Placing her hands on the
mother's shoulders she said with a deep voice issuing from her very
heart, quietly as if in an ecstasy:
"If you knew--if you but understood what a great, joyous work we
are doing! You will come to feel it!" she exclaimed with conviction.
A feeling akin to envy touched the heart of the mother. Rising
from the floor she said plaintively:
"I am too old for that--ignorant and old."
Pavel spoke more and more often and at greater length, discussed
more and more hotly, and--grew thinner and thinner. It seemed to
his mother that when he spoke to Natasha or looked at her his eyes
turned softer, his voice sounded fonder, and his entire bearing
became simpler.
"Heaven grant!" she thought; and imagining Natasha as her
daughter-in-law, she smiled inwardly.
Whenever at the meetings the disputes waxed too hot and stormy,
the Little Russian stood up, and rocking himself to and fro like
the tongue of a bell, he spoke in his sonorous, resonant voice
simple and good words which allayed their excitement and recalled
them to their purpose. Vyesovshchikov always kept hurrying everybody
on somewhere. He and the red-haired youth called Samoylov were the
first to begin all disputes.
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