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One night, Anna Pavlovna was sitting in Ivan Andreevitch's bedroom he suffered from sleeplessness a lamp was burning before the holy picture. My grandfather's servant, Yuditch, of whom I shall have to say a few words later, went out of the room.
But there lay hid in her soul a faint spark of that fire which burned so fiercely in Vassily Ivanovitch. While Ivan Andreevitch's own children did not dare even to wonder about the cause of the strange, dumb feud between their parents, Olga was from her earliest years disturbed and tormented by Anna Pavlovna's position. Like Vassily, she loved independence; any restriction fretted her.
The servants came in. 'Take him, do, and give it him thoroughly. Ivan Andreevitch's lips were white and twitching. He walked up and down the room like a wild beast in a small cage. The servants did not dare to carry out his orders. 'Why are you standing still, children of Ham? Am I to undertake him myself, eh? Yuditch was moving towards the door.... 'Stay! screamed Ivan Andreevitch.
Anna Pavlovna got up, crossed the room, and sobbing flung herself on her knees at her husband's bedside, tried to say something stretched out her hands... Ivan Andreevitch looked at her, and in a faint voice, but resolutely, called, 'Boy! The servant went in; Anna Pavlovna hurriedly rose, and went back, tottering, to her place. Ivan Andreevitch's children were exceedingly afraid of him.
Ivan Andreevitch had a servant called Yuditch, just such another tall, thin, taciturn person as his master. They say that this man Yuditch was partly responsible for Ivan Andreevitch's strange behaviour with Anna Pavlovna; they say he discovered my great-grandmother's guilty intrigue with one of my great-grandfather's dearest friends.
They grew up in the country, and were witnesses of Ivan Andreevitch's strange treatment of his wife. They all loved Anna Pavlovna passionately, but did not dare to show their love. She seemed of herself to hold aloof from them.... You remember my grandfather, gentlemen; to the day of his death he always walked on tiptoe, and spoke in a whisper... such is the force of habit!
He reckoned on Ivan Andreevitch's tapping the bags with his stick, and not noticing the hardly perceptible difference in the sound, and by Saturday he hoped to obtain and to replace the sum in the coffer. As he planned, so he did. His father did not, in fact, notice anything.
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