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six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would fall ill,
another might easily become so, a third would be without something
necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so
on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares and
anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible.
Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over
her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for
the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and
the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children—the chil-
dren themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her
sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like
gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain,
nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw
nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.
Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would
make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken,
that she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could
not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of
them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be
met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.
Chapter 8.
Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband’s answer to her com-
plaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote
begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before,
and promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not
present itself, and till the beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna stayed
alone in the country.
On the Sunday in St. Peter’s week Darya Alexandrovna drove to
mass for all her children to take the sacrament. Darya Alexandrovna
in her intimate, philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her
friends very often astonished them by the freedom of her views in
regard to religion. She had a strange religion of transmigration of souls
all her own, in which she had firm faith, troubling herself little about
the dogmas of the Church. But in her family she was strict in carrying
out all that was required by the Church—and not merely in order to
set an example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that the children
had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried her extremely,
and with the full approval and sympathy of Marya Philimonovna she
decided that this should take place now in the summer.
For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily deliber-
ating on how to dress all the children. Frocks were made or altered and