And he would give a base "Eh?" in a voice like a worn-out gramophone record. Vasena promptly began washing him with a sponge, then fed him with manna-gruel. The old man sat bent up on the sofa, his hands resting on his knees. He ate slowly from a spoon. They were silent, his eyes gazing inwardly, seeing nothing. Sunbeams stole in through the window and glistened on his yellowish hair. "Your good son, Ilya Ippolytovich, has come," Vasena said. "Eh?" Ippolyte Ippolytovich had married at about the age of forty; of his three sons only Ilya was living. The old man called his son to memory, pictured him in his mind, but felt neither joy nor interest-- felt nothing! Dimly, somewhere far away in the dark recesses of his memory, lurked a glimmering, wavering image of his son; at first he saw him as an infant, then as a boy, finally a youth. He recollected that now already he too was almost an old man. It came to him that once, long ago, this image was necessary and very dear to him, that afterwards he had lost sight of it, and that now it had become meaningless to him. Dully, through inertia, the old man inquired: "He has come, you say?" "Yes, came in the night, alone. He is resting now." "Eh? He has come to have a look at me before I die." Vasena promptly answered: "Lord! you are not so young as to...." They were silent. The old man lay back on the sofa and slept. "Ippolyte Ippolytovich, you must take your walk!" "Eh?" It was a "St. Martin's Summer." Over the scattered blood-red vine leaves on the terrace, which was deluged in mellow autumnal sunshine, the bent-up old man walked, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane, and supported by the sturdy Vasena. He had a skull-cap pulled down low over his forehead, and wore a long, black overcoat. IV Sometimes the old man relapsed into a state of coma, lasting several hours. Then life seemed to have ebbed from him entirely. A clay-like pallor over-spread his face, he had the lips and open, glassy eyes of a corpse, and he scarcely breathed. Then they sent post-haste for the doctor, who sprinkled him with camphor, gave him oxygen and produced artificial respiration. The old man slowly came to, rolling his eyes. "Another minute and it would have been death," the doctor would say in a deep, grave voice. When the old man had at length recovered, Vasena used to say to him: "Lord! We were so frightened, we were so frightened! ... We thought you were quite gone. Yes, we did. For you know, you are not so young as to...." Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments, half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his lips, he laughed: "He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He- he!" V