The first blow to her authority was not so much the abolition of serfdom as the preparations preceding it. At first, there were simply rumors, then came the meetings of landowners and addresses, next followed provincial committees, and revising commissions. All these things exhausted and confused her. Arina Petrovna's imagination, active enough without additional stimuli, conceived numerous absurd situations. "How am I going to call Agashka?" she'd think. "Perhaps I'll have to tack a 'Miss' before her name." Or she would see herself walking about in the empty rooms while the servants were taking it easy in their quarters and were gorging themselves with all kinds of food; and when they got tired of gorging she saw them throwing the remnants under the table. Then she would find herself surprising Yulka and Feshka in the cellar, devouring everything in sight, like beasts, and she would itch to reprimand them, but would have to check herself with the thought, "How dare one say anything to them, now that they are free? Why one can't even appeal to the court against them!" However insignificant such trifles may be, a whole fantastic world is built up of them, which holds you tight and completely paralyzes your activity. Arina Petrovna somehow suddenly let the reins of government slip out of her grasp, and for a space of two years did nothing from morning until night except complain. "One or the other," she was fond of saying, "gains all or loses all. But these meetings and addresses and commissions, they're nothing but trouble." At that time, just when the committees were in full swing, Vladimir Mikhailych died. On his deathbed he repudiated Barkov and his teachings, and died appeased and reconciled to the world. His last words were: "I thank my God that He did not suffer me to come into His presence on an equal footing with the serfs." These words made a deep impression on his wife's receptive soul, so that both his death and her fantastic notions about the future laid a coloring of gloom and despair on the atmosphere of the house. It seemed as if both the old manor and its inhabitants were getting ready for death. From a few complaints that found their way into the letters of Arina Petrovna, Porfiry Vladimirych's amazingly keen perceptions sensed the confusion that possessed her mind. Not that Arina Petrovna actually sermonized and moralized in her letters, but above all, she trusted in God's help, "which in these faithless times does not abandon even slaves, far less those who because of their means were the surest prop and ornament of the church." Yudushka instinctively understood that if mother dear began to put her hope in God, then there was some flaw in the fabric of her existence. And he took advantage of the flaw with his peculiar, subtle skill. Almost at the very end of the preliminaries to the emancipation, he visited Golovliovo quite unexpectedly and found Arina Petrovna sunk into despondency, almost to a point of prostration.