BY
COUNT LÉON TOLSTOÏ
Author of “War and Peace,” “What I Believe,” etc.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
—AUTHORIZED EDITION—
NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1887
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887
by William S. Gottsberger
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
CHAPTER: I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX.
KATIA.
CHAPTER I.
WE were in mourning for our mother, who had died the preceding autumn,and we had spent all the winter alone in the country—Macha, Sonia andI.
Macha was an old family friend, who had been our governess and hadbrought us all up, and my memories of her, like my love for her, went asfar back as my memories of myself.
Sonia was my younger sister.
The winter had dragged by, sad and sombre, in our old country-house ofPokrovski. The weather had been cold, and so windy that the snow wasoften piled high above our windows; the panes were almost always cloudywith a coating of ice; and throughout the whole season we were shut in,rarely finding it possible to go out of the house.
It was very seldom that any one came to see us, and our few visitorsbrought neither joy nor cheerfulness to our house. They all had mournfulfaces, spoke low, as if they were afraid of waking some one, werecareful not to laugh, sighed and often shed tears when they looked atme, and above all at the sight of my poor Sonia in her little blackfrock. Everything in the house still savored of death; the affliction,the horror of the last agony yet reigned in the air. Mamma’s chamber wasshut up, and I felt a painful dread and yet an irresistible longing topeep furtively into the chill, desolate place as I passed it every nighton my way to bed.
I was at this time seventeen years old, and the very year of her deathMamma had intended to remove to the city, in order to introduce me intosociety. The loss of my mother had been a great sorrow to me; but I mustconfess that to this grief had been added another, that of seeingmyself—young, beautiful as I heard from every one that Iwas,—condemned to vegetate during a second winter in the country, in abarren solitude. Even before the end of this winter, the feeling ofregret, of isolation, and, to speak plainly, of ennui, had so gainedupon me that I scarcely ever left my own room, never opened my piano,and never even took a book in my hand. If Macha urged me to occupymyself with something I would reply: “I do not wish to, I cannot,” andfar down in my soul a voice kept asking: “What is the use? Why ‘dosomething’—no matter what—when the best of my life is wearing away soin pure loss? Why?” And to this “Why?” I