nd holy
on earth. It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the
heavens. Lavretsky drew himself up, and rose cold and pale with ecstasy.
This music seemed to clutch his very soul, so lately shaken by the
rapture of love, the music was glowing with love too. "Again!" he
whispered as the last chord sounded. The old man threw him an eagle
glance, struck his hand on his chest and saying deliberately in his own
tongue, "This is my work, I am a great musician," he played again his
marvellous composition. There was no candle in the room; the light of
the rising moon fell aslant on the window; the soft air was vibrating
with sound; the poor little room seemed a holy place, and the old man's
head stood out noble and inspired in the silvery half light. Lavretsky
went up to him and embraced him. At first Lemm did not respond to
his embrace and even pushed him away with his elbow. For a long while
without moving in any limb he kept the same severe, almost morose
expression, and only growled out twice, "aha." At last his face
relaxed, changed, and grew calmer, and in response to Lavretsky's warm
congratulations he smiled a little at first, then burst into tears, and
sobbed weakly like a child.

"It is wonderful," he said, "that you have come just at this moment; but
I know all, I know all."

"You know all?" Lavretsky repeated in amazement.

"You have heard me," replied Lemm, "did you not understand that I knew
all?"

Till daybreak Lavretsky could not sleep, all night he was sitting on his
bed. And Lisa too did not sleep; she was praying.

Chapter XXXV

The reader knows how Lavretsky grew up and developed. Let us say a few
words about Lisa's education. She was in her tenth year when her father
died; but he had not troubled himself much about her. Weighed down
with business cares, for ever anxious for the increase of his property,
bilious, sharp and impatient, he gave money unsparingly for the
teachers, tutors, dress and other necessities of his children; but he
could not endure, as he expressed it, "to be dandling his squallers,"
and indeed had no time to dandle them. He worked, took no rest from
business, slept little, rarely played cards, and worked again. He
compared himself to a horse harnessed to a threshing-machine. "My life
has soon come to an end," was his comment on his deathbed, with a bitter
smile on his parched lips. Marya Dmitrievna did not in reality trouble
herself about Lisa any more than