“I shuddered at these words. So these were my mother’s hidden thoughts! The whisper grew still lower, and then ceased.… We all waited and listened, and suddenly we knew that she had ceased to be. Someone burst into tears. They lifted her from the floor, and her thin, wasted body took a strange attitude, as it lay heavily and awkwardly in the arms of the maids. At that moment I realized that she was no longer a being, but a _thing_; and, with a cry of horror, I fled. I shut myself up in my room, and sobbed all the evening, as much with grief at having lost her as with the sharp pain her last words had caused me. “‘She had assured me that I was her life and her joy,’ I thought, ‘and yet for how little had I counted in her existence.’ “During all our life together, during all those years that had been so dear to me, she had only suffered and hidden her pain from me! ‘Never a moment of happiness!’ Those last words rang in my ears with cruel and horrible insistence. “It was already night when I ventured out of my room. The whole household was sleeping; only the deacon was reading the psalms for the dead, in a melancholy voice, beside my mother’s body. She lay there, all in white, surrounded with flowers. I approached on tiptoe, and stood still, gazing at her; she looked so small, so thin, so frail, like an old child. A feeling of boundless pity took possession of my soul. ‘How, oh how had she deserved so sad a destiny?’ I asked myself hopelessly. ‘What had she done? How had she offended God?’ “And I pressed close to her and kissed her, and felt that I had never understood how much she loved me. Only a love that knew no limits could have given her the strength to hide her pain so completely. She had not wanted to sadden my childhood; she had realized that a child could only grow up and develop well and normally when surrounded by love and happiness. How many mothers have I met since who have failed to realize this, and who have ruined the futures of their children by letting them share, at a tender age, tears and sorrows beyond their years! “I remained beside my mother till dawn; and during that night, it was as if some voice had told me that I should never again have a true friend. The prophecy has indeed been fulfilled; I know the entire province, but I have not a friend. Sometimes, too, I have flattered myself with the hope that I had found a true woman with whom I would like to share my life; but always, as I came within reach of the prize, it melted away, having been but a dream. Fate always seemed to say to me: ‘You have had your fair share of woman’s love, and have no right for more.’