I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped me, saying that it would only excite her — it were best not to do so. Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again. What she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in it she was blessing you — you the children whom she could not see.

God did not grant her to see her little ones before her death. Then she raised herself up — did my love, my darling — yes, just so with her hands, and exclaimed in a voice which I cannot bear to remember, ‘Mother of God, never forsake them!’”

“Then the pain mounted to her heart, and from her eyes it as, plain that she suffered terribly, my poor one! She sank back upon the pillows, tore the bedclothes with her teeth, and wept —