Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/157

Rh What right did they have to speak of and weep for her? Some of them, speaking of us, called us orphans. As if we did not know ourselves that children who had no mother were called by that name! They seemed to take delight in being the first to name us so, just as people are in a hurry to call a newly married girl Madame.

In the farther corner of the parlour, almost hidden behind the open door of the buffet, knelt the bent, gray-haired old woman. Folding her hands and raising them to heaven, she did not weep, but prayed. Her soul went out to God, and she asked Him to unite her with the mistress whom she had loved more than any one in the world, and she was firmly convinced that this would soon happen.

"Here is one who has loved her sincerely!" thought I, and I was ashamed of myself.

The mass was over; the face of the deceased one was uncovered, and all persons present, except us, went up to the coffin, one after another, and made their obeisance.

One of the last to walk up to take leave of mother was a peasant woman, with a pretty five-year-old girl in her arms, whom, God knows why, she had brought with her. Just then I accidentally dropped my wet handkerchief, and I was on the point of lifting it up. The moment I bent down, I was struck by a terrible, penetrating cry, which was filled with such terror that if I were to live a hundred years I shall not forget it, and whenever I think of it, a cold chill passes over my body. I raised my head: on a tabouret, near the coffin, stood the same peasant woman, with difficulty restraining the girl in her arms, who fought with her little hands, and, throwing back her terrified face and fixing her bulging eyes upon the countenance of the dead woman, shrieked in a terrible, preternatural voice. I cried out in a voice which, I think, was even more terrible than the one that had struck me, and ran out of the room.