My parents received us in sorrow and humiliation. Themselves too broken
in spirit to offer me any consolation, they moved silently through the
stately mansion, blushing for me before the servants, hiding me from the
eyes of their friends.
Even my children hung their heads and crept about on tiptoe, mute and
abashed without knowing why.
One day Tania, my little Tania, was snatched from my arms. Vassili took
her from me, nor did I ever see her again.
I had gone out, I remember, sad and alone, into the wintry park. By my
side trotted Bear, my father's faithful setter, who every now and then
thrust his moist and affectionate nose into my hand. In my thoughts I
was trying to face what the future might have in store for me.
"When my little Tioka grows up," I said to myself, "I know, alas! that I
shall lose him. He will want to live with his father: he will look
forward to entering upon life under happy and propitious auspices. Yes,
Tioka will leave me, I know. But my little girl will stay with me. Tania
will be my very own. She will grow up, fair and gentle, by my side; I
shall forget my sorrows in her clinging love; I shall live my life over
again in hers. I shall be renewed, in strength and purity, in my
daughter's stainless youth."
As I thus reflected I saw my mother running to meet me, her gray head
bare in the icy wind; she was weeping bitterly. Tania was gone! Vassili
had taken her away!
Notwithstanding all my tears and prayers it was never vouchsafed to me
to see my little girl again.
But when the day came in which they sought to tear my son from me as
well, I fought like a maddened creature, vowing that no human power
should take him from me while I lived. I fled with him from Otrada--I
fled I knew not and cared not whither, clasping in my arms my tender
fair-haired prey, watching over him in terror, guarding him with fervent
prayers. I fled, hunted onward by the restlessness that was in my own
blood, pursued by the bats of madness in my brain.
Thus began my aimless wanderings that were to lead me so far astray.
Alone with little Tioka and the humble Elise Perrier, I took to the
highways of the world.
How helpless and terrified we were, all three of us! It was like living
in a melancholy fairy tale; it was like the story of the babes lost in
the wood. Sometimes, in the midst of a street in some great unknown
city, little Tioka would stop and say: "Mother, let us find some one who
knows us, and ask them where we are to go and what we are to do."
"No, no! Nobody must know us, Tioka."
Then Tioka would begin to cry. "I feel as if we were lost, as if we were
lost!..." And I knew not how to comfort him.
One day--we were at Moscow, I remember--there appeared to me for the first
time that lean and threatening wolf which is called--_Poverty_. Poverty!
I had never seen it at close range before. I almost thought it did not
really exist. I knew, to be sure, that there were people in the world
who were in need of money; but those were the people whom we gave
charity to; that was all.
Poverty? What had poverty to do with us?
During all my life I had never given a thought to money.