is former reader,
notably because of the princess, who could not forgive Kranitski;
since, as was too well known by all, he was occupied with the
wife of that millionaire--the eternally absent.

There were still many acquaintances, and more recent relations,
but these had neither the charm nor the certainty of those which
time had in various ways broken, brought to an end, or relaxed.

His mother, the foundress of his destiny, had ceased to live some
time before that.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre maman!"

How tenderly and unboundedly he had loved her. How long he had
hesitated and fought with himself before he left at her
persuasion, the house in which she had given birth to him. He
regretted immensely the village, the freedom, and that
bright-haired maiden in the neighborhood. But the wide world and
the great city took on, in his mother's narrative, the outlines
of paradise, and his worthy relatives, the forms of demi-gods.

When at last, after long hesitation and struggles, he resolved to
go away, how many were the kisses and embraces of his mother! how
many were her maxims and advices; how many her predictions of
happiness. He began to look at his own form in the mirrors, and
to feel in his own person the movement of desires, hopes,
ambitions. Once he caught himself bowing and making gestures,
almost involuntarily, before the mirrors. He laughed aloud, his
mother laughed also, for she had caught him in the act
red-handed.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre, chere maman!"

And on the background of that domestic gladness, of those
wonderful hopes, only one person by her conduct had raised a
cloud on that heaven, beaming serenely. That was widow Clemens,
an old servant of the house, and once his nurse, not young even
at that time, and a childless widow.

She was morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said
nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the
youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till
at last she spoke when alone with the petted stripling. It was
the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the
yard in Lipovka, and the linden grove, in a black line, cut
through the evening ruddiness glowing in the western heavens.
Widow Clemens, with her eyes fixed on the grove and the red of
evening, said:

"Oi! Tulek, Tulek! how will this be? You will go away; you will
take up and go away; but the sun will rise and set; the grove
will rustle; the wheat will rip