Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/69



was getting dark when we reached home. Mamma seated herself at the piano, and we children brought paper, pencils, and paint, and took up positions at the round table. I had only some blue paint; yet I began to picture the hunt with that alone. Having very vividly represented a blue boy astride on a blue horse, and blue dogs, I was not quite sure whether it was proper to paint a blue hare, and so I ran into papa's cabinet to take counsel with him. Papa was reading something, and to my question, "Are there any blue hares?" he answered, without raising his head, "There are, my dear, there are." I returned to the round table and painted a blue hare; but I found it necessary later to change the blue hare into a bush. The bush did not please me either; I made a tree of it, and of the tree I made a hay rick, and of the rick a cloud, and finally I so smeared the whole paper over with the blue paint, that I tore it up in anger, and dozed off in an armchair.

Mamma was playing the second concert of Field, her teacher. I was dozing, and in my imagination rose some light, bright and transparent recollections. She began to play a pathetic sonata of Beethoven, and something sad, heavy and gloomy overcast my mind. Mamma often played these two pieces. I very well remember, therefore, the feeling which they evoked in me. That feeling