ust be that I am
lost forever, for every sin shall be forgiven, save the sin against the
Holy Spirit...."

And having uttered these dreadful words, my son threw himself back on
the platform and I dropped down on the floor of the hut.... My legs
failed me....

Father Alexyei paused for a moment, and covered his eyes with his hand.

But why should I weary you longer [he went on], and myself? My son and I
dragged ourselves home, and there he soon afterward expired, and I lost
my Yasha. For several days before his death he neither ate nor drank,
but kept running back and forth in the room and repeating that there
could be no forgiveness for his sin.... But he never saw _him_ again.
"He has ruined my soul," he said; "and why should he come any more
now?" And when Yakoff took to his bed, he immediately sank into
unconsciousness, and thus, without repentance, like a senseless worm,
he went from this life to life eternal....

But I will not believe that the Lord judged harshly....

And among other reasons why I do not believe it is, that he looked so
well in his coffin; he seemed to have grown young again and resembled
the Yakoff of days gone by. His face was so tranquil and pure, his hair
curled in little rings, and there was a smile on his lips. Marfa
Savishna came to look at him, and said the same thing. She encircled him
all round with flowers, and laid flowers on his heart, and set up the
gravestone at her own expense.

And I was left alone.... And that is why, my dear sir, you have beheld
such great grief on my face.... It will never pass off---and it cannot.

I wanted to speak a word of comfort to Father Alexyei ... but could
think of none. We parted soon after.

OLD PORTRAITS[27]

(1881)

About forty versts from our village there dwelt, many years ago, the
great-uncle of my mother, a retired Sergeant of the Guards and a fairly
wealthy landed proprietor, Alexyei Sergyeitch Telyegin, on his ancestral
estate, Sukhodol. He never went anywhere himself, and therefore did not
visit us; but I was sent to pay my respects to him a couple of times a
year, at first with my governor, and later on alone. Alexyei Sergyeitch
always received me very cordially, and I spent three or four days with
him. He was already an old man when I made his acquaintance; I remember
that I was twelve years old at my first visit, and he was already over
seventy. He had been born under the Empress Elizabeth, in the last year
o