Our uncle Nicholas was not a man very accessible to feelings
of affection. Apart from his worship for Napoleon the Great, he loved
really, I believe, only three people in the world: his mother--your
great-grandmother, whom you have seen but cannot possibly remember; his
brother, our father, in whose house he lived for so many years; and
of all of us, his nephews and nieces grown up around him, your mother
alone. The modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did not
seem able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpected
stroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I had
become its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home one wintry
afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where I had to remain
permanently administering the estate and at tending to the complicated
affairs--(the girls took it in turn week and week about)--driving, as
I said, from the house of the Countess Tekla Potocka, where our invalid
mother was staying then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got
stuck in a snow drift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery,
the personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while they
were trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the sledge and went
to look for the road herself.
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