quickly threw up her head and cried out:

"Oh, no! At times I feel such joy, such happiness!"

Her face paled and her blue eyes gleamed. Placing her hands on the
mother's shoulders she said with a deep voice issuing from her very
heart, quietly as if in an ecstasy:

"If you knew--if you but understood what a great, joyous work we are
doing! You will come to feel it!" she exclaimed with conviction.

A feeling akin to envy touched the heart of the mother. Rising from
the floor she said plaintively:

"I am too old for that--ignorant and old."

Pavel spoke more and more often and at greater length, discussed more
and more hotly, and--grew thinner and thinner. It seemed to his mother
that when he spoke to Natasha or looked at her his eyes turned softer,
his voice sounded fonder, and his entire bearing became simpler.

"Heaven grant!" she thought; and imagining Natasha as her
daughter-in-law, she smiled inwardly.

Whenever at the meetings the disputes waxed too hot and stormy, the
Little Russian stood up, and rocking himself to and fro like the tongue
of a bell, he spoke in his sonorous, resonant voice simple and good
words which allayed their excitement and recalled them to their
purpose. Vyesovshchikov always kept hurrying everybody on somewhere.
He and the red-haired youth called Samoylov were the first to begin all
disputes. On their side were always Ivan Bukin, with the round head
and the white eyebrows and lashes, who looked as if he had been hung
out to dry, or washed out with lye; and the curly-headed, lofty-browed
Fedya Mazin. Modest Yakob Somov, always smoothly combed and clean,
spoke little and briefly, with a quiet, serious voice, and always took
sides with Pavel and the Little Russian.

Sometimes, instead of Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich, a native of some
remote government, came from the city. He wore eyeglasses, his beard
was shiny, and he spoke with a peculiar singing voice. He produced the
impression of a stranger from a far-distant land. He spoke about simple
matters--about family life, about children, about commerce, the police,
the price of bread and meat--about everything by which people live from
day to day; and in everything he discovered fraud, confusion, and
stupidity, sometimes setting these matters in a humorous light, but
always showing their decided disadvantage to the people.

To the mother, too, it seemed that he had come from far away, from
another country, where all the people