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to find consolation.”
“I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming
eyes. “My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot
find within me strength to support me.”
“You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I beseech you to
believe in my friendship,” she said, with a sigh. “Our support is love,
that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,” she said,
with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. “He will
be your support and your succor.”
Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental
emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which
had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey
Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear
this now.
“I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I under-
stand nothing.”
“Dear friend,” repeated Lidia Ivanovna.
“It’s not the loss of what I have not now, it’s not that!” pursued
Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help
feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in.
It is wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it.”
“Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I
was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within
your heart,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes raptur-
ously, “and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands,
he cracked his fingers.
“One must know all the facts,” he said in his thin voice. “A man’s
strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The
whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about
household matters arising” (he emphasized the word arising) “from my
new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts....
These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the
strength to bear it. At dinner... yesterday, I was almost getting up from
the dinner table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did
not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not
bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is not
all....” Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that had
been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on
blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of
self-pity.
“I understand, dear friend,” said Lidia Ivanovna. “I understand it
all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come
only to aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all these petty,
humiliating cares...I understand that a woman’s word, a woman’s su-
perintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?”
Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.
“Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are not
my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper.
Don’t thank me. I do it not from myself...”
“I cannot help thanking you.”
“But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you
spoke—being ashamed of what is the Christian’s highest glory: *he
who humbles himself shall be exalted*. And you cannot thank me.
You must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we
find peace, consolation, salvation, and love,” she said, and turning her
eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey Alexandrovitch gath-