py time of my childhood came to an end, and
a new epoch--the epoch of my boyhood--began; but since my memories of
Natalia Savishna (who exercised such a strong and beneficial influence
upon the bent of my mind and the development of my sensibility) belong
rather to the first period, I will add a few words about her and her
death before closing this portion of my life.

I heard later from people in the village that, after our return to
Moscow, she found time hang very heavy on her hands. Although the
drawers and shelves were still under her charge, and she never ceased
to arrange and rearrange them--to take things out and to dispose of them
afresh--she sadly missed the din and bustle of the seignorial mansion to
which she had been accustomed from her childhood up. Consequently
grief, the alteration in her mode of life, and her lack of activity soon
combined to develop in her a malady to which she had always been more or
less subject.

Scarcely more than a year after Mamma's death dropsy showed itself, and
she took to her bed. I can imagine how sad it must have been for her
to go on living--still more, to die--alone in that great empty house
at Petrovskoe, with no relations or any one near her. Every one there
esteemed and loved her, but she had formed no intimate friendships in
the place, and was rather proud of the fact. That was because, enjoying
her master's confidence as she did, and having so much property
under her care, she considered that intimacies would lead to culpable
indulgence and condescension, Consequently (and perhaps, also, because
she had nothing really in common with the other servants) she kept them
all at a distance, and used to say that she "recognised neither kinsman
nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with
regard to her master's property."

Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God. Yet
sometimes, in those moments of weakness to which all of us are
subject, and when man's best solace is the tears and compassion of his
fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and
talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by
licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska
began to whine she would say as she quieted it: "Enough, enough! I know
without thy telling me that my time is near." A month before her death
she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white
cambric, and pink