Mamma’s eyes were wide open, but they could not see us.  Never shall I forget the terrible expression in them—­the expression of agonies of suffering!

Then we were taken away.

When, later, I was able to ask Natalia Savishna about Mamma’s last moments she told me the following: 

“After you were taken out of the room, my beloved one struggled for a long time, as though some one were trying to strangle her.  Then at last she laid her head back upon the pillow, and slept softly, peacefully, like an angel from Heaven.  I went away for a moment to see about her medicine, and just as I entered the room again my darling was throwing the bedclothes from off her and calling for your Papa.  He stooped over her, but strength failed her to say what she wanted to.  All she could do was to open her lips and gasp, ’My God, my God!  The children, the children!’ I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped me, saying that it would only excite her—­it were best not to do so.  Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again.  What she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in it she was blessing you—­you the children whom she could not see.  God did not grant her to see her little ones before her death.  Then she raised herself up—­did my love, my darling—­yes, just so with her hands, and exclaimed in a voice which I cannot bear to remember, ’Mother of God, never forsake them!’”

“Then the pain mounted to her heart, and from her eyes it as, plain that she suffered terribly, my poor one!  She sank back upon the pillows, tore the bedclothes with her teeth, and wept—­wept—­”

“Yes and what then?” I asked but Natalia Savishna could say no more.  She turned away and cried bitterly.

Mamma had expired in terrible agonies.

XXVII —­ GRIEF

Late the following evening I thought I would like to look at her once more; so, conquering an involuntary sense of fear, I gently opened the door of the salon and entered on tiptoe.

In the middle of the room, on a table, lay the coffin, with wax candles burning all round it on tall silver candelabra.  In the further corner sat the chanter, reading the Psalms in a low, monotonous voice.  I stopped at the door and tried to look, but my eyes were so weak with crying, and my nerves so terribly on edge, that I could distinguish nothing.  Every object seemed to mingle together in a strange blur—­the candles, the brocade, the velvet, the great candelabra, the pink satin cushion trimmed with lace, the chaplet of flowers, the ribboned cap, and something of a transparent, wax-like colour.  I mounted a chair to see her face, yet where it should have been I could see only that wax-like, transparent something.  I could not believe it to be her face.  Yet, as I stood grazing at it, I at last recognised the well-known, beloved features.  I shuddered with horror to