son as a model; he declared that he believed in nothing and then began
to pray again; he could not put up with one instant of solitude, and
expected his household to sit by his chair continually day and night,
and entertain him with stories, which he constantly interrupted with
exclamations, "You are for ever lying, . . . a pack of nonsense!"

Glafira Petrovna was specially necessary to him; he absolutely could not
get on without her--and to the end she always carried out every whim of
the sick man, though sometimes she could not bring herself to answer at
once for fear the sound of her voice should betray her inward anger.
Thus he lingered on for two years and died on the first day of May, when
he had been brought out on to the balcony into the sun. "Glasha,
Glashka! soup, soup, old foo---his halting tongue muttered and before he
had articulated the last word, it was silent for ever. Glafira Petrovna,
who had only just taken the cup of soup from the hands of the steward,
stopped, looked at her brother's face, slowly made a large sign of the
cross and turned away in silence; and his son, who happened to be there,
also said nothing; he leaned on the railing of the balcony and gazed a
long while into the garden, all fragrant and green, and shining in the
rays of the golden sunshine of spring. He was twenty-three years old;
how terribly, how imperceptibly quickly those twenty-three years had
passed by! . . . Life was opening before him.



Chapter XII


After burying his father and intrusting to the unchanged Glafira
Petrovna the management of his estate and superintendence of his