one else to be at peace. He prayed, grumbled
at fate, found fault with himself, with his system,
with politics, with all which he used to boast of,
with all that he had ever set up as a model for his
son. He would declare that he believed in nothing,
and then he would betake himself again to prayer;
he could not bear a single moment of solitude, and
he compelled his servants constantly to sit near his
bed day and night, and to entertain him with stories,
which he was in the habit of interrupting by exclamations
of, “You’re all telling lies!” or,
“What utter nonsense!”
[Footnote A: Literally, “a regular rag.”]
Glafira Petrovna had the largest share in all the
trouble he gave. He was absolutely unable to
do without her; and until the very end she fulfilled
all the invalid’s caprices, though sometimes
she was unable to reply immediately to what he said,
for fear the tone of her voice should betray the anger
which was almost choking her. So he creaked on
for two years more, and at length one day in the beginning
of the month of May, he died. He had been carried
out to the balcony, and planed there in the sun.
“Glasha! Glashka! broth, broth, you old
idi—,” lisped his stammering tongue;
and then, without completing the last word, it became
silent forever. Glafira, who had just snatched
the cup of broth from the hands of the major-domo,
stopped short, looked her brother in the face, very
slowly crossed herself, and went silently away.
And his son, who happened also to be on the spot, did
not say a word either, but bent over the railing of
the balcony, and gazed for a long time into the garden,
all green and fragrant, all sparkling in the golden
sunlight of spring. He was twenty-three years
old; how sadly, how swiftly had those years passed
by unmarked! Life opened out before him now.
XII.
After his father’s burial, having confided to
the never-changing Glafira Petrovna the administration
of his household, and the supervision of his agents,
the young Lavretsky set out for Moscow, whither a
vague but powerful longing attracted him. He knew
in what his education had been defective, and he was
determined to supply its deficiencies as far as possible.
In the course of the last five years he had read much,
and he had see a good deal with his own eyes.
Many ideas had passed through his mind, many a professor
might have envied him some of his knowledge; yet,
at the same time, he was entirely ignorant of much
that had long been familiar to every school-boy.
Lavretsky felt that he was not at his ease among his
fellow-men; he had a secret inkling that he was an
exceptional character. The Anglomaniac had played
his son a cruel trick; his capricious education had
borne its fruit. For many years he had implicitly
obeyed his father; and when at last he had learned
to value him aright, the effects of his father’s
teaching were already produced. Certain habits
