ghtly feverish; yet he still insisted upon it that she should not
remain in his room, and should go away to her own to sleep. Platonida
Ivanovna obeyed, but did not undress, and did not go to bed; she sat up
in an arm-chair and kept listening and whispering her prayer.

She was beginning to fall into a doze, when suddenly a dreadful,
piercing shriek awakened her. She sprang to her feet, rushed into
Aratoff's study, and found him lying on the floor, as upon the night
before.

But he did not come to himself as he had done the night before, work
over him as they would. That night he was seized with a high fever,
complicated by inflammation of the heart.

A few days later he died.

A strange circumstance accompanied his second swoon. When they lifted
him up and put him to bed, there proved to be a small lock of woman's
black hair clutched in his right hand. Where had that hair come from?
Anna Semyonovna had such a lock, which she had kept after Clara's death;
but why should she have given to Aratoff an object which was so precious
to her? Could she have laid it into the diary, and not noticed the fact
when she gave him the book?

In the delirium which preceded his death Aratoff called himself
Romeo ... after the poison; he talked about a marriage contracted,
consummated;--said that now he knew the meaning of delight. Especially
dreadful for Platonida Ivanovna was the moment when Aratoff, recovering
consciousness, and seeing her by his bedside, said to her:

"Aunty, why art thou weeping? Is it because I must die? But dost thou
not know that love is stronger than death?... Death! O Death, where is
thy sting? Thou must not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice...."

And again the face of the dying man beamed with that same blissful smile
which had made the poor old woman shudder so.

POEMS IN PROSE

(1878-1882)

_From the Editor of the "European Messenger_"

In compliance with our request, Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgenieff has given
his consent to our sharing now with the readers of our journal, without
delay, those passing comments, thoughts, images which he had noted down,
under one impression or another of current existence, during the last
five years,--those which belong to him personally, and those which
pertain to society in general. They, like many others, have not found a
place in those finished productions of the past which have already been
presented to the world, and have formed a complete c