situation.

He was tempted by the resounding fame of a professor, celebrated at that time, and he, in his turn, hastened to the lecturer's chair for which he had been preparing himself, to try his eagle wings in flight.

But now with singed wings he naturally remembered the proposition which even then had made him hesitate.

The sudden death of his second wife, who did not live a year with him, settled the matter decisively.