Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/165

Rh have arrived." I understood that she imagined she saw mamma, and I stopped. "And they told me that you were no more," she continued, frowning. "What nonsense! You can't die before me!" and she laughed out with a terrible, hysterical laughter.

Only people who are capable of strong affection can experience deep sorrow; but this very necessity of loving serves for them as a counteraction of their sorrow, and cures it. For this reason the moral nature of man is even more tenacious than his physical nature. Sorrow never kills.

A week later grandmother was able to weep, and she grew better. Her first thought, after she regained consciousness, was of us, and her love for us was increased. We did not leave her chair; she wept softly, spoke of mamma, and tenderly petted us.

It would never have occurred to a person who saw grandmother's bereavement, that she exaggerated it, though the expression of that sorrow was vehement and touching; but somehow I sympathized more with Natálya Sávishna, and I am convinced, even now, that nobody loved mamma so sincerely and purely, or grieved for her so much as did that simple-hearted and loving creature.

With my mother's death the happy period of my life was over, and a new epoch, that of my boyhood, began; but since the memories of Natálya Sávishna, whom I never saw again, and who had had such a strong and helpful influence upon the direction and development of my sentiments, belong to the first epoch, I shall say a few words about her and her death.

After our departure, as our people who remained in the village later told me, she felt very lonely for want of work. Although all the coffers were still in her keeping, and she did not cease rummaging through them, transposing, hanging things up, and spreading them out,