Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/79

Rh tears, wanted to rush out of the room. Mamma kept her back, embraced her, and they both melted into tears.

As far back as I can remember myself, I remember Natálya Sávishna, her love and her favours; but it is only now that I am able to estimate them, — for then it never occurred to me what a rare and remarkable being that old woman was. She not only never spoke, but, it seems, she never even thought of herself; all her life consisted of love and self-sacrifice. I was so accustomed to her unselfish, tender love for us that I did not imagine it could have been otherwise, in no way was grateful to her, and never asked myself whether she was happy or satisfied.

At times I would run into her chamber, under the pretext of some absolute necessity, and would sit down and begin to think aloud, not being in the least troubled by her presence. She was always busy with something: she either knitted some stockings or rummaged through the coffers with which her chamber was crowded, or took a list of the linen, and, listening to all the nonsense which I was talking, how, "when I shall be a general, I will marry a famous beauty, will buy me a red horse, will build me a glass house, and will send for Karl Ivánovich's relatives in Saxony," and so forth, she would say, " Yes, my dear, yes." Generally, when I got up to go, she opened a blue coffer, on the lid of which were pasted, on the inside, — I remember it as if it happened to-day, — a coloured reproduction of a hussar, a picture with a pomatum can, and a drawing by Volódya, — took out of that box some incense, lighted it, and, fanning, said:

"This, my dear one, is incense from Ochákov. When your deceased grandfather — the kingdom of heaven be his! — went against the Turks, he brought it back from there. There is only this last piece left," she added with a sigh.

In the coffers that filled the room there was absolutely everything. No matter what was needed, they used to