Grushenka's trip through Europe is a history in itself, and cannot be retold here. She was young and beautiful, but sad. She had an abundant amount of money, or so at least it seemed to herself. She gave the impression of one of those travelling Russians so well known at that time for their unlimited orgies. Instead of settling down somewhere, she moved restlessly on until she came to Rome. This city impressed her greatly with its splendor and gaiety.
With the Russian ability for languages, she learned to speak Italian easily. She mixed with all kinds of company; with artists and students; with kept women, and, now and then, even with society.
After she had gotten over the blow which had struck her, she plunged into countless love-intrigues. But she always was dissatisfied with the men or women with whom she went to bed because her Russian strength and vigor surpassed the ability and appetites of her bed-fellows. She indulged in utter sentimentality or brutal orgies.
More than once she came into conflict with the police when she had aroused the neighborhood in a drunken frenzy or beaten up her maids in true Russian style. The whip was at that time in use all over the civilized world, but the Italian girls who now served her had a finer constitution than the Russian farmer girls and often fainted under her reckless tortures. Her good rubles, however, got her out of every scrape, and the “wild Russian girl” soon was a familiar figure in the by-ways of old Rome. Drinking and gambling and whoring soon exhausted her purse. She took the ancient way out taken by all Eves; she became a kept woman, ruining her lovers in a short time with her recklessness. Working for a procurer who catered to strangers of the upper class, she again came into conflict with the authorities. As a result she fled to Nuremberg, which at that time had a flourishing Italian colony. But there she could find neither the customers nor the money which she had been accustomed to in Rome. She therefore married a humble German master-baker, but ran away from him without a divorce when his love-shaft became exhausted after the honeymoon.
Meanwhile her longing to return to Russia had never ceased, and now-she was twenty-seven years of age-she made up her mind to go back.
Her affair with Mihail, whom she still carried in her heart, would certainly be forgotten by both him and his father. She resolved to open up a modiste shop in Moscow -one like Madame Laura had. She was adventurous enough now not to care where the money came from to start such an enterprise. Thus she stole what she could from her German husband, fitted herself out with an elegant traveling dress and, made up as a woman of the world, soon crossed the Russian border.
To give herself a good front, she carried many a big trunk, although they were filled only with stones. When she reached the gates of Moscow in a public stage coach, she got out and kissed the walls of the huge gateway. So happy was she to be back home.