Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/23

 Nicolayevitch looked at him and said with a broad smile:

"You are peevish to-day, like a girl who has reached the age when she should marry but has no lover."

HE illness dried him up still more, burnt something out of him. Inwardly he seemed to become lighter, more transparent, more resigned. His eyes are still keener, his glance piercing. He listens attentively as though recalling something which he has forgotten or as though waiting for something new and unknown. In Yassnaya Polyana he seemed to me a man who knew everything and had nothing more to learn—a man who had settled every question.

F he were a fish, he would certainly swim only in the ocean, never coming to the narrow seas, and particularly not to the flat waters of earthly rivers. Around him here there rest or dart hither and thither the little fishes: what he says does not interest them, is not necessary to them, and his silence does not frighten or move them. Yet his silence is impressive like that of a real hermit driven out from this world. Though he speaks a great deal and as a duty upon certain subjects, his silence is felt to be still greater. Certain things one cannot tell to anyone. Surely he has some thoughts of which he is afraid.