Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/273

Three Deaths paces, he turned back, walked across the room and approached the priest. The priest looked up at him, raised his brows to heaven and sighed. His thick, grizzled beard rose aloft and sank down again simultaneously.

"My God! my God!" said the husband.

"What's to be done?" said the priest sighing, and again his brows and his beard rose and fell.

"And her mother there!" said the husband desperately. "It is more than she can bear. How she did love her . . . ! I don't know what to do. You, my father, do try and quiet her and induce her to go away from here."

The priest got up and went to the old woman.

"A mother's heart!—ah! who can estimate its love? yet God is merciful," said he.

The old woman's face suddenly became overcast and she began to sob.

"God is merciful," repeated the priest when she had grown a little calmer. "I may also tell you that in my parish there was a sick woman much worse than Maria Dmitrievna, and what do you think?—a simple shopkeeper cured her by means of herbs in a short time. And this same shopkeeper is now in Moscow. I was telling Vasily Dmitrievich that we might try the experiment. At any rate, it might afford the patient relief. With God all things are possible."

"No, she won't live!" interrupted the old woman. "What will become of me if God takes her?" And she gave way to such passionate emotion that she lost consciousness.