hambermaid appeared and said to him with alarm:

"Ignat Matveyich, Natalya Fominichna is calling you. She is feeling
bad."

"Why bad? It'll pass!" he roared, his eyes flashing cheerfully. "Tell
her I'll be there immediately! Tell her she's a fine fellow! I'll just
get a present for her and I'll come! Hold on! Prepare something to eat
for the priest. Send somebody after Mayakin!"

His enormous figure looked as though it had grown bigger, and
intoxicated with joy, he stupidly tossed about the room; he was smiling,
rubbing his hands and casting fervent glances at the images; he crossed
himself swinging his hand wide. At last he went up to his wife.

His eyes first of all caught a glimpse of the little red body, which the
midwife was bathing in a tub. Noticing him, Ignat stood up on tiptoes,
and, folding his hands behind his back, walked up to him, stepping
carefully and comically putting forth his lips. The little one was
whimpering and sprawling in the water, naked, impotent and pitiful.

"Look out there! Handle him more carefully! He hasn't got any bones
yet," said Ignat to the midwife, softly.

She began to laugh, opening her toothless mouth, and cleverly throwing
the child over from one hand to the other.

"You better go to your wife."

He obediently moved toward the bed and asked on his way:

"Well, how is it, Natalya?"

Then, on reaching her, he drew back the bed curtain, which had thrown a
shadow over the bed.

"I'll not survive this," said she in a low, hoarse voice.

Ignat was silent, fixedly staring at his wife's face, sunk in the white
pillow, over which her dark locks were spread out like dead snakes.
Yellow, lifeless, with black circles around her large, wide-open
eyes--her face was strange to him. And the glance of those terrible
eyes, motionlessly fixed somewhere in the distance through the
wall--that, too, was unfamiliar to Ignat. His heart, compressed by a
painful foreboding, slackened its joyous throbbing.

"That's nothing. That's nothing. It's always like this," said he softly,
bending over his wife to give her a kiss. But she moaned right into his
face:

"I'll not survive this."

Her lips were gray and cold, and when he touched them with his own he
understood that death was already within her.

"Oh, Lord!" he uttered, in an alarmed whisper, feeling that fright was
choking his throat and suppressing his breath.

"Natasha? What will become of him? He must be nursed! What is the matter