Nor would Lavretsky have been able to recognize himself, if he could
have looked at himself as he in fancy was looking at Liza. In
the course of those eight years his life had attained its final
crisis--that crisis which many people never experience, but without
which no man can be sure of maintaining his principles firm to the
last. He had really given up thinking about his own happiness, about
what would conduce to his own interests. He had become calm, and--why
should we conceal the truth?--he had aged; and that not in face
alone or frame, but he had aged in mind; for, indeed, not only is
it difficult, but it is even hazardous to do what some people speak
of--to preserve the heart young in bodily old age. Contentment, in old
age, is deserved by him alone who has not lost his faith in what
is good, his persevering strength of will, his desire for active
employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really
become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and
in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as
far as in him lay the power, assured, and obtained guarantees for, the
welfare of the peasantry on his estates.

Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the
bench he knew so well. There--on that loved spot, in sight of that
house in which he had fruitlessly, and for the last time, stretched
forth his hands towards that cup of promise in which foamed and
sparkled the golden wine of enjoyment,--he, a lonely, homeless
wanderer, while the joyous cries of that younger generation which had
already forgotten him came flying to his ears, gazed steadily at his
past life.

His heart became very sorrowful, but it was free now from any crushing
sense of pain. He had nothing to be ashamed of; he had many sources
of consolation. "Play on, young vigorous lives!" he thought--and his
thoughts had no taint of bitterness in them--"the future awaits you,
and your path of life in it will be comparatively easy for you. You
will not be obliged, as we were, to seek out your path, to struggle,
to fall, to rise again in utter darkness. We had to seek painfully
by what means we might hold out to the end--and how many there were
amongst us who did not hold out!--but your part is now to act, to
work--and the blessing of old men like me shall be with you. For my
part, after the day I have spent here, after the emotions I have here
experienced, nothing remains for me