Whereafter, having crossed himself with a faltering hand, he carefully scrutinised the corpse, and at last let his eyes halt upon the lad's sweet features. Then he muttered sadly:
"How extraordinarily he has grown! Yes, death has indeed enlarged him! Ah, well, so be it! Soon I too shall have to be stretching myself out. Oh that it were now!"
Then with cautious movements of his deformed fingers he straightened the folds of the lad's smock, and drew it over the legs. Whereafter he pressed his flushed lips to the hem of the garment.
Said I to him at that moment:
"What is it that you have been wanting of him? Why is it that you have been trying to teach him strange words?"
Straightening himself, and glancing at me with dim eyes, Antipa repeated:
"What is it that I have been wanting of him?" To the repetition he added with manifest sincerity, though also with a self-depreciatory movement of the head:
"To tell the truth, I scarcely know WHAT it is that I have been wanting of him. By God I do not. Yet, as one speaking the truth in the presence of death, I say that never during my long lifetime had I so desired aught else.... Yes, I have waited and waited for fortune to reveal it to me; and ever has fortune remained mute and tongueless. Foolish was it of me to have expected otherwise, to have expected, for instance, that some day there might occur something marvellous, something unlooked-for."
With a short laugh, he indicated the corpse with his eyes, and continued more firmly:
"Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby gaining some provision against her old age."