Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/166

134 she missed the noise and bustle of the country residence when it is inhabited by its masters, to which she had been accustomed from her childhood. The bereavement, the changed manner of life, and the absence of petty cares soon developed in her an ailment of old age for which she had a natural predisposition. Precisely a year after mother's death, she developed dropsy, and took to her bed.

I think it was hard for Natálya Sávishna to live alone, and harder still to die alone, in the large Petróvskoe house, without relatives, without friends. Everybody in the house loved and respected her, but she had no friendship for anybody, and she prided herself on the fact. She surmised that in her capacity of stewardess, where she enjoyed the confidence of her masters and had so many coffers with all kinds of property in her charge, her friendship for anybody would necessarily lead to hypocrisy and criminal condescension. For this reason, or, perhaps, because she had nothing in common with the other servants, she kept aloof from all and maintained that in the house she had no kith nor kin, and that she would show no indulgence in matters pertaining to her master's property.

She sought and found consolation in confiding her feelings to God in fervent prayers; but at times, during moments of weakness, to which we all are subject, when the best consolation is afforded man by the tears and sympathies of living beings, she lifted upon her bed her lapdog, who, fixing her yellow eyes upon her, licked her hands; Natálya Sávishna spoke to her and, weeping softly, stroked her. When her lapdog began pitifully to whimper, she tried to quiet her, and said: "Now stop, I know without you that I shall die soon."

A month before her death she took some white calico, white muslin, and rose-coloured ribbons out of her coffer: with the aid of her servant-girl she sewed a white dress