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My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out afresh. In the morning there would lie the pages on her table, neatly piled together, covered all over with her fine, clear handwriting, and everything ready so that when "Lyovotchka" got up he could send the proof-sheets off by post.
'She can come and find me if she wants me, he answered. "Lyovotchka is just the same. When Dolgoruky sent his chief secretary Istomin to ask him to come and have a talk with him about Syntayef, the sectarian, do you know what he answered? "'Let him come here, if he wants me. Isn't that just the same as Forna? "No, Lyovotchka is very proud.
I do not remember apropos of what, but Uncle Seryozha averred that Lyovotchka was proud. He said: "He is always preaching humility and non-resistance, but he is proud himself. "Nashenka's sister had a footman called Forna. When he got drunk, he used to get under the staircase, tuck in his legs, and lie down. One day they came and told him that the countess was calling him.
Being wholly in agreement with my sister's views, I will merely supplement them with the words uttered by his brother, Nikolai Nikolayevitch, who said that "Turgenieff cannot reconcile himself to the idea that Lyovotchka is growing up and freeing himself from his tutelage."
They awaited my father's arrival impatiently, but were secretly afraid of his influence on his brother, and hoped against hope that Sergei Nikolayevitch would send for the priest before his arrival. "Imagine our surprise and delight," said Maria Tolstoy, "when Lyovotchka came out of his room and told Maria Mikhailovna that Seryozha wanted a priest sent for.
I do not know what they had been talking about, but when Seryozha said that he wished to take the communion, Lyovotchka answered that he was quite right, and at once came and told us what he wanted." My father stayed about a week at Pirogovo, and left two days before my uncle died. When he received a telegram to say he was worse, he drove over again, but arrived too late; he was no longer living.
At one period he spent several winters in succession with his family in Moscow. One time, after a historic concert given by Anton Rubinstein, at which Uncle Seryozha and his daughter had been, he came to take tea with us in Weavers' Row. My father asked him how he had liked the concert. "Do you remember Himbut, Lyovotchka? Lieutenant Himbut, who was forester near Yasnaya?
"What are you going to wear, Lyovotchka?" she would say to papa. "It's very cold to-day, and there is a wind. Only the Kuzminsky overcoat again today? You must put on something underneath, if only for my sake." Papa would make a face, but give in at last, and buckle on his short gray overcoat under the other and sally forth. It would then be growing light.
"When Sasha arrived with her girl friend, they set to work studying this map of Russia and planning out a route to the Caucasus. Lyovotchka sat there thoughtful and melancholy. "'Never mind, Papa; it'll be all right, said Sasha, trying to encourage him. "'Ah, you women, you women! answered her father, bitterly. 'How can it ever be all right?
The result, as I can see now, partly of his aristocratic appearance, but chiefly because of the fact that he called my father "Lyovotchka" and treated him just as my father treated us. He was not only not in the least afraid of him, but was always teasing him, and argued with him like an elder person with a younger. We were quite alive to this.
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