tupid, but insipid,
insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her
daughter's fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he
had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very
poor.

'Why am I thinking about her?' he asked himself, but he could not cease
doing so. 'Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy
as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But
why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to
myself.'

And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he
went on thinking about Pashenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now
of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At
last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him
and said: 'Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what
your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.'

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt
glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew
the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts (two hundred
miles) away, and he set out to walk there.

VI

Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become old,
withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of that failure,
the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in the country town
where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting the
family: her daughter, her ailing neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five
grandchildren. She did this by giving music lessons to tradesmen's
daughters, giving four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each,
and earning in this way some sixty rubles (6 pounds) a month. So they
lived for the present, in expectation of another appointment. She had
sent letters to all her relations and acquaintances asking them to
obtain a post for her son-in-law, and among the rest she had written to
Sergius, but that letter had not reached him.

It was a Saturday, and Praskovya Mikhaylovna was herself mixing dough
for currant bread such as the serf-cook on her father's estate used
to make so well. She wished to give her grandchildren a treat on the
Sunday.

Masha, her daughter, was nursing her youngest child, the eldest boy and
girl were at school, and her son-in-law was asleep, not having slept
during the night. Praskovya Mikhaylovna had rem