consolation in religion, then '
Gradually, at the sight of the familiar objects, memories awakened in Alexandra heart. He passed in thought through his childhood and youth up to his departure for Petersburg; he remembered how, when he was a child, he used to repeat his prayers to his mother, how she used to tell him about the guardian angel which stands on guard over the heart of man, and is always waging war with the spirits of evil; how, pointing to the stars, she used to say that these were the eyes of God's angels, who look down upon the world and keep a reckoning of the good and bad actions of men, how the angels weep when the bad seem more than the good in their list, and how they are happy when the good outweigh the bad. Pointing to the blue of the distant horizon she would say that that was Sion. . . . Alexandr sighed, stirred by these memories.
The evening service was over. Alexandr returned home, still more depressed than when he started. Anna Pavlovna did not know what to do. One day he woke up earlier than usual and heard a noise near his pillow. He looked round; an old woman was standing over him muttering. She at once disappeared as soon as she saw that she was observed. Under his pillow Alexandr found a herb of some sort; round his neck was hanging an amulet.
' What does this mean ? ' asked Alexandr of his mother; ' who was the old woman in my room ? '
Anna Pavlovna was confused.
'It ... . was Nikitishna ?' she said.
' What! Nikitishna ? '
' She, you know, my dear .... you won't be angry ? '
' But what is it all about ? tell me.'
'She, they say, can do a great deal If she only
whispers over water, and breathes on a person asleep, everything will go away.'
'The year before last,' put in Agrafena, 'the widow Sidovicha was haunted at night by a fiery dragon through the chimney.'
Anna Pavlovna made a gesture of horror.
' Nikitishna,' continued Agrafena, ' charmed away the dragon ; it left off haunting her.'
'Well, and what became of Sidovicha?' inquired Alexandr.
'• She was brought to bed of .... oh, such a wretched black little brat! it died two days afterwards.'
Alexandr laughed, perhaps for the first time since his return to the country.
'Where did you pick her up? ' he asked.
' Anton Ivanitch brought her,' replied Anna Pavlovna.
' You are ready to listen to that fool! '
' Ob, Sashenka, what are you saying ? aren't you ashamed ? Anton Ivanitch a fool! How can you. bring yourself to say such a thing? Anton Ivanitch—he is our friend, our benefactor !'
' Well, then, take the amulet, mamma, and give it to our friend and benefactor; let him hang it round his neck.'
From that time he took to locking his door at night.
Two, three months passed away. Gradually the solitude, the peace, the home life, with all the material comforts that went with it, went some way to restoring Alexandr to health.
And here he was better, wiser than any one! Here he was the idol of all for some miles round. And here at every step his soul expanded with peaceful soothing emotions at the aspect of Nature. The prattle of the stream, the whisper of the leaves, the cool shade, at times the very silence of Nature—all begot meditation and kindled emotion. In the meadows, in the garden, at home he was haunted by memories of his childhood and youth. Anna Pavlovna, sitting sometimes near him, seemed to divine his thoughts. She helped him to renew in his memory the trifling details of life so precious to the heart, or told him of something he did not remember at all.
'You see those lime-trees,' she said, pointing to the
R
garden ; ' your father planted them. It was not long before you were born. I was sitting, as it happened, on the balcony and looking at him. He was working and working away, and then he would look at me, and the perspiration was streaming on him. ' Ah ! are you there ?' he said. * That's why I work with so much pleasure/ and he set to again. And that's the little field where you used to play with the children; so passionate you were; the least thing not to your liking and you'd scream at the top of your voice. One day Agashka, the one who's Kouzmiy's wife now—his hut is the third from the paddock—gave you a push somehow and your nose was cut and bleeding ; such a thrashing your father gave her, it was all I could do to beg her off.'
Alexandr mentally filled out these memories with others. ' On that seat, under the tree,' he thought, ' I used to sit with Sophia, and I was happy then. And there between the two lilac bushes, she gave me the first kiss.' And all this was before his eyes. He smiled at these recollections, and used to sit for whole hours on the balcony basking in the sunshine and following it about, listening to the singing of the birds, the plash of the lake and the humming of unseen insects.
Sometimes he moved over to the window which looked out on to the court and the village street. There was a different picture, in the style of Teniers, full of bustling family life. Barbos lay stretched in his kennel out of the heat, his muzzle lying on his paws. Dozens of hens were greeting the morning with emulous clucking; the cocks were fighting. A herd was driven along the street to the meadow. Sometimes one cow left behind by the herd would low anxiously, standing in the middle of the street and looking round her in all directions. Peasants and women with hoes and scythes over their shoulders go by to their work. Now and then two or three words of their talk are snatched up by the wind and carried up to the window. Further off, a peasant's cart goes rumbling over the bridge and after it slowly crawls a waggon of hay. Unkempt, white-haired children are strolling about the fields lifting up their smocks. Looking at this picture, Alexandr began to understand the poetry of 'grey skies, broken hedges, agate, earth-stained toil and the trepaka? His tight trim coat he exchanged for the wide smock of manual labour. And every
incident of this tranquil life, every impression of morning and evening, of meals and of repose, was pervaded by the ever-watchful love of his mother.
She could not be thankful enough when she saw that Alexandr was growing fatter, that the colour had come back to his cheeks, and that a peaceful light was shining in his eyes. ' Only his curls do not grow again,' she said, ' and they were like silk/
Alexandr often took walks about the neighbourhood. One day he met a troop of peasant women and girls, roaming in the forest after mushrooms, so he joined them and spent the whole day with them. On his return home he praised one girl, Masha, for her quickness and smartness, and Masha was chosen in the household to ' wait on the master.'
He sometimes rode out to look at the field-work and learnt by experience what he had often translated and written about for the journal. ' How many lies I told in it,' he thought, shaking his head, and he began to go into the subject more deeply and thoroughly. ^ One day in bad weather he tried to occupy himself with work, sat down to write and was well pleased with the beginning of his attempt. Some book was needed for reference; he wrote for it to Petersburg, and it was sent him. He set to work in earnest. He wrote for more books to be sent. In vain did Anna Pavlovna try to persuade him not to write, ' not to cramp his chest,' he would not listen to her. She sent Anton Ivanitch to him. Alexandr would not listen to him either, and continued to write. When three or four months had passed, and he not only had not grown thin from writing, but had grown stouter, Anna Pavlovna's mind was set at rest.
So passed a year and a half. All would have been well, but at the end of that period Alexandr began to grow melancholy again. He had no desires of any kind, or at least such as he had were easy to content; they did not go beyond the limits of family life. Nothing agitated him; not a care nor a doubt, but he was depressed! By degrees the narrow round of home-life had grown repulsive to him ; his mother's blandishments bored him; and Anton Ivanitch he detested; his work too sickened him, and Nature could not charm him.
He used to sit silently at the window, and now gazed with indifference at his father's lime-trees, and listened with irritation to the plash of the lake. He began to reflect on the cause of this new uneasiness, and discovered that he was homesick—for Petersburg! Now that he was removed to a distance from the past, he began to regret it. His blood was still hot, his heart was still beating, body and soul
demanded activity A failure again 1 Alas ! he almost
wept over this discovery. He thought that this depression would pass, that he would grow used to the
