More Tales from Tolstoi
fences, in town houses and country houses, everything was light and motion. In the sky, on the eaxth, and in the heart of man, youth and happiness revived. In one of the principal streets, in front of a gentle- man's mansion, fresh straw had been laid down ; in the house was that selfsame dying invalid who had been so eager to go abroad. At the closed doors of the bedchamber stood the husband of the invalid and a portly woman. On the divain sat a priest with dejected eyes, holding some- thing wrapped up in an epitrachilion. In a large arm-chair in a corner lay an old woman, the mother of the invalid, weeping convulsively. By her side stood a maid holding in her hand a clean pocket- handkerchief, and waiting till the old woman asked for it; another maid was rubbing the old woman's temples with something or other, and blowing under her cap among her grey hairs. "Well, Christ be with you, my friend," said the husband to the stout woman standing by his side at the door (his wife's sister), " she has such confidence in you ; you know how to talk to her, you see, so go in and persuade her nicely, my dear." He would have opened the door for her there and then, but the sister prevented him, at the same time dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and shaking her head. " Well, I don't look now as if I had been crying," said she, and, opening the door herself, she went in. The husband was violently agitated, and seemed quite distraught. He made his way towards the old
woman, but before he had taken more than a few
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