Unfortunately, I have no rich shorthand material to rely on,
such as Gusef and Bulgakof had for their memoirs, and
more especially Dushan Petrovitch Makowicki, who is
preparing, I am told, a big and conscientious work, full of truth
and interest.
In November, 1906, my sister Masha died of inflammation of the
lungs. It is a curious thing that she vanished out of life with
just as little commotion as she had passed through it. Evidently
this is the lot of all the pure in heart.
No one was particularly astonished by her death. I remember
that when I received the telegram, I felt no surprise. It seemed
perfectly natural to me. Masha had married a kinsman of ours,
Prince Obolenski; she lived on her own estate at
Pirogovo, twenty-one miles from us, and spent half the year
with her husband at Yasnaya. She was very delicate and had
constant illnesses.
When I arrived at Yasnaya the day after her death, I
was aware of an atmosphere of exaltation and prayerful emotion
about the whole family, and it was then I think for the first time
that I realized the full grandeur and beauty of death.
I definitely felt that by her death Masha, so far from having
gone away from us, had come nearer to us, and had been, as it were,
welded to us forever in a way that she never could have been during
her lifetime.
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