voice for a long time.  The next morning I noticed that my uncle looked at David with great confidence and affection:  he appeared very well pleased with him.  David carried; him to Latkin’s funeral services at the church.  I also went:  my father made no objection, but he remained at home.  Raissa’s calm surprised me:  she had grown pale and thin, but she shed no tears, and her words and actions were very simple.  In everything she did I noticed, strangely enough, a certain majesty—­the majesty of grief, which forgets itself.  At the entrance of the church Uncle Jegor was introduced to her.  It was evident from his manner that David had spoken to him of her.  She pleased him as much as did his son.  I could see that in David’s face when I next looked at it.  I remember how it glowed when his father said of her in his presence, “She’s an intelligent girl:  she will be a good housewife.”  At Latkin’s house they told me that the old man had gone quietly, like a burned-out taper, and that so long as he had strength and consciousness he had stroked his daughter’s hair, had said something unintelligible, but not sad, and had smiled continually.  At the burial my father went to the church and to the graveyard.

Even Trankwillitatin sang in the choir.  At the grave’ Raissa burst suddenly into sobs and threw herself, face downward, on the ground, but she rose immediately.  Her little sister, the deaf mute, looked at everything with great, bright, somewhat dull eyes:  from time to time she drew near Raissa, but she did not seem at all afraid.  The second day after the funeral, Uncle Jegor, who, apparently, had not come back from Siberia empty-handed (he had paid all the funeral expenses and given David’s preserver a generous reward)—­who had said nothing of his life there nor of his plans for the future—­Uncle Jegor, I say, said to my father that he had determined not to stay in Riasan, but to go with his son to Moscow.  My father politely expressed his regret, and even tried, though very gently, to alter my uncle’s decision, but in the depths of his soul I fancy he was very glad.  The presence of his brother—­with whom he had too little in common, who had not honored him with even a single reproach, who did not even despise him, who simply took no pleasure in him—­was wearisome to him, and parting from David gave him no especial uneasiness.  This separation, of course, nearly broke my heart:  at first I was really bereaved, and I felt as if I had lost every comfort and joy in life.

So my uncle went off and took with him not only David, but, to our great surprise, and even to the great dissatisfaction of our street, Raissa and her little sister.  When my aunt heard of this she called him a Turk, and a Turk she called him till her death.

And I was left alone, alone, but it makes no difference about me.

XXV.