of selfish aims. He had calmed
down, and--why should the truth be concealed?--he had aged, not alone in
face and body, he had aged in soul; to preserve the heart youthful to old
age, as some say, is difficult, and almost absurd: he may feel content
who has not lost faith in good, steadfastness of will, desire for
activity.... Lavretzky had a right to feel satisfied: he had become a
really fine agriculturist, he had really learned to till the soil, and he
had toiled not for himself alone; in so far as he had been able, he had
freed from care and established on a firm foundation the existence of his
serfs.

Lavretzky emerged from the house into the garden: he seated himself on
the familiar bench--and in that dear spot, in the face of the house,
where he had, on the last occasion, stretched out his hands in vain to
the fatal cup in which seethes and sparkles the wine of delight,--he, a
solitary, homeless wanderer,--to the sounds of the merry cries of the
younger generation which had already superseded him,--took a survey of
his life. His heart was sad, but not heavy and not very sorrowful: he had
nothing which he had need to regret or be ashamed of. "Play on, make
merry, grow on, young forces,"--he thought, and there was no bitterness
in his meditations:--"life lies before you, and it will be easier for you
to live: you will not be compelled, as we have been, to seek your road,
to struggle, to fall, and to rise to your feet again amid the gloom; we
have given ourselves great trouble, that we might remain whole,--and how
many of us have failed in that!--but you must do deeds, work,--and the
blessing of old fellows like me be upon you. But all that remains for me,
after to-day, after these emotions, is to make my final reverence to you,
and, although with sadness, yet without envy, without any dark feelings,
to say, in view of the end, in view of God who is awaiting me: 'Long live
solitary old age! Burn thyself out, useless life!'"

Lavretzky rose softly, and softly went away; no one noticed him, no one
detained him; the merry cries resounded more loudly than ever in the
garden behind the green, dense wall of lofty lindens. He seated himself
in his tarantas, and ordered the coachman to drive home, and not to
press the horses hard.

* * * * *

"And the end?" perchance some dissatisfied reader will say. "And what
became of Lavretzky? of Liza?" But what can one say about people who