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Updated: June 7, 2025
But don't be uneasy; they used the flats of their swords, and it seems only one was seriously wounded. I saw him struck, and I myself carried him out of the crowd." His face and voice, and the warmth and brightness of the room quieted Vlasova. Looking gratefully at him, she asked: "Did they hit you, too?"
But since all agreed with what he had said, and all ought to stand up for him, he would not be detained long. She longed to embrace him and cry over him; but there stood the officer, watching her with a malevolent squint of his eyes. His lips trembled, his mustache twitched. It seemed to Vlasova that the officer was but waiting for her tears, complaints, and supplications.
"Bring in the prisoner Vyesovshchikov!" he commanded, and began to read aloud a document which he raised to his face. Nikolay was brought into the room. "Hats off!" shouted the officer, interrupting his reading. Rybin went up to Vlasova, and patting her on the back, said in an undertone: "Don't get excited, mother!"
The mother's heart quivered with impatience, and she looked with a puzzled air at everything around her, amazed at the oppressive simplicity of life in this corner of the world. Next to Vlasova sat a little old woman with a wrinkled face, but youthful eyes. She kept her thin neck turned to listen to the conversation, and looked about on all sides with a strange expression of eagerness in her face.
"I'm thirty-two years old already!" Vlasova smiled. "I'm not talking about that. To judge by your face, one would say you're older; but one wonders that your eyes, your voice are so fresh, so springlike, as if you were a young girl. Your life is so bard and troubled, yet your heart is smiling." "The heart is smiling," repeated Sofya thoughtfully. "How well you speak simple and good.
She even had to restrain herself from telling him that she was Vlasova, and she thought sadly, in derision of herself: "Oh, you old fool!" "Eat more! Get well sooner for the sake of the cause!" She burst out all of a sudden, in agitation, bending toward him: "It awaits powerful young hands, clean hearts, honest minds. It lives by these forces!
"Pavel's all right; he's strong; he's like an elder among us; he converses with the officials and gives commands; he's respected. There's good reason for it." Vlasova nodded her head, listening, and looked sidewise at the swollen, bluish face of Yegor, congealed to immobility, devoid of expression. It seemed strangely flat, only the eyes flashed with animation and cheerfulness.
They walked to the grill; the mother shed tears as she pressed the hand of her son. He and Fedya spoke words, smiled, and joked. All were excited, but light and cheerful. The women wept; but, like Vlasova, more from habit than grief. They did not experience the stunning pain produced by an unexpected blow on the head, but only the sad consciousness that they must part with the children.
Now and then somebody would rap on the pane, and quickly take to his heels in fright. Once the tavern keeper stopped Vlasova on the street. He was a dapper old man, who always wore a black silk neckerchief around his red, flabby neck, and a thick, lilac-colored waistcoat of velvet around his body.
Vlasova saw how her son had grown up; she strove to understand his work, and when she succeeded, she rejoiced with a childlike joy. Pavel rose particularly in the esteem of the people after the appearance of his story about the "Muddy Penny." Back of the factory, almost encircling it with a ring of putrescence, stretched a vast marsh grown over with fir trees and birches.
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