refreshments which must be ready for the priests, she took up her
knitting and seated herself by my side again. The conversation reverted
to the old topic, and we once more mourned and shed tears together.
These talks with Natalia I repeated every day, for her quiet tears
and words of devotion brought me relief and comfort. Soon, however, a
parting came. Three days after the funeral we returned to Moscow, and I
never saw her again.

Grandmamma received the sad tidings only on our return to her house, and
her grief was extraordinary. At first we were not allowed to see her,
since for a whole week she was out of her mind, and the doctors were
afraid for her life. Not only did she decline all medicine whatsoever,
but she refused to speak to anybody or to take nourishment, and never
closed her eyes in sleep. Sometimes, as she sat alone in the arm-chair in
her room, she would begin laughing and crying at the same time, with a
sort of tearless grief, or else relapse into convulsions, and scream out
dreadful, incoherent words in a horrible voice. It was the first dire
sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost
to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then
another, of bringing this misfortune upon her, and rail at and blame
them with the most extraordinary virulence, Finally she would rise from
her arm-chair, pace the room for a while, and end by falling senseless
to the floor.

Once, when I went to her room, she appeared to be sitting quietly in her
chair, yet with an air which struck me as curious. Though her eyes were
wide open, their glance was vacant and meaningless, and she seemed to
gaze in my direction without seeing me. Suddenly her lips parted slowly
in a smile, and she said in a touchingly, tender voice: "Come here,
then, my dearest one; come here, my angel." Thinking that it was myself