Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XV).djvu/326



this I write to thee, to thee, my one never forgotten friend, to thee, my dear companion, whom I have left for ever, but shall not cease to love till my life's end. Alas! thou knowest what parted us. But that I have no wish to speak of now. I have left thee but even here, in these wilds, in this far-off exile, I am all filled through and through with thee; as of old I am in thy power, as of old I feel the sweet burden of thy hand on my bent head!

For the last time I drag myself from out the grave of silence in which I am lying now. I turn a brief and softened gaze on all my past our past. No hope and no return; but no bitterness is in my heart and no regret, and clearer than the blue of heaven, purer than the first snow on mountain tops, fair memories rise up before me like the forms of departed gods. They come, not thronging in crowds, in slow procession they follow one another like those draped Athenian figures we admired so much—dost thou remember?—in the ancient bas-reliefs in the Vatican.