Adelaida Ivanovna’s death in Petersburg is the abrupt end of her separation from Fyodor Pavlovitch, but the account refuses to settle either the precise cause of her death or the meaning of her husband’s response. News reaches him as he is preparing—amid another bout of drinking—to travel after her; instead, he hears that she has died far away, and his grief appears inseparable from the relief of being released from their marriage.

Separation and Death

After leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch, Adelaida is traced to Petersburg, where she has gone with a divinity student and thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Her departure gives the episode a history of flight and independence, although the account offers little about her life there beyond those details. The distance matters: Fyodor has only just found her whereabouts, and the possibility of pursuing her gives way to news of her death before he reaches her.

Adelaida dies suddenly in a garret. The reports disagree about the cause: one attributes her death to typhus, while another says starvation. The narrative does not choose between them, leaving the circumstances uncertain rather than turning her death into a neatly explained consequence of her departure.

Fyodor’s Response

When the news arrives through Adelaida’s family, Fyodor is drunk. The account places the revelation beside his habitual dissipation: he had decided to set out after his wife, but, feeling entitled to fortify himself for the journey, began drinking recklessly again. Her death interrupts that prospective pursuit and changes what the journey can mean; there is no longer a living wife to find.

The accounts of his immediate response conflict as well. Some say that he invoked the words, “Thy servant depart in peace,” while others report that he wept without restraint, like a child. The narrator allows that both versions may be true: Fyodor could rejoice at his release and grieve for the woman whose death released him. The uncertainty does not excuse his repulsive conduct, but it complicates the impression that he is incapable of feeling.

Narrative Significance

The episode is mediated through reports rather than a direct scene of Adelaida’s death. Its uncertain causes and divided testimony about Fyodor’s mourning make absence central to the account: Adelaida is described through her departure, the distant news of her death, and the reactions attributed to the people around her. The narrator’s final reflection—that even wicked people may be more naïve and simple-hearted than they seem—frames Fyodor’s tears as evidence of an emotional contradiction, not as proof that his grief was pure or his conduct redeemed.