ly at the portrait of Father Aristark.
"It's not my doing. . . . I am only the obedient instrument . .
It's really a miracle. Rheumatism of eight years' standing by one
pilule of scrofuloso!"

"Excuse me, you were so kind as to give me three pilules. One I
took at dinner and the effect was instantaneous! Another in the
evening, and the third next day; and since then not a touch! Not a
twinge anywhere! And you know I thought I was dying, I had written
to Moscow for my son to come! The Lord has given you wisdom, our
lady of healing! Now I am walking, and feel as though I were in
Paradise. The Tuesday I came to you I was hobbling, and now I am
ready to run after a hare. . . . I could live for a hundred years.
There's only one trouble, our lack of means. I'm well now, but
what's the use of health if there's nothing to live on? Poverty
weighs on me worse than illness. . . . For example, take this . . .
It's the time to sow oats, and how is one to sow it if one has
no seed? I ought to buy it, but the money . . . everyone knows how
we are off for money. . . ."

"I will give you oats, Kuzma Kuzmitch. . . . Sit down, sit down.
You have so delighted me, you have given me so much pleasure that
it's not you but I that should say thank you!"

"You are our joy! That the Lord should create such goodness! Rejoice,
Madam, looking at your good deeds! . . . While we sinners have no
cause for rejoicing in ourselves. . . . We are paltry, poor-spirited,
useless people . . . a mean lot. . . . We are only gentry in name,
but in a material sense we are the same as peasants, only worse. . . .
We live in stone houses, but it's a mere make-believe . . . for
the roof leaks. And there is no money to buy wood to mend it with."

"I'll give you the wood, Kuzma Kuzmitch."

Zamuhrishen asks for and gets a cow too, a letter of recommendation
for his daughter whom he wants to send to a boarding school, and
. . . touched by the lady's liberality he whimpers with excess of
feeling, twists his mouth, and feels in his pocket for his handkerchief
. . . .

Marfa Petrovna sees a red paper slip out of his pocket with his
handkerchief and fall noiselessly to the floor.

"I shall never forget it to all eternity . . ." he mutters, "and I
shall make my children and my grandchildren remember it . . . from
generation to generation. 'See, children,' I shall say, 'who has
saved me from the grave, who . . .'"

When she has seen her patient out, the lady looks fo