t, one eye opened, and it seemed as
though at the sight of the priest in his vestments, the smoking
censers, the light before the image, something like a shudder of horror
passed over the death-stricken face. When at last he had breathed his
last, and there arose a universal lamentation in the house, Vassily
Ivanovitch was seized by a sudden frenzy. 'I said I should rebel,' he
shrieked hoarsely, with his face inflamed and distorted, shaking his
fist in the air, as though threatening some one; 'and I rebel, I
rebel!' But Arina Vlasyevna, all in tears, hung upon his neck, and both
fell on their faces together. 'Side by side,' Anfisushka related
afterwards in the servants' room, 'they dropped their poor heads like
lambs at noonday ...'

But the heat of noonday passes, and evening comes and night, and then,
too, the return to the kindly refuge, where sleep is sweet for the
weary and heavy laden....

CHAPTER XXVIII

Six months had passed by. White winter had come with the cruel
stillness of unclouded frosts, the thick-lying, crunching snow, the
rosy rime on the trees, the pale emerald sky, the wreaths of smoke
above the chimneys, the clouds of steam rushing out of the doors when
they are opened for an instant, with the fresh faces, that look stung
by the cold, and the hurrying trot of the chilled horses. A January day
was drawing to its close; the cold evening was more keen than ever in
the motionless air, and a lurid sunset was rapidly dying away. There
were lights burning in the windows of the house at Maryino; Prokofitch
in a black frockcoat and white gloves, with a special solemnity, laid
the table for seven. A week before in the small parish church two
weddings had taken place quietly, and almost without witnesses--Arkady
and Katya's, and Nikolai Petrovitch and Fenitchka's; and on this day
Nikolai Petrovitch was giving a farewell dinner to his brother, who was
going away to Moscow on business. Anna Sergyevna had gone there also
directly after the ceremony was over, after making very handsome
presents to the young people.

Precisely at three o'clock they all gathered about the table. Mitya was
placed there too; with him appeared a nurse in a cap of glazed brocade.
Pavel Petrovitch took his seat between Katya and Fenitchka; the
'husbands' took their places beside their wives. Our friends had
changed of late; they all seemed to have grown stronger and better
looking; only Pavel Petrovitch was thinner, which ga