use, playfully but resolutely. The twinkle in
his eyes discomfited her, and she thought to herself, with a slight
feeling of offense: "If you laugh at me, then why do you ask me to
read with you?"

He noticed that the mother began to ask him with increasing frequency
for the meaning of this or that book word. She always looked aside
when asking for such information, and spoke in a monotonous tone of
indifference. He divined that she was studying by herself in secret,
understood her bashfulness, and ceased to invite her to read with him.
Shortly afterwards she said to him:

"My eyes are getting weak, Andriusha. I guess I need glasses."

"All right! Next Sunday I'll take you to a physician in the city, a
friend of mine, and you shall have glasses!"

She, had already been three times in the prison to ask for a meeting
with Pavel, and each time the general of the gendarmes, a gray old man
with purple cheeks and a huge nose, turned her gently away.

"In about a week, little mother, not before! A week from now we shall
see, but at present it's impossible!"

He was a round, well-fed creature, and somehow reminded her of a ripe
plum, somewhat spoiled by too long keeping, and already covered with a
downy mold. He kept constantly picking his small, white teeth with a
sharp yellow toothpick. There was a little smile in his small greenish
eyes, and his voice had a friendly, caressing sound.

"Polite!" said the mother to the Little Russian with a thoughtful air.
"Always with a smile on him. I don't think it's right. When a man is
tending to affairs like these, I don't think he ought to grin."

"Yes, yes. They are so gentle, always smiling. If they should be
told: 'Look here, this man is honest and wise, he is dangerous to us;
hang him!' they would still smile and hang him, and keep on smiling."

"The one who made the search in our place is the better of the two; he
is simpler. You can see at once that he is a dog."

"None of them are human beings; they are used to stun the people and
render them insensible. They are tools, the means wherewith our kind
is rendered more convenient to the state. They themselves have already
been so fixed that they have become convenient instruments in the hand
that governs us. They can do whatever they are told to do without
thought, without asking why it is necessary to do it."

At last Vlasova got permission to see her son, and one Sunday she was
sitting modestly in a co