Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/85

Rh seated herself at the door on the same chair with Fókа. I see clearly the bald, wrinkled face of Fókа and the bent, kindly figure in the cap, underneath which gray hair peeped out. They are both pressing together on one chair, and they both feel uncomfortable.

I continued to be careless and impatient. The ten seconds during which we sat with closed doors appeared to me a whole hour. Finally all arose, made the sign of the cross, and began to take leave. Papa embraced mamma, and kissed her several times.

"That will do, my dear!" said papa; "we are not departing for an age."

"It is sad, nevertheless!" said mamma, in a voice trembling with tears.

When I heard that voice and saw her quivering lips and eyes full of tears, I forgot everything, and I felt so sad, so pained, and so utterly wretched, that I wanted rather to run away than to bid her farewell. I understood at that moment that when she embraced father, she really was bidding us farewell.

She began so many times to kiss Volódya and to make the sign of the cross over him that, supposing she was going to turn to me, I pushed myself forward, but she again and again blessed him and pressed him to her breast. At last, I embraced her and, clinging to her, wept and wept, thinking of nothing but my sorrow.

When we went out to seat ourselves in the vehicles, the annoying manorial servants followed to bid us goodbye. Their "Please, your hand, sir," their smacking kisses on the shoulder, and the odour of lard from their heads provoked in me a feeling very much akin to disgust. Under the influence of that feeling I very coldly kissed Natálya Sávishna's cap, while she, all in tears, bade me farewell.

It is strange, but I see all the faces of the servants as if it had happened to-day, and I could paint them with