She often felt great thoughts needful to everybody stirring in her bosom, but scarcely ever was able to make them live in words; and they oppressed her heart with a dumb, heavy sadness. Sometimes the image of her son grew before her until it assumed the proportions of a giant in the old fairy tales. He united within himself all the honest thoughts she had heard spoken, all the people that she liked, everything heroic of which she knew. Then, moved with delight in him, she exulted in quiet rapture. An indistinct hope filled her. "Everything will be well—everything!" Her love, the love of a mother, was fanned into a flame, a veritable pain to her heart. Then the motherly affection hindered the growth of the broader human feeling, burned it; and in place of a great sentiment a small, dismal thought beat faint-heartedly in the gray ashes of alarm: "He will perish; he will fall!"
Late that night the mother sank into a heavy sleep, but rose early, her bones stiff, her head aching. At midday she was sitting in the prison office opposite Pavel and looking through a mist in her eyes at his bearded, swarthy face. She was watching for a chance to deliver to him the note she held tightly in her hand.
"I am well and all are well," said Pavel in a moderated voice. "And how are you?"
"So so. Yegor Ivanovich died," she said mechanically.
"Yes?" exclaimed Pavel, and dropped his head.
"At the funeral the police got up a fight and arrested one man," the mother continued in her simple-hearted way.
The thin-lipped assistant overseer of the prison jumped from his chair and mumbled quickly:
"Cut that out; it's forbidden! Why don't you understand? You know politics are prohibited."
The mother also rose from her chair, and as if failing to comprehend him, she said guiltily:
"I wasn't discussing politics. I was telling about a fight—and they did fight; that's true. They even broke one fellow's head."