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290
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
cold night, feeling the violence of the illness which
had attacked her. That very morning she had told
my brother, who was Rector of the University, that
she must have leave of absence during the following
April, on whatever terms she could obtain it.1
Each time she had returned to Stockholm her only
consolation in the midst of her despair had been to
make plans for the future. Between times she tried
to numb her sorrow and restlessness by working hard.
She had thought of several new plans, as concerned
both mathematics and literature, and spoke of them
with much interest. To my brother she divulged an
idea of a mathematical work, which he thought would
be the greatest she had yet written. To her friend
Ellen Key, with whom she spent most of these last
days, she spoke of several new novels which she had
worked out in her head. One she had already
commenced, and in it she meant to give a character-sketch
of her father. She had also written two thirds of
another, which was to be a pendant to " Vera Vorontzoff."
She meant to call it " A Nihilist," and it was to
describe an episode in Tschernyschévsky’s life. The last
chapter, which she had not yet written, she described
to Ellen Key, who noted it down in the following
words:
T-, from obscurity, has suddenly risen to celebrity among
the young generation by his social revolutionary novel entitled
"What to Do." At a fëte he has been hailed as the hope and
leader of the rising generation. He has returned to his garret,
where he lives with his beautiful young wife. She is asleep
when he arrives. He goes to the window and looks down on
sleeping St. Petersburg, where lights still glimmer. He talks,
in imagination, to the terrible silent city. There it lies — still
the home of violence, poverty, injustice, and oppression. But
he will conquer; he will breathe his spirit into it. What lie
1 Appendix K.
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