EPILOGUE
THE TRANSLATION
An hour went by. The form upon the couch had neither moved nor given any sign of life; yet body and soul still held together. The mind was only sunk into a stupor of complete unconsciousness. When it was that the change began, none could have determined. After a few moments of a faintly visible fluttering of the breath, a wider parting of the lips, the feeble movement of a finger, Ivan's eyes suddenly flew wide open, his jaw relaxed and dropped. He was immediately sensible that all the heaviness of the opiate had passed from him; and that his being was possessed by a singular lightness and freedom. Then he perceived that, at his side, in close contact, indeed, with his new self, was his mother: tenderness incarnate, as of old, yet with undoubted anxiety about her.
"Smile for me, mother! Welcome me home!" he cried; filled now with a deep, expanding joy, wholly new and wonderful.
Sophia, looking down upon him, smiled, indeed, but pitifully, and with less of joy than of anxiety in her gentle look. Starting back from this, he turned to look about him, and found himself surrounded by shadow-shapes of many that he had known of old: Madame Dravikine, Nicholas, Zaremba, and old Sósha: ay, even pallid Joseph, too, lurking behind a little group of brethren of the spirit: in life unknown; in death beloved. There was Mozart the beautiful; Beethoven, of lion-mien; Schumann, Schubert, Wagner the tempestuous, and the melancholy Pole. But none of them approached him closely, yearn as he might for welcome from them, his familiars. Nor did Sophia's sweet seriousness brighten.
"Mother, what is it?" he whispered. "Why are we waiting?"
"For a decision, Ivan. You have come to us before your time."
"But not without reason," he answered, quietly, with a dignity that seemed to her adequate. "There is a question I have died to ask."
"It shall be heard, then," said a voice: a voice inexplicable; resonant; divine.
Immediately Sophia and all the silent throng melted away. Ivan, no longer bound to the empty shell upon the couch, prostrated himself, instinctively, before the figure that appeared, framed in the oaken doorway of the outer room: the figure of a man white-robed, whose face, luminous and gently strong, was turned to him in tranquil majesty.