"
The thoughts of the mother were arrested by this fact. Its dull,
impudent gleam threw light upon a series of similar facts, at one
time known to her, but now forgotten.
"It's evident that they are satiated with everything. I know one
country officer who compelled the peasants to salute his horse when
it was led through the village; and he arrested everyone who failed
to salute it. Now, what need had he of that? It's impossible to
understand." After a pause she sighed: "The poor people are stupid
from poverty, and the rich from greed."
Sofya began to hum a song bold as the morning.
CHAPTER V
The life of Nilovna flowed on with strange placidity. This calmness
sometimes astonished her. There was her son immured in prison. She
knew that a severe sentence awaited him, yet every time the idea of
it came to her mind her thoughts strayed to Andrey, Fedya, and an
endless series of other people she had never seen, but only heard
of. The figure of her son appeared to her absorbing all the people
into his own destiny. The contemplative feeling aroused in her
involuntarily and unnoticeably diverted her inward gaze away from
him to all sides. Like thin, uneven rays it touched upon everything,
tried to throw light everywhere, and make one picture of the whole.
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