“Good-bye, Yasha,” answered the little one, not looking up from her doll.
Half an hour later Yevka, the housemaid, ran into my father’s study, pale and trembling.
“Oh, sir ... there ... in the attic ... he’s hanged himself ... Yasha....”
And she fell down in a swoon.
On a nail in the attic hung the lifeless body of Yasha.
When the coroner questioned the cook, she said that Yasha’s manner had been very strange on the day of his death.
“He stood before the looking-glass,” said she, “and pressed his hands so tightly round his neck that his face went quite red and his tongue stuck out and his eyes bulged.... He must have been seeing what he would look like.”
The coroner brought in a verdict of “suicide while in a state of unsound mind.”
Yasha was buried in a special grave dug for the purpose in the ravine on the other side of the wood. Next day Bouton could not be found anywhere. The faithful dog had run off to the grave and lay there howling, mourning the death of his austere friend. Afterwards he disappeared and we never saw him again.
And now that I myself am nearly what may be called an old man, I go over my varied recollections now and then, and when I come to the thought of Yasha, every time I say to myself: “What a strange soul—faithful, pure, contradictory, absurd—and great. Was it not a truly Slav soul that dwelt in the body of Yasha?”