through the transparent muslin of the covering, something like a piece of paper.
“Nonsense! Self-suggestion! It is impossible! Hallucination!” The thought flashed through her tortured brain. She forced herself to be calm, and to look again.
Yes! She had not been mistaken. The white corner of a folded paper appeared clearly against the general’s dark uniform. At the same moment a cold draught coming from somewhere set the tapers flickering. Shadows danced around the room, over the bier, across the dead man’s face; and in the quick change of light and shadow it seemed to her that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile formed itself on the closed lips, that the tightly- shut eyelids quivered. A wild cry rang through the whole room. With a desperate shriek: “His eyes! He is looking at me!” the general’s wife staggered forward and fell fainting to the floor, beside her husband’s bier.
V
The deacon sprang from his sofa with a cry, and an answering cry came from the lips of the shivering Rita, as she fled from the room. Servants rushed in, rubbing their eyes, still half-asleep, questioning each other, running this way and that. The deacon, spurred by a feeling of guilt, was determined to conceal the fact that he was sleeping. “It was the lady!” he said. “She came in to pray; she told me to stop reading while she prayed. She knelt down. Then she prayed for a long time, and suddenly…suddenly she cried out, and fainted. Grief, brothers! It is terrible! To lose such a husband!” and he set them to work with restoratives, himself rubbing the fallen woman’s chilly hands.
The general’s wife opened her eyes after a few minutes. Looking wildly round in bewilderment, she seemed to be wondering where she was and how she had come there. Suddenly she remembered.
“The will! In his hands! Take it!” she cried, and fainted again. By this time the whole household was awake. Anna Iurievna had come in, full of astonishment at the sudden disturbance, but with the same feeling of deep quiet and peace still filling her heart and giving her features an expression of joy and calm. She heard the cry of the general’s wife, and the words were recorded in her mind, though she did not at first give them any meaning.
She set herself, with all the tenderness of a good woman, to minister to the other’s need, sending her own maid for sal volatile, chafing the fainting woman’s hands, and giving orders that a bed should be prepared for her in another room, further away from the bier. As she spoke, quietly, gravely, with authority, the turmoil gradually subsided. The frightened servants recovered themselves, and moved about with the orderly obedience they ordinarily showed; and the deacon, above all anxious to cover his negligence, began intoning the liturgy, lending an atmosphere of solemnity to the whole room.
The servants, returning to announce that the bedroom was ready, were ordered by Anna Iurievna to lift the fainting woman with all care and gentleness, and she herself went with them to see the general’s wife safely bestowed in her room, and waited while the doctor did all in his power to make her more comfortable. Olga Vseslavovna did not at once recover consciousness. She seemed to pass from a faint into an uneasy slumber, which, however, gradually became more quiet.
Only then, as she was leaving the room, did Anna Iurievna bethink her of the strange words that had fallen on her ears: “The will! In his hands! Take it!” And repeating them questioningly to herself, she walked slowly back toward the room in which lay her father’s body.
But she was even more occupied with her own thoughts. She no longer felt in her heart the bitter resentment toward Olga Vseslavovna that had filled it yesterday. She was conscious of a feeling of sorrow for the helpless woman, of compassion for her empty, shallow life, the fruit of an empty, shallow heart. And she was wondering why such empty, joyless lives should exist in a world where there was such deep happiness and joy.
She came over to her father’s coffin, close to which the deacon was still droning out his liturgy, and stood beside the dead body, looking down at the strong, quiet face, and vividly recalling her dream of the night before. Her eyes rested on the many stars and medals on his breast, and on his hands, quietly clasped in death. Then suddenly, and quite mechanically, Olga Vseslavovna’s cry, as she returned to consciousness, came back into her mind:
“The will! In his hands! Take it!” And bending down, she noted for the first time something white beneath the muslin canopy. As she scrutinized it wonderingly, she was conscious of an humble, apologetic voice murmuring something at her elbow:
“Forgive me, Anna Iurievna. I humbly beg you, forgive me! It was I…in the night…the flowers fell…I was putting them back…fixing the head of your sainted papa.… It was under his head, the paper…I thought he wanted to keep it.… I put it in his hands, to be safe!…Forgive me, Anna Iurievna, if I have done any harm.”
It was the deacon, still oppressed by a feeling of guilt. Anna Iurievna turned to him, and then turned back again, to her father’s body, to the white object shining under the muslin canopy. And once more Olga Vseslavovna’s words came into her mind:
“The will! In his hands! Take it!”
Gently raising the canopy, she softly drew the paper from beneath the general’s clasped hands, and unfolded it. She read no more than the opening words, but she had read enough to realize that it was, indeed, her father’s will.
THE CLOAK, by Nikolay V. Gogol
In the department of——, but it is better not to mention the department. The touchiest things in the world are departments, regiments, courts of justice, in a word, all branches of public service. Each individual nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person. Quite recently, a complaint was received from a district chief of police in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar’s sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance, in which the district chief of police is made to appear about once in every ten pages, and sometimes in a downright drunken condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to designate the department in question, as a certain department.
So, in a certain department there was a certain official—not a very notable one, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and mole-eyed, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. The St. Petersburg climate was responsible for this. As for his official rank—with us Russians the rank comes first—he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.
His family name was Bashmachkin. This name is evidently derived from bashmak (shoe); but, when, at what time, and in what manner, is not known. His father and grandfather, and all the Bashmachkins, always wore boots, which were resoled two or three times a year. His name was Akaky Akakiyevich. It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other.
This was how it came about.
Akaky Akakiyevich was born, if my memory fails me not, in the evening on the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of a Government official, and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for having the child baptised. She was lying on the bed opposite the door; on her right stood the godfather, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, a most estimable man, who served as the head clerk of the senate; and the godmother, Arina Semyonovna Bielobrinshkova, the wife of an officer of the quarter, and a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should be called after the martyr Khozdazat. “No,” said the good woman, “all those names are poor.” In order to please her, they opened
