"
They carried him off in that same car. Before it started on its journey,
a woman in a shabby black dress, who had run out of the iron gate of
some private grounds up the road, clambered on to the rear platform and
would not be put off.
"I am a relation," she insisted, in bad French. "This young man is a
Russian, and I am his relation." On this plea they let her have her way.
She sat down calmly, and took his head on her lap; her scared faded eyes
avoided looking at his deathlike face. At the corner of a street, on the
other side of the town, a stretcher met the car. She followed it to the
door of the hospital, where they let her come in and see him laid on a
bed. Razumov's new-found relation never shed a tear, but the officials
had some difficulty in inducing her to go away. The porter observed her
lingering on the opposite pavement for a long time. Suddenly, as though
she had remembered something, she ran off.
The ardent hater of all Finance ministers, the slave of Madame de S--,
had made up her mind to offer her resignation as lady companion to
the Egeria of Peter Ivanovitch. She had found work to do after her own
heart.
But hours before, while the thunderstorm still raged in the night, there
had been in the rooms of Julius Laspara a great sensation. The terrible
Nikita, coming in from the landing, uplifted his squeaky voice in
horrible glee before all the company--
"Razumov! Mr.
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