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 she was addressing, I moved towards her, but it was not I whom she was beholding at that moment.  “Oh, my love,” she went on, “if only you could know how distracted I have been, and how delighted I am to see you once more!” I understood then that she believed herself to be looking upon Mamma, and halted where I was.  “They told me you were gone,” she concluded with a frown; “but what nonsense!  As if you could die before me!” and she laughed a terrible, hysterical laugh.

Only those who can love strongly can experience an overwhelming grief.  Yet their very need of loving sometimes serves to throw off their grief from them and to save them.  The moral nature of man is more tenacious of life than the physical, and grief never kills.

After a time Grandmamma’s power of weeping came back to her, and she began to recover.  Her first thought when her reason returned was for us children, and her love for us was greater than ever.  We never left her arm-chair, and she would talk of Mamma, and weep softly, and caress us.

Nobody who saw her grief could say that it was consciously exaggerated, for its expression was too strong and touching; yet for some reason or another my sympathy went out more to Natalia Savishna, and to this day I am convinced that nobody loved and regretted Mamma so purely and sincerely as did that simple-hearted, affectionate being.

With Mamma’s death the happy time of my childhood came to an end, and a new epoch—­the epoch of my boyhood—­began; but since my memories of Natalia Savishna (who exercised such a strong and beneficial influence upon the bent of my mind and the development of my sensibility) belong rather to the first period, I will add a few words about her and her death before closing this portion of my life.