all at a distance, and used to say that she 'recognised neither kinsman
nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with
regard to her master's property.'
Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God. Yet
sometimes, in those moments of weakness to which all of us are
subject, and when man's best solace is the tears and compassion of his
fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and
talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by
licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska
began to whine she would say as she quieted it: 'Enough, enough! I know
without thy telling me that my time is near.' A month before her death
she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white
cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants,
fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried. Next she put
everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory
which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy. All that she kept
back was a couple of silk gowns, an old shawl, and Grandpapa's military
uniform--things which had been presented to her absolutely, and which,
thanks to her care and orderliness, were in an excellent state of
preservation--particularly the handsome gold embroidery on the uniform.
Just before her death, again, she expressed a wish that one of the gowns
(a pink one) should be made into a robe de chambre for Woloda; that the
other one (a many-coloured gown) should be made into a similar garment
for myself; and that the shawl should go to Lubotshka. As for the
uniform, it was to devolve either to Woloda or to myself, according as
the one or the other of us should first become an officer. All the rest
of her property (save only forty roubles, which she set aside for her
commemorative rites and to defray the costs of her burial) was to pass
to her brother, a person with whom, since he lived a dissipated life
in a distant province, she had had no intercourse during her lifetime.
When, eventually, he arrived to claim the inheritance, and found that
its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused
to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a
woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as
well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even
the smallest thing should have left no more: yet it was a fact.
Though Natalia's last illness lasted for two months, she bore her
sufferings with truly Christian fortitude. Never did she fret or
complain, but, as usual, appealed continually to God. An hour before
the end came she made her final confession, received the Sacrament with
quiet joy, and was accorded extreme unction. Then she begged forgiveness
of every one in the house for any wrong she might have done them, and
requested the priest to send us word of the number of times she had
blessed us for our love of her, as well as of how in her last moments
she had implored our forgiveness if, in her ignorance, she had ever at
any time given us offence. 'Yet a thief have I never been. Never have I
used so much as a piece of thread that was not my own.' Such was the one
quality which she valued in herself.
Dressed in the cap and gown prepared so long beforehand, and with her
head resting, upon the cushion made for the purpose, she conversed with
the priest up to the very last moment, until, suddenly, recollecting
