Mother by Maxim Gorky

wishing to revenge themselves on the Czar for liberating the peasant serfs, had vowed not to cut their hair until the Czar should be killed. These were the persons who had been called socialists. And now she could not understand why it was that her son and his friends were socialists.
    When they had all departed, she asked Pavel:
    "Pavlusha, are you a socialist?"
    "Yes," he said, standing before her, straight and stalwart as
always. "Why?"
    The mother heaved a heavy sigh, and lowering her eyes, said:
    "So, Pavlusha? Why, they are against the Czar; they killed one."
    Pavel walked up and down the room, ran his hand across his face,
and, smiling, said:
    "We don't need to do that!"
    He spoke to her for a long while in a low, serious voice. She looked into his face and thought:
    "He will do nothing bad; he is incapable of doing bad!"
    And thereafter the terrible word was repeated with increasing frequency; its sharpness wore off, and it became as familiar to her ear as scores of other words unintelligible to her. But Sashenka did not please her, and when she came the mother felt troubled and ill at ease.
    Once she said to the Little Russian, with an expression of dissatisfaction about the mouth:
    "What a stern person this Sashenka is! Flings her commands around! --You must do this and you must do that!"
    The Little Russian laughed aloud.
    "Well said, mother! You struck the nail right on the head! Hey, Pavel?"
    And with a wink to the mother, he said with a jovial gleam in his eyes:
    "You can't drain the blue blood out of a person even with a pump!"
    Pavel remarked dryly:
    "She is a good woman!" His face glowered.
    "And that's true, too!" the Little Russian corroborated. "Only she does not understand that she ought to----"
    They started up an argument about something the mother did not understand. The mother noticed, also, that Sashenka was most stern with Pavel, and that sometimes she even scolded him. Pavel smiled, was silent, and looked in the girl's face with that soft look he had formerly given Natasha. This likewise displeased the mother.
    The gatherings increased in number, and began to be held twice a week; and when the mother observed with what avidity the young people listened to the speeches of her son and the Little Russian, to the interesting stories of Sashenka, Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich, and the other people from the city, she forgot her fears and shook her head sadly as she recalled the days of her youth.
    Sometimes they sang songs, the simple, familiar melodies, aloud and merrily. But often they sang new songs, the words and music in perfect accord, sad and quaint in tune. These they sang in an undertone, pensively and seriously as church hymns are chanted. Their faces grew pale, yet hot, and a mighty force made itself felt in their ringing words.
    "It is time for us to sing these songs in the street," said
Vyesovshchikov somberly.
    And sometimes the mother was struck by the spirit of lively, boisterous hilarity that took sudden possession of them. It was incomprehensible to her. It usually happened on the evenings when they read in the papers about the working people in other countries. Then their eyes sparkled with bold, animated joy; they became strangely, childishly happy; the room rang with merry peals of laughter, and they struck one another on the shoulder affectionately.
    "Capital fellows, our comrades the French!" cried some one, as if intoxicated with his own mirth.
    "Long live our comrades, the workingmen of Italy!" they shouted
another time.
    And sending these calls into the remote distance to friends who did not know them, who could not have understood their language, they seemed to feel confident that these people unknown to them heard and comprehended their enthusiasm and their ecstasy.
    The Little Russian spoke, his eyes beaming, his love larger than
the love of the others:
    "Comrades, it would be well to write to them over there! Let them know that they have friends living in far-away Russia,