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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Childhood, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Childhood
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2142]
+Last Updated: September 11, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDHOOD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Martin Adamson and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+CHILDHOOD
+
+By Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Translated by C.J. Hogarth
+
+
+
+
+I -- THE TUTOR, KARL IVANITCH
+
+On the 12th of August, 18-- (just three days after my tenth birthday,
+when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven
+o’clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my
+head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so
+roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken
+back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out
+from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand,
+flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with
+sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown
+fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red
+knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went
+on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.
+
+“Suppose,” I thought to myself, “that I am only a small boy, yet why
+should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda’s
+bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so
+he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long--how to tease
+me. He knows very well that he has woken me up and frightened me, but he
+pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and
+cap and tassel too--they are all of them disgusting.”
+
+While I was thus inwardly venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had
+passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in
+a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail,
+then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned round to
+us.
+
+“Get up, children! It is quite time, and your mother is already in the
+drawing-room,” he exclaimed in his strong German accent. Then he crossed
+over to me, sat down at my feet, and took his snuff-box out of his
+pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanitch sneezed, wiped his
+nose, flicked his fingers, and began amusing himself by teasing me and
+tickling my toes as he said with a smile, “Well, well, little lazy one!”
+
+For all my dread of being tickled, I determined not to get out of bed
+or to answer him, but hid my head deeper in the pillow, kicked out with
+all my strength, and strained every nerve to keep from laughing.
+
+“How kind he is, and how fond of us!” I thought to myself. “Yet to think
+that I could be hating him so just now!”
+
+I felt angry, both with myself and with Karl Ivanitch, I wanted to laugh
+and to cry at the same time, for my nerves were all on edge.
+
+“Leave me alone, Karl!” I exclaimed at length, with tears in my eyes, as
+I raised my head from beneath the bed-clothes.
+
+Karl Ivanitch was taken aback. He left off tickling my feet, and asked
+me kindly what the matter was. Had I had a disagreeable dream? His good
+German face and the sympathy with which he sought to know the cause
+of my tears made them flow the faster. I felt conscience-stricken, and
+could not understand how, only a minute ago, I had been hating Karl,
+and thinking his dressing-gown and cap and tassel disgusting. On the
+contrary, they looked eminently lovable now. Even the tassel seemed
+another token of his goodness. I replied that I was crying because I had
+had a bad dream, and had seen Mamma dead and being buried. Of course it
+was a mere invention, since I did not remember having dreamt anything
+at all that night, but the truth was that Karl’s sympathy as he tried to
+comfort and reassure me had gradually made me believe that I HAD dreamt
+such a horrible dream, and so weep the more--though from a different
+cause to the one he imagined.
+
+When Karl Ivanitch had left me, I sat up in bed and proceeded to draw
+my stockings over my little feet. The tears had quite dried now, yet the
+mournful thought of the invented dream was still haunting me a little.
+Presently Uncle [This term is often applied by children to old servants
+in Russia] Nicola came in--a neat little man who was always grave,
+methodical, and respectful, as well as a great friend of Karl’s. He
+brought with him our clothes and boots--at least, boots for Woloda, and
+for myself the old detestable, be-ribanded shoes. In his presence I
+felt ashamed to cry, and, moreover, the morning sun was shining so gaily
+through the window, and Woloda, standing at the washstand as he mimicked
+Maria Ivanovna (my sister’s governess), was laughing so loud and so
+long, that even the serious Nicola--a towel over his shoulder, the soap
+in one hand, and the basin in the other--could not help smiling as he
+said, “Will you please let me wash you, Vladimir Petrovitch?” I had
+cheered up completely.
+
+“Are you nearly ready?” came Karl’s voice from the schoolroom. The tone
+of that voice sounded stern now, and had nothing in it of the kindness
+which had just touched me so much. In fact, in the schoolroom Karl was
+altogether a different man from what he was at other times. There he was
+the tutor. I washed and dressed myself hurriedly, and, a brush still
+in my hand as I smoothed my wet hair, answered to his call. Karl,
+with spectacles on nose and a book in his hand, was sitting, as usual,
+between the door and one of the windows. To the left of the door were
+two shelves--one of them the children’s (that is to say, ours), and the
+other one Karl’s own. Upon ours were heaped all sorts of books--lesson
+books and play books--some standing up and some lying down. The only
+two standing decorously against the wall were two large volumes of a
+Histoire des Voyages, in red binding. On that shelf could be seen books
+thick and thin and books large and small, as well as covers without
+books and books without covers, since everything got crammed up together
+anyhow when play time arrived and we were told to put the “library” (as
+Karl called these shelves) in order. The collection of books on his own
+shelf was, if not so numerous as ours, at least more varied. Three of
+them in particular I remember, namely, a German pamphlet (minus a cover)
+on Manuring Cabbages in Kitchen-Gardens, a History of the Seven Years’
+War (bound in parchment and burnt at one corner), and a Course of
+Hydrostatics. Though Karl passed so much of his time in reading that he
+had injured his sight by doing so, he never read anything beyond these
+books and The Northern Bee.
+
+Another article on Karl’s shelf I remember well. This was a round piece
+of cardboard fastened by a screw to a wooden stand, with a sort of comic
+picture of a lady and a hairdresser glued to the cardboard. Karl was
+very clever at fixing pieces of cardboard together, and had devised this
+contrivance for shielding his weak eyes from any very strong light.
+
+I can see him before me now--the tall figure in its wadded dressing-gown
+and red cap (a few grey hairs visible beneath the latter) sitting beside
+the table; the screen with the hairdresser shading his face; one hand
+holding a book, and the other one resting on the arm of the chair.
+Before him lie his watch, with a huntsman painted on the dial, a
+check cotton handkerchief, a round black snuff-box, and a green
+spectacle-case. The neatness and orderliness of all these articles show
+clearly that Karl Ivanitch has a clear conscience and a quiet mind.
+
+Sometimes, when tired of running about the salon downstairs, I would
+steal on tiptoe to the schoolroom and find Karl sitting alone in his
+armchair as, with a grave and quiet expression on his face, he perused
+one of his favourite books. Yet sometimes, also, there were moments when
+he was not reading, and when the spectacles had slipped down his large
+aquiline nose, and the blue, half-closed eyes and faintly smiling lips
+seemed to be gazing before them with a curious expression. All would be
+quiet in the room--not a sound being audible save his regular breathing
+and the ticking of the watch with the hunter painted on the dial. He
+would not see me, and I would stand at the door and think: “Poor, poor
+old man! There are many of us, and we can play together and be happy,
+but he sits there all alone, and has nobody to be fond of him. Surely
+he speaks truth when he says that he is an orphan. And the story of his
+life, too--how terrible it is! I remember him telling it to Nicola. How
+dreadful to be in his position!” Then I would feel so sorry for him that
+I would go to him, and take his hand, and say, “Dear Karl Ivanitch!”
+ and he would be visibly delighted whenever I spoke to him like this, and
+would look much brighter.
+
+On the second wall of the schoolroom hung some maps--mostly torn, but
+glued together again by Karl’s hand. On the third wall (in the middle of
+which stood the door) hung, on one side of the door, a couple of rulers
+(one of them ours--much bescratched, and the other one his--quite a new
+one), with, on the further side of the door, a blackboard on which our
+more serious faults were marked by circles and our lesser faults by
+crosses. To the left of the blackboard was the corner in which we had to
+kneel when naughty. How well I remember that corner--the shutter on the
+stove, the ventilator above it, and the noise which it made when turned!
+Sometimes I would be made to stay in that corner till my back and knees
+were aching all over, and I would think to myself. “Has Karl Ivanitch
+forgotten me? He goes on sitting quietly in his arm-chair and reading
+his Hydrostatics, while I--!” Then, to remind him of my presence, I
+would begin gently turning the ventilator round. Or scratching some
+plaster off the wall; but if by chance an extra large piece fell upon
+the floor, the fright of it was worse than any punishment. I would
+glance round at Karl, but he would still be sitting there quietly, book
+in hand, and pretending that he had noticed nothing.
+
+In the middle of the room stood a table, covered with a torn black
+oilcloth so much cut about with penknives that the edge of the table
+showed through. Round the table stood unpainted chairs which, through
+use, had attained a high degree of polish. The fourth and last wall
+contained three windows, from the first of which the view was as
+follows. Immediately beneath it there ran a high road on which every
+irregularity, every pebble, every rut was known and dear to me. Beside
+the road stretched a row of lime-trees, through which glimpses could be
+caught of a wattled fence, with a meadow with farm buildings on one side
+of it and a wood on the other--the whole bounded by the keeper’s hut at
+the further end of the meadow. The next window to the right overlooked
+the part of the terrace where the “grownups” of the family used to sit
+before luncheon. Sometimes, when Karl was correcting our exercises, I
+would look out of that window and see Mamma’s dark hair and the backs
+of some persons with her, and hear the murmur of their talking and
+laughter. Then I would feel vexed that I could not be there too, and
+think to myself, “When am I going to be grown up, and to have no more
+lessons, but sit with the people whom I love instead of with these
+horrid dialogues in my hand?” Then my anger would change to sadness, and
+I would fall into such a reverie that I never heard Karl when he scolded
+me for my mistakes.
+
+At last, on the morning of which I am speaking, Karl Ivanitch took
+off his dressing-gown, put on his blue frockcoat with its creased and
+crumpled shoulders, adjusted his tie before the looking-glass, and took
+us down to greet Mamma.
+
+
+
+
+II -- MAMMA
+
+Mamma was sitting in the drawing-room and making tea. In one hand she
+was holding the tea-pot, while with the other one she was drawing water
+from the urn and letting it drip into the tray. Yet though she appeared
+to be noticing what she doing, in reality she noted neither this fact
+nor our entry.
+
+However vivid be one’s recollection of the past, any attempt to recall
+the features of a beloved being shows them to one’s vision as through
+a mist of tears--dim and blurred. Those tears are the tears of the
+imagination. When I try to recall Mamma as she was then, I see, true,
+her brown eyes, expressive always of love and kindness, the small mole
+on her neck below where the small hairs grow, her white embroidered
+collar, and the delicate, fresh hand which so often caressed me,
+and which I so often kissed; but her general appearance escapes me
+altogether.
+
+To the left of the sofa stood an English piano, at which my dark-haired
+sister Lubotshka was sitting and playing with manifest effort (for
+her hands were rosy from a recent washing in cold water) Clementi’s
+“Etudes.” Then eleven years old, she was dressed in a short cotton frock
+and white lace-frilled trousers, and could take her octaves only in
+arpeggio. Beside her was sitting Maria Ivanovna, in a cap adorned
+with pink ribbons and a blue shawl. Her face was red and cross, and it
+assumed an expression even more severe when Karl Ivanitch entered the
+room. Looking angrily at him without answering his bow, she went on
+beating time with her foot and counting, “One, two, three--one, two,
+three,” more loudly and commandingly than ever.
+
+Karl Ivanitch paid no attention to this rudeness, but went, as usual,
+with German politeness to kiss Mamma’s hand. She drew herself up, shook
+her head as though by the movement to chase away sad thoughts from her,
+and gave Karl her hand, kissing him on his wrinkled temple as he bent
+his head in salutation.
+
+“I thank you, dear Karl Ivanitch,” she said in German, and then, still
+using the same language asked him how we (the children) had slept.
+Karl Ivanitch was deaf in one ear, and the added noise of the piano now
+prevented him from hearing anything at all. He moved nearer to the sofa,
+and, leaning one hand upon the table and lifting his cap above his
+head, said with, a smile which in those days always seemed to me the
+perfection of politeness: “You, will excuse me, will you not, Natalia
+Nicolaevna?”
+
+The reason for this was that, to avoid catching cold, Karl never took
+off his red cap, but invariably asked permission, on entering the
+drawing-room, to retain it on his head.
+
+“Yes, pray replace it, Karl Ivanitch,” said Mamma, bending towards him
+and raising her voice, “But I asked you whether the children had slept
+well?”
+
+Still he did not hear, but, covering his bald head again with the red
+cap, went on smiling more than ever.
+
+“Stop a moment, Mimi,” said Mamma (now smiling also) to Maria Ivanovna.
+“It is impossible to hear anything.”
+
+How beautiful Mamma’s face was when she smiled! It made her so
+infinitely more charming, and everything around her seemed to grow
+brighter! If in the more painful moments of my life I could have seen
+that smile before my eyes, I should never have known what grief is. In
+my opinion, it is in the smile of a face that the essence of what we
+call beauty lies. If the smile heightens the charm of the face, then the
+face is a beautiful one. If the smile does not alter the face, then the
+face is an ordinary one. But if the smile spoils the face, then the face
+is an ugly one indeed.
+
+Mamma took my head between her hands, bent it gently backwards, looked
+at me gravely, and said: “You have been crying this morning?”
+
+I did not answer. She kissed my eyes, and said again in German: “Why did
+you cry?”
+
+When talking to us with particular intimacy she always used this
+language, which she knew to perfection.
+
+“I cried about a dream, Mamma” I replied, remembering the invented
+vision, and trembling involuntarily at the recollection.
+
+Karl Ivanitch confirmed my words, but said nothing as to the subject of
+the dream. Then, after a little conversation on the weather, in which
+Mimi also took part, Mamma laid some lumps of sugar on the tray for
+one or two of the more privileged servants, and crossed over to her
+embroidery frame, which stood near one of the windows.
+
+“Go to Papa now, children,” she said, “and ask him to come to me before
+he goes to the home farm.”
+
+Then the music, the counting, and the wrathful looks from Mimi began
+again, and we went off to see Papa. Passing through the room which had
+been known ever since Grandpapa’s time as “the pantry,” we entered the
+study.
+
+
+
+
+III -- PAPA
+
+He was standing near his writing-table, and pointing angrily to some
+envelopes, papers, and little piles of coin upon it as he addressed some
+observations to the bailiff, Jakoff Michaelovitch, who was standing in
+his usual place (that is to say, between the door and the barometer)
+and rapidly closing and unclosing the fingers of the hand which he held
+behind his back. The more angry Papa grew, the more rapidly did those
+fingers twirl, and when Papa ceased speaking they came to rest also.
+Yet, as soon as ever Jakoff himself began to talk, they flew here,
+there, and everywhere with lightning rapidity. These movements always
+appeared to me an index of Jakoff’s secret thoughts, though his face was
+invariably placid, and expressive alike of dignity and submissiveness,
+as who should say, “I am right, yet let it be as you wish.” On seeing
+us, Papa said, “Directly--wait a moment,” and looked towards the door as
+a hint for it to be shut.
+
+“Gracious heavens! What can be the matter with you to-day, Jakoff?” he
+went on with a hitch of one shoulder (a habit of his). “This envelope
+here with the 800 roubles enclosed,”--Jacob took out a set of tablets,
+put down “800” and remained looking at the figures while he waited
+for what was to come next--“is for expenses during my absence. Do you
+understand? From the mill you ought to receive 1000 roubles. Is not
+that so? And from the Treasury mortgage you ought to receive some 8000
+roubles. From the hay--of which, according to your calculations, we
+shall be able to sell 7000 poods [The pood = 40 lbs.]at 45 copecks a
+piece there should come in 3000. Consequently the sum-total that you
+ought to have in hand soon is--how much?--12,000 roubles. Is that
+right?”
+
+“Precisely,” answered Jakoff. Yet by the extreme rapidity with which
+his fingers were twitching I could see that he had an objection to make.
+Papa went on:
+
+“Well, of this money you will send 10,000 roubles to the Petrovskoe
+local council. As for the money already at the office, you will remit it
+to me, and enter it as spent on this present date.” Jakoff turned over
+the tablet marked “12,000,” and put down “21,000”--seeming, by his
+action, to imply that 12,000 roubles had been turned over in the
+same fashion as he had turned the tablet. “And this envelope with the
+enclosed money,” concluded Papa, “you will deliver for me to the person
+to whom it is addressed.”
+
+I was standing close to the table, and could see the address. It was “To
+Karl Ivanitch Mayer.” Perhaps Papa had an idea that I had read something
+which I ought not, for he touched my shoulder with his hand and made me
+aware, by a slight movement, that I must withdraw from the table. Not
+sure whether the movement was meant for a caress or a command, I kissed
+the large, sinewy hand which rested upon my shoulder.
+
+“Very well,” said Jakoff. “And what are your orders about the accounts
+for the money from Chabarovska?” (Chabarovska was Mamma’s village.)
+
+“Only that they are to remain in my office, and not to be taken thence
+without my express instructions.”
+
+For a minute or two Jakoff was silent. Then his fingers began to twitch
+with extraordinary rapidity, and, changing the expression of deferential
+vacancy with which he had listened to his orders for one of shrewd
+intelligence, he turned his tablets back and spoke.
+
+“Will you allow me to inform you, Peter Alexandritch,” he said, with
+frequent pauses between his words, “that, however much you wish it, it
+is out of the question to repay the local council now. You enumerated
+some items, I think, as to what ought to come in from the mortgage, the
+mill, and the hay (he jotted down each of these items on his tablets
+again as he spoke). Yet I fear that we must have made a mistake
+somewhere in the accounts.” Here he paused a while, and looked gravely
+at Papa.
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Well, will you be good enough to look for yourself? There is the
+account for the mill. The miller has been to me twice to ask for time,
+and I am afraid that he has no money whatever in hand. He is here now.
+Would you like to speak to him?”
+
+“No. Tell me what he says,” replied Papa, showing by a movement of his
+head that he had no desire to have speech with the miller.
+
+“Well, it is easy enough to guess what he says. He declares that there
+is no grinding to be got now, and that his last remaining money has gone
+to pay for the dam. What good would it do for us to turn him out? As to
+what you were pleased to say about the mortgage, you yourself are aware
+that your money there is locked up and cannot be recovered at a moment’s
+notice. I was sending a load of flour to Ivan Afanovitch to-day, and
+sent him a letter as well, to which he replies that he would have been
+glad to oblige you, Peter Alexandritch, were it not that the matter is
+out of his hands now, and that all the circumstances show that it would
+take you at least two months to withdraw the money. From the hay I
+understood you to estimate a return of 3000 roubles?” (Here Jakoff
+jotted down “3000” on his tablets, and then looked for a moment from the
+figures to Papa with a peculiar expression on his face.) “Well, surely
+you see for yourself how little that is? And even then we should lose if
+we were to sell the stuff now, for you must know that--”
+
+It was clear that he would have had many other arguments to adduce had
+not Papa interrupted him.
+
+“I cannot make any change in my arrangements,” said Papa. “Yet if there
+should REALLY have to be any delay in the recovery of these sums, we
+could borrow what we wanted from the Chabarovska funds.”
+
+“Very well, sir.” The expression of Jakoff’s face and the way in which
+he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great
+satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but,
+like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the
+interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own.
+He was forever endeavouring to increase his master’s property at the
+expense of his mistress’s, and to prove that it would be impossible to
+avoid using the rents from her estates for the benefit of Petrovskoe (my
+father’s village, and the place where we lived). This point he had now
+gained and was delighted in consequence.
+
+Papa then greeted ourselves, and said that if we stayed much longer in
+the country we should become lazy boys; that we were growing quite big
+now, and must set about doing lessons in earnest,
+
+“I suppose you know that I am starting for Moscow to-night?” he went on,
+“and that I am going to take you with me? You will live with Grandmamma,
+but Mamma and the girls will remain here. You know, too, I am sure, that
+Mamma’s one consolation will be to hear that you are doing your lessons
+well and pleasing every one around you.”
+
+The preparations which had been in progress for some days past had
+made us expect some unusual event, but this news left us thunderstruck,
+Woloda turned red, and, with a shaking voice, delivered Mamma’s message
+to Papa.
+
+“So this was what my dream foreboded!” I thought to myself. “God send
+that there come nothing worse!” I felt terribly sorry to have to leave
+Mamma, but at the same rejoiced to think that I should soon be grown up,
+“If we are going to-day, we shall probably have no lessons to do, and
+that will be splendid. However, I am sorry for Karl Ivanitch, for he
+will certainly be dismissed now. That was why that envelope had been
+prepared for him. I think I would almost rather stay and do lessons here
+than leave Mamma or hurt poor Karl. He is miserable enough already.”
+
+As these thoughts crossed my mind I stood looking sadly at the black
+ribbons on my shoes. After a few words to Karl Ivanitch about the
+depression of the barometer and an injunction to Jakoff not to feed
+the hounds, since a farewell meet was to be held after luncheon, Papa
+disappointed my hopes by sending us off to lessons--though he also
+consoled us by promising to take us out hunting later.
+
+On my way upstairs I made a digression to the terrace. Near the door
+leading on to it Papa’s favourite hound, Milka, was lying in the sun and
+blinking her eyes.
+
+“Miloshka,” I cried as I caressed her and kissed her nose, “we are going
+away today. Good-bye. Perhaps we shall never see each other again.” I
+was crying and laughing at the same time.
+
+
+
+
+IV -- LESSONS
+
+Karl Ivanitch was in a bad temper. This was clear from his contracted
+brows, and from the way in which he flung his frockcoat into a drawer,
+angrily donned his old dressing-gown again, and made deep dints with
+his nails to mark the place in the book of dialogues to which we were
+to learn by heart. Woloda began working diligently, but I was too
+distracted to do anything at all. For a long while I stared vacantly
+at the book; but tears at the thought of the impending separation kept
+rushing to my eyes and preventing me from reading a single word. When at
+length the time came to repeat the dialogues to Karl (who listened to us
+with blinking eyes--a very bad sign), I had no sooner reached the place
+where some one asks, “Wo kommen Sie her?” (“Where do you come from?”)
+and some one else answers him, “Ich komme vom Kaffeehaus” (“I come from
+the coffee-house”), than I burst into tears and, for sobbing, could not
+pronounce, “Haben Sie die Zeitung nicht gelesen?” (“Have you not read the
+newspaper?”) at all. Next, when we came to our writing lesson, the tears
+kept falling from my eyes and, making a mess on the paper, as though
+some one had written on blotting-paper with water, Karl was very
+angry. He ordered me to go down upon my knees, declared that it was all
+obstinacy and “puppet-comedy playing” (a favourite expression of his)
+on my part, threatened me with the ruler, and commanded me to say that
+I was sorry. Yet for sobbing and crying I could not get a word out. At
+last--conscious, perhaps, that he was unjust--he departed to Nicola’s
+pantry, and slammed the door behind him. Nevertheless their conversation
+there carried to the schoolroom.
+
+“Have you heard that the children are going to Moscow, Nicola?” said
+Karl.
+
+“Yes. How could I help hearing it?”
+
+At this point Nicola seemed to get up for Karl said, “Sit down, Nicola,”
+ and then locked the door. However, I came out of my corner and crept to
+the door to listen.
+
+“However much you may do for people, and however fond of them you may
+be, never expect any gratitude, Nicola,” said Karl warmly. Nicola, who
+was shoe-cobbling by the window, nodded his head in assent.
+
+“Twelve years have I lived in this house,” went on Karl, lifting his
+eyes and his snuff-box towards the ceiling, “and before God I can say
+that I have loved them, and worked for them, even more than if they had
+been my own children. You recollect, Nicola, when Woloda had the fever?
+You recollect how, for nine days and nights, I never closed my eyes as
+I sat beside his bed? Yes, at that time I was ‘the dear, good Karl
+Ivanitch’--I was wanted then; but now”--and he smiled ironically--“the
+children are growing up, and must go to study in earnest. Perhaps they
+never learnt anything with me, Nicola? Eh?”
+
+“I am sure they did,” replied Nicola, laying his awl down and
+straightening a piece of thread with his hands.
+
+“No, I am wanted no longer, and am to be turned out. What good are
+promises and gratitude? Natalia Nicolaevna”--here he laid his hand upon
+his heart--“I love and revere, but what can SHE I do here? Her will is
+powerless in this house.”
+
+He flung a strip of leather on the floor with an angry gesture. “Yet I
+know who has been playing tricks here, and why I am no longer wanted. It
+is because I do not flatter and toady as certain people do. I am in
+the habit of speaking the truth in all places and to all persons,” he
+continued proudly, “God be with these children, for my leaving them will
+benefit them little, whereas I--well, by God’s help I may be able to
+earn a crust of bread somewhere. Nicola, eh?”
+
+Nicola raised his head and looked at Karl as though to consider whether
+he would indeed be able to earn a crust of bread, but he said nothing.
+Karl said a great deal more of the same kind--in particular how much
+better his services had been appreciated at a certain general’s where
+he had formerly lived (I regretted to hear that). Likewise he spoke of
+Saxony, his parents, his friend the tailor, Schonheit (beauty), and so
+on.
+
+I sympathised with his distress, and felt dreadfully sorry that he and
+Papa (both of whom I loved about equally) had had a difference. Then I
+returned to my corner, crouched down upon my heels, and fell to thinking
+how a reconciliation between them might be effected.
+
+Returning to the study, Karl ordered me to get up and prepare to write
+from dictation. When I was ready he sat down with a dignified air in
+his arm-chair, and in a voice which seemed to come from a profound abyss
+began to dictate: “Von al-len Lei-den-shaf-ten die grau-samste ist. Have
+you written that?” He paused, took a pinch of snuff, and began again:
+“Die grausamste ist die Un-dank-bar-keit [The most cruel of all passions
+is ingratitude.] a capital U, mind.”
+
+The last word written, I looked at him, for him to go on.
+
+“Punctum” (stop), he concluded, with a faintly perceptible smile, as he
+signed to us to hand him our copy-books.
+
+Several times, and in several different tones, and always with an
+expression of the greatest satisfaction, did he read out that sentence,
+which expressed his predominant thought at the moment. Then he set us
+to learn a lesson in history, and sat down near the window. His face did
+not look so depressed now, but, on the contrary, expressed eloquently
+the satisfaction of a man who had avenged himself for an injury dealt
+him.
+
+By this time it was a quarter to one o’clock, but Karl Ivanitch never
+thought of releasing us. He merely set us a new lesson to learn. My
+fatigue and hunger were increasing in equal proportions, so that I
+eagerly followed every sign of the approach of luncheon. First came the
+housemaid with a cloth to wipe the plates. Next, the sound of crockery
+resounded in the dining-room, as the table was moved and chairs placed
+round it. After that, Mimi, Lubotshka, and Katenka. (Katenka was Mimi’s
+daughter, and twelve years old) came in from the garden, but Foka (the
+servant who always used to come and announce luncheon) was not yet to be
+seen. Only when he entered was it lawful to throw one’s books aside and
+run downstairs.
+
+Hark! Steps resounded on the staircase, but they were not Foka’s. Foka’s
+I had learnt to study, and knew the creaking of his boots well. The door
+opened, and a figure unknown to me made its appearance.
+
+
+
+
+V -- THE IDIOT
+
+The man who now entered the room was about fifty years old, with a pale,
+attenuated face pitted with smallpox, long grey hair, and a scanty beard
+of a reddish hue. Likewise he was so tall that, on coming through the
+doorway, he was forced not only to bend his head, but to incline his
+whole body forward. He was dressed in a sort of smock that was much
+torn, and held in his hand a stout staff. As he entered he smote this
+staff upon the floor, and, contracting his brows and opening his mouth
+to its fullest extent, laughed in a dreadful, unnatural way. He had lost
+the sight of one eye, and its colourless pupil kept rolling about and
+imparting to his hideous face an even more repellent expression than it
+otherwise bore.
+
+“Hullo, you are caught!” he exclaimed as he ran to Woloda with little
+short steps and, seizing him round the head, looked at it searchingly.
+Next he left him, went to the table, and, with a perfectly serious
+expression on his face, began to blow under the oil-cloth, and to make
+the sign of the cross over it, “O-oh, what a pity! O-oh, how it hurts!
+They are angry! They fly from me!” he exclaimed in a tearful choking
+voice as he glared at Woloda and wiped away the streaming tears with his
+sleeve. His voice was harsh and rough, all his movements hysterical and
+spasmodic, and his words devoid of sense or connection (for he used no
+conjunctions). Yet the tone of that voice was so heartrending, and his
+yellow, deformed face at times so sincere and pitiful in its expression,
+that, as one listened to him, it was impossible to repress a mingled
+sensation of pity, grief, and fear.
+
+This was the idiot Grisha. Whence he had come, or who were his parents,
+or what had induced him to choose the strange life which he led, no
+one ever knew. All that I myself knew was that from his fifteenth year
+upwards he had been known as an imbecile who went barefooted both in
+winter and summer, visited convents, gave little images to any one who
+cared to take them, and spoke meaningless words which some people took
+for prophecies; that nobody remembered him as being different; that at,
+rare intervals he used to call at Grandmamma’s house; and that by some
+people he was said to be the outcast son of rich parents and a pure,
+saintly soul, while others averred that he was a mere peasant and an
+idler.
+
+At last the punctual and wished-for Foka arrived, and we went
+downstairs. Grisha followed us sobbing and continuing to talk nonsense,
+and knocking his staff on each step of the staircase. When we entered
+the drawing-room we found Papa and Mamma walking up and down there, with
+their hands clasped in each other’s, and talking in low tones. Maria
+Ivanovna was sitting bolt upright in an arm-chair placed at tight angles
+to the sofa, and giving some sort of a lesson to the two girls sitting
+beside her. When Karl Ivanitch entered the room she looked at him for a
+moment, and then turned her eyes away with an expression which seemed to
+say, “You are beneath my notice, Karl Ivanitch.” It was easy to see from
+the girls’ eyes that they had important news to communicate to us as
+soon as an opportunity occurred (for to leave their seats and approach
+us first was contrary to Mimi’s rules). It was for us to go to her
+and say, “Bon jour, Mimi,” and then make her a low bow; after which we
+should possibly be permitted to enter into conversation with the girls.
+
+What an intolerable creature that Mimi was! One could hardly say a word
+in her presence without being found fault with. Also whenever we wanted
+to speak in Russian, she would say, “Parlez, donc, francais,” as though
+on purpose to annoy us, while, if there was any particularly nice
+dish at luncheon which we wished to enjoy in peace, she would keep on
+ejaculating, “Mangez, donc, avec du pain!” or, “Comment est-ce que vous
+tenez votre fourchette?” “What has SHE got to do with us?” I used to
+think to myself. “Let her teach the girls. WE have our Karl Ivanitch.” I
+shared to the full his dislike of “certain people.”
+
+“Ask Mamma to let us go hunting too,” Katenka whispered to me, as she
+caught me by the sleeve just when the elders of the family were making a
+move towards the dining-room.
+
+“Very well. I will try.”
+
+Grisha likewise took a seat in the dining-room, but at a little table
+apart from the rest. He never lifted his eyes from his plate, but kept
+on sighing and making horrible grimaces, as he muttered to himself:
+“What a pity! It has flown away! The dove is flying to heaven! The stone
+lies on the tomb!” and so forth.
+
+Ever since the morning Mamma had been absent-minded, and Grisha’s
+presence, words, and actions seemed to make her more so.
+
+“By the way, there is something I forgot to ask you,” she said, as she
+handed Papa a plate of soup.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“That you will have those dreadful dogs of yours tied up. They nearly
+worried poor Grisha to death when he entered the courtyard, and I am
+sure they will bite the children some day.”
+
+No sooner did Grisha hear himself mentioned that he turned towards our
+table and showed us his torn clothes. Then, as he went on with his meal,
+he said: “He would have let them tear me in pieces, but God would not
+allow it! What a sin to let the dogs loose--a great sin! But do not beat
+him, master; do not beat him! It is for God to forgive! It is past now!”
+
+“What does he say?” said Papa, looking at him gravely and sternly. “I
+cannot understand him at all.”
+
+“I think he is saying,” replied Mamma, “that one of the huntsmen set
+the dogs on him, but that God would not allow him to be torn in pieces.
+Therefore he begs you not to punish the man.”
+
+“Oh, is that it?” said Papa, “How does he know that I intended to
+punish the huntsman? You know, I am not very fond of fellows like this,”
+ he added in French, “and this one offends me particularly. Should it
+ever happen that--”
+
+“Oh, don’t say so,” interrupted Mamma, as if frightened by some thought.
+“How can you know what he is?”
+
+“I think I have plenty of opportunities for doing so, since no lack of
+them come to see you--all of them the same sort, and probably all with
+the same story.”
+
+I could see that Mamma’s opinion differed from his, but that she did not
+mean to quarrel about it.
+
+“Please hand me the cakes,” she said to him, “Are they good to-day or
+not?”
+
+“Yes, I AM angry,” he went on as he took the cakes and put them where
+Mamma could not reach them, “very angry at seeing supposedly reasonable
+and educated people let themselves be deceived,” and he struck the table
+with his fork.
+
+“I asked you to hand me the cakes,” she repeated with outstretched hand.
+
+“And it is a good thing,” Papa continued as he put the hand aside, “that
+the police run such vagabonds in. All they are good for is to play upon
+the nerves of certain people who are already not over-strong in
+that respect,” and he smiled, observing that Mamma did not like the
+conversation at all. However, he handed her the cakes.
+
+“All that I have to say,” she replied, “is that one can hardly believe
+that a man who, though sixty years of age, goes barefooted winter and
+summer, and always wears chains of two pounds’ weight, and never
+accepts the offers made to him to live a quiet, comfortable life--it is
+difficult to believe that such a man should act thus out of laziness.”
+ Pausing a moment, she added with a sigh: “As to predictions, je suis
+payee pour y croire, I told you, I think, that Grisha prophesied the
+very day and hour of poor Papa’s death?”
+
+“Oh, what HAVE you gone and done?” said Papa, laughing and putting his
+hand to his cheek (whenever he did this I used to look for something
+particularly comical from him). “Why did you call my attention to his
+feet? I looked at them, and now can eat nothing more.”
+
+Luncheon was over now, and Lubotshka and Katenka were winking at us,
+fidgeting about in their chairs, and showing great restlessness. The
+winking, of course, signified, “Why don’t you ask whether we too may go
+to the hunt?” I nudged Woloda, and Woloda nudged me back, until at last
+I took heart of grace, and began (at first shyly, but gradually with
+more assurance) to ask if it would matter much if the girls too were
+allowed to enjoy the sport. Thereupon a consultation was held among the
+elder folks, and eventually leave was granted--Mamma, to make things
+still more delightful, saying that she would come too.
+
+
+
+
+VI -- PREPARATIONS FOR THE CHASE
+
+During dessert Jakoff had been sent for, and orders given him to have
+ready the carriage, the hounds, and the saddle-horses--every detail
+being minutely specified, and every horse called by its own particular
+name. As Woloda’s usual mount was lame, Papa ordered a “hunter” to be
+saddled for him; which term, “hunter” so horrified Mamma’s ears, that
+she imagined it to be some kind of an animal which would at once run
+away and bring about Woloda’s death. Consequently, in spite of all
+Papa’s and Woloda’s assurances (the latter glibly affirming that it was
+nothing, and that he liked his horse to go fast), poor Mamma continued
+to exclaim that her pleasure would be quite spoilt for her.
+
+When luncheon was over, the grown-ups had coffee in the study, while
+we younger ones ran into the garden and went chattering along the
+undulating paths with their carpet of yellow leaves. We talked about
+Woloda’s riding a hunter and said what a shame it was that Lubotshka,
+could not run as fast as Katenka, and what fun it would be if we could
+see Grisha’s chains, and so forth; but of the impending separation
+we said not a word. Our chatter was interrupted by the sound of the
+carriage driving up, with a village urchin perched on each of its
+springs. Behind the carriage rode the huntsmen with the hounds, and
+they, again, were followed by the groom Ignat on the steed intended
+for Woloda, with my old horse trotting alongside. After running to
+the garden fence to get a sight of all these interesting objects, and
+indulging in a chorus of whistling and hallooing, we rushed upstairs to
+dress--our one aim being to make ourselves look as like the huntsmen as
+possible. The obvious way to do this was to tuck one’s breeches inside
+one’s boots. We lost no time over it all, for we were in a hurry to run
+to the entrance steps again there to feast our eyes upon the horses and
+hounds, and to have a chat with the huntsmen. The day was exceedingly
+warm while, though clouds of fantastic shape had been gathering on the
+horizon since morning and driving before a light breeze across the sun,
+it was clear that, for all their menacing blackness, they did not
+really intend to form a thunderstorm and spoil our last day’s pleasure.
+Moreover, towards afternoon some of them broke, grew pale and elongated,
+and sank to the horizon again, while others of them changed to the
+likeness of white transparent fish-scales. In the east, over Maslovska,
+a single lurid mass was louring, but Karl Ivanitch (who always seemed to
+know the ways of the heavens) said that the weather would still continue
+to be fair and dry.
+
+In spite of his advanced years, it was in quite a sprightly manner that
+Foka came out to the entrance steps, to give the order “Drive up.”
+ In fact, as he planted his legs firmly apart and took up his station
+between the lowest step and the spot where the coachman was to halt,
+his mien was that of a man who knew his duties and had no need to be
+reminded of them by anybody. Presently the ladies, also came out, and
+after a little discussions as to seats and the safety of the girls (all
+of which seemed to me wholly superfluous), they settled themselves in
+the vehicle, opened their parasols, and started. As the carriage was,
+driving away, Mamma pointed to the hunter and asked nervously “Is that
+the horse intended for Vladimir Petrovitch?” On the groom answering
+in the affirmative, she raised her hands in horror and turned her head
+away. As for myself, I was burning with impatience. Clambering on to
+the back of my steed (I was just tall enough to see between its ears), I
+proceeded to perform evolutions in the courtyard.
+
+“Mind you don’t ride over the hounds, sir,” said one of the huntsmen.
+
+“Hold your tongue. It is not the first time I have been one of the
+party.” I retorted with dignity.
+
+Although Woloda had plenty of pluck, he was not altogether free from
+apprehensions as he sat on the hunter. Indeed, he more than once asked
+as he patted it, “Is he quiet?” He looked very well on horseback--almost
+a grown-up young man, and held himself so upright in the saddle that I
+envied him since my shadow seemed to show that I could not compare with
+him in looks.
+
+Presently Papa’s footsteps sounded on the flagstones, the whip collected
+the hounds, and the huntsmen mounted their steeds. Papa’s horse came up
+in charge of a groom, the hounds of his particular leash sprang up from
+their picturesque attitudes to fawn upon him, and Milka, in a collar
+studded with beads, came bounding joyfully from behind his heels to
+greet and sport with the other dogs. Finally, as soon as Papa had
+mounted we rode away.
+
+
+
+
+VII -- THE HUNT
+
+AT the head of the cavalcade rode Turka, on a hog-backed roan. On his
+head he wore a shaggy cap, while, with a magnificent horn slung across
+his shoulders and a knife at his belt, he looked so cruel and inexorable
+that one would have thought he was going to engage in bloody strife with
+his fellow men rather than to hunt a small animal. Around the hind legs
+of his horse the hounds gambolled like a cluster of checkered, restless
+balls. If one of them wished to stop, it was only with the greatest
+difficulty that it could do so, since not only had its leash-fellow
+also to be induced to halt, but at once one of the huntsmen would wheel
+round, crack his whip, and shout to the delinquent,
+
+“Back to the pack, there!”
+
+Arrived at a gate, Papa told us and the huntsmen to continue our way
+along the road, and then rode off across a cornfield. The harvest was at
+its height. On the further side of a large, shining, yellow stretch of
+cornland lay a high purple belt of forest which always figured in my
+eyes as a distant, mysterious region behind which either the world ended
+or an uninhabited waste began. This expanse of corn-land was dotted with
+swathes and reapers, while along the lanes where the sickle had passed
+could be seen the backs of women as they stooped among the tall, thick
+grain or lifted armfuls of corn and rested them against the shocks. In
+one corner a woman was bending over a cradle, and the whole stubble was
+studded with sheaves and cornflowers. In another direction shirt-sleeved
+men were standing on waggons, shaking the soil from the stalks of
+sheaves, and stacking them for carrying. As soon as the foreman (dressed
+in a blouse and high boots, and carrying a tally-stick) caught sight of
+Papa, he hastened to take off his lamb’s-wool cap and, wiping his red
+head, told the women to get up. Papa’s chestnut horse went trotting
+along with a prancing gait as it tossed its head and swished its tail
+to and fro to drive away the gadflies and countless other insects which
+tormented its flanks, while his two greyhounds--their tails curved like
+sickles--went springing gracefully over the stubble. Milka was always
+first, but every now and then she would halt with a shake of her head
+to await the whipper-in. The chatter of the peasants; the rumbling of
+horses and waggons; the joyous cries of quails; the hum of insects as
+they hung suspended in the motionless air; the smell of the soil and
+grain and steam from our horses; the thousand different lights and
+shadows which the burning sun cast upon the yellowish-white cornland;
+the purple forest in the distance; the white gossamer threads which were
+floating in the air or resting on the soil-all these things I observed
+and heard and felt to the core.
+
+Arrived at the Kalinovo wood, we found the carriage awaiting us
+there, with, beside it, a one-horse waggonette driven by the butler--a
+waggonette in which were a tea-urn, some apparatus for making ices, and
+many other attractive boxes and bundles, all packed in straw! There was
+no mistaking these signs, for they meant that we were going to have tea,
+fruit, and ices in the open air. This afforded us intense delight, since
+to drink tea in a wood and on the grass and where none else had ever
+drunk tea before seemed to us a treat beyond expressing.
+
+When Turka arrived at the little clearing where the carriage was
+halted he took Papa’s detailed instructions as to how we were to divide
+ourselves and where each of us was to go (though, as a matter of fact,
+he never acted according to such instructions, but always followed his
+own devices). Then he unleashed the hounds, fastened the leashes to
+his saddle, whistled to the pack, and disappeared among the young birch
+trees the liberated hounds jumping about him in high delight, wagging
+their tails, and sniffing and gambolling with one another as they
+dispersed themselves in different directions.
+
+“Has anyone a pocket-handkerchief to spare?” asked Papa. I took mine
+from my pocket and offered it to him.
+
+“Very well. Fasten it to this greyhound here.”
+
+“Gizana?” I asked, with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+“Yes. Then run him along the road with you. When you come to a little
+clearing in the wood stop and look about you, and don’t come back to me
+without a hare.”
+
+Accordingly I tied my handkerchief round Gizana’s soft neck, and set off
+running at full speed towards the appointed spot, Papa laughing as he
+shouted after me, “Hurry up, hurry up or you’ll be late!”
+
+Every now and then Gizana kept stopping, pricking up his ears, and
+listening to the hallooing of the beaters. Whenever he did this I was
+not strong enough to move him, and could do no more than shout, “Come
+on, come on!” Presently he set off so fast that I could not restrain
+him, and I encountered more than one fall before we reached our
+destination. Selecting there a level, shady spot near the roots of a
+great oak-tree, I lay down on the turf, made Gizana crouch beside me,
+and waited. As usual, my imagination far outstripped reality. I fancied
+that I was pursuing at least my third hare when, as a matter of fact,
+the first hound was only just giving tongue. Presently, however, Turka’s
+voice began to sound through the wood in louder and more excited tones,
+the baying of a hound came nearer and nearer, and then another, and then
+a third, and then a fourth, deep throat joined in the rising and falling
+cadences of a chorus, until the whole had united their voices in one
+continuous, tumultuous burst of melody. As the Russian proverb expresses
+it, “The forest had found a tongue, and the hounds were burning as with
+fire.”
+
+My excitement was so great that I nearly swooned where I stood. My lips
+parted themselves as though smiling, the perspiration poured from me in
+streams, and, in spite of the tickling sensation caused by the drops as
+they trickled over my chin, I never thought of wiping them away. I felt
+that a crisis was approaching. Yet the tension was too unnatural to
+last. Soon the hounds came tearing along the edge of the wood, and
+then--behold, they were racing away from me again, and of hares there
+was not a sign to be seen! I looked in every direction and Gizana did
+the same--pulling at his leash at first and whining. Then he lay down
+again by my side, rested his muzzle on my knees, and resigned himself to
+disappointment. Among the naked roots of the oak-tree under which I was
+sitting. I could see countless ants swarming over the parched grey earth
+and winding among the acorns, withered oak-leaves, dry twigs, russet
+moss, and slender, scanty blades of grass. In serried files they kept
+pressing forward on the level track they had made for themselves--some
+carrying burdens, some not. I took a piece of twig and barred their way.
+Instantly it was curious to see how they made light of the obstacle.
+Some got past it by creeping underneath, and some by climbing over it. A
+few, however, there were (especially those weighted with loads) who were
+nonplussed what to do. They either halted and searched for a way round,
+or returned whence they had come, or climbed the adjacent herbage, with
+the evident intention of reaching my hand and going up the sleeve of my
+jacket. From this interesting spectacle my attention was distracted by
+the yellow wings of a butterfly which was fluttering alluringly before
+me. Yet I had scarcely noticed it before it flew away to a little
+distance and, circling over some half-faded blossoms of white clover,
+settled on one of them. Whether it was the sun’s warmth that delighted
+it, or whether it was busy sucking nectar from the flower, at all events
+it seemed thoroughly comfortable. It scarcely moved its wings at all,
+and pressed itself down into the clover until I could hardly see
+its body. I sat with my chin on my hands and watched it with intense
+interest.
+
+Suddenly Gizana sprang up and gave me such a violent jerk that I nearly
+rolled over. I looked round. At the edge of the wood a hare had just
+come into view, with one ear bent down and the other one sharply
+pricked. The blood rushed to my head, and I forgot everything else as
+I shouted, slipped the dog, and rushed towards the spot. Yet all was in
+vain. The hare stopped, made a rush, and was lost to view.
+
+How confused I felt when at that moment Turka stepped from the
+undergrowth (he had been following the hounds as they ran along the
+edges of the wood)! He had seen my mistake (which had consisted in my
+not biding my time), and now threw me a contemptuous look as he said,
+“Ah, master!” And you should have heard the tone in which he said it! It
+would have been a relief to me if he had then and there suspended me to
+his saddle instead of the hare. For a while I could only stand miserably
+where I was, without attempting to recall the dog, and ejaculate as I
+slapped my knees, “Good heavens! What a fool I was!” I could hear the
+hounds retreating into the distance, and baying along the further side
+of the wood as they pursued the hare, while Turka rallied them with
+blasts on his gorgeous horn: yet I did not stir.
+
+
+
+
+VIII -- WE PLAY GAMES
+
+THE hunt was over, a cloth had been spread in the shade of some young
+birch-trees, and the whole party was disposed around it. The butler,
+Gabriel, had stamped down the surrounding grass, wiped the plates in
+readiness, and unpacked from a basket a quantity of plums and peaches
+wrapped in leaves.
+
+Through the green branches of the young birch-trees the sun glittered
+and threw little glancing balls of light upon the pattern of my napkin,
+my legs, and the bald moist head of Gabriel. A soft breeze played in
+the leaves of the trees above us, and, breathing softly upon my hair and
+heated face, refreshed me beyond measure. When we had finished the
+fruit and ices, nothing remained to be done around the empty cloth, so,
+despite the oblique, scorching rays of the sun, we rose and proceeded to
+play.
+
+“Well, what shall it be?” said Lubotshka, blinking in the sunlight and
+skipping about the grass, “Suppose we play Robinson?”
+
+“No, that’s a tiresome game,” objected Woloda, stretching himself lazily
+on the turf and gnawing some leaves, “Always Robinson! If you want to
+play at something, play at building a summerhouse.”
+
+Woloda was giving himself tremendous airs. Probably he was proud of
+having ridden the hunter, and so pretended to be very tired. Perhaps,
+also, he had too much hard-headedness and too little imagination
+fully to enjoy the game of Robinson. It was a game which consisted of
+performing various scenes from The Swiss Family Robinson, a book which
+we had recently been reading.
+
+“Well, but be a good boy. Why not try and please us this time?” the
+girls answered. “You may be Charles or Ernest or the father, whichever
+you like best,” added Katenka as she tried to raise him from the ground
+by pulling at his sleeve.
+
+“No, I’m not going to; it’s a tiresome game,” said Woloda again, though
+smiling as if secretly pleased.
+
+“It would be better to sit at home than not to play at ANYTHING,”
+ murmured Lubotshka, with tears in her eyes. She was a great weeper.
+
+“Well, go on, then. Only, DON’T cry; I can’t stand that sort of thing.”
+
+Woloda’s condescension did not please us much. On the contrary, his
+lazy, tired expression took away all the fun of the game. When we sat
+on the ground and imagined that we were sitting in a boat and either
+fishing or rowing with all our might, Woloda persisted in sitting with
+folded hands or in anything but a fisherman’s posture. I made a remark
+about it, but he replied that, whether we moved our hands or not, we
+should neither gain nor lose ground--certainly not advance at all, and I
+was forced to agree with him. Again, when I pretended to go out hunting,
+and, with a stick over my shoulder, set off into the wood, Woloda only
+lay down on his back with his hands under his head, and said that he
+supposed it was all the same whether he went or not. Such behaviour and
+speeches cooled our ardour for the game and were very disagreeable--the
+more so since it was impossible not to confess to oneself that Woloda
+was right, I myself knew that it was not only impossible to kill birds
+with a stick, but to shoot at all with such a weapon. Still, it was
+the game, and if we were once to begin reasoning thus, it would become
+equally impossible for us to go for drives on chairs. I think that even
+Woloda himself cannot at that moment have forgotten how, in the long
+winter evenings, we had been used to cover an arm-chair with a shawl
+and make a carriage of it--one of us being the coachman, another one the
+footman, the two girls the passengers, and three other chairs the trio
+of horses abreast. With what ceremony we used to set out, and with what
+adventures we used to meet on the way! How gaily and quickly those long
+winter evenings used to pass! If we were always to judge from reality,
+games would be nonsense; but if games were nonsense, what else would
+there be left to do?
+
+
+
+
+IX -- A FIRST ESSAY IN LOVE
+
+PRETENDING to gather some “American fruit” from a tree, Lubotshka
+suddenly plucked a leaf upon which was a huge caterpillar, and throwing
+the insect with horror to the ground, lifted her hands and sprang away
+as though afraid it would spit at her. The game stopped, and we crowded
+our heads together as we stooped to look at the curiosity.
+
+I peeped over Katenka’s shoulder as she was trying to lift the
+caterpillar by placing another leaf in its way. I had observed before
+that the girls had a way of shrugging their shoulders whenever they were
+trying to put a loose garment straight on their bare necks, as well as
+that Mimi always grew angry on witnessing this manoeuvre and declared
+it to be a chambermaid’s trick. As Katenka bent over the caterpillar she
+made that very movement, while at the same instant the breeze lifted the
+fichu on her white neck. Her shoulder was close to my lips, I looked at
+it and kissed it. She did not turn round, but Woloda remarked without
+raising his head, “What spooniness!” I felt the tears rising to my eyes,
+and could not take my gaze from Katenka. I had long been used to her
+fair, fresh face, and had always been fond of her, but now I looked at
+her more closely, and felt more fond of her, than I had ever done or
+felt before.
+
+When we returned to the grown-ups, Papa informed us, to our great joy,
+that, at Mamma’s entreaties, our departure was to be postponed until
+the following morning. We rode home beside the carriage--Woloda and
+I galloping near it, and vieing with one another in our exhibition of
+horsemanship and daring. My shadow looked longer now than it had done
+before, and from that I judged that I had grown into a fine rider. Yet
+my complacency was soon marred by an unfortunate occurrence. Desiring
+to outdo Woloda before the audience in the carriage, I dropped a little
+behind. Then with whip and spur I urged my steed forward, and at the
+same time assumed a natural, graceful attitude, with the intention of
+whooting past the carriage on the side on which Katenka was seated. My
+only doubt was whether to halloo or not as I did so. In the event, my
+infernal horse stopped so abruptly when just level with the carriage
+horses that I was pitched forward on to its neck and cut a very sorry
+figure!
+
+
+
+
+X -- THE SORT OF MAN MY FATHER WAS
+
+Papa was a gentleman of the last century, with all the chivalrous
+character, self-reliance, and gallantry of the youth of that time. Upon
+the men of the present day he looked with a contempt arising partly from
+inborn pride and partly from a secret feeling of vexation that, in this
+age of ours, he could no longer enjoy the influence and success which
+had been his in his youth. His two principal failings were gambling and
+gallantry, and he had won or lost, in the course of his career, several
+millions of roubles.
+
+Tall and of imposing figure, he walked with a curiously quick, mincing
+gait, as well as had a habit of hitching one of his shoulders. His eyes
+were small and perpetually twinkling, his nose large and aquiline, his
+lips irregular and rather oddly (though pleasantly) compressed, his
+articulation slightly defective and lisping, and his head quite bald.
+Such was my father’s exterior from the days of my earliest recollection.
+It was an exterior which not only brought him success and made him a
+man a bonnes fortunes but one which pleased people of all ranks and
+stations. Especially did it please those whom he desired to please.
+
+At all junctures he knew how to take the lead, for, though not deriving
+from the highest circles of society, he had always mixed with them, and
+knew how to win their respect. He possessed in the highest degree that
+measure of pride and self-confidence which, without giving offence,
+maintains a man in the opinion of the world. He had much originality,
+as well as the ability to use it in such a way that it benefited him as
+much as actual worldly position or fortune could have done. Nothing in
+the universe could surprise him, and though not of eminent attainments
+in life, he seemed born to have acquired them. He understood so
+perfectly how to make both himself and others forget and keep at
+a distance the seamy side of life, with all its petty troubles
+and vicissitudes, that it was impossible not to envy him. He was a
+connoisseur in everything which could give ease and pleasure, as well
+as knew how to make use of such knowledge. Likewise he prided himself on
+the brilliant connections which he had formed through my mother’s family
+or through friends of his youth, and was secretly jealous of any one of
+a higher rank than himself--any one, that is to say, of a rank higher
+than a retired lieutenant of the Guards. Moreover, like all ex-officers,
+he refused to dress himself in the prevailing fashion, though he attired
+himself both originally and artistically--his invariable wear being
+light, loose-fitting suits, very fine shirts, and large collars and
+cuffs. Everything seemed to suit his upright figure and quiet, assured
+air. He was sensitive to the pitch of sentimentality, and, when reading
+a pathetic passage, his voice would begin to tremble and the tears to
+come into his eyes, until he had to lay the book aside. Likewise he was
+fond of music, and could accompany himself on the piano as he sang the
+love songs of his friend A-- or gipsy songs or themes from operas;
+but he had no love for serious music, and would frankly flout received
+opinion by declaring that, whereas Beethoven’s sonatas wearied him and
+sent him to sleep, his ideal of beauty was “Do not wake me, youth”
+ as Semenoff sang it, or “Not one” as the gipsy Taninsha rendered that
+ditty. His nature was essentially one of those which follow public
+opinion concerning what is good, and consider only that good which the
+public declares to be so. [It may be noted that the author has said
+earlier in the chapter that his father possessed “much originality.”]
+God only knows whether he had any moral convictions. His life was so
+full of amusement that probably he never had time to form any, and was
+too successful ever to feel the lack of them.
+
+As he grew to old age he looked at things always from a fixed point
+of view, and cultivated fixed rules--but only so long as that point or
+those rules coincided with expediency. The mode of life which offered
+some passing degree of interest--that, in his opinion, was the right
+one and the only one that men ought to affect. He had great fluency of
+argument; and this, I think, increased the adaptability of his morals
+and enabled him to speak of one and the same act, now as good, and now,
+with abuse, as abominable.
+
+
+
+
+XI -- IN THE DRAWING-ROOM AND THE STUDY
+
+Twilight had set in when we reached home. Mamma sat down to the piano,
+and we to a table, there to paint and draw in colours and pencil. Though
+I had only one cake of colour, and it was blue, I determined to draw a
+picture of the hunt. In exceedingly vivid fashion I painted a blue boy
+on a blue horse, and--but here I stopped, for I was uncertain whether
+it was possible also to paint a blue HARE. I ran to the study to consult
+Papa, and as he was busy reading he never lifted his eyes from his book
+when I asked, “Can there be blue hares?” but at once replied, “There
+can, my boy, there can.” Returning to the table I painted in my blue
+hare, but subsequently thought it better to change it into a blue bush.
+Yet the blue bush did not wholly please me, so I changed it into a tree,
+and then into a rick, until, the whole paper having now become one blur
+of blue, I tore it angrily in pieces, and went off to meditate in the
+large arm-chair.
+
+Mamma was playing Field’s second concerto. Field, it may be said, had
+been her master. As I dozed, the music brought up before my imagination
+a kind of luminosity, with transparent dream-shapes. Next she played the
+“Sonate Pathetique” of Beethoven, and I at once felt heavy, depressed,
+and apprehensive. Mamma often played those two pieces, and therefore I
+well recollect the feelings they awakened in me. Those feelings were a
+reminiscence--of what? Somehow I seemed to remember something which had
+never been.
+
+Opposite to me lay the study door, and presently I saw Jakoff enter it,
+accompanied by several long-bearded men in kaftans. Then the door shut
+again.
+
+“Now they are going to begin some business or other,” I thought. I
+believed the affairs transacted in that study to be the most important
+ones on earth. This opinion was confirmed by the fact that people only
+approached the door of that room on tiptoe and speaking in whispers.
+Presently Papa’s resonant voice sounded within, and I also scented
+cigar smoke--always a very attractive thing to me. Next, as I dozed, I
+suddenly heard a creaking of boots that I knew, and, sure enough,
+saw Karl Ivanitch go on tiptoe, and with a depressed, but resolute,
+expression on his face and a written document in his hand, to the study
+door and knock softly. It opened, and then shut again behind him.
+
+“I hope nothing is going to happen,” I mused. “Karl Ivanitch is
+offended, and might be capable of anything--” and again I dozed off.
+
+Nevertheless something DID happen. An hour later I was disturbed by
+the same creaking of boots, and saw Karl come out, and disappear up
+the stairs, wiping away a few tears from his cheeks with his pocket
+handkerchief as he went and muttering something between his teeth. Papa
+came out behind him and turned aside into the drawing-room.
+
+“Do you know what I have just decided to do?” he asked gaily as he laid
+a hand upon Mamma’s shoulder.
+
+“What, my love?”
+
+“To take Karl Ivanitch with the children. There will be room enough for
+him in the carriage. They are used to him, and he seems greatly attached
+to them. Seven hundred roubles a year cannot make much difference to us,
+and the poor devil is not at all a bad sort of a fellow.” I could not
+understand why Papa should speak of him so disrespectfully.
+
+“I am delighted,” said Mamma, “and as much for the children’s sake as
+his own. He is a worthy old man.”
+
+“I wish you could have seen how moved he was when I told him that he
+might look upon the 500 roubles as a present! But the most amusing thing
+of all is this bill which he has just handed me. It is worth
+seeing,” and with a smile Papa gave Mamma a paper inscribed in Karl’s
+handwriting. “Is it not capital?” he concluded.
+
+The contents of the paper were as follows: [The joke of this bill
+consists chiefly in its being written in very bad Russian, with
+continual mistakes as to plural and singular, prepositions and so
+forth.]
+
+“Two book for the children--70 copeck. Coloured paper, gold frames, and
+a pop-guns, blockheads [This word has a double meaning in Russian.] for
+cutting out several box for presents--6 roubles, 55 copecks. Several
+book and a bows, presents for the childrens--8 roubles, 16 copecks. A
+gold watches promised to me by Peter Alexandrovitch out of Moscow, in
+the years 18-- for 140 roubles. Consequently Karl Mayer have to receive
+139 rouble, 79 copecks, beside his wage.”
+
+If people were to judge only by this bill (in which Karl Ivanitch
+demanded repayment of all the money he had spent on presents, as well as
+the value of a present promised to himself), they would take him to have
+been a callous, avaricious egotist yet they would be wrong.
+
+It appears that he had entered the study with the paper in his hand and
+a set speech in his head, for the purpose of declaiming eloquently to
+Papa on the subject of the wrongs which he believed himself to have
+suffered in our house, but that, as soon as ever he began to speak in
+the vibratory voice and with the expressive intonations which he used in
+dictating to us, his eloquence wrought upon himself more than upon Papa;
+with the result that, when he came to the point where he had to say,
+“however sad it will be for me to part with the children,” he lost his
+self-command utterly, his articulation became choked, and he was obliged
+to draw his coloured pocket-handkerchief from his pocket.
+
+“Yes, Peter Alexandrovitch,” he said, weeping (this formed no part of
+the prepared speech), “I am grown so used to the children that I cannot
+think what I should do without them. I would rather serve you without
+salary than not at all,” and with one hand he wiped his eyes, while with
+the other he presented the bill.
+
+Although I am convinced that at that moment Karl Ivanitch was speaking
+with absolute sincerity (for I know how good his heart was), I confess
+that never to this day have I been able quite to reconcile his words
+with the bill.
+
+“Well, if the idea of leaving us grieves you, you may be sure that the
+idea of dismissing you grieves me equally,” said Papa, tapping him on
+the shoulder. Then, after a pause, he added, “But I have changed my
+mind, and you shall not leave us.”
+
+Just before supper Grisha entered the room. Ever since he had entered
+the house that day he had never ceased to sigh and weep--a portent,
+according to those who believed in his prophetic powers, that misfortune
+was impending for the household. He had now come to take leave of us,
+for to-morrow (so he said) he must be moving on. I nudged Woloda, and we
+moved towards the door.
+
+“What is the matter?” he said.
+
+“This--that if we want to see Grisha’s chains we must go upstairs at
+once to the men-servants’ rooms. Grisha is to sleep in the second one,
+so we can sit in the store-room and see everything.”
+
+“All right. Wait here, and I’ll tell the girls.”
+
+The girls came at once, and we ascended the stairs, though the question
+as to which of us should first enter the store-room gave us some little
+trouble. Then we cowered down and waited.
+
+
+
+
+XII -- GRISHA
+
+WE all felt a little uneasy in the thick darkness, so we pressed close
+to one another and said nothing. Before long Grisha arrived with his
+soft tread, carrying in one hand his staff and in the other a tallow
+candle set in a brass candlestick. We scarcely ventured to breathe.
+
+“Our Lord Jesus Christ! Holy Mother of God! Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost!” he kept repeating, with the different intonations and
+abbreviations which gradually become peculiar to persons who are
+accustomed to pronounce the words with great frequency.
+
+Still praying, he placed his staff in a corner and looked at the bed;
+after which he began to undress. Unfastening his old black girdle, he
+slowly divested himself of his torn nankeen kaftan, and deposited
+it carefully on the back of a chair. His face had now lost its usual
+disquietude and idiocy. On the contrary, it had in it something restful,
+thoughtful, and even grand, while all his movements were deliberate and
+intelligent.
+
+Next, he lay down quietly in his shirt on the bed, made the sign of the
+cross towards every side of him, and adjusted his chains beneath his
+shirt--an operation which, as we could see from his face, occasioned him
+considerable pain. Then he sat up again, looked gravely at his ragged
+shirt, and rising and taking the candle, lifted the latter towards the
+shrine where the images of the saints stood. That done, he made the sign
+of the cross again, and turned the candle upside down, when it went out
+with a hissing noise.
+
+Through the window (which overlooked the wood) the moon (nearly full)
+was shining in such a way that one side of the tall white figure of the
+idiot stood out in the pale, silvery moonlight, while the other side was
+lost in the dark shadow which covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. In
+the courtyard the watchman was tapping at intervals upon his brass alarm
+plate. For a while Grisha stood silently before the images and, with
+his large hands pressed to his breast and his head bent forward, gave
+occasional sighs. Then with difficulty he knelt down and began to pray.
+
+At first he repeated some well-known prayers, and only accented a word
+here and there. Next, he repeated thee same prayers, but louder and
+with increased accentuation. Lastly he repeated them again and with even
+greater emphasis, as well as with an evident effort to pronounce them in
+the old Slavonic Church dialect. Though disconnected, his prayers were
+very touching. He prayed for all his benefactors (so he called every one
+who had received him hospitably), with, among them, Mamma and ourselves.
+Next he prayed for himself, and besought God to forgive him his sins,
+at the same time repeating, “God forgive also my enemies!” Then, moaning
+with the effort, he rose from his knees--only to fall to the floor again
+and repeat his phrases afresh. At last he regained his feet, despite
+the weight of the chains, which rattled loudly whenever they struck the
+floor.
+
+Woloda pinched me rudely in the leg, but I took no notice of that
+(except that I involuntarily touched the place with my hand), as I
+observed with a feeling of childish astonishment, pity, and respect
+the words and gestures of Grisha. Instead of the laughter and amusement
+which I had expected on entering the store-room, I felt my heart beating
+and overcome.
+
+Grisha continued for some time in this state of religious ecstasy as he
+improvised prayers and repeated again and yet again, “Lord, have mercy
+upon me!” Each time that he said, “Pardon me, Lord, and teach me to
+do what Thou wouldst have done,” he pronounced the words with added
+earnestness and emphasis, as though he expected an immediate answer to
+his petition, and then fell to sobbing and moaning once more. Finally,
+he went down on his knees again, folded his arms upon his breast, and
+remained silent. I ventured to put my head round the door (holding my
+breath as I did so), but Grisha still made no movement except for the
+heavy sighs which heaved his breast. In the moonlight I could see a tear
+glistening on the white patch of his blind eye.
+
+“Yes, Thy will be done!” he exclaimed suddenly, with an expression which
+I cannot describe, as, prostrating himself with his forehead on the
+floor, he fell to sobbing like a child.
+
+Much sand has run out since then, many recollections of the past have
+faded from my memory or become blurred in indistinct visions, and poor
+Grisha himself has long since reached the end of his pilgrimage; but the
+impression which he produced upon me, and the feelings which he aroused
+in my breast, will never leave my mind. O truly Christian Grisha, your
+faith was so strong that you could feel the actual presence of God; your
+love so great that the words fell of themselves from your lips. You had
+no reason to prove them, for you did so with your earnest praises of His
+majesty as you fell to the ground speechless and in tears!
+
+Nevertheless the sense of awe with which I had listened to Grisha could
+not last for ever. I had now satisfied my curiosity, and, being cramped
+with sitting in one position so long, desired to join in the tittering
+and fun which I could hear going on in the dark store-room behind me.
+Some one took my hand and whispered, “Whose hand is this?” Despite the
+darkness, I knew by the touch and the low voice in my ear that it was
+Katenka. I took her by the arm, but she withdrew it, and, in doing so,
+pushed a cane chair which was standing near. Grisha lifted his head
+looked quietly about him, and, muttering a prayer, rose and made the
+sign of the cross towards each of the four corners of the room.
+
+
+
+
+XIII -- NATALIA SAVISHNA
+
+In days gone by there used to run about the seignorial courtyard of the
+country-house at Chabarovska a girl called Natashka. She always wore a
+cotton dress, went barefooted, and was rosy, plump, and gay. It was at
+the request and entreaties of her father, the clarionet player Savi,
+that my grandfather had “taken her upstairs”--that is to say, made
+her one of his wife’s female servants. As chamber-maid, Natashka so
+distinguished herself by her zeal and amiable temper that when Mamma
+arrived as a baby and required a nurse Natashka was honoured with the
+charge of her. In this new office the girl earned still further praises
+and rewards for her activity, trustworthiness, and devotion to her young
+mistress. Soon, however, the powdered head and buckled shoes of the
+young and active footman Foka (who had frequent opportunities of
+courting her, since they were in the same service) captivated her
+unsophisticated, but loving, heart. At last she ventured to go and ask
+my grandfather if she might marry Foka, but her master took the request
+in bad part, flew into a passion, and punished poor Natashka by exiling
+her to a farm which he owned in a remote quarter of the Steppes. At
+length, when she had been gone six months and nobody could be found to
+replace her, she was recalled to her former duties. Returned, and with
+her dress in rags, she fell at Grandpapa’s feet, and besought him to
+restore her his favour and kindness, and to forget the folly of which
+she had been guilty--folly which, she assured him, should never recur
+again. And she kept her word.
+
+From that time forth she called herself, not Natashka, but Natalia
+Savishna, and took to wearing a cap. All the love in her heart was now
+bestowed upon her young charge. When Mamma had a governess appointed
+for her education, Natalia was awarded the keys as housekeeper, and
+henceforth had the linen and provisions under her care. These new duties
+she fulfilled with equal fidelity and zeal. She lived only for her
+master’s advantage. Everything in which she could detect fraud,
+extravagance, or waste she endeavoured to remedy to the best of her
+power. When Mamma married and wished in some way to reward Natalia
+Savishna for her twenty years of care and labour, she sent for her and,
+voicing in the tenderest terms her attachment and love, presented
+her with a stamped charter of her (Natalia’s) freedom, [It will be
+remembered that this was in the days of serfdom] telling her at the same
+time that, whether she continued to serve in the household or not, she
+should always receive an annual pension of 300 roubles. Natalia listened
+in silence to this. Then, taking the document in her hands and regarding
+it with a frown, she muttered something between her teeth, and darted
+from the room, slamming the door behind her. Not understanding the
+reason for such strange conduct, Mamma followed her presently to her
+room, and found her sitting with streaming eyes on her trunk, crushing
+her pocket-handkerchief between her fingers, and looking mournfully
+at the remains of the document, which was lying torn to pieces on the
+floor.
+
+“What is the matter, dear Natalia Savishna?” said Mamma, taking her
+hand.
+
+“Nothing, ma’am,” she replied; “only--only I must have displeased you
+somehow, since you wish to dismiss me from the house. Well, I will go.”
+
+She withdrew her hand and, with difficulty restraining her tears, rose
+to leave the room, but Mamma stopped her, and they wept a while in one
+another’s arms.
+
+Ever since I can remember anything I can remember Natalia Savishna and
+her love and tenderness; yet only now have I learnt to appreciate them
+at their full value. In early days it never occurred to me to think what
+a rare and wonderful being this old domestic was. Not only did she never
+talk, but she seemed never even to think, of herself. Her whole life
+was compounded of love and self-sacrifice. Yet so used was I to her
+affection and singleness of heart that I could not picture things
+otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, “Is she
+also happy? Is she also contented?” Often on some pretext or another I
+would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I
+would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever
+mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room,
+or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I
+talked--how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful
+woman, to buy a chestnut horse, to, build myself a house of glass, to
+invite Karl Ivanitch’s relatives to come and visit me from Saxony, and
+so forth; to all of which she would only reply, “Yes, my love, yes.”
+ Then, on my rising, and preparing to go, she would open a blue trunk
+which had pasted on the inside of its lid a coloured picture of a hussar
+which had once adorned a pomade bottle and a sketch made by Woloda, and
+take from it a fumigation pastille, which she would light and shake for
+my benefit, saying:
+
+“These, dear, are the pastilles which your grandfather (now in Heaven)
+brought back from Otchakov after fighting against the Turks.” Then she
+would add with a sigh: “But this is nearly the last one.”
+
+The trunks which filled her room seemed to contain almost everything in
+the world. Whenever anything was wanted, people said, “Oh, go and ask
+Natalia Savishna for it,” and, sure enough, it was seldom that she did
+not produce the object required and say, “See what comes of taking care
+of everything!” Her trunks contained thousands of things which nobody in
+the house but herself would have thought of preserving.
+
+Once I lost my temper with her. This was how it happened.
+
+One day after luncheon I poured myself out a glass of kvass, and then
+dropped the decanter, and so stained the tablecloth.
+
+“Go and call Natalia, that she may come and see what her darling has
+done,” said Mamma.
+
+Natalia arrived, and shook her head at me when she saw the damage I had
+done; but Mamma whispered something in her car, threw a look at myself,
+and then left the room.
+
+I was just skipping away, in the sprightliest mood possible, when
+Natalia darted out upon me from behind the door with the tablecloth in
+her hand, and, catching hold of me, rubbed my face hard with the stained
+part of it, repeating, “Don’t thou go and spoil tablecloths any more!”
+
+I struggled hard, and roared with temper.
+
+“What?” I said to myself as I fled to the drawing-room in a mist of
+tears, “To think that Natalia Savishna-just plain Natalia-should say
+‘THOU’ to me and rub my face with a wet tablecloth as though I were a
+mere servant-boy! It is abominable!”
+
+Seeing my fury, Natalia departed, while I continued to strut about and
+plan how to punish the bold woman for her offence. Yet not more than a
+few moments had passed when Natalia returned and, stealing to my side,
+began to comfort me,
+
+“Hush, then, my love. Do not cry. Forgive me my rudeness. It was wrong
+of me. You WILL pardon me, my darling, will you not? There, there,
+that’s a dear,” and she took from her handkerchief a cornet of pink
+paper containing two little cakes and a grape, and offered it me with
+a trembling hand. I could not look the kind old woman in the face, but,
+turning aside, took the paper, while my tears flowed the faster--though
+from love and shame now, not from anger.
+
+
+
+
+XIV -- THE PARTING
+
+ON the day after the events described, the carriage and the luggage-cart
+drew up to the door at noon. Nicola, dressed for the journey, with his
+breeches tucked into his boots and an old overcoat belted tightly about
+him with a girdle, got into the cart and arranged cloaks and cushions on
+the seats. When he thought that they were piled high enough he sat down
+on them, but finding them still unsatisfactory, jumped up and arranged
+them once more.
+
+“Nicola Dimitvitch, would you be so good as to take master’s
+dressing-case with you?” said Papa’s valet, suddenly standing up in the
+carriage, “It won’t take up much room.”
+
+“You should have told me before, Michael Ivanitch,” answered Nicola
+snappishly as he hurled a bundle with all his might to the floor of the
+cart. “Good gracious! Why, when my head is going round like a whirlpool,
+there you come along with your dressing-case!” and he lifted his cap to
+wipe away the drops of perspiration from his sunburnt brow.
+
+The courtyard was full of bareheaded peasants in kaftans or simple
+shirts, women clad in the national dress and wearing striped
+handkerchiefs, and barefooted little ones--the latter holding their
+mothers’ hands or crowding round the entrance-steps. All were chattering
+among themselves as they stared at the carriage. One of the postillions,
+an old man dressed in a winter cap and cloak, took hold of the pole of
+the carriage and tried it carefully, while the other postillion (a
+young man in a white blouse with pink gussets on the sleeves and a black
+lamb’s-wool cap which he kept cocking first on one side and then on the
+other as he arranged his flaxen hair) laid his overcoat upon the box,
+slung the reins over it, and cracked his thonged whip as he looked now
+at his boots and now at the other drivers where they stood greasing the
+wheels of the cart--one driver lifting up each wheel in turn and the
+other driver applying the grease. Tired post-horses of various hues
+stood lashing away flies with their tails near the gate--some stamping
+their great hairy legs, blinking their eyes, and dozing, some leaning
+wearily against their neighbours, and others cropping the leaves and
+stalks of dark-green fern which grew near the entrance-steps. Some of
+the dogs were lying panting in the sun, while others were slinking under
+the vehicles to lick the grease from the wheels. The air was filled with
+a sort of dusty mist, and the horizon was lilac-grey in colour, though
+no clouds were to be seen, A strong wind from the south was raising
+volumes of dust from the roads and fields, shaking the poplars and
+birch-trees in the garden, and whirling their yellow leaves away. I
+myself was sitting at a window and waiting impatiently for these various
+preparations to come to an end.
+
+As we sat together by the drawing-room table, to pass the last few
+moments en famille, it never occurred to me that a sad moment was
+impending. On the contrary, the most trivial thoughts were filling my
+brain. Which driver was going to drive the carriage and which the cart?
+Which of us would sit with Papa, and which with Karl Ivanitch? Why must
+I be kept forever muffled up in a scarf and padded boots?
+
+“Am I so delicate? Am I likely to be frozen?” I thought to myself.
+“I wish it would all come to an end, and we could take our seats and
+start.”
+
+“To whom shall I give the list of the children’s linen?” asked Natalia
+Savishna of Mamma as she entered the room with a paper in her hand and
+her eyes red with weeping.
+
+“Give it to Nicola, and then return to say good-bye to them,” replied
+Mamma. The old woman seemed about to say something more, but suddenly
+stopped short, covered her face with her handkerchief, and left the
+room. Something seemed to prick at my heart when I saw that gesture of
+hers, but impatience to be off soon drowned all other feeling, and
+I continued to listen indifferently to Papa and Mamma as they talked
+together. They were discussing subjects which evidently interested
+neither of them. What must be bought for the house? What would Princess
+Sophia or Madame Julie say? Would the roads be good?--and so forth.
+
+Foka entered, and in the same tone and with the same air as though he
+were announcing luncheon said, “The carriages are ready.” I saw Mamma
+tremble and turn pale at the announcement, just as though it were
+something unexpected.
+
+Next, Foka was ordered to shut all the doors of the room. This amused
+me highly. As though we needed to be concealed from some one! When
+every one else was seated, Foka took the last remaining chair. Scarcely,
+however, had he done so when the door creaked and every one looked that
+way. Natalia Savishna entered hastily, and, without raising her eyes,
+sat own on the same chair as Foka. I can see them before me now-Foka’s
+bald head and wrinkled, set face, and, beside him, a bent, kind figure
+in a cap from beneath which a few grey hairs were straggling. The pair
+settled themselves together on the chair, but neither of them looked
+comfortable.
+
+I continued preoccupied and impatient. In fact, the ten minutes during
+which we sat there with closed doors seemed to me an hour. At last every
+one rose, made the sign of the cross, and began to say good-bye. Papa
+embraced Mamma, and kissed her again and again.
+
+“But enough,” he said presently. “We are not parting for ever.”
+
+“No, but it is-so-so sad!” replied Mamma, her voice trembling with
+emotion.
+
+When I heard that faltering voice, and saw those quivering lips and
+tear-filled eyes, I forgot everything else in the world. I felt so ill
+and miserable that I would gladly have run away rather than bid
+her farewell. I felt, too, that when she was embracing Papa she was
+embracing us all. She clasped Woloda to her several times, and made the
+sign of the cross over him; after which I approached her, thinking that
+it was my turn. Nevertheless she took him again and again to her heart,
+and blessed him. Finally I caught hold of her, and, clinging to her,
+wept--wept, thinking of nothing in the world but my grief.
+
+As we passed out to take our seats, other servants pressed round us in
+the hall to say good-bye. Yet their requests to shake hands with
+us, their resounding kisses on our shoulders, [The fashion in which
+inferiors salute their superiors in Russia.] and the odour of their
+greasy heads only excited in me a feeling akin to impatience with these
+tiresome people. The same feeling made me bestow nothing more than a
+very cross kiss upon Natalia’s cap when she approached to take leave of
+me. It is strange that I should still retain a perfect recollection of
+these servants’ faces, and be able to draw them with the most minute
+accuracy in my mind, while Mamma’s face and attitude escape me entirely.
+It may be that it is because at that moment I had not the heart to look
+at her closely. I felt that if I did so our mutual grief would burst
+forth too unrestrainedly.
+
+I was the first to jump into the carriage and to take one of the hinder
+seats. The high back of the carriage prevented me from actually seeing
+her, yet I knew by instinct that Mamma was still there.
+
+“Shall I look at her again or not?” I said to myself. “Well, just for
+the last time,” and I peeped out towards the entrance-steps. Exactly at
+that moment Mamma moved by the same impulse, came to the opposite side
+of the carriage, and called me by name. Hearing her voice behind me. I
+turned round, but so hastily that our heads knocked together. She gave a
+sad smile, and kissed me convulsively for the last time.
+
+When we had driven away a few paces I determined to look at her once
+more. The wind was lifting the blue handkerchief from her head as, bent
+forward and her face buried in her hands, she moved slowly up the steps.
+Foka was supporting her. Papa said nothing as he sat beside me. I felt
+breathless with tears--felt a sensation in my throat as though I were
+going to choke, just as we came out on to the open road I saw a white
+handkerchief waving from the terrace. I waved mine in return, and the
+action of so doing calmed me a little. I still went on crying, but the
+thought that my tears were a proof of my affection helped to soothe and
+comfort me.
+
+After a little while I began to recover, and to look with interest at
+objects which we passed and at the hind-quarters of the led horse which
+was trotting on my side. I watched how it would swish its tail, how it
+would lift one hoof after the other, how the driver’s thong would fall
+upon its back, and how all its legs would then seem to jump together and
+the back-band, with the rings on it, to jump too--the whole covered with
+the horse’s foam. Then I would look at the rolling stretches of ripe
+corn, at the dark ploughed fields where ploughs and peasants and horses
+with foals were working, at their footprints, and at the box of the
+carriage to see who was driving us; until, though my face was still wet
+with tears, my thoughts had strayed far from her with whom I had just
+parted--parted, perhaps, for ever. Yet ever and again something would
+recall her to my memory. I remembered too how, the evening before, I
+had found a mushroom under the birch-trees, how Lubotshka had quarrelled
+with Katenka as to whose it should be, and how they had both of them
+wept when taking leave of us. I felt sorry to be parted from them, and
+from Natalia Savishna, and from the birch-tree avenue, and from Foka.
+Yes, even the horrid Mimi I longed for. I longed for everything at home.
+And poor Mamma!--The tears rushed to my eyes again. Yet even this mood
+passed away before long.
+
+
+
+
+XV -- CHILDHOOD
+
+HAPPY, happy, never-returning time of childhood! How can we help loving
+and dwelling upon its recollections? They cheer and elevate the soul,
+and become to one a source of higher joys.
+
+Sometimes, when dreaming of bygone days, I fancy that, tired out with
+running about, I have sat down, as of old, in my high arm-chair by the
+tea-table. It is late, and I have long since drunk my cup of milk. My
+eyes are heavy with sleep as I sit there and listen. How could I not
+listen, seeing that Mamma is speaking to somebody, and that the sound
+of her voice is so melodious and kind? How much its echoes recall to
+my heart! With my eyes veiled with drowsiness I gaze at her wistfully.
+Suddenly she seems to grow smaller and smaller, and her face vanishes
+to a point; yet I can still see it--can still see her as she looks at me
+and smiles. Somehow it pleases me to see her grown so small. I blink and
+blink, yet she looks no larger than a boy reflected in the pupil of an
+eye. Then I rouse myself, and the picture fades. Once more I half-close
+my eyes, and cast about to try and recall the dream, but it has gone.
+
+I rise to my feet, only to fall back comfortably into the armchair.
+
+“There! You are failing asleep again, little Nicolas,” says Mamma. “You
+had better go to by-by.”
+
+“No, I won’t go to sleep, Mamma,” I reply, though almost inaudibly, for
+pleasant dreams are filling all my soul. The sound sleep of childhood is
+weighing my eyelids down, and for a few moments I sink into slumber and
+oblivion until awakened by some one. I feel in my sleep as though a
+soft hand were caressing me. I know it by the touch, and, though still
+dreaming, I seize hold of it and press it to my lips. Every one else has
+gone to bed, and only one candle remains burning in the drawing-room.
+Mamma has said that she herself will wake me. She sits down on the arm
+of the chair in which I am asleep, with her soft hand stroking my hair,
+and I hear her beloved, well-known voice say in my ear:
+
+“Get up, my darling. It is time to go by-by.”
+
+No envious gaze sees her now. She is not afraid to shed upon me the
+whole of her tenderness and love. I do not wake up, yet I kiss and kiss
+her hand.
+
+“Get up, then, my angel.”
+
+She passes her other arm round my neck, and her fingers tickle me as
+they move across it. The room is quiet and in half-darkness, but the
+tickling has touched my nerves and I begin to awake. Mamma is sitting
+near me--that I can tell--and touching me; I can hear her voice and
+feel her presence. This at last rouses me to spring up, to throw my arms
+around her neck, to hide my head in her bosom, and to say with a sigh:
+
+“Ah, dear, darling Mamma, how much I love you!”
+
+She smiles her sad, enchanting smile, takes my head between her two
+hands, kisses me on the forehead, and lifts me on to her lap.
+
+“Do you love me so much, then?” she says. Then, after a few moments’
+silence, she continues: “And you must love me always, and never forget
+me. If your Mamma should no longer be here, will you promise never to
+forget her--never, Nicolinka? and she kisses me more fondly than ever.
+
+“Oh, but you must not speak so, darling Mamma, my own darling Mamma!”
+ I exclaim as I clasp her knees, and tears of joy and love fall from my
+eyes.
+
+How, after scenes like this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the
+ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, “God bless Papa and Mamma!” and
+repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt
+to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a single
+emotion!
+
+After saying my prayers I would wrap myself up in the bedclothes. My
+heart would feel light, peaceful, and happy, and one dream would follow
+another. Dreams of what? They were all of them vague, but all of them
+full of pure love and of a sort of expectation of happiness. I remember,
+too, that I used to think about Karl Ivanitch and his sad lot. He was
+the only unhappy being whom I knew, and so sorry would I feel for him,
+and so much did I love him, that tears would fall from my eyes as I
+thought, “May God give him happiness, and enable me to help him and to
+lessen his sorrow. I could make any sacrifice for him!” Usually, also,
+there would be some favourite toy--a china dog or hare--stuck into the
+bed-corner behind the pillow, and it would please me to think how warm
+and comfortable and well cared-for it was there. Also, I would pray God
+to make every one happy, so that every one might be contented, and also
+to send fine weather to-morrow for our walk. Then I would turn myself
+over on to the other side, and thoughts and dreams would become jumbled
+and entangled together until at last I slept soundly and peacefully,
+though with a face wet with tears.
+
+Do in after life the freshness and light-heartedness, the craving for
+love and for strength of faith, ever return which we experience in our
+childhood’s years? What better time is there in our lives than when
+the two best of virtues--innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for
+affection--are our sole objects of pursuit?
+
+Where now are our ardent prayers? Where now are our best gifts--the pure
+tears of emotion which a guardian angel dries with a smile as he sheds
+upon us lovely dreams of ineffable childish joy? Can it be that life has
+left such heavy traces upon one’s heart that those tears and ecstasies
+are for ever vanished? Can it be that there remains to us only the
+recollection of them?
+
+
+
+
+XVI -- VERSE-MAKING
+
+RATHER less than a month after our arrival in Moscow I was sitting
+upstairs in my Grandmamma’s house and doing some writing at a large
+table. Opposite to me sat the drawing master, who was giving a few
+finishing touches to the head of a turbaned Turk, executed in black
+pencil. Woloda, with out-stretched neck, was standing behind the drawing
+master and looking over his shoulder. The head was Woloda’s first
+production in pencil and to-day--Grandmamma’s name-day--the masterpiece
+was to be presented to her.
+
+“Aren’t you going to put a little more shadow there?” said Woloda to
+the master as he raised himself on tiptoe and pointed to the Turk’s
+neck.
+
+“No, it is not necessary,” the master replied as he put pencil and
+drawing-pen into a japanned folding box. “It is just right now, and
+you need not do anything more to it. As for you, Nicolinka,” he added,
+rising and glancing askew at the Turk, “won’t you tell us your great
+secret at last? What are you going to give your Grandmamma? I think
+another head would be your best gift. But good-bye, gentlemen,” and
+taking his hat and cardboard he departed.
+
+I too had thought that another head than the one at which I had been
+working would be a better gift; so, when we were told that Grandmamma’s
+name-day was soon to come round and that we must each of us have a
+present ready for her, I had taken it into my head to write some
+verses in honour of the occasion, and had forthwith composed two rhymed
+couplets, hoping that the rest would soon materialise. I really do not
+know how the idea--one so peculiar for a child--came to occur to me, but
+I know that I liked it vastly, and answered all questions on the subject
+of my gift by declaring that I should soon have something ready for
+Grandmamma, but was not going to say what it was.
+
+Contrary to my expectation, I found that, after the first two couplets
+executed in the initial heat of enthusiasm, even my most strenuous
+efforts refused to produce another one. I began to read different poems
+in our books, but neither Dimitrieff nor Derzhavin could help me. On
+the contrary, they only confirmed my sense of incompetence. Knowing,
+however, that Karl Ivanitch was fond of writing verses, I stole softly
+upstairs to burrow among his papers, and found, among a number of German
+verses, some in the Russian language which seemed to have come from his
+own pen.
+
+     To L
+
+     Remember near
+     Remember far,
+     Remember me.
+     To-day be faithful, and for ever--
+     Aye, still beyond the grave--remember
+     That I have well loved thee.
+
+     “KARL MAYER.”
+
+These verses (which were written in a fine, round hand on thin
+letter-paper) pleased me with the touching sentiment with which they
+seemed to be inspired. I learnt them by heart, and decided to take them
+as a model. The thing was much easier now. By the time the name-day had
+arrived I had completed a twelve-couplet congratulatory ode, and sat
+down to the table in our school-room to copy them out on vellum.
+
+Two sheets were soon spoiled--not because I found it necessary to alter
+anything (the verses seemed to me perfect), but because, after the third
+line, the tail-end of each successive one would go curving upward and
+making it plain to all the world that the whole thing had been written
+with a want of adherence to the horizontal--a thing which I could not
+bear to see.
+
+The third sheet also came out crooked, but I determined to make it do.
+In my verses I congratulated Grandmamma, wished her many happy returns,
+and concluded thus:
+
+     “Endeavouring you to please and cheer,
+      We love you like our Mother dear.”
+
+This seemed to me not bad, yet it offended my ear somehow.
+
+“Lo-ve you li-ike our Mo-ther dear,” I repeated to myself. “What other
+rhyme could I use instead of ‘dear’? Fear? Steer? Well, it must go at
+that. At least the verses are better than Karl Ivanitch’s.”
+
+Accordingly I added the last verse to the rest. Then I went into
+our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and
+gesticulation. The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I
+did not stop to consider that. Yet the last one displeased me more than
+ever. As I sat on my bed I thought:
+
+“Why on earth did I write ‘like our Mother dear’? She is not here, and
+therefore she need never have been mentioned. True, I love and respect
+Grandmamma, but she is not quite the same as--Why DID I write that?
+What did I go and tell a lie for? They may be verses only, yet I needn’t
+quite have done that.”
+
+At that moment the tailor arrived with some new clothes for us.
+
+“Well, so be it!” I said in much vexation as I crammed the verses
+hastily under my pillow and ran down to adorn myself in the new Moscow
+garments.
+
+They fitted marvellously-both the brown jacket with yellow buttons (a
+garment made skin-tight and not “to allow room for growth,” as in
+the country) and the black trousers (also close-fitting so that they
+displayed the figure and lay smoothly over the boots).
+
+“At last I have real trousers on!” I thought as I looked at my legs with
+the utmost satisfaction. I concealed from every one the fact that the
+new clothes were horribly tight and uncomfortable, but, on the contrary,
+said that, if there were a fault, it was that they were not tight
+enough. For a long while I stood before the looking-glass as I combed
+my elaborately pomaded head, but, try as I would, I could not reduce the
+topmost hairs on the crown to order. As soon as ever I left off combing
+them, they sprang up again and radiated in different directions, thus
+giving my face a ridiculous expression.
+
+Karl Ivanitch was dressing in another room, and I heard some one
+bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door leading
+downstairs I heard a maid-servant’s voice, and went to see what she
+wanted. In her hand she held a well-starched shirt which she said she
+had been sitting up all night to get ready. I took it, and asked if
+Grandmamma was up yet.
+
+“Oh yes, she has had her coffee, and the priest has come. My word, but
+you look a fine little fellow!” added the girl with a smile at my new
+clothes.
+
+This observation made me blush, so I whirled round on one leg, snapped
+my fingers, and went skipping away, in the hope that by these manoeuvres
+I should make her sensible that even yet she had not realised quite what
+a fine fellow I was.
+
+However, when I took the shirt to Karl I found that he did not need it,
+having taken another one. Standing before a small looking-glass, he tied
+his cravat with both hands--trying, by various motions of his head, to
+see whether it fitted him comfortably or not--and then took us down to
+see Grandmamma. To this day I cannot help laughing when I remember what
+a smell of pomade the three of us left behind us on the staircase as we
+descended.
+
+Karl was carrying a box which he had made himself, Woloda, his drawing,
+and I my verses, while each of us also had a form of words ready with
+which to present his gift. Just as Karl opened the door, the priest put
+on his vestment and began to say prayers.
+
+During the ceremony Grandmamma stood leaning over the back of a chair,
+with her head bent down. Near her stood Papa. He turned and smiled at us
+as we hurriedly thrust our presents behind our backs and tried to remain
+unobserved by the door. The whole effect of a surprise, upon which we
+had been counting, was entirely lost. When at last every one had made
+the sign of the cross I became intolerably oppressed with a sudden,
+invincible, and deadly attack of shyness, so that the courage to, offer
+my present completely failed me. I hid myself behind Karl Ivanitch, who
+solemnly congratulated Grandmamma and, transferring his box from his
+right hand to his left, presented it to her. Then he withdrew a few
+steps to make way for Woloda. Grandmamma seemed highly pleased with
+the box (which was adorned with a gold border), and smiled in the most
+friendly manner in order to express her gratitude. Yet it was evident
+that, she did not know where to set the box down, and this probably
+accounts for the fact that she handed it to Papa, at the same time
+bidding him observe how beautifully it was made.
+
+His curiosity satisfied, Papa handed the box to the priest, who also
+seemed particularly delighted with it, and looked with astonishment,
+first at the article itself, and then at the artist who could make
+such wonderful things. Then Woloda presented his Turk, and received a
+similarly flattering ovation on all sides.
+
+It was my turn now, and Grandmamma turned to me with her kindest smile.
+Those who have experienced what embarrassment is know that it is a
+feeling which grows in direct proportion to delay, while decision
+decreases in similar measure. In other words the longer the condition
+lasts, the more invincible does it become, and the smaller does the
+power of decision come to be.
+
+My last remnants of nerve and energy had forsaken me while Karl and
+Woloda had been offering their presents, and my shyness now reached its
+culminating point, I felt the blood rushing from my heart to my head,
+one blush succeeding another across my face, and drops of perspiration
+beginning to stand out on my brow and nose. My ears were burning, I
+trembled from head to foot, and, though I kept changing from one foot to
+the other, I remained rooted where I stood.
+
+“Well, Nicolinka, tell us what you have brought?” said Papa. “Is it a
+box or a drawing?”
+
+There was nothing else to be done. With a trembling hand held out the
+folded, fatal paper, but my voiced failed me completely and I stood
+before Grandmamma in silence. I could not get rid of the dreadful idea
+that, instead of a display of the expected drawing, some bad verses of
+mine were about to be read aloud before every one, and that the words
+“our Mother dear” would clearly prove that I had never loved, but had
+only forgotten, her. How shall I express my sufferings when Grandmamma
+began to read my poetry aloud?--when, unable to decipher it, she stopped
+half-way and looked at Papa with a smile (which I took to be one of
+ridicule)?--when she did not pronounce it as I had meant it to be
+pronounced?--and when her weak sight not allowing her to finish it, she
+handed the paper to Papa and requested him to read it all over again
+from the beginning? I fancied that she must have done this last because
+she did not like to read such a lot of stupid, crookedly written stuff
+herself, yet wanted to point out to Papa my utter lack of feeling. I
+expected him to slap me in the face with the verses and say, “You bad
+boy! So you have forgotten your Mamma! Take that for it!” Yet nothing
+of the sort happened. On the contrary, when the whole had been read,
+Grandmamma said, “Charming!” and kissed me on the forehead. Then our
+presents, together with two cambric pocket-handkerchiefs and a snuff-box
+engraved with Mamma’s portrait, were laid on the table attached to the
+great Voltairian arm-chair in which Grandmamma always sat.
+
+“The Princess Barbara Ilinitsha!” announced one of the two footmen who
+used to stand behind Grandmamma’s carriage, but Grandmamma was looking
+thoughtfully at the portrait on the snuff-box, and returned no answer.
+
+“Shall I show her in, madam?” repeated the footman.
+
+
+
+
+XVII -- THE PRINCESS KORNAKOFF
+
+“Yes, show her in,” said Grandmamma, settling herself as far back in
+her arm-chair as possible. The Princess was a woman of about
+forty-five, small and delicate, with a shrivelled skin and disagreeable,
+greyish-green eyes, the expression of which contradicted the unnaturally
+suave look of the rest of her face. Underneath her velvet bonnet,
+adorned with an ostrich feather, was visible some reddish hair, while
+against the unhealthy colour of her skin her eyebrows and eyelashes
+looked even lighter and redder that they would other wise have done.
+Yet, for all that, her animated movements, small hands, and peculiarly
+dry features communicated something aristocratic and energetic to her
+general appearance. She talked a great deal, and, to judge from her
+eloquence, belonged to that class of persons who always speak as though
+some one were contradicting them, even though no one else may be saying
+a word. First she would raise her voice, then lower it and then take on
+a fresh access of vivacity as she looked at the persons present, but not
+participating in the conversation, with an air of endeavouring to draw
+them into it.
+
+Although the Princess kissed Grandmamma’s hand and repeatedly called her
+“my good Aunt,” I could see that Grandmamma did not care much about her,
+for she kept raising her eyebrows in a peculiar way while listening
+to the Princess’s excuses why Prince Michael had been prevented from
+calling, and congratulating Grandmamma “as he would like so-much to
+have done.” At length, however, she answered the Princess’s French with
+Russian, and with a sharp accentuation of certain words.
+
+“I am much obliged to you for your kindness,” she said. “As for Prince
+Michael’s absence, pray do not mention it. He has so much else to do.
+Besides, what pleasure could he find in coming to see an old woman like
+me?” Then, without allowing the Princess time to reply, she went on:
+“How are your children my dear?”
+
+“Well, thank God, Aunt, they grow and do their lessons and
+play--particularly my eldest one, Etienne, who is so wild that it
+is almost impossible to keep him in order. Still, he is a clever and
+promising boy. Would you believe it, cousin,” (this last to Papa, since
+Grandmamma altogether uninterested in the Princess’s children, had
+turned to us, taken my verses out from beneath the presentation box, and
+unfolded them again), “would you believe it, but one day not long ago--”
+ and leaning over towards Papa, the Princess related something or other
+with great vivacity. Then, her tale concluded, she laughed, and, with a
+questioning look at Papa, went on:
+
+“What a boy, cousin! He ought to have been whipped, but the trick was
+so spirited and amusing that I let him off.” Then the Princess looked at
+Grandmamma and laughed again.
+
+“Ah! So you WHIP your children, do you” said Grandmamma, with a
+significant lift of her eyebrows, and laying a peculiar stress on the
+word “WHIP.”
+
+“Alas, my good Aunt,” replied the Princess in a sort of tolerant tone
+and with another glance at Papa, “I know your views on the subject, but
+must beg to be allowed to differ with them. However much I have thought
+over and read and talked about the matter, I have always been forced to
+come to the conclusion that children must be ruled through FEAR. To make
+something of a child, you must make it FEAR something. Is it not so,
+cousin? And what, pray, do children fear so much as a rod?”
+
+As she spoke she seemed, to look inquiringly at Woloda and myself, and I
+confess that I did not feel altogether comfortable.
+
+“Whatever you may say,” she went on, “a boy of twelve, or even of
+fourteen, is still a child and should be whipped as such; but with
+girls, perhaps, it is another matter.”
+
+“How lucky it is that I am not her son!” I thought to myself.
+
+“Oh, very well,” said Grandmamma, folding up my verses and replacing
+them beneath the box (as though, after that exposition of views, the
+Princess was unworthy of the honour of listening to such a production).
+“Very well, my dear,” she repeated “But please tell me how, in return,
+you can look for any delicate sensibility from your children?”
+
+Evidently Grandmamma thought this argument unanswerable, for she cut the
+subject short by adding:
+
+“However, it is a point on which people must follow their own opinions.”
+
+The Princess did not choose to reply, but smiled condescendingly, and as
+though out of indulgence to the strange prejudices of a person whom she
+only PRETENDED to revere.
+
+“Oh, by the way, pray introduce me to your young people,” she went on
+presently as she threw us another gracious smile.
+
+Thereupon we rose and stood looking at the Princess, without in the
+least knowing what we ought to do to show that we were being introduced.
+
+“Kiss the Princess’s hand,” said Papa.
+
+“Well, I hope you will love your old aunt,” she said to Woloda, kissing
+his hair, “even though we are not near relatives. But I value friendship
+far more than I do degrees of relationship,” she added to Grandmamma,
+who nevertheless, remained hostile, and replied:
+
+“Eh, my dear? Is that what they think of relationships nowadays?”
+
+“Here is my man of the world,” put in Papa, indicating Woloda; “and here
+is my poet,” he added as I kissed the small, dry hand of the Princess,
+with a vivid picture in my mind of that same hand holding a rod and
+applying it vigorously.
+
+“WHICH one is the poet?” asked the Princess.
+
+“This little one,” replied Papa, smiling; “the one with the tuft of hair
+on his top-knot.”
+
+“Why need he bother about my tuft?” I thought to myself as I retired
+into a corner. “Is there nothing else for him to talk about?”
+
+I had strange ideas on manly beauty. I considered Karl Ivanitch one of
+the handsomest men in the world, and myself so ugly that I had no need
+to deceive myself on that point. Therefore any remark on the subject of
+my exterior offended me extremely. I well remember how, one day after
+luncheon (I was then six years of age), the talk fell upon my personal
+appearance, and how Mamma tried to find good features in my face, and
+said that I had clever eyes and a charming smile; how, nevertheless,
+when Papa had examined me, and proved the contrary, she was obliged to
+confess that I was ugly; and how, when the meal was over and I went
+to pay her my respects, she said as she patted my cheek; “You know,
+Nicolinka, nobody will ever love you for your face alone, so you must
+try all the more to be a good and clever boy.”
+
+Although these words of hers confirmed in me my conviction that I was
+not handsome, they also confirmed in me an ambition to be just such
+a boy as she had indicated. Yet I had my moments of despair at my
+ugliness, for I thought that no human being with such a large nose, such
+thick lips, and such small grey eyes as mine could ever hope to attain
+happiness on this earth. I used to ask God to perform a miracle by
+changing me into a beauty, and would have given all that I possessed, or
+ever hoped to possess, to have a handsome face.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII -- PRINCE IVAN IVANOVITCH
+
+When the Princess had heard my verses and overwhelmed the writer of them
+with praise, Grandmamma softened to her a little. She began to address
+her in French and to cease calling her “my dear.” Likewise she invited
+her to return that evening with her children. This invitation having
+been accepted, the Princess took her leave. After that, so many other
+callers came to congratulate Grandmamma that the courtyard was crowded
+all day long with carriages.
+
+“Good morning, my dear cousin,” was the greeting of one guest in
+particular as he entered the room and kissed Grandmamma’s hand. He was
+a man of seventy, with a stately figure clad in a military uniform and
+adorned with large epaulettes, an embroidered collar, and a white cross
+round the neck. His face, with its quiet and open expression, as well
+as the simplicity and ease of his manners, greatly pleased me, for, in
+spite of the thin half-circle of hair which was all that was now left
+to him, and the want of teeth disclosed by the set of his upper lip, his
+face was a remarkably handsome one.
+
+Thanks to his fine character, handsome exterior, remarkable valour,
+influential relatives, and, above all, good fortune, Prince, Ivan
+Ivanovitch had early made himself a career. As that career progressed,
+his ambition had met with a success which left nothing more to be sought
+for in that direction. From his earliest youth upward he had prepared
+himself to fill the exalted station in the world to which fate actually
+called him later; wherefore, although in his prosperous life (as in the
+lives of all) there had been failures, misfortunes, and cares, he had
+never lost his quietness of character, his elevated tone of thought, or
+his peculiarly moral, religious bent of mind. Consequently, though he
+had won the universal esteem of his fellows, he had done so less through
+his important position than through his perseverance and integrity.
+While not of specially distinguished intellect, the eminence of his
+station (whence he could afford to look down upon all petty questions)
+had caused him to adopt high points of view. Though in reality he was
+kind and sympathetic, in manner he appeared cold and haughty--probably
+for the reason that he had forever to be on his guard against the
+endless claims and petitions of people who wished to profit through
+his influence. Yet even then his coldness was mitigated by the polite
+condescension of a man well accustomed to move in the highest circles
+of society. Well-educated, his culture was that of a youth of the end of
+the last century. He had read everything, whether philosophy or belles
+lettres, which that age had produced in France, and loved to quote from
+Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Montaigne, and Fenelon. Likewise he
+had gleaned much history from Segur, and much of the old classics from
+French translations of them; but for mathematics, natural philosophy, or
+contemporary literature he cared nothing whatever. However, he knew how
+to be silent in conversation, as well as when to make general remarks
+on authors whom he had never read--such as Goethe, Schiller, and Byron.
+Moreover, despite his exclusively French education, he was simple in
+speech and hated originality (which he called the mark of an untutored
+nature). Wherever he lived, society was a necessity to him, and, both in
+Moscow and the country he had his reception days, on which practically
+“all the town” called upon him. An introduction from him was a passport
+to every drawing-room; few young and pretty ladies in society objected
+to offering him their rosy cheeks for a paternal salute; and people even
+in the highest positions felt flattered by invitations to his parties.
+
+The Prince had few friends left now like Grandmamma--that is to say, few
+friends who were of the same standing as himself, who had had the same
+sort of education, and who saw things from the same point of view:
+wherefore he greatly valued his intimate, long-standing friendship with
+her, and always showed her the highest respect.
+
+I hardly dared to look at the Prince, since the honour paid him on all
+sides, the huge epaulettes, the peculiar pleasure with which Grandmamma
+received him, and the fact that he alone, seemed in no way afraid of
+her, but addressed her with perfect freedom (even being so daring as to
+call her “cousin”), awakened in me a feeling of reverence for his person
+almost equal to that which I felt for Grandmamma herself.
+
+On being shown my verses, he called me to his side, and said:
+
+“Who knows, my cousin, but that he may prove to be a second Derzhavin?”
+ Nevertheless he pinched my cheek so hard that I was only prevented from
+crying by the thought that it must be meant for a caress.
+
+Gradually the other guests dispersed, and with them Papa and Woloda.
+Thus only Grandmamma, the Prince, and myself were left in the
+drawing-room.
+
+“Why has our dear Natalia Nicolaevna not come to-day” asked the Prince
+after a silence.
+
+“Ah, my friend,” replied Grandmamma, lowering her voice and laying a
+hand upon the sleeve of his uniform, “she would certainly have come if
+she had been at liberty to do what she likes. She wrote to me that Peter
+had proposed bringing her with him to town, but that she had refused,
+since their income had not been good this year, and she could see
+no real reason why the whole family need come to Moscow, seeing that
+Lubotshka was as yet very young and that the boys were living with me--a
+fact, she said, which made her feel as safe about them as though she had
+been living with them herself.”
+
+“True, it is good for the boys to be here,” went on Grandmamma, yet in
+a tone which showed clearly that she did not think it was so very good,
+“since it was more than time that they should be sent to Moscow to
+study, as well as to learn how to comport themselves in society. What
+sort of an education could they have got in the country? The eldest boy
+will soon be thirteen, and the second one eleven. As yet, my cousin,
+they are quite untaught, and do not know even how to enter a room.”
+
+“Nevertheless” said the Prince, “I cannot understand these complaints
+of ruined fortunes. He has a very handsome income, and Natalia has
+Chabarovska, where we used to act plays, and which I know as well as
+I do my own hand. It is a splendid property, and ought to bring in an
+excellent return.”
+
+“Well,” said Grandmamma with a sad expression on her face, “I do not
+mind telling you, as my most intimate friend, that all this seems to me
+a mere pretext on his part for living alone, for strolling about from
+club to club, for attending dinner-parties, and for resorting to--well,
+who knows what? She suspects nothing; you know her angelic sweetness and
+her implicit trust of him in everything. He had only to tell her that
+the children must go to Moscow and that she must be left behind in the
+country with a stupid governess for company, for her to believe him! I
+almost think that if he were to say that the children must be whipped
+just as the Princess Barbara whips hers, she would believe even that!”
+ and Grandmamma leant back in her arm-chair with an expression of
+contempt. Then, after a moment of silence, during which she took her
+handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe away a few tears which had stolen
+down her cheeks, she went, on:
+
+“Yes, my friend, I often think that he cannot value and understand
+her properly, and that, for all her goodness and love of him and her
+endeavours to conceal her grief (which, however as I know only too well,
+exists). She cannot really be happy with him. Mark my words if he does
+not--” Here Grandmamma buried her face in the handkerchief.
+
+“Ah, my dear old friend,” said the Prince reproachfully. “I think you
+are unreasonable. Why grieve and weep over imagined evils? That is
+not right. I have known him a long time, and feel sure that he is an
+attentive, kind, and excellent husband, as well as (which is the chief
+thing of all) a perfectly honourable man.”
+
+At this point, having been an involuntary auditor of a conversation
+not meant for my ears, I stole on tiptoe out of the room, in a state of
+great distress.
+
+
+
+
+XIX -- THE IWINS
+
+“Woloda, Woloda! The Iwins are just coming.” I shouted on seeing from
+the window three boys in blue overcoats, and followed by a young tutor,
+advancing along the pavement opposite our house.
+
+The Iwins were related to us, and of about the same age as ourselves. We
+had made their acquaintance soon after our arrival in Moscow. The second
+brother, Seriosha, had dark curly hair, a turned-up, strongly pronounced
+nose, very bright red lips (which, never being quite shut, showed a
+row of white teeth), beautiful dark-blue eyes, and an uncommonly bold
+expression of face. He never smiled but was either wholly serious or
+laughing a clear, merry, agreeable laugh. His striking good looks had
+captivated me from the first, and I felt an irresistible attraction
+towards him. Only to see him filled me with pleasure, and at one time my
+whole mental faculties used to be concentrated in the wish that I
+might do so. If three or four days passed without my seeing him I felt
+listless and ready to cry. Awake or asleep, I was forever dreaming of
+him. On going to bed I used to see him in my dreams, and when I had
+shut my eyes and called up a picture of him I hugged the vision as
+my choicest delight. So much store did I set upon this feeling for my
+friend that I never mentioned it to any one. Nevertheless, it must have
+annoyed him to see my admiring eyes constantly fixed upon him, or else
+he must have felt no reciprocal attraction, for he always preferred to
+play and talk with Woloda. Still, even with that I felt satisfied, and
+wished and asked for nothing better than to be ready at any time to make
+any sacrifice for him. Likewise, over and above the strange fascination
+which he exercised upon me, I always felt another sensation, namely,
+a dread of making him angry, of offending him, of displeasing him. Was
+this because his face bore such a haughty expression, or because I,
+despising my own exterior, over-rated the beautiful in others, or,
+lastly (and most probably), because it is a common sign of affection?
+At all events, I felt as much fear, of him as I did love. The first time
+that he spoke to me I was so overwhelmed with sudden happiness that I
+turned pale, then red, and could not utter a word. He had an ugly habit
+of blinking when considering anything seriously, as well as of twitching
+his nose and eyebrows. Consequently every one thought that this habit
+marred his face. Yet I thought it such a nice one that I involuntarily
+adopted it for myself, until, a few days after I had made his
+acquaintance, Grandmamma suddenly asked me whether my eyes were hurting
+me, since I was winking like an owl! Never a word of affection passed
+between us, yet he felt his power over me, and unconsciously but
+tyrannically, exercised it in all our childish intercourse. I used to
+long to tell him all that was in my heart, yet was too much afraid of
+him to be frank in any way, and, while submitting myself to his will,
+tried to appear merely careless and indifferent. Although at times his
+influence seemed irksome and intolerable, to throw it off was beyond my
+strength.
+
+I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless,
+disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found
+self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always
+longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed,
+since childhood’s days, for those days to come back to me! Many times,
+in my relations with Seriosha, this wish to resemble grown-up people
+put a rude check upon the love that was waiting to expand, and made me
+repress it. Not only was I afraid of kissing him, or of taking his hand
+and saying how glad I was to see him, but I even dreaded calling him
+“Seriosha” and always said “Sergius” as every one else did in our
+house. Any expression of affection would have seemed like evidence of
+childishness, and any one who indulged in it, a baby. Not having yet
+passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years
+circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of
+a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble
+grown-up people.
+
+I met the Iwins in the ante-room, welcomed them, and then ran to tell
+Grandmamma of their arrival with an expression as happy as though she
+were certain to be equally delighted. Then, never taking my eyes off
+Seriosha, I conducted the visitors to the drawing-room, and eagerly
+followed every movement of my favourite. When Grandmamma spoke to
+and fixed her penetrating glance upon him, I experienced that mingled
+sensation of pride and solicitude which an artist might feel when
+waiting for revered lips to pronounce a judgment upon his work.
+
+With Grandmamma’s permission, the Iwins’ young tutor, Herr Frost,
+accompanied us into the little back garden, where he seated himself
+upon a bench, arranged his legs in a tasteful attitude, rested his
+brass-knobbed cane between them, lighted a cigar, and assumed the air
+of a man well-pleased with himself. He was a German, but of a very
+different sort to our good Karl Ivanitch. In the first place, he spoke
+both Russian and French correctly, though with a hard accent Indeed,
+he enjoyed--especially among the ladies--the reputation of being a very
+accomplished fellow. In the second place, he wore a reddish moustache,
+a large gold pin set with a ruby, a black satin tie, and a very
+fashionable suit. Lastly, he was young, with a handsome, self-satisfied
+face and fine muscular legs. It was clear that he set the greatest store
+upon the latter, and thought them beyond compare, especially as regards
+the favour of the ladies. Consequently, whether sitting or standing, he
+always tried to exhibit them in the most favourable light. In short,
+he was a type of the young German-Russian whose main desire is to be
+thought perfectly gallant and gentlemanly.
+
+In the little garden merriment reigned. In fact, the game of “robbers”
+ never went better. Yet an incident occurred which came near to spoiling
+it. Seriosha was the robber, and in pouncing upon some travellers he
+fell down and knocked his leg so badly against a tree that I thought
+the leg must be broken. Consequently, though I was the gendarme and
+therefore bound to apprehend him, I only asked him anxiously, when I
+reached him, if he had hurt himself very much. Nevertheless this threw
+him into a passion, and made him exclaim with fists clenched and in a
+voice which showed by its faltering what pain he was enduring, “Why,
+whatever is the matter? Is this playing the game properly? You ought
+to arrest me. Why on earth don’t you do so?” This he repeated several
+times, and then, seeing Woloda and the elder Iwin (who were taking the
+part of the travellers) jumping and running about the path, he suddenly
+threw himself upon them with a shout and loud laughter to effect
+their capture. I cannot express my wonder and delight at this valiant
+behaviour of my hero. In spite of the severe pain, he had not only
+refrained from crying, but had repressed the least symptom of suffering
+and kept his eye fixed upon the game! Shortly after this occurrence
+another boy, Ilinka Grap, joined our party. We went upstairs, and
+Seriosha gave me an opportunity of still further appreciating and taking
+delight in his manly bravery and fortitude. This was how it was.
+
+Ilinka was the son of a poor foreigner who had been under certain
+obligations to my Grandpapa, and now thought it incumbent upon him to
+send his son to us as frequently as possible. Yet if he thought that the
+acquaintance would procure his son any advancement or pleasure, he was
+entirely mistaken, for not only were we anything but friendly to Ilinka,
+but it was seldom that we noticed him at all except to laugh at him. He
+was a boy of thirteen, tall and thin, with a pale, birdlike face, and
+a quiet, good-tempered expression. Though poorly dressed, he always had
+his head so thickly pomaded that we used to declare that on warm days
+it melted and ran down his neck. When I think of him now, it seems to
+me that he was a very quiet, obliging, and good-tempered boy, but at
+the time I thought him a creature so contemptible that he was not worth
+either attention or pity.
+
+Upstairs we set ourselves to astonish each other with gymnastic tours de
+force. Ilinka watched us with a faint smile of admiration, but refused
+an invitation to attempt a similar feat, saying that he had no strength.
+
+Seriosha was extremely captivating. His face and eyes glowed with
+laughter as he surprised us with tricks which we had never seen before.
+He jumped over three chairs put together, turned somersaults right
+across the room, and finally stood on his head on a pyramid of
+Tatistchev’s dictionaries, moving his legs about with such comical
+rapidity that it was impossible not to help bursting with merriment.
+
+After this last trick he pondered for a moment (blinking his eyes as
+usual), and then went up to Ilinka with a very serious face.
+
+“Try and do that,” he said. “It is not really difficult.”
+
+Ilinka, observing that the general attention was fixed upon him,
+blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could not do the
+feat.
+
+“Well, what does he mean by doing nothing at all? What a girl the fellow
+is! He has just GOT to stand on his head,” and Seriosha, took him by the
+hand.
+
+“Yes, on your head at once! This instant, this instant!” every one
+shouted as we ran upon Ilinka and dragged him to the dictionaries,
+despite his being visibly pale and frightened.
+
+“Leave me alone! You are tearing my jacket!” cried the unhappy victim,
+but his exclamations of despair only encouraged us the more. We were
+dying with laughter, while the green jacket was bursting at every seam.
+
+Woloda and the eldest Iwin took his head and placed it on the
+dictionaries, while Seriosha, and I seized his poor, thin legs (his
+struggles had stripped them upwards to the knees), and with boisterous,
+laughter held them uptight--the youngest Iwin superintending his general
+equilibrium.
+
+Suddenly a moment of silence occurred amid our boisterous laughter--a
+moment during which nothing was to be heard in the room but the panting
+of the miserable Ilinka. It occurred to me at that moment that, after
+all, there was nothing so very comical and pleasant in all this.
+
+“Now, THAT’S a boy!” cried Seriosha, giving Ilinka a smack with his
+hand. Ilinka said nothing, but made such desperate movements with his
+legs to free himself that his foot suddenly kicked Seriosha in the
+eye: with the result that, letting go of Ilinka’s leg and covering the
+wounded member with one hand, Seriosha hit out at him with all his might
+with the other one. Of course Ilinka’s legs slipped down as, sinking
+exhausted to the floor and half-suffocated with tears, he stammered out:
+
+“Why should you bully me so?”
+
+The poor fellow’s miserable figure, with its streaming tears, ruffled
+hair, and crumpled trousers revealing dirty boots, touched us a little,
+and we stood silent and trying to smile.
+
+Seriosha was the first to recover himself.
+
+“What a girl! What a gaby!” he said, giving Ilinka a slight kick. “He
+can’t take things in fun a bit. Well, get up, then.”
+
+“You are an utter beast! That’s what YOU are!” said Ilinka, turning
+miserably away and sobbing.
+
+“Oh, oh! Would it still kick and show temper, then?” cried Seriosha,
+seizing a dictionary and throwing it at the unfortunate boy’s head.
+Apparently it never occurred to Ilinka to take refuge from the missile;
+he merely guarded his head with his hands.
+
+“Well, that’s enough now,” added Seriosha, with a forced laugh. “You
+DESERVE to be hurt if you can’t take things in fun. Now let’s go
+downstairs.”
+
+I could not help looking with some compassion at the miserable creature
+on the floor as, his face buried in the dictionary, he lay there sobbing
+almost as though he were in a fit.
+
+“Oh, Sergius!” I said. “Why have you done this?”
+
+“Well, you did it too! Besides, I did not cry this afternoon when I
+knocked my leg and nearly broke it.”
+
+“True enough,” I thought. “Ilinka is a poor whining sort of a chap,
+while Seriosha is a boy--a REAL boy.”
+
+It never occurred to my mind that possibly poor Ilinka was suffering
+far less from bodily pain than from the thought that five companions
+for whom he may have felt a genuine liking had, for no reason at all,
+combined to hurt and humiliate him.
+
+I cannot explain my cruelty on this occasion. Why did I not step forward
+to comfort and protect him? Where was the pitifulness which often made
+me burst into tears at the sight of a young bird fallen from its nest,
+or of a puppy being thrown over a wall, or of a chicken being killed by
+the cook for soup?
+
+Can it be that the better instinct in me was overshadowed by my
+affection for Seriosha and the desire to shine before so brave a boy? If
+so, how contemptible were both the affection and the desire! They alone
+form dark spots on the pages of my youthful recollections.
+
+
+
+
+XX -- PREPARATIONS FOR THE PARTY
+
+To judge from the extraordinary activity in the pantry, the shining
+cleanliness which imparted such a new and festal guise to certain
+articles in the salon and drawing-room which I had long known as
+anything but resplendent, and the arrival of some musicians whom Prince
+Ivan would certainly not have sent for nothing, no small amount of
+company was to be expected that evening.
+
+At the sound of every vehicle which chanced to pass the house I ran
+to the window, leaned my head upon my arms, and peered with impatient
+curiosity into the street.
+
+At last a carriage stopped at our door, and, in the full belief that
+this must be the Iwins, who had promised to come early, I at once ran
+downstairs to meet them in the hall.
+
+But, instead of the Iwins, I beheld from behind the figure of the
+footman who opened the door two female figures-one tall and wrapped in a
+blue cloak trimmed with marten, and the other one short and wrapped in
+a green shawl from beneath which a pair of little feet, stuck into fur
+boots, peeped forth.
+
+Without paying any attention to my presence in the hall (although I
+thought it my duty, on the appearance of these persons to salute them),
+the shorter one moved towards the taller, and stood silently in front of
+her. Thereupon the tall lady untied the shawl which enveloped the head
+of the little one, and unbuttoned the cloak which hid her form; until,
+by the time that the footmen had taken charge of these articles and
+removed the fur boots, there stood forth from the amorphous chrysalis
+a charming girl of twelve, dressed in a short muslin frock, white
+pantaloons, and smart black satin shoes. Around her, white neck she wore
+a narrow black velvet ribbon, while her head was covered with flaxen
+curls which so perfectly suited her beautiful face in front and her bare
+neck and shoulders behind that I, would have believed nobody, not even
+Karl Ivanitch, if he, or she had told me that they only hung so nicely
+because, ever since the morning, they had been screwed up in fragments
+of a Moscow newspaper and then warmed with a hot iron. To me it seemed
+as though she must have been born with those curls.
+
+The most prominent feature in her face was a pair of unusually large
+half-veiled eyes, which formed a strange, but pleasing, contrast to the
+small mouth. Her lips were closed, while her eyes looked so grave that
+the general expression of her face gave one the impression that a smile
+was never to be looked for from her: wherefore, when a smile did come,
+it was all the more pleasing.
+
+Trying to escape notice, I slipped through the door of the salon,
+and then thought it necessary to be seen pacing to and fro, seemingly
+engaged in thought, as though unconscious of the arrival of guests.
+
+BY the time, however, that the ladies had advanced to the middle of
+the salon I seemed suddenly to awake from my reverie and told them that
+Grandmamma was in the drawing room, Madame Valakhin, whose face pleased
+me extremely (especially since it bore a great resemblance to her
+daughter’s), stroked my head kindly.
+
+Grandmamma seemed delighted to see Sonetchka. She invited her to come
+to her, put back a curl which had fallen over her brow, and looking
+earnestly at her said, “What a charming child!”
+
+Sonetchka blushed, smiled, and, indeed, looked so charming that I myself
+blushed as I looked at her.
+
+“I hope you are going to enjoy yourself here, my love,” said
+Grandmamma. “Pray be as merry and dance as much as ever you can. See, we
+have two beaux for her already,” she added, turning to Madame Valakhin,
+and stretching out her hand to me.
+
+This coupling of Sonetchka and myself pleased me so much that I blushed
+again.
+
+Feeling, presently, that, my embarrassment was increasing, and hearing
+the sound of carriages approaching, I thought it wise to retire. In the
+hall I encountered the Princess Kornakoff, her son, and an incredible
+number of daughters. They had all of them the same face as their mother,
+and were very ugly. None of them arrested my attention. They talked in
+shrill tones as they took off their cloaks and boas, and laughed as they
+bustled about--probably at the fact that there were so many of them!
+
+Etienne was a boy of fifteen, tall and plump, with a sharp face,
+deep-set bluish eyes, and very large hands and feet for his age.
+Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice.
+Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my
+opinion, a boy who could well bear being beaten with rods.
+
+For a long time we confronted one another without speaking as we took
+stock of each other. When the flood of dresses had swept past I made
+shift to begin a conversation by asking him whether it had not been very
+close in the carriage.
+
+“I don’t know,” he answered indifferently. “I never ride inside it, for
+it makes me feel sick directly, and Mamma knows that. Whenever we are
+driving anywhere at night-time I always sit on the box. I like that, for
+then one sees everything. Philip gives me the reins, and sometimes the
+whip too, and then the people inside get a regular--well, you know,” he
+added with a significant gesture “It’s splendid then.”
+
+“Master Etienne,” said a footman, entering the hall, “Philip wishes me
+to ask you where you put the whip.”
+
+“Where I put it? Why, I gave it back to him.”
+
+“But he says that you did not.”
+
+“Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!”
+
+“No, sir, he says that you did not do that either. You had better
+confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds. I suppose poor Philip
+will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket.” The footman
+(who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair,
+and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip’s behalf.
+
+Out of delicacy I pretended to notice nothing and turned aside, but the
+other footmen present gathered round and looked approvingly at the old
+servant.
+
+“Hm--well, I DID tear it in pieces,” at length confessed Etienne,
+shrinking from further explanations. “However, I will pay for it. Did
+you ever hear anything so absurd?” he added to me as he drew me towards
+the drawing-room.
+
+“But excuse me, sir; HOW are you going to pay for it? I know your ways
+of paying. You have owed Maria Valericana twenty copecks these eight
+months now, and you have owed me something for two years, and Peter
+for--”
+
+“Hold your tongue, will you!” shouted the young fellow, pale with rage,
+“I shall report you for this.”
+
+“Oh, you may do so,” said the footman. “Yet it is not fair, your
+highness,” he added, with a peculiar stress on the title, as he departed
+with the ladies’ wraps to the cloak-room. We ourselves entered the
+salon.
+
+“Quite right, footman,” remarked someone approvingly from the ball
+behind us.
+
+Grandmamma had a peculiar way of employing, now the second person
+singular, now the second person plural, in order to indicate her opinion
+of people. When the young Prince Etienne went up to her she addressed
+him as “YOU,” and altogether looked at him with such an expression
+of contempt that, had I been in his place, I should have been utterly
+crestfallen. Etienne, however, was evidently not a boy of that sort,
+for he not only took no notice of her reception of him, but none of her
+person either. In fact, he bowed to the company at large in a way which,
+though not graceful, was at least free from embarrassment.
+
+Sonetchka now claimed my whole attention. I remember that, as I stood
+in the salon with Etienne and Woloda, at a spot whence we could both
+see and be seen by Sonetchka, I took great pleasure in talking very loud
+(and all my utterances seemed to me both bold and comical) and glancing
+towards the door of the drawing-room, but that, as soon as ever we
+happened to move to another spot whence we could neither see nor be seen
+by her, I became dumb, and thought the conversation had ceased to be
+enjoyable. The rooms were now full of people--among them (as at all
+children’s parties) a number of elder children who wished to dance and
+enjoy themselves very much, but who pretended to do everything merely in
+order to give pleasure to the mistress of the house.
+
+When the Iwins arrived I found that, instead of being as delighted as
+usual to meet Seriosha, I felt a kind of vexation that he should see and
+be seen by Sonetchka.
+
+
+
+
+XXI -- BEFORE THE MAZURKA
+
+“HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night,” said Seriosha,
+issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his pocket a brand new
+pair of gloves. “I suppose it IS necessary to put on gloves?”
+
+“Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves,” I thought to myself.
+“I must go upstairs and search about.” Yet though I rummaged in every
+drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green travelling mittens, and,
+in another, a single lilac-coloured glove, a thing which could be of no
+use to me, firstly, because it was very old and dirty, secondly, because
+it was much too large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the
+middle finger was wanting--Karl having long ago cut it off to wear over
+a sore nail.
+
+However, I put it on--not without some diffident contemplation of the
+blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges round the
+vacant space.
+
+“If only Natalia Savishna had been here,” I reflected, “we should
+certainly have found some gloves. I can’t go downstairs in this
+condition. Yet, if they ask me why I am not dancing, what am I to say?
+However, I can’t remain here either, or they will be sending upstairs to
+fetch me. What on earth am I to do?” and I wrung my hands.
+
+“What are you up to here?” asked Woloda as he burst into the room. “Go
+and engage a partner. The dancing will be beginning directly.”
+
+“Woloda,” I said despairingly, as I showed him my hand with two fingers
+thrust into a single finger of the dirty glove, “Woloda, you, never
+thought of this.”
+
+“Of what?” he said impatiently. “Oh, of gloves,” he added with a
+careless glance at my hand. “That’s nothing. We can ask Grandmamma what
+she thinks about it,” and without further ado he departed downstairs. I
+felt a trifle relieved by the coolness with which he had met a situation
+which seemed to me so grave, and hastened back to the drawing-room,
+completely forgetful of the unfortunate glove which still adorned my
+left hand.
+
+Cautiously approaching Grandmamma’s arm-chair, I asked her in a whisper:
+
+“Grandmamma, what are we to do? We have no gloves.”
+
+“What, my love?”
+
+“We have no gloves,” I repeated, at the same time bending over towards
+her and laying both hands on the arm of her chair.
+
+“But what is that?” she cried as she caught hold of my left hand.
+“Look, my dear!” she continued, turning to Madame Valakhin. “See how
+smart this young man has made himself to dance with your daughter!”
+
+As Grandmamma persisted in retaining hold of my hand and gazing with a
+mock air of gravity and interrogation at all around her, curiosity was
+soon aroused, and a general roar of laughter ensued.
+
+I should have been infuriated at the thought that Seriosha was present
+to see this, as I scowled with embarrassment and struggled hard to free
+my hand, had it not been that somehow Sonetchka’s laughter (and she was
+laughing to such a degree that the tears were standing in her eyes
+and the curls dancing about her lovely face) took away my feeling
+of humiliation. I felt that her laughter was not satirical, but only
+natural and free; so that, as we laughed together and looked at one
+another, there seemed to begin a kind of sympathy between us. Instead
+of turning out badly, therefore, the episode of the glove served only
+to set me at my ease among the dreaded circle of guests, and to make
+me cease to feel oppressed with shyness. The sufferings of shy people
+proceed only from the doubts which they feel concerning the opinions
+of their fellows. No sooner are those opinions expressed (whether
+flattering or the reverse) than the agony disappears.
+
+How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as my
+vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How
+charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How
+gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how
+naively she executed the jete assemble with her little feet!
+
+In the fifth figure, when my partner had to leave me for the other
+side and I, counting the beats, was getting ready to dance my solo, she
+pursed her lips gravely and looked in another direction; but her fears
+for me were groundless. Boldly I performed the chasse en avant and
+chasse en arriere glissade, until, when it came to my turn to move
+towards her and I, with a comic gesture, showed her the poor glove with
+its crumpled fingers, she laughed heartily, and seemed to move her tiny
+feet more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.
+
+How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without
+withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose with
+her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I hear the
+quadrille from “The Maids of the Danube” to which we danced that night.
+
+The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when we went
+to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome with shyness
+and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my silence had lasted
+so long that I began to be afraid that she would think me a stupid boy,
+I decided at all hazards to counteract such a notion.
+
+“Vous etes une habitante de Moscou?” I began, and, on receiving an
+affirmative answer, continued. “Et moi, je n’ai encore jamais frequente
+la capitale” (with a particular emphasis on the word “frequente”). Yet I
+felt that, brilliant though this introduction might be as evidence of my
+profound knowledge of the French language, I could not long keep up the
+conversation in that manner. Our turn for dancing had not yet arrived,
+and silence again ensued between us. I kept looking anxiously at her in
+the hope both of discerning what impression I had produced and of her
+coming to my aid.
+
+“Where did you get that ridiculous glove of yours?” she asked me all of
+a sudden, and the question afforded me immense satisfaction and relief.
+I replied that the glove belonged to Karl Ivanitch, and then went on
+to speak ironically of his appearance, and to describe how comical he
+looked in his red cap, and how he and his green coat had once fallen
+plump off a horse into a pond.
+
+The quadrille was soon over. Yet why had I spoken ironically of poor
+Karl Ivanitch? Should I, forsooth, have sunk in Sonetchka’s esteem if,
+on the contrary, I had spoken of him with the love and respect which I
+undoubtedly bore him?
+
+The quadrille ended, Sonetchka said, “Thank you,” with as lovely an
+expression on her face as though I had really conferred, upon her a
+favour. I was delighted. In fact I hardly knew myself for joy and could
+not think whence I derived such case and confidence and even daring.
+
+“Nothing in the world can abash me now,” I thought as I wandered
+carelessly about the salon. “I am ready for anything.”
+
+Just then Seriosha came and requested me to be his vis-a-vis.
+
+“Very well,” I said. “I have no partner as yet, but I can soon find
+one.”
+
+Glancing round the salon with a confident eye, I saw that every lady was
+engaged save one--a tall girl standing near the drawing-room door. Yet a
+grown-up young man was approaching her-probably for the same purpose as
+myself! He was but two steps from her, while I was at the further end
+of the salon. Doing a glissade over the polished floor, I covered the
+intervening space, and in a brave, firm voice asked the favour of her
+hand in the quadrille. Smiling with a protecting air, the young lady
+accorded me her hand, and the tall young man was left without a partner.
+I felt so conscious of my strength that I paid no attention to his
+irritation, though I learnt later that he had asked somebody who the
+awkward, untidy boy was who, had taken away his lady from him.
+
+
+
+
+XXII -- THE MAZURKA
+
+AFTERWARDS the same young man formed one of the first couple in a
+mazurka. He sprang to his feet, took his partner’s hand, and then,
+instead of executing the pas de Basques which Mimi had taught us, glided
+forward till he arrived at a corner of the room, stopped, divided his
+feet, turned on his heels, and, with a spring, glided back again. I, who
+had found no partner for this particular dance and was sitting on the
+arm of Grandmamma’s chair, thought to myself:
+
+“What on earth is he doing? That is not what Mimi taught us. And there
+are the Iwins and Etienne all dancing in the same way-without the pas de
+Basques! Ah! and there is Woloda too! He too is adopting the new style,
+and not so badly either. And there is Sonetchka, the lovely one! Yes,
+there she comes!” I felt immensely happy at that moment.
+
+The mazurka came to an end, and already some of the guests were saying
+good-bye to Grandmamma. She was evidently tired, yet she assured them
+that she felt vexed at their early departure. Servants were gliding
+about with plates and trays among the dancers, and the musicians were
+carelessly playing the same tune for about the thirteenth time in
+succession, when the young lady whom I had danced with before, and who
+was just about to join in another mazurka, caught sight of me, and, with
+a kindly smile, led me to Sonetchka. And one of the innumerable Kornakoff
+princesses, at the same time asking me, “Rose or Hortie?”
+
+“Ah, so it’s YOU!” said Grandmamma as she turned round in her armchair.
+“Go and dance, then, my boy.”
+
+Although I would fain have taken refuge behind the armchair rather than
+leave its shelter, I could not refuse; so I got up, said, “Rose,” and
+looked at Sonetchka. Before I had time to realise it, however, a hand in
+a white glove laid itself on mine, and the Kornakoff girl stepped forth
+with a pleased smile and evidently no suspicion that I was ignorant of
+the steps of the dance. I only knew that the pas de Basques (the only
+figure of it which I had been taught) would be out of place. However,
+the strains of the mazurka falling upon my ears, and imparting their
+usual impulse to my acoustic nerves (which, in their turn, imparted
+their usual impulse to my feet), I involuntarily, and to the amazement
+of the spectators, began executing on tiptoe the sole (and fatal) pas
+which I had been taught.
+
+So long as we went straight ahead I kept fairly right, but when it came
+to turning I saw that I must make preparations to arrest my course.
+Accordingly, to avoid any appearance of awkwardness, I stopped short,
+with the intention of imitating the “wheel about” which I had seen the
+young man perform so neatly.
+
+Unfortunately, just as I divided my feet and prepared to make a spring,
+the Princess Kornakoff looked sharply round at my legs with such an
+expression of stupefied amazement and curiosity that the glance undid
+me. Instead of continuing to dance, I remained moving my legs up and
+down on the same spot, in a sort of extraordinary fashion which bore
+no relation whatever either to form or rhythm. At last I stopped
+altogether. Every-one was looking at me--some with curiosity, some with
+astonishment, some with disdain, and some with compassion, Grandmamma
+alone seemed unmoved.
+
+“You should not dance if you don’t know the step,” said Papa’s angry
+voice in my ear as, pushing me gently aside, he took my partner’s hand,
+completed the figures with her to the admiration of every one, and
+finally led her back to, her place. The mazurka was at an end.
+
+Ah me! What had I done to be punished so heavily?
+
+*****
+
+“Every one despises me, and will always despise me,” I thought to
+myself. “The way is closed for me to friendship, love, and fame! All,
+all is lost!”
+
+Why had Woloda made signs to me which every one saw, yet which could in
+no way help me? Why had that disgusting princess looked at my legs? Why
+had Sonetchka--she was a darling, of course!--yet why, oh why, had she
+smiled at that moment?
+
+Why had Papa turned red and taken my hand? Can it be that he was ashamed
+of me?
+
+Oh, it was dreadful! Alas, if only Mamma had been there she would never
+have blushed for her Nicolinka!
+
+How on the instant that dear image led my imagination captive! I seemed
+to see once more the meadow before our house, the tall lime-trees in the
+garden, the clear pond where the ducks swain, the blue sky dappled with
+white clouds, the sweet-smelling ricks of hay. How those memories--aye,
+and many another quiet, beloved recollection--floated through my mind at
+that time!
+
+
+
+
+XXIII -- AFTER THE MAZURKA
+
+At supper the young man whom I have mentioned seated himself beside
+me at the children’s table, and treated me with an amount of attention
+which would have flattered my self-esteem had I been able, after the
+occurrence just related, to give a thought to anything beyond my failure
+in the mazurka. However, the young man seemed determined to cheer me
+up. He jested, called me “old boy,” and finally (since none of the
+elder folks were looking at us) began to help me to wine, first from one
+bottle and then from another and to force me to drink it off quickly.
+
+By the time (towards the end of supper) that a servant had poured me out
+a quarter of a glass of champagne, and the young man had straightway bid
+him fill it up and urged me to drink the beverage off at a draught, I
+had begun to feel a grateful warmth diffusing itself through my body.
+I also felt well-disposed towards my kind patron, and began to laugh
+heartily at everything. Suddenly the music of the Grosvater dance struck
+up, and every one rushed from the table. My friendship with the young
+man had now outlived its day; so, whereas he joined a group of the older
+folks, I approached Madame Valakhin to hear what she and her daughter had
+to say to one another.
+
+“Just HALF-an-hour more?” Sonetchka was imploring her.
+
+“Impossible, my dearest.”
+
+“Yet, only to please me--just this ONCE?” Sonetchka went on
+persuasively.
+
+“Well, what if I should be ill to-morrow through all this dissipation?”
+ rejoined her mother, and was incautious enough to smile.
+
+“There! You DO consent, and we CAN stay after all!” exclaimed Sonetchka,
+jumping for joy.
+
+“What is to be done with such a girl?” said Madame. “Well, run away and
+dance. See,” she added on perceiving myself, “here is a cavalier ready
+waiting for you.”
+
+Sonetchka gave me her hand, and we darted off to the salon. The wine,
+added to Sonetchka’s presence and gaiety, had at once made me forget
+all about the unfortunate end of the mazurka. I kept executing the most
+splendid feats with my legs--now imitating a horse as he throws out his
+hoofs in the trot, now stamping like a sheep infuriated at a dog, and
+all the while laughing regardless of appearances.
+
+Sonetchka also laughed unceasingly, whether we were whirling round in
+a circle or whether we stood still to watch an old lady whose painful
+movements with her feet showed the difficulty she had in walking.
+Finally Sonetchka nearly died of merriment when I jumped half-way to the
+ceiling in proof of my skill.
+
+As I passed a mirror in Grandmamma’s boudoir and glanced at myself
+I could see that my face was all in a perspiration and my hair
+dishevelled--the top-knot, in particular, being more erect than ever.
+Yet my general appearance looked so happy, healthy, and good-tempered
+that I felt wholly pleased with myself.
+
+“If I were always as I am now,” I thought, “I might yet be able to
+please people with my looks.” Yet as soon as I glanced at my partner’s
+face again, and saw there not only the expression of happiness, health,
+and good temper which had just pleased me in my own, but also a fresh
+and enchanting beauty besides, I felt dissatisfied with myself again.
+I understood how silly of me it was to hope to attract the attention
+of such a wonderful being as Sonetchka. I could not hope for
+reciprocity--could not even think of it, yet my heart was overflowing
+with happiness. I could not imagine that the feeling of love which was
+filling my soul so pleasantly could require any happiness still greater,
+or wish for more than that that happiness should never cease. I felt
+perfectly contented. My heart beat like that of a dove, with the blood
+constantly flowing back to it, and I almost wept for joy.
+
+As we passed through the hall and peered into a little dark store-room
+beneath the staircase I thought: “What bliss it would be if I could pass
+the rest of my life with her in that dark corner, and never let anybody
+know that we were there!”
+
+“It HAS been a delightful evening, hasn’t it?” I asked her in a low,
+tremulous voice. Then I quickened my steps--as much out of fear of what
+I had said as out of fear of what I had meant to imply.
+
+“Yes, VERY!” she answered, and turned her face to look at me with an
+expression so kind that I ceased to be afraid. I went on:
+
+“Particularly since supper. Yet if you could only know how I regret” (I
+had nearly said) “how miserable I am at your going, and to think that
+we shall see each other no more!”
+
+“But why SHOULDN’T we?” she asked, looking gravely at the corner of
+her pocket-handkerchief, and gliding her fingers over a latticed screen
+which we were passing. “Every Tuesday and Friday I go with Mamma to the
+Iverskoi Prospect. I suppose you go for walks too sometimes?”
+
+“Well, certainly I shall ask to go for one next Tuesday, and, if they
+won’t take me I shall go by myself--even without my hat, if necessary. I
+know the way all right.”
+
+“Do you know what I have just thought of?” she went on. “You know, I
+call some of the boys who come to see us THOU. Shall you and I call each
+other THOU too? Wilt THOU?” she added, bending her head towards me and
+looking me straight in the eyes.
+
+At this moment a more lively section of the Grosvater dance began.
+
+“Give me your hand,” I said, under the impression that the music and din
+would drown my exact words, but she smilingly replied, “THY hand, not
+YOUR hand.” Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying
+THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could
+be employed--and employed more than once. All that I wanted was the
+courage to say it.
+
+“Wilt THOU?” and “THY hand” sounded continually in my ears, and caused
+in me a kind of intoxication I could hear and see nothing but Sonetchka.
+I watched her mother take her curls, lay them flat behind her ears (thus
+disclosing portions of her forehead and temples which I had not yet
+seen), and wrap her up so completely in the green shawl that nothing was
+left visible but the tip of her nose. Indeed, I could see that, if her
+little rosy fingers had not made a small, opening near her mouth, she
+would have been unable to breathe. Finally I saw her leave her mother’s
+arm for an instant on the staircase, and turn and nod to us quickly
+before she disappeared through the doorway.
+
+Woloda, the Iwins, the young Prince Etienne, and myself were all of us
+in love with Sonetchka and all of us standing on the staircase to follow
+her with our eyes. To whom in particular she had nodded I do not know,
+but at the moment I firmly believed it to be myself. In taking leave
+of the Iwins, I spoke quite unconcernedly, and even coldly, to Seriosha
+before I finally shook hands with him. Though he tried to appear
+absolutely indifferent, I think that he understood that from that day
+forth he had lost both my affection and his power over me, as well as
+that he regretted it.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV -- IN BED
+
+“How could I have managed to be so long and so passionately devoted to
+Seriosha?” I asked myself as I lay in bed that night. “He never either
+understood, appreciated, or deserved my love. But Sonetchka! What a
+darling SHE is! ‘Wilt THOU?’--‘THY hand’!”
+
+I crept closer to the pillows, imagined to myself her lovely face,
+covered my head over with the bedclothes, tucked the counterpane in on
+all sides, and, thus snugly covered, lay quiet and enjoying the warmth
+until I became wholly absorbed in pleasant fancies and reminiscences.
+
+If I stared fixedly at the inside of the sheet above me I found that I
+could see her as clearly as I had done an hour ago could talk to her in
+my thoughts, and, though it was a conversation of irrational tenor, I
+derived the greatest delight from it, seeing that “THOU” and “THINE” and
+“for THEE” and “to THEE” occurred in it incessantly. These fancies were
+so vivid that I could not sleep for the sweetness of my emotion, and
+felt as though I must communicate my superabundant happiness to some
+one.
+
+“The darling!” I said, half-aloud, as I turned over; then, “Woloda, are
+you asleep?”
+
+“No,” he replied in a sleepy voice. “What’s the matter?”
+
+“I am in love, Woloda--terribly in love with Sonetchka”
+
+“Well? Anything else?” he replied, stretching himself.
+
+“Oh, but you cannot imagine what I feel just now, as I lay covered over
+with the counterpane, I could see her and talk to her so clearly that
+it was marvellous! And, do you know, while I was lying thinking about
+her--I don’t know why it was, but all at once I felt so sad that I could
+have cried.”
+
+Woloda made a movement of some sort.
+
+“One thing only I wish for,” I continued; “and that is that I could
+always be with her and always be seeing her. Just that. You are in love
+too, I believe. Confess that you are.”
+
+It was strange, but somehow I wanted every one to be in love with
+Sonetchka, and every one to tell me that they were so.
+
+“So that’s how it is with you? “ said Woloda, turning round to me.
+“Well, I can understand it.”
+
+“I can see that you cannot sleep,” I remarked, observing by his bright
+eyes that he was anything but drowsy. “Well, cover yourself over SO”
+ (and I pulled the bedclothes over him), “and then let us talk about her.
+Isn’t she splendid? If she were to say to me, ‘Nicolinka, jump out of
+the window,’ or ‘jump into the fire,’ I should say, ‘Yes, I will do it
+at once and rejoice in doing it.’ Oh, how glorious she is!”
+
+I went on picturing her again and again to my imagination, and, to enjoy
+the vision the better, turned over on my side and buried my head in the
+pillows, murmuring, “Oh, I want to cry, Woloda.”
+
+“What a fool you are!” he said with a slight laugh. Then, after a
+moment’s silence he added: “I am not like you. I think I would rather
+sit and talk with her.”
+
+“Ah! Then you ARE in love with her!” I interrupted.
+
+“And then,” went on Woloda, smiling tenderly, “kiss her fingers and eyes
+and lips and nose and feet--kiss all of her.”
+
+“How absurd!” I exclaimed from beneath the pillows.
+
+“Ah, you don’t understand things,” said Woloda with contempt.
+
+“I DO understand. It’s you who don’t understand things, and you talk
+rubbish, too,” I replied, half-crying.
+
+“Well, there is nothing to cry about,” he concluded. “She is only a
+girl.”
+
+
+
+
+XXV -- THE LETTER
+
+ON the 16th of April, nearly six months after the day just described,
+Papa entered our schoolroom and told us that that night we must start
+with him for our country house. I felt a pang at my heart when I heard
+the news, and my thoughts at once turned to Mamma. The cause of our
+unexpected departure was the following letter:
+
+“PETROVSKOE, 12th April.
+
+“Only this moment (i.e. at ten o’clock in the evening) have I received
+your dear letter of the 3rd of April, but as usual, I answer it at once.
+Fedor brought it yesterday from town, but, as it was late, he did not
+give it to Mimi till this morning, and Mimi (since I was unwell) kept
+it from me all day. I have been a little feverish. In fact, to tell the
+truth, this is the fourth day that I have been in bed.
+
+“Yet do not be uneasy. I feel almost myself again now, and if Ivan
+Vassilitch should allow me, I think of getting up to-morrow.
+
+“On Friday last I took the girls for a drive, and, close to the little
+bridge by the turning on to the high road (the place which always makes
+me nervous), the horses and carriage stuck fast in the mud. Well, the
+day being fine, I thought that we would walk a little up the road until
+the carriage should be extricated, but no sooner had we reached the
+chapel than I felt obliged to sit down, I was so tired, and in this way
+half-an-hour passed while help was being sent for to get the carriage
+dug out. I felt cold, for I had only thin boots on, and they had been
+wet through. After luncheon too, I had alternate cold and hot fits, yet
+still continued to follow our ordinary routine.
+
+“When tea was over I sat down to the piano to play a duct with
+Lubotshka, (you would be astonished to hear what progress she has
+made!), but imagine my surprise when I found that I could not count the
+beats! Several times I began to do so, yet always felt confused in
+my head, and kept hearing strange noises in my ears. I would begin
+‘One-two-three--’ and then suddenly go on ‘-eight-fifteen,’ and so on,
+as though I were talking nonsense and could not help it. At last Mimi
+came to my assistance and forced me to retire to bed. That was how my
+illness began, and it was all through my own fault. The next day I had
+a good deal of fever, and our good Ivan Vassilitch came. He has not left
+us since, but promises soon to restore me to the world.
+
+“What a wonderful old man he is! While I was feverish and delirious he
+sat the whole night by my bedside without once closing his eyes; and at
+this moment (since he knows I am busy writing) he is with the girls in
+the divannaia, and I can hear him telling them German stories, and them
+laughing as they listen to him.
+
+“‘La Belle Flamande,’ as you call her, is now spending her second week
+here as my guest (her mother having gone to pay a visit somewhere), and
+she is most attentive and attached to me. She even tells me her secret
+affairs. Under different circumstances her beautiful face, good temper,
+and youth might have made a most excellent girl of her, but in the
+society in which according to her own account, she moves she will be
+wasted. The idea has more than once occurred to me that, had I not had
+so many children of my own, it would have been a deed of mercy to have
+adopted her.
+
+“Lubotshka had meant to write to you herself, but she has torn up three
+sheets of paper, saying: ‘I know what a quizzer Papa always is. If he
+were to find a single fault in my letter he would show it to everybody.’
+Katenka is as charming as usual, and Mimi, too, is good, but tiresome.
+
+“Now let me speak of more serious matters. You write to me that your
+affairs are not going well this winter, and that you wish to break into
+the revenues of Chabarovska. It seems to me strange that you should
+think it necessary to ask my consent. Surely what belongs to me belongs
+no less to you? You are so kind-hearted, dear, that, for fear of
+worrying me, you conceal the real state of things, but I can guess that
+you have lost a great deal at cards, as also that you are afraid of my
+being angry at that. Yet, so long as you can tide over this crisis, I
+shall not think much of it, and you need not be uneasy, I have grown
+accustomed to no longer relying, so far as the children are concerned,
+upon your gains at play, nor yet--excuse me for saying so--upon your
+income. Therefore your losses cause me as little anxiety as your gains
+give me pleasure. What I really grieve over is your unhappy passion
+itself for gambling--a passion which bereaves me of part of your tender
+affection and obliges me to tell you such bitter truths as (God knows
+with what pain) I am now telling you. I never cease to beseech Him that
+He may preserve us, not from poverty (for what is poverty?), but from
+the terrible juncture which would arise should the interests of the
+children, which I am called upon to protect, ever come into collision
+with our own. Hitherto God has listened to my prayers. You have never
+yet overstepped the limit beyond which we should be obliged either
+to sacrifice property which would no longer belong to us, but to the
+children, or--It is terrible to think of, but the dreadful misfortune
+at which I hint is forever hanging over our heads. Yes, it is the heavy
+cross which God has given us both to carry.
+
+“Also, you write about the children, and come back to our old point
+of difference by asking my consent to your placing them at a
+boarding-school. You know my objection to that kind of education. I
+do not know, dear, whether you will accede to my request, but I
+nevertheless beseech you, by your love for me, to give me your promise
+that never so long as I am alive, nor yet after my death (if God should
+see fit to separate us), shall such a thing be done.
+
+“Also you write that our affairs render it indispensable for you to
+visit St. Petersburg. The Lord go with you! Go and return as, soon as
+possible. Without you we shall all of us be lonely.
+
+“Spring is coming in beautifully. We keep the door on to the terrace
+always open now, while the path to the orangery is dry and the
+peach-trees are in full blossom. Only here and there is there a little
+snow remaining. The swallows are arriving, and to-day Lubotshka brought
+me the first flowers. The doctor says that in about three days’ time I
+shall be well again and able to take the open air and to enjoy the April
+sun. Now, au revoir, my dearest one. Do not be alarmed, I beg of you,
+either on account of my illness or on account of your losses at play.
+End the crisis as soon as possible, and then return here with the
+children for the summer. I am making wonderful plans for our passing of
+it, and I only need your presence to realise them.”
+
+The rest of the letter was written in French, as well as in a strange,
+uncertain hand, on another piece of paper. I transcribe it word for
+word:
+
+“Do not believe what I have just written to you about my illness. It is
+more serious than any one knows. I alone know that I shall never leave
+my bed again. Do not, therefore, delay a minute in coming here with the
+children. Perhaps it may yet be permitted me to embrace and bless them.
+It is my last wish that it should be so. I know what a terrible blow
+this will be to you, but you would have had to hear it sooner or
+later--if not from me, at least from others. Let us try to, bear the
+Calamity with fortitude, and place our trust in the mercy of God. Let
+us submit ourselves to His will. Do not think that what I am writing is
+some delusion of my sick imagination. On the contrary, I am perfectly
+clear at this moment, and absolutely calm. Nor must you comfort yourself
+with the false hope that these are the unreal, confused feelings of a
+despondent spirit, for I feel indeed, I know, since God has deigned to
+reveal it to me--that I have now but a very short time to live. Will my
+love for you and the children cease with my life? I know that that can
+never be. At this moment I am too full of that love to be capable of
+believing that such a feeling (which constitutes a part of my very
+existence) can ever, perish. My soul can never lack its love for you;
+and I know that that love will exist for ever, since such a feeling
+could never have been awakened if it were not to be eternal. I shall no
+longer be with you, yet I firmly believe that my love will cleave to
+you always, and from that thought I glean such comfort that I await the
+approach of death calmly and without fear. Yes, I am calm, and God knows
+that I have ever looked, and do look now, upon death as no more than the
+passage to a better life. Yet why do tears blind my eyes? Why should the
+children lose a mother’s love? Why must you, my husband, experience such
+a heavy and unlooked-for blow? Why must I die when your love was making
+life so inexpressibly happy for me?
+
+“But His holy will be done!
+
+“The tears prevent my writing more. It may be that I shall never see you
+again. I thank you, my darling beyond all price, for all the felicity
+with which you have surrounded me in this life. Soon I shall appear
+before God Himself to pray that He may reward you. Farewell, my dearest!
+Remember that, if I am no longer here, my love will none the less NEVER
+AND NOWHERE fail you. Farewell, Woloda--farewell, my pet! Farewell, my
+Benjamin, my little Nicolinka! Surely they will never forget me?”
+
+With this letter had come also a French note from Mimi, in which the
+latter said:
+
+“The sad circumstances of which she has written to you are but too
+surely confirmed by the words of the doctor. Yesterday evening she
+ordered the letter to be posted at once, but, thinking at she did so in
+delirium, I waited until this morning, with the intention of sealing and
+sending it then. Hardly had I done so when Natalia Nicolaevna asked
+me what I had done with the letter and told me to burn it if not yet
+despatched. She is forever speaking of it, and saying that it will kill
+you. Do not delay your departure for an instant if you wish to see the
+angel before she leaves us. Pray excuse this scribble, but I have not
+slept now for three nights. You know how much I love her.”
+
+Later I heard from Natalia Savishna (who passed the whole of the night
+of the 11th April at Mamma’s bedside) that, after writing the first part
+of the letter, Mamma laid it down upon the table beside her and went to
+sleep for a while.
+
+“I confess,” said Natalia Savishna, “that I too fell asleep in the
+arm-chair, and let my knitting slip from my hands. Suddenly, towards one
+o’clock in the morning, I heard her saying something; whereupon I opened
+my eyes and looked at her. My darling was sitting up in bed, with her
+hands clasped together and streams of tears gushing from her eyes.
+
+“‘It is all over now,’ she said, and hid her face in her hands.
+
+“I sprang to my feet, and asked what the matter was.
+
+“‘Ah, Natalia Savishna, if you could only know what I have just
+seen!’ she said; yet, for all my asking, she would say no more,
+beyond commanding me to hand her the letter. To that letter she added
+something, and then said that it must be sent off directly. From that
+moment she grew, rapidly worse.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVI -- WHAT AWAITED US AT THE COUNTRY-HOUSE
+
+On the 18th of April we descended from the carriage at the front door
+of the house at Petrovskoe. All the way from Moscow Papa had been
+preoccupied, and when Woloda had asked him “whether Mamma was ill” he
+had looked at him sadly and nodded an affirmative. Nevertheless he had
+grown more composed during the journey, and it was only when we were
+actually approaching the house that his face again began to grow
+anxious, until, as he leaped from the carriage and asked Foka (who
+had run breathlessly to meet us), “How is Natalia Nicolaevna now?” his
+voice, was trembling, and his eyes had filled with tears. The good, old
+Foka looked at us, and then lowered his gaze again. Finally he said as
+he opened the hall-door and turned his head aside: “It is the sixth day
+since she has not left her bed.”
+
+Milka (who, as we afterwards learned, had never ceased to whine from the
+day when Mamma was taken ill) came leaping, joyfully to meet Papa, and
+barking a welcome as she licked his hands, but Papa put her aside, and
+went first to the drawing-room, and then into the divannaia, from which
+a door led into the bedroom. The nearer he approached the latter, the
+more, did his movements express the agitation that he felt. Entering the
+divannaia he crossed it on tiptoe, seeming to hold his breath. Even then
+he had to stop and make the sign of the cross before he could summon up
+courage to turn the handle. At the same moment Mimi, with dishevelled
+hair and eyes red with weeping came hastily out of the corridor.
+
+“Ah, Peter Alexandritch!” she said in a whisper and with a marked
+expression of despair. Then, observing that Papa was trying to open the
+door, she whispered again:
+
+“Not here. This door is locked. Go round to the door on the other side.”
+
+Oh, how terribly all this wrought upon my imagination, racked as it was
+by grief and terrible forebodings!
+
+So we went round to the other side. In the corridor we met the gardener,
+Akim, who had been wont to amuse us with his grimaces, but at this
+moment I could see nothing comical in him. Indeed, the sight of his
+thoughtless, indifferent face struck me more painfully than anything
+else. In the maidservants’ hall, through which we had to pass, two maids
+were sitting at their work, but rose to salute us with an expression so
+mournful that I felt completely overwhelmed.
+
+Passing also through Mimi’s room, Papa opened the door of the bedroom,
+and we entered. The two windows on the right were curtained over, and
+close to them was seated, Natalia Savishna, spectacles on nose and
+engaged in darning stockings. She did not approach us to kiss me as she
+had been used to do, but just rose and looked at us, her tears beginning
+to flow afresh. Somehow it frightened me to see every one, on beholding
+us, begin to cry, although they had been calm enough before.
+
+On the left stood the bed behind a screen, while in the great arm-chair
+the doctor lay asleep. Beside the bed a young, fair-haired and
+remarkably beautiful girl in a white morning wrapper was applying ice to
+Mamma’s head, but Mamma herself I could not see. This girl was “La
+Belle Flamande” of whom Mamma had written, and who afterwards played so
+important a part in our family life. As we entered she disengaged one
+of her hands, straightened the pleats of her dress on her bosom, and
+whispered, “She is insensible.” Though I was in an agony of grief, I
+observed at that moment every little detail.
+
+It was almost dark in the room, and very hot, while the air was heavy
+with the mingled, scent of mint, eau-de-cologne, camomile, and Hoffman’s
+pastilles. The latter ingredient caught my attention so strongly that
+even now I can never hear of it, or even think of it, without my memory
+carrying me back to that dark, close room, and all the details of that
+dreadful time.
+
+Mamma’s eyes were wide open, but they could not see us. Never shall I
+forget the terrible expression in them--the expression of agonies of
+suffering!
+
+Then we were taken away.
+
+When, later, I was able to ask Natalia Savishna about Mamma’s last
+moments she told me the following:
+
+“After you were taken out of the room, my beloved one struggled for a
+long time, as though some one were trying to strangle her. Then at last
+she laid her head back upon the pillow, and slept softly, peacefully,
+like an angel from Heaven. I went away for a moment to see about her
+medicine, and just as I entered the room again my darling was throwing
+the bedclothes from off her and calling for your Papa. He stooped over
+her, but strength failed her to say what she wanted to. All she could
+do was to open her lips and gasp, ‘My God, my God! The children, the
+children!’ I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped
+me, saying that it would only excite her--it were best not to do so.
+Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again. What
+she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in
+it she was blessing you--you the children whom she could not see. God
+did not grant her to see her little ones before her death. Then she
+raised herself up--did my love, my darling--yes, just so with her hands,
+and exclaimed in a voice which I cannot bear to remember, ‘Mother of
+God, never forsake them!’”
+
+“Then the pain mounted to her heart, and from her eyes it as, plain that
+she suffered terribly, my poor one! She sank back upon the pillows, tore
+the bedclothes with her teeth, and wept--wept--”
+
+“Yes and what then?” I asked but Natalia Savishna could say no more. She
+turned away and cried bitterly.
+
+Mamma had expired in terrible agonies.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII -- GRIEF
+
+LATE the following evening I thought I would like to look at her once
+more; so, conquering an involuntary sense of fear, I gently opened the
+door of the salon and entered on tiptoe.
+
+In the middle of the room, on a table, lay the coffin, with wax candles
+burning all round it on tall silver candelabra. In the further corner
+sat the chanter, reading the Psalms in a low, monotonous voice. I
+stopped at the door and tried to look, but my eyes were so weak with
+crying, and my nerves so terribly on edge, that I could distinguish
+nothing. Every object seemed to mingle together in a strange blur--the
+candles, the brocade, the velvet, the great candelabra, the pink satin
+cushion trimmed with lace, the chaplet of flowers, the ribboned cap, and
+something of a transparent, wax-like colour. I mounted a chair to see
+her face, yet where it should have been I could see only that wax-like,
+transparent something. I could not believe it to be her face. Yet, as
+I stood grazing at it, I at last recognised the well-known, beloved
+features. I shuddered with horror to realise that it WAS she. Why were
+those eyes so sunken? What had laid that dreadful paleness upon her
+cheeks, and stamped the black spot beneath the transparent skin on one
+of them? Why was the expression of the whole face so cold and severe?
+Why were the lips so white, and their outline so beautiful, so majestic,
+so expressive of an unnatural calm that, as I looked at them, a chill
+shudder ran through my hair and down my back?
+
+Somehow, as I gazed, an irrepressible, incomprehensible power seemed
+to compel me to keep my eyes fixed upon that lifeless face. I could not
+turn away, and my imagination began to picture before me scenes of her
+active life and happiness. I forgot that the corpse lying before me
+now--the THING at which I was gazing unconsciously as at an object which
+had nothing in common with my dreams--was SHE. I fancied I could
+see her--now here, now there, alive, happy, and smiling. Then some
+well-known feature in the face at which I was gazing would suddenly
+arrest my attention, and in a flash I would recall the terrible reality
+and shudder-though still unable to turn my eyes away.
+
+Then again the dreams would replace reality--then again the reality put
+to flight the dreams. At last the consciousness of both left me, and for
+a while I became insensible.
+
+How long I remained in that condition I do not know, nor yet how it
+occurred. I only know that for a time I lost all sense of existence, and
+experienced a kind of vague blissfulness which though grand and sweet,
+was also sad. It may be that, as it ascended to a better world, her
+beautiful soul had looked down with longing at the world in which she
+had left us--that it had seen my sorrow, and, pitying me, had returned
+to earth on the wings of love to console and bless me with a heavenly
+smile of compassion.
+
+The door creaked as the chanter entered who was to relieve his
+predecessor. The noise awakened me, and my first thought was that,
+seeing me standing on the chair in a posture which had nothing touching
+in its aspect, he might take me for an unfeeling boy who had climbed
+on to the chair out of mere curiosity: wherefore I hastened to make the
+sign of the cross, to bend down my head, and to burst out crying. As I
+recall now my impressions of that episode I find that it was only during
+my moments of self-forgetfulness that my grief was wholehearted. True,
+both before and after the funeral I never ceased to cry and to look
+miserable, yet I feel conscience-stricken when I recall that grief
+of mine, seeing that always present in it there was an element of
+conceit--of a desire to show that I was more grieved than any one else,
+of an interest which I took in observing the effect, produced upon
+others by my tears, and of an idle curiosity leading me to remark
+Mimi’s bonnet and the faces of all present. The mere circumstance that
+I despised myself for not feeling grief to the exclusion of everything
+else, and that I endeavoured to conceal the fact, shows that my sadness
+was insincere and unnatural. I took a delight in feeling that I was
+unhappy, and in trying to feel more so. Consequently this egotistic
+consciousness completely annulled any element of sincerity in my woe.
+
+That night I slept calmly and soundly (as is usual after any great
+emotion), and awoke with my tears dried and my nerves restored. At ten
+o’clock we were summoned to attend the pre-funeral requiem.
+
+The room was full of weeping servants and peasants who had come to bid
+farewell to their late mistress. During the service I myself wept
+a great deal, made frequent signs of the cross, and performed many
+genuflections, but I did not pray with, my soul, and felt, if anything,
+almost indifferent. My thoughts were chiefly centred upon the new coat
+which I was wearing (a garment which was tight and uncomfortable) and
+upon how to avoid soiling my trousers at the knees. Also I took the most
+minute notice of all present.
+
+Papa stood at the head of the coffin. He was as white as snow, and
+only with difficulty restrained his tears. His tall figure in its black
+frockcoat, his pale, expressive face, the graceful, assured manner in
+which, as usual, he made the sign of the cross or bowed until he touched
+the floor with his hand [A custom of the Greek funeral rite.] or took
+the candle from the priest or went to the coffin--all were exceedingly
+effective; yet for some reason or another I felt a grudge against him
+for that very ability to appear effective at such a moment. Mimi stood
+leaning against the wall as though scarcely able to support herself. Her
+dress was all awry and covered with feathers, and her cap cocked to one
+side, while her eyes were red with weeping, her legs trembling under
+her, and she sobbed incessantly in a heartrending manner as ever and
+again she buried her face in her handkerchief or her hands. I imagine
+that she did this to check her continual sobbing without being seen by
+the spectators. I remember, too, her telling Papa, the evening before,
+that Mamma’s death had come upon her as a blow from which she could
+never hope to recover; that with Mamma she had lost everything; but that
+“the angel,” as she called my mother, had not forgotten her when at the
+point of death, since she had declared her wish to render her (Mimi’s)
+and Katenka’s fortunes secure for ever. Mimi had shed bitter tears
+while relating this, and very likely her sorrow, if not wholly pure and
+disinterested, was in the main sincere. Lubotshka, in black garments
+and suffused with tears, stood with her head bowed upon her breast. She
+rarely looked at the coffin, yet whenever she did so her face expressed
+a sort of childish fear. Katenka stood near her mother, and, despite
+her lengthened face, looked as lovely as ever. Woloda’s frank nature
+was frank also in grief. He stood looking grave and as though he were
+staring at some object with fixed eyes. Then suddenly his lips would
+begin to quiver, and he would hastily make the sign of the cross, and
+bend his head again.
+
+Such of those present as were strangers I found intolerable. In fact,
+the phrases of condolence with which they addressed Papa (such, for
+instance, as that “she is better off now” “she was too good for this
+world,” and so on) awakened in me something like fury. What right had
+they to weep over or to talk about her? Some of them, in referring to
+ourselves, called us “orphans”--just as though it were not a matter of
+common knowledge that children who have lost their mother are known as
+orphans! Probably (I thought) they liked to be the first to give us that
+name, just as some people find pleasure in being the first to address a
+newly-married girl as “Madame.”
+
+In a far corner of the room, and almost hidden by the open door, of the
+dining-room, stood a grey old woman with bent knees. With hands clasped
+together and eyes lifted to heaven, she prayed only--not wept. Her soul
+was in the presence of God, and she was asking Him soon to reunite her
+to her whom she had loved beyond all beings on this earth, and whom she
+steadfastly believed that she would very soon meet again.
+
+“There stands one who SINCERELY loved her,” I thought to myself, and
+felt ashamed.
+
+The requiem was over. They uncovered the face of the deceased, and all
+present except ourselves went to the coffin to give her the kiss of
+farewell.
+
+One of the last to take leave of her departed mistress was a peasant
+woman who was holding by the hand a pretty little girl of five whom she
+had brought with her, God knows for what reason. Just at a moment when
+I chanced to drop my wet handkerchief and was stooping to pick it up
+again, a loud, piercing scream startled me, and filled me with such
+terror that, were I to live a hundred years more, I should never forget
+it. Even now the recollection always sends a cold shudder through my
+frame. I raised my head. Standing on the chair near the coffin was the
+peasant woman, while struggling and fighting in her arms was the
+little girl, and it was this same poor child who had screamed with such
+dreadful, desperate frenzy as, straining her terrified face away, she
+still, continued to gaze with dilated eyes at the face of the corpse.
+I too screamed in a voice perhaps more dreadful still, and ran headlong
+from the room.
+
+Only now did I understand the source of the strong, oppressive smell
+which, mingling with the scent of the incense, filled the chamber, while
+the thought that the face which, but a few days ago, had been full of
+freshness and beauty--the face which I loved more than anything else in
+all the world--was now capable of inspiring horror at length revealed to
+me, as though for the first time, the terrible truth, and filled my soul
+with despair.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII -- SAD RECOLLECTIONS
+
+Mamma was no longer with us, but our life went on as usual. We went
+to bed and got up at the same times and in the same rooms; breakfast,
+luncheon, and supper continued to be at their usual hours; everything
+remained standing in its accustomed place; nothing in the house or in
+our mode of life was altered: only, she was not there.
+
+Yet it seemed to me as though such a misfortune ought to have changed
+everything. Our old mode of life appeared like an insult to her memory.
+It recalled too vividly her presence.
+
+The day before the funeral I felt as though I should like to rest a
+little after luncheon, and accordingly went to Natalia Savishna’s room
+with the intention of installing myself comfortably under the warm, soft
+down of the quilt on her bed. When I entered I found Natalia herself
+lying on the bed and apparently asleep, but, on hearing my footsteps,
+she raised herself up, removed the handkerchief which had been
+protecting her face from the flies, and, adjusting her cap, sat forward
+on the edge of the bed. Since it frequently happened that I came to lie
+down in her room, she guessed my errand at once, and said:
+
+“So you have come to rest here a little, have you? Lie down, then, my
+dearest.”
+
+“Oh, but what is the matter with you, Natalia Savishna?” I exclaimed
+as I forced her back again. “I did not come for that. No, you are tired
+yourself, so you LIE down.”
+
+“I am quite rested now, darling,” she said (though I knew that it was
+many a night since she had closed her eyes). “Yes, I am indeed, and have
+no wish to sleep again,” she added with a deep sigh.
+
+I felt as though I wanted to speak to her of our misfortune, since I
+knew her sincerity and love, and thought that it would be a consolation
+to me to weep with her.
+
+“Natalia Savishna,” I said after a pause, as I seated myself upon the
+bed, “who would ever have thought of this?”
+
+The old woman looked at me with astonishment, for she did not quite
+understand my question.
+
+“Yes, who would ever have thought of it?” I repeated.
+
+“Ah, my darling,” she said with a glance of tender compassion, “it is
+not only ‘Who would ever have thought of it?’ but ‘Who, even now, would
+ever believe it?’ I am old, and my bones should long ago have gone to
+rest rather than that I should have lived to see the old master, your
+Grandpapa, of blessed memory, and Prince Nicola Michaelovitch, and his
+two brothers, and your sister Amenka all buried before me, though all
+younger than myself--and now my darling, to my never-ending sorrow, gone
+home before me! Yet it has been God’s will. He took her away because she
+was worthy to be taken, and because He has need of the good ones.”
+
+This simple thought seemed to me a consolation, and I pressed closer to
+Natalia. She laid her hands upon my head as she looked upward with eyes
+expressive of a deep, but resigned, sorrow. In her soul was a sure and
+certain hope that God would not long separate her from the one upon whom
+the whole strength of her love had for many years been concentrated.
+
+“Yes, my dear,” she went on, “it is a long time now since I used to
+nurse and fondle her, and she used to call me Natasha. She used to come
+jumping upon me, and caressing and kissing me, and say, ‘MY Nashik, MY
+darling, MY ducky,’ and I used to answer jokingly, ‘Well, my love, I
+don’t believe that you DO love me. You will be a grown-up young
+lady soon, and going away to be married, and will leave your Nashik
+forgotten.’ Then she would grow thoughtful and say, ‘I think I had
+better not marry if my Nashik cannot go with me, for I mean never to
+leave her.’ Yet, alas! She has left me now! Who was there in the world
+she did not love? Yes, my dearest, it must never be POSSIBLE for you to
+forget your Mamma. She was not a being of earth--she was an angel from
+Heaven. When her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom she will continue
+to love you and to be proud of you even there.”
+
+“But why do you say ‘when her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom’?” I
+asked. “I believe it is there now.”
+
+“No, my dearest,” replied Natalia as she lowered her voice and pressed
+herself yet closer to me, “her soul is still here,” and she pointed
+upwards. She spoke in a whisper, but with such an intensity of
+conviction that I too involuntarily raised my eyes and looked at the
+ceiling, as though expecting to see something there. “Before the souls
+of the just enter Paradise they have to undergo forty trials for forty
+days, and during that time they hover around their earthly home.” [A
+Russian popular legend.]
+
+She went on speaking for some time in this strain--speaking with the
+same simplicity and conviction as though she were relating common things
+which she herself had witnessed, and to doubt which could never enter
+into any one’s head. I listened almost breathlessly, and though I did
+not understand all she said, I never for a moment doubted her word.
+
+“Yes, my darling, she is here now, and perhaps looking at us and
+listening to what we are saying,” concluded Natalia. Raising her head,
+she remained silent for a while. At length she wiped away the tears
+which were streaming from her eyes, looked me straight in the face, and
+said in a voice trembling with emotion:
+
+“Ah, it is through many trials that God is leading me to Him. Why,
+indeed, am I still here? Whom have I to live for? Whom have I to love?”
+
+“Do you not love US, then?” I asked sadly, and half-choking with my
+tears.
+
+“Yes, God knows that I love you, my darling; but to love any one as I
+loved HER--that I cannot do.”
+
+She could say no more, but turned her head aside and wept bitterly. As
+for me, I no longer thought of going to sleep, but sat silently with her
+and mingled my tears with hers.
+
+Presently Foka entered the room, but, on seeing our emotion and not
+wishing to disturb us, stopped short at the door.
+
+“Do you want anything, my good Foka?” asked Natalia as she wiped away
+her tears.
+
+“If you please, half-a-pound of currants, four pounds of sugar, and
+three pounds of rice for the kutia.” [Cakes partaken of by the mourners
+at a Russian funeral.]
+
+“Yes, in one moment,” said Natalia as she took a pinch of snuff and
+hastened to her drawers. All traces of the grief, aroused by our
+conversation disappeared on, the instant that she had duties to fulfil,
+for she looked upon those duties as of paramount importance.
+
+“But why FOUR pounds?” she objected as she weighed the sugar on a
+steelyard. “Three and a half would be sufficient,” and she withdrew a
+few lumps. “How is it, too, that, though I weighed out eight pounds of
+rice yesterday, more is wanted now? No offence to you, Foka, but I am
+not going to waste rice like that. I suppose Vanka is glad that there
+is confusion in the house just now, for he thinks that nothing will be
+looked after, but I am not going to have any careless extravagance with
+my master’s goods. Did one ever hear of such a thing? Eight pounds!”
+
+“Well, I have nothing to do with it. He says it is all gone, that’s
+all.”
+
+“Hm, hm! Well, there it is. Let him take it.”
+
+I was struck by the sudden transition from the touching sensibility
+with which she had just been speaking to me to this petty reckoning and
+captiousness. Yet, thinking it over afterwards, I recognised that it was
+merely because, in spite of what was lying on her heart, she retained
+the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which
+enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong
+and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial
+tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend.
+Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet
+a sentiment so inherent in human nature, that even the most poignant
+sorrow does not always drive it wholly forth. Vanity mingled with grief
+shows itself in a desire to be recognised as unhappy or resigned;
+and this ignoble desire--an aspiration which, for all that we may
+not acknowledge it is rarely absent, even in cases of the utmost
+affliction--takes off greatly from the force, the dignity, and the
+sincerity of grief. Natalia Savishna had been so sorely smitten by her
+misfortune that not a single wish of her own remained in her soul--she
+went on living purely by habit.
+
+Having handed over the provisions to Foka, and reminded him of the
+refreshments which must be ready for the priests, she took up her
+knitting and seated herself by my side again. The conversation reverted
+to the old topic, and we once more mourned and shed tears together.
+These talks with Natalia I repeated every day, for her quiet tears
+and words of devotion brought me relief and comfort. Soon, however, a
+parting came. Three days after the funeral we returned to Moscow, and I
+never saw her again.
+
+Grandmamma received the sad tidings only on our return to her house, and
+her grief was extraordinary. At first we were not allowed to see her,
+since for a whole week she was out of her mind, and the doctors were
+afraid for her life. Not only did she decline all medicine whatsoever,
+but she refused to speak to anybody or to take nourishment, and never
+closed her eyes in sleep. Sometimes, as she sat alone in the arm-chair in
+her room, she would begin laughing and crying at the same time, with a
+sort of tearless grief, or else relapse into convulsions, and scream out
+dreadful, incoherent words in a horrible voice. It was the first dire
+sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost
+to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then
+another, of bringing this misfortune upon her, and rail at and blame
+them with the most extraordinary virulence. Finally she would rise from
+her arm-chair, pace the room for a while, and end by falling senseless
+to the floor.
+
+Once, when I went to her room, she appeared to be sitting quietly in her
+chair, yet with an air which struck me as curious. Though her eyes were
+wide open, their glance was vacant and meaningless, and she seemed to
+gaze in my direction without seeing me. Suddenly her lips parted slowly
+in a smile, and she said in a touchingly, tender voice: “Come here,
+then, my dearest one; come here, my angel.” Thinking that it was myself
+she was addressing, I moved towards her, but it was not I whom she was
+beholding at that moment. “Oh, my love,” she went on, “if only you could
+know how distracted I have been, and how delighted I am to see you once
+more!” I understood then that she believed herself to be looking
+upon Mamma, and halted where I was. “They told me you were gone,” she
+concluded with a frown; “but what nonsense! As if you could die before
+ME!” and she laughed a terrible, hysterical laugh.
+
+Only those who can love strongly can experience an overwhelming grief.
+Yet their very need of loving sometimes serves to throw off their grief
+from them and to save them. The moral nature of man is more tenacious of
+life than the physical, and grief never kills.
+
+After a time Grandmamma’s power of weeping came back to her, and she
+began to recover. Her first thought when her reason returned was for us
+children, and her love for us was greater than ever. We never left her
+arm-chair, and she would talk of Mamma, and weep softly, and caress us.
+
+Nobody who saw her grief could say that it was consciously exaggerated,
+for its expression was too strong and touching; yet for some reason or
+another my sympathy went out more to Natalia Savishna, and to this day
+I am convinced that nobody loved and regretted Mamma so purely and
+sincerely as did that simple-hearted, affectionate being.
+
+With Mamma’s death the happy time of my childhood came to an end, and
+a new epoch--the epoch of my boyhood--began; but since my memories of
+Natalia Savishna (who exercised such a strong and beneficial influence
+upon the bent of my mind and the development of my sensibility) belong
+rather to the first period, I will add a few words about her and her
+death before closing this portion of my life.
+
+I heard later from people in the village that, after our return to
+Moscow, she found time hang very heavy on her hands. Although the
+drawers and shelves were still under her charge, and she never ceased
+to arrange and rearrange them--to take things out and to dispose of them
+afresh--she sadly missed the din and bustle of the seignorial mansion to
+which she had been accustomed from her childhood up. Consequently
+grief, the alteration in her mode of life, and her lack of activity soon
+combined to develop in her a malady to which she had always been more or
+less subject.
+
+Scarcely more than a year after Mamma’s death dropsy showed itself, and
+she took to her bed. I can imagine how sad it must have been for her
+to go on living--still more, to die--alone in that great empty house
+at Petrovskoe, with no relations or any one near her. Every one there
+esteemed and loved her, but she had formed no intimate friendships in
+the place, and was rather proud of the fact. That was because, enjoying
+her master’s confidence as she did, and having so much property
+under her care, she considered that intimacies would lead to culpable
+indulgence and condescension. Consequently (and perhaps, also, because
+she had nothing really in common with the other servants) she kept them
+all at a distance, and used to say that she “recognised neither kinsman
+nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with
+regard to her master’s property.”
+
+Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God. Yet
+sometimes, in those moments of weakness to which all of us are
+subject, and when man’s best solace is the tears and compassion of his
+fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and
+talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by
+licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska
+began to whine she would say as she quieted it: “Enough, enough! I know
+without thy telling me that my time is near.” A month before her death
+she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white
+cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants,
+fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried. Next she put
+everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory
+which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy. All that she kept
+back was a couple of silk gowns, an old shawl, and Grandpapa’s military
+uniform--things which had been presented to her absolutely, and which,
+thanks to her care and orderliness, were in an excellent state of
+preservation--particularly the handsome gold embroidery on the uniform.
+
+Just before her death, again, she expressed a wish that one of the gowns
+(a pink one) should be made into a robe de chambre for Woloda; that the
+other one (a many-coloured gown) should be made into a similar garment
+for myself; and that the shawl should go to Lubotshka. As for the
+uniform, it was to devolve either to Woloda or to myself, according as
+the one or the other of us should first become an officer. All the rest
+of her property (save only forty roubles, which she set aside for her
+commemorative rites and to defray the costs of her burial) was to pass
+to her brother, a person with whom, since he lived a dissipated life
+in a distant province, she had had no intercourse during her lifetime.
+When, eventually, he arrived to claim the inheritance, and found that
+its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused
+to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a
+woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as
+well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even
+the smallest thing should have left no more: yet it was a fact.
+
+Though Natalia’s last illness lasted for two months, she bore her
+sufferings with truly Christian fortitude. Never did she fret or
+complain, but, as usual, appealed continually to God. An hour before
+the end came she made her final confession, received the Sacrament with
+quiet joy, and was accorded extreme unction. Then she begged forgiveness
+of every one in the house for any wrong she might have done them, and
+requested the priest to send us word of the number of times she had
+blessed us for our love of her, as well as of how in her last moments
+she had implored our forgiveness if, in her ignorance, she had ever at
+any time given us offence. “Yet a thief have I never been. Never have I
+used so much as a piece of thread that was not my own.” Such was the one
+quality which she valued in herself.
+
+Dressed in the cap and gown prepared so long beforehand, and with her
+head resting, upon the cushion made for the purpose, she conversed with
+the priest up to the very last moment, until, suddenly, recollecting
+that she had left him nothing for the poor, she took out ten roubles,
+and asked him to distribute them in the parish. Lastly she made the sign
+of the cross, lay down, and expired--pronouncing with a smile of joy the
+name of the Almighty.
+
+She quitted life without a pang, and, so far from fearing death,
+welcomed it as a blessing. How often do we hear that said, and how
+seldom is it a reality! Natalia Savishna had no reason to fear death
+for the simple reason that she died in a sure and certain faith and in
+strict obedience to the commands of the Gospel. Her whole life had
+been one of pure, disinterested love, of utter self-negation. Had her
+convictions been of a more enlightened order, her life directed to a
+higher aim, would that pure soul have been the more worthy of love and
+reverence? She accomplished the highest and best achievement in this
+world: she died without fear and without repining.
+
+They buried her where she had wished to lie--near the little mausoleum
+which still covers Mamma’s tomb. The little mound beneath which she
+sleeps is overgrown with nettles and burdock, and surrounded by a black
+railing, but I never forget, when leaving the mausoleum, to approach
+that railing, and to salute the plot of earth within by bowing
+reverently to the ground.
+
+Sometimes, too, I stand thoughtfully between the railing and the
+mausoleum, and sad memories pass through my mind. Once the idea came to
+me as I stood there: “Did Providence unite me to those two beings solely
+in order to make me regret them my life long?”
+
+
+
+
+
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