I heard later from people in the village that, after our return to Moscow, she found time hang very heavy on her hands.  Although the drawers and shelves were still under her charge, and she never ceased to arrange and rearrange them—­to take things out and to dispose of them afresh—­she sadly missed the din and bustle of the seignorial mansion to which she had been accustomed from her childhood up.  Consequently grief, the alteration in her mode of life, and her lack of activity soon combined to develop in her a malady to which she had always been more or less subject.

Scarcely more than a year after Mamma’s death dropsy showed itself, and she took to her bed.  I can imagine how sad it must have been for her to go on living—­still more, to die—­alone in that great empty house at Petrovskoe, with no relations or any one near her.  Every one there esteemed and loved her, but she had formed no intimate friendships in the place, and was rather proud of the fact.  That was because, enjoying her master’s confidence as she did, and having so much property under her care, she considered that intimacies would lead to culpable indulgence and condescension, Consequently (and perhaps, also, because she had nothing really in common with the other servants) she kept them all at a distance, and used to say that she “recognised neither kinsman nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with regard to her master’s property.”

Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God.  Yet sometimes, in those moments of weakness to which all of us are subject, and when man’s best solace is the tears and compassion of his fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her.  When Moska began to whine she would say as she quieted it:  “Enough, enough!  I know without thy telling me that my time is near.”  A month before her death she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants, fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried.  Next she put everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy.  All that she kept back was a couple of silk gowns, an old shawl, and Grandpapa’s military uniform—­things which had been presented to her absolutely, and which, thanks to her care and orderliness, were in an excellent state of preservation—­particularly the handsome gold embroidery on the uniform.