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258
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
by her lectures, but, had her sister sent for her, she
would have gone even if it had cost her her
professorship and livelihood. But she was told that there was
no danger in the operation, and every hope of full
recovery. She had already received news that the
operation had been successful, when a telegram
suddenly announced her sister’s death. Inflammation of
the lungs had supervened, and the weak state of the
patient had caused her to sink almost immediately.
Sonya, as we learn in her " Recollections of
Childhood," had always loved this sister most dearly. To
the sorrow of having lost her forever, and of not
being with her at the last, was added her grief at the
sad tragedy of Aniuta’s life. She who had once been so
brilliant, so greatly admired, had been consumed by a
most painful illness. Disappointed in everything she
had hoped for, unhappy in all personal circumstances,
hampered in her career as an author, she was now cut
off by inexorable death in the very flower of her age !
To such a brooding nature as Sonya’s all sufferings
were magnified because she generalized them. Any
misfortune which befell herself or those she loved
became the misfortune of humanity. She not only bore
her own sorrows, but those of the world at large.
It pained her much to think that with her sister’s
death the last link was broken which united her to the
home of her childhood.
" There is no one now who remembers me as the
little Sönya," she said. " To all of you I am Madame
Kovalévsky, the celebrated scientist. To no one am I
any longer the little, shy, reserved, negligée Sönya."
But the great self-command she possessed, and her
power of concealing her feelings, enabled her to
appear, in society, much the same as before. She did
not even wear mourning. Her sister, like herself, had
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