ru levantine; but how, later on, having flown
into a rage with her neighbour, on account of the unseemly question:
"What might your capital amount to, madam?" she had given orders that he
should not be admitted, and how she had then commanded, that everything,
down to the very smallest scrap, should be given to Feodor Ivanitch
after her death. And, in fact, Lavretzky found all his aunt's effects
intact, not excepting the festival cap, with the rose-purple ribbons, and
the gown of yellow tru-tru levantine. The ancient papers and curious
documents, which Lavretzky had counted upon, proved not to exist, with
the exception of one tattered little old book, in which his grandfather,
Piotr Andreitch, had jotted down, now--"Celebration in the city of
Saint Petersburg of the peace concluded with the Turkish Empire by his
Illustriousness Prince Alexander Alexandrovitch Prozorovsky"; now a
recipe for a decoction for the chest, with the comment: "This instruction
was given to Generaless Praskovya Feodorovna Saltykoff, by Feodor
Avksentievitch, Archpriest of the Church of the Life-giving Trinity";
again, some item of political news, like the following: "In the '_Moscow
News_,' it is announced that Premier-Major Mikhail Petrovitch
Kolytcheff has died. Was not he the son of Piotr Vasilievitch
Kolytcheff?" Lavretzky also found several ancient calendars and
dream-books, and the mystical works of Mr. Ambodik; many memories were
awakened in him by the long-forgotten but familiar "Symbols and Emblems."
In Glafira Petrovna's toilet-table Lavretzky found a small packet,
tied with black ribbon, and sealed with black wax, thrust into the
remotest recesses of the drawer. In the packet, face to face, lay a
pastel portrait of his father in his youth, with soft curls tumbling over
his brow, with long, languid eyes, and mouth half opened,--and the almost
effaced portrait of a pale woman in a white gown, with a white rose in
her hand,--his mother. Glafira Petrovna had never permitted her own
portrait to be made.--"Dear little father Feodor Ivanitch,"--Anton was
wont to say to Lavretzky:--"although I did not then have my residence in
the manor-house of the masters, yet I remember your great-grandfather,
Andrei Afanasievitch,--that I do; I was eighteen years of age when he
died. Once I met him in the garden,--my very hamstrings shook; but he did
nothing, only inquired my name,--and sent me to his chamber for a
pocket-handkerchief. He was a real gentlema