Malanya Pavlovna drew nearer, bent over.... But the hand which had been raised fell back powerless on the coverlet, and a few moments later Alexyei Sergyeitch ceased to be. His daughters with their husbands only arrived in time for the funeral; neither one of them had any children. Alexyei Sergyeitch had not discriminated against them in his will, although he had not referred to them on his death-bed. "My heart is locked against them," he had said to me one day. Knowing his kind-heartedness, I was surprised at his words.--It is a difficult matter to judge between parents and children.--"A vast ravine begins with a tiny rift," Alexyei Sergyeitch had said to me on another occasion, referring to the same subject. "A wound an arshin long will heal over, but if you cut off so much as a nail, it will not grow again!" I have an idea that the daughters were ashamed of their eccentric old folks. A month later Malanya Pavlovna expired also. She hardly rose from her bed again after the day of Alexyei Sergyeitch's death, and did not array herself; but they buried her in the blue jacket, and with the medal of Orloff on her shoulder, only minus the diamonds. The daughters shared those between them, under the pretext that those diamonds were to be used for the setting of holy pictures; but as a matter of fact they used them to adorn their own persons. And now how vividly do my old people stand before me, and what a good memory I cherish of them! And yet, during my very last visit to them (I was already a student at the time) an incident occurred which injected some discord into the harmoniously-patriarchal mood with which the Telyegin house inspired me.