Youth

By Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

First published in 1857

Distributed by the Tolstoy Library


Chapter I

What I Consider the Beginning of Youth

I have said that my friendship with Dmitry revealed a new view of life to me, its aims and bearings.  This view consisted essentially in the belief that man's destiny is to strive for moral perfection, and this perfection is easy, possible, and eternal.  But hitherto I had reveled only in the discovery of the new thoughts which sprang from this belief, and in the construction of brilliant plans for a moral and active future; but my life went on in the same petty, confused, and idle fashion.

The philanthropic thoughts which I examined in my conversations with my adored friend Dmitry, *wonderful Mitya*, as I called him in a whisper to myself sometimes, still pleased my mind only, but not my feelings.  But the time arrived when these thoughts came into my head with such freshness and force of moral discovery, that I was alarmed when I reflected how much time I had wasted in vain; and I wanted to apply these thoughts immediately, that very second, to life, with the firm intention of never changing them.

And from that time I date the beginning of *youth*.  At that time I was nearly sixteen.  Masters continued to come to me.  St. Jerome supervised my studies, and I was forced unwillingly to prepare for the university.  Besides my studies, my occupations consisted in solitary incoherent reveries and meditation; in gymnastic exercises with a view to making myself the strongest man in the world; in roaming, without any definite aim or idea, through all the rooms, and particularly in the corridor of the maids' room; and in gazing at myself in the mirror, from which last occupation, by the way, I always desisted with a heavy feeling of sorrow and even of aversion.  I not only was convinced that my appearance was plain, but I could not even comfort myself with the consolations usual in such cases.  I could not say that my face was expressive, intellectual, and noble.  There was nothing expressive about it; the features were of the coarsest, most ordinary, and most homely description.  My small gray eyes were stupid rather than intelligent, particularly when I looked in the mirror.  There was still less of manliness about it.  Although I was not so diminutive in stature, and very strong for my age, all my features were soft, flabby, and unformed.  There was not even anything noble about it; on the contrary, my face was exactly like that of a common peasant (*muzhik*), and I had just such big hands and feet; and this seemed to me at that time very disgraceful.


Chapter II

Spring

On the year when I entered the university, Easter fell so late in April that examinations were set for St. Thomas's Week [Footnote:  The week following Easter week. -Tr.], and I was obliged to fast in preparation for the Holy Communion [Footnote:  At least one reception a year of this Sacrament is obligatory; and the usual time is during the Great Fast (Lent) before Easter.  Even those who receive it frequently make a point of having one such reception fall during this Great Fast. -Tr.], and make my final preparations, during Passion Week.

The weather had been soft, warm, and clear for three days after the wet snow which Karl Ivanitch had been in the habit of calling "*the son followed the father.*"  Not a lump of snow was to be seen in the streets; dirty paste had given way to wet, shining pavements and rapid rivulets.  The last drops were thawing from the roofs in the sun.  The buds were swelling on the trees within the enclosures.  The path in the courtyard was dry.  In the direction of the stable, past the frozen heaps of manure, and between the stones about the porch, the moss-like grass was beginning to turn green.  It was that particular period of spring which acts most powerfully upon the soul of man, - the clear, full, brilliant but not hot sun, the brooks and snow-bare places, perfumed freshness in the air, and the tender blue sky, with its long transparent clouds.  I do not know why, but it seems to me that the influence of this first period of birth of the spring is even more powerful and perceptible in a great city; one sees less, but foresees more.  I stood by the window, through whose double frames the morning sun cast dusty rays of light upon the floor of the school-room which bored me so intolerably, solving a long algebraic equation on the blackboard.  In one hand I held a soft, tattered copy of Franker's Algebra, in the other a small bit of chalk, with which I had already smeared both hands, my face, and the elbows of my coat.  Nikolai, wearing an apron, and with his sleeves rolled up, was chipping off the cement, and extracting the nails of the window which opened on the front yard.  His occupation, and the noise he made, distracted my attention.  Besides, I was in a very evil and dissatisfied state of mind.  Nothing would go right with me.  I had made a mistake at the beginning of my calculation, so that I had had to begin all over again.  I had dropped the chalk twice.  I was conscious that my hands and face were dirty.  The sponge had disappeared somewhere or other, the noise which Nikolai made shook my nerves painfully.  I wanted to get into a rage, and growl.  I flung aside the chalk and algebra, and began to pace the room.  But I remembered that today I must go to confession, and that I must refrain from all evil; and all at once I fell into a peculiar, gentle mood, and approached Nikolai.

"Permit me; I will help you, Nikolai," said I, trying to impart the gentlest of tones to my voice.  The thought that I was behaving well, stifling my vexation, and helping him, heightened this gentle disposition of mind still further.

The cement was cut away, the nails removed; but although Nikolai tugged at the cross-frame with all his might, the frame would not yield.

"If the frame comes out immediately now, when I pull on it," I thought, "it will signify that it is a sin, and that I need not do any more work today."  The frame leaned to one side, and came out.

"Where is it to be carried?" said I.

"If you please, I will take care of it myself," replied Nikolai, evidently amazed and seemingly displeased with my zeal; "it must not be mixed up, but they belong in the garret in my room."

"I will mark it," said I, lifting the frame.

It seems to me that if the garret were two versts away, and the window-frame were twice as heavy, I should be very much pleased.  I wanted to exhaust myself by performing this service for Nikolai. When I returned to the room, the tiles and the cones of salt [Footnote:  In order to aid the sand, which is placed between the double windows to absorb dampness, little cones of salt two or three inches high are added, about three to a window.  The salt is put into little paper molds while damp, to give it this conical form, and the molds are sometimes left also.  Tiles or little bricks are often added, like cases, between the salt, for ornament; and provincial esthetes frequently add or substitute little bunches of artificial flowers. -Tr.] were already transferred to the window-sills, and Nikolai, with a wing, had brushed off the sand and drowsy flies through the open window.  The fresh, perfumed air had already entered and filled the room.  From the window the hum of the city and the twittering of the sparrows in the yard were audible.

Every object was brilliantly illuminated; the room had grown cheerful; the light spring breeze fluttered the leaves of my algebra, and Nikolai's hair.  I approached the window, sat down in it, bent toward the yard, and began to think.

A certain new, exceedingly powerful, and pleasant sensation penetrated my soul all at once.  The wet earth, through which, here and there, bright green spears of grass with yellow stalks pushed their way; the rivulets, sparkling in the sun, and whirling along little clods of earth and shavings; and reddening twigs of syringa with swollen buds which undulate just beneath the window; the anxious twittering of the birds thronging this bush; the blackish hedge wet with the melted snow:  but chiefly the damp, fragrant air and cheerful sun, - spoke to me intelligibly, clearly, of something new and very beautiful, which, though I cannot reproduce it as it told itself to me, I shall endeavor to repeat as I received it:  everything spoke to me of beauty, happiness, and virtue, said that both were easy and possible to me, that one could not exist without the other, and even that beauty, happiness, and virtue are one and the same.  "How could I fail to understand this?  How wicked I was before! How happy I might have been, and how happy I may be in the future!" I said to myself.  "I must become another man as quickly, as quickly, as possible, this very moment, and begin to live differently."  But, in spite of this, I still sat for a long time in the window, dreaming and doing nothing.  Has it ever happened to you, in summer, to lie down to sleep, during the daytime, in gloomy, rainy weather, and, waking up at sunset, to open your eyes, to catch sight through the wide square window, from under the linen shade which swells and beats its stick against the window-sill, of the shady, purpling side of the linden alley, wet with rain, and the damp garden walks, illuminated by the bright, slanting rays; suddenly to catch the sound of merry life among the birds in the garden, and to see the insects which are circling in the window aperture, transparent in the sun, and become conscious of the fragrance of the air after rain, and to think, "How shameful of me to sleep away such an evening!" and then to spring up in haste, in order to go to the garden and rejoice in life?  If this has happened to you, then that is a specimen of the powerful feeling which I experienced then.


Chapter III

Reveries

"Today I shall confess, I shall purify myself of all my sins," I thought, "and I shall never commit any more."  (Here I recalled all the sins which troubled me most.)  "I shall go to church, without fail, every Sunday, and afterwards I shall read the Gospels for a whole hour; and then, out of the white bank-bill which I shall receive every month when I enter the university, I will be sure to give two rubles and a half (one-tenth) to the poor, and in such a manner that no one shall know it - and not to beggars, but I will seek out poor people, and orphan or old woman, whom no one knows about.

"I shall have a room to myself (probably St. Jerome's), and I shall take care of it myself, and keep it wonderfully clean; and I shall leave the man nothing to do for me, for he is just the same as I am.  Then I shall go every day to the university on foot (and if they give me a drozhky, I shall sell it, and give that money also to the poor), and I shall do everything with the greatest precision.  (What this "everything" was, I could not have told, in the least, then; but I vividly realized and felt that this "everything" meant an intellectual, moral, and irreproachable life.)  "I shall prepare my lectures, and even go over the subjects beforehand, so that I shall be at the head in the first course, and write the dissertation; in the second course, I shall know everything beforehand, and they can transfer me directly to the third course, so that at eighteen I shall graduate as first candidate, with two gold medals; then I shall stand my examination for the degree of Master, then Doctor, and I shall become the leading *savant* in Russia; I may be the most learned man in Europe, even."  "Well, and afterwards?" I asked myself.  But here I remembered that these were dreams, - pride, sin, which I should have to recount to the priest that evening; and I went back to the beginning of my argument.  "As a preparation for my lectures, I will walk out to the Sparrow Hills [Footnote:  Hills near Moscow. -Tr.]; there I will select a spot beneath a tree, and read over the lesson.  Sometimes I shall take something to eat with me, cheese or cakes from Pedotti, or something.  I shall rest myself, and then I shall read some good book, or sketch views, or play on some instrument (I must not fail to learn to play the flute).  Then *she* will also take a walk on the Sparrow Hills, and some day she will come up to me and ask who I am.  And I shall look at her so mournfully, and say that I am the son of a priest, and that I am happy only here when I am alone, quite, quite alone.  Then she will give me her hand, and say something, and sit down beside me.  Thus we shall come there every day, and we shall become friends, and I shall kiss her. -- No, that is not well; on the contrary, from this day forth, I shall never more look at a woman.  Never, never will I go into the maids' room, I will try not to pass by it even; and in three years I shall be free from guardianship, and I shall marry, without fail.  I shall take as much exercise as possible with gymnastics every day, so that when I am twenty-five I shall be stronger than Rappeau.  The first day, I will hold half a pood [Footnote:  About twenty pounds. -Tr.] in my outstretched hand for five minutes; on the second day, twenty-one pounds; on the third day, twenty-two pounds, and so on, so that at last I can support four poods in each hand, and I shall be stronger than all the men-servants; and when any one undertakes to insult me, or express himself disrespectfully of *her*, I will take him thus, quite simply, by the breast, I will lift him an arshin or two from the ground with one hand, and only hold him long enough to let him feel my power, and then I will release him. -- But this is not well:  no, I will not do him any harm, I will only show him ...."

Reproach me not because the dreams of youth were as childish as the dreams of childhood and boyhood.  I am convinced that if I am fated to live to extreme old age, and my story follows my growth, as an old man of seventy I shall dream in exactly the same impossibly childish way as now.  I shall dream of some charming Marie, who will fall in love with me as a toothless old man, as she loved Mazeppa [Footnote:  An allusion to Pushkin's poem, "Poltava".  -Tr.]; of how my weak-minded son will suddenly become a Minister through some unusual circumstance; or of how a treasure of millions will fall to me all of a sudden.  I am convinced that there is no human being or age which is deprived of this beneficent, comforting capacity for dreaming.  But, exclusive of the general traits of impossibility, - the witchcraft of reverie, - the dreams of each man and of each stage of growth possess their own distinctive character.  During that period of time which I regard as the limit of boyhood and the beginning of youth, four sentiments formed the foundation of my dreams:  love for *her*, the ideal woman, of whom I thought always in the same strain, and whom I expected to meet somewhere at any moment.  This *she* was a little like Sonitchka; a little like Mascha, Vasily's wife, when she washes the clothes in the tub; and a little like the woman with pearls on her white neck, whom I saw in the theater very long ago, in the box next to ours.  The second sentiment was love of love.  I wanted to have every one know and love me.  I wanted to pronounce my name, Nikolai Irteneff, and have every one, startled by this information, surround me, and thank me for something.  The third feeling was the hope of some remarkable, glorious good fortune, - so great and firm that it would border on madness.  I was so sure that I should become the greatest and most distinguished man in the world very soon, in consequence of some extraordinary circumstance or other, that I found myself constantly in a state of agitated expectation of something enchantingly blissful.  I was always expecting that it *was about to begin*, and that I was on the point of attaining whatever a man may desire; and I was always hastening about in all directions, supposing that it was already *beginning* in the place where I was not.  The fourth and principal feeling was disgust at myself, and remorse, but a remorse so mingled with hope of bliss that there was nothing sorrowful about it.  It seemed to me so easy and natural to tear myself away from all the past, to reconstruct, to forget everything which had been, and to begin my life with all its relations quite anew, that the past neither weighed upon nor fettered me.  I even took pleasure in my repugnance to the past, and began to see it in more somber colors than it had possessed.  The blacker was the circle of memories of the past, the purer and brighter did the pure, bright point of the present and the rainbow hues of the future stand out in relief against it.  This voice of remorse and of passionate desire for perfection was the chief new spiritual sentiment at that epoch of my development; and it marked a new era in my views with regard to myself, to people, and the world.  That beneficent, cheering voice has, since then, so often boldly been raised, in those sad hours when the soul has silently submitted to the weight of life's falsehood and vice, against every untruth, maliciously convicting the past, pointing to the bright spot of the present and making one love it, and promising good and happiness in the future, - the blessed, comforting voice!  Is it possible that thou wilt ever cease to sound.


Chapter IV

Our Family Circle

Papa was seldom at home that spring.  But when it did happen, he was extremely gay; he rattled off his favorite pieces on the piano, made eyes and invented jests about Mimi and all of us, such as that the Tsarevitch of Georgia had seen Mimi out riding, and had fallen so much in love that he had sent a petition to the Synod for a divorce, and that I had been appointed assistant to the ambassador to Vienna, - and he communicated this news with a sober face, - and frightened Katenka with spiders, which she was afraid of.  He was very gracious to our friends Dubkoff and Nekhliudoff, and was constantly telling us and visitors his plans for the coming year.  Although these plans were changed nearly every day, and contradicted each other, they were so attractive that we listened to them eagerly, and Liubotchka stared straight at papa's mouth, never winking lest she should lose a single word.  Now the plan consisted in leaving us in Moscow at the university, and going to Italy with Liubotchka for two years, - again, he was going to purchase an estate in the Crimea, on the southern shore, and go there every summer, - then, he intended to remove to Petersburg with the whole family, and so forth.  But another change had taken place of late in papa, besides his remarkable gayety, which greatly surprised me.  He had got himself some fashionable clothes, - an olive-colored coat, fashionable trousers with straps, and a long overcoat which became him extremely, - and he was often deliciously scented with perfumes when he went anywhere, and particularly to one lady of whom Mimi never spoke except with a sigh, and with a face on which one might have read the words, "Poor orphans! An unfortunate passion.  It is well that *she* is no more," and so on.  I learned from Nikolai (for papa never told us about his gambling affairs) that he had been very lucky in play that winter; he had won a dreadfully large sum at *l'hombre*, and did not want to play any that spring.  Probably this was the reason that he was so anxious to go to the country as soon as possible, lest he should not be able to restrain himself.  He even decided not to await my entrance to the university, but to go off immediately after Easter to Petrovskoe with the girls, whither Volodya and I were to follow him later on.

Volodya had been inseparable from Dubkoff all winter and even until the spring (but they and Dmitry began to treat each other rather coldly).  Their chief pleasures, so far as I could judge from the conversations which I heard, consisted in drinking champagne incessantly, driving in a sleigh past the windows of young ladies with whom they were both in love, and dancing *vis-à-vis*, not at children's balls any more, but at real balls.

This last circumstance cause a great separation between Volodya and me, although we loved each other.  We were conscious that the difference was too great between the boy to whom teachers still came, and the man who danced at great balls, to allow of our making up our minds to share our thoughts. Katenka was already quite grown up, read a great many romances, and the thought that she might soon marry no longer seemed a joke to me; but although Volodya was grown up also, they did not associate, and it even seemed as though they despised each other.  Generally, when Katenka was alone at home, nothing interested her but romances, and she was bored most of the time; but when strange men came, she became very lively and charming, made eyes at them, and what she meant to express by this I could not in the least understand.  Only later, when I learned from her in conversation that the only coquetry permitted to a girl is this coquetry of the eyes, could I explain to myself the strange, unnatural grimaces of the eyes, which did not seem to surprise other people at all.  Liubotchka also had begun to wear dresses which were almost long, so that her crooked legs were hardly visible at all; but she cried as much as ever.  She no longer dreamed now of marrying a hussar, but a singer or a musician; and to this end she busied herself diligently with music.  St. Jerome, who knew that he was to remain in the house only until the conclusion of my examinations, had found a situation with some Count, and from that time forth looked upon our household rather disdainfully.  He was seldom at home, took to smoking cigarettes, which were then the height of dandyism, and was incessantly whistling merry airs through a card.  Mimi became more bitter every day, and it seemed as though she did not expect any good from any one of us from the time we were grown up.

When I came down to dinner, I found only Mimi, Katenka, Liubotchka, and St. Jerome in the dining room; papa was not at home, and Volodya, who was preparing for examination, was with his comrades in his room, and had ordered his dinner to be served there.  Of late, Mimi, whom none of us respected, had taken the head of the table most of the time, and dinner lost much of its charm.  Dinner was no longer, as in mamma's day, and grandmamma's, a kind of ceremony which united the whole family at a certain hour, and divided the day into two halves.  We permitted ourselves to be late, to come in a t the second course, to drink wine from tumblers (St. Jerome himself set the example on this point), to lounge on our chairs, to go off before dinner was over, and similar liberties.  From that moment dinner ceased to be, as formerly, a joyous, daily family solemnity.  It was quite another thing at Petrovskoe, where all, freshly washed and dressed for dinner, seated themselves in the drawing room at two o'clock, and chatted merrily while waiting for the appointed hour.  Just as the clock in the butler's pantry squeaks preparatory to striking two, Foka enters softly, a napkin on his arm, and with a dignified and rather stern countenance.  "Dinner is ready!" he says in a loud, drawling voice; and all go to the dining room, the elder people in front, the young ones behind, with gay, contented faces; rattling their starched skirts, and squeaking their shoes, and softly talking, they seat themselves in their familiar places.  And it used to be very different in Moscow, where all stood softly talking before the table, waiting for grandmamma, - and Gavrilo has already gone to announce to her that dinner is serves; all at once the door opens, the rustle of a dress and the sound of feet become audible, and grandmamma swims out of her chamber, in a remarkable cap with lilac ribbons and all on one side, smiling or scowling darkly (according to the state of her health). Gavrilo rushes to her chair, the chairs rattle, and with a feeling of cold trickling down your spine - a forerunner of appetite - you take your rather damp, starched napkin, devour your crust of bread, and, rubbing your hands under the table with impatient and joyous greediness, you gaze at the steaming tureen of soup, which the butler dispenses according to rank, age, and grandmamma's ideas.

I no longer experienced any such joy or emotion when I came to dinner.

The chatter between Mimi, St. Jerome, and the girls about the frightful shoes which the Russian teacher wears, and about the young princesses Kornakoff's flounced dresses, and so on, - that chatter which formerly inspired me with genuine contempt, which I did not even try to conceal so far as Liubotchka and Katenka were concerned, - did not withdraw me from my new and virtuous frame of mind.  I was unusually gentle; I listened to them with a peculiarly courteous smile, respectfully asked to have the kvas passed to me, and agreed with St. Jerome when he corrected me for a phrase which I had used before dinner, and told me that it was more elegant to say *je puis* than *je peux*.  But I must confess that it rather displeased me to find no one paid any special attention to my gentleness and amiability.  After dinner Liubotchka showed me a paper on which she had written down all her sins; I thought that very fine, but that it would be still better to inscribe one's sins in one's soul, and that "all that was not quite the thing to do."

"Why not?" asked Liubotchka.

"Well, but this is all right also; you don't understand me."  And I went upstairs to my own room, telling St. Jerome that I was going to occupy myself until time to go to confession, which was an hour and a half off yet, with writing out a list of my duties and occupations for my whole life, and laying out on paper the aim of my life, and the rules by which I was always to act without any deviation.


Chapter V

Rules

I procured a sheet of paper, and wanted first of all to set about a list of my duties and occupations for the coming year.  For this the paper must be ruled; but as I had not the ruler by me, I used the Latin dictionary for that purpose.  When I drew the pen along the dictionary, and then moved that back, it appeared that instead of a line I had made a long puddle of ink on the paper; besides, the dictionary was shorter than the paper, and the line curved around its soft corner.  I took another piece of paper, and by moving the lexicon I managed to draw the line after a fashion.  Separating my duties into three classes, - duties to myself, to my neighbor, and to God, - I began to write down the first; but they turned out to be so numerous, and of so many kinds and subdivisions, that it was necessary to write first, "Rules of Life," and then to set about making a list of them.  I took six sheets of paper, sewed them into a book, and wrote at the top, "Rules of Life".  These words were so crookedly and unevenly written that I pondered for a long while whether I should not write them over; and I worried long as I looked at the tattered list, and this deformed heading.  Why does everything which was beautiful and clean in my soul turn out so repulsive on paper, and in life generally, when I want to put in practice any of the things which I think?

"The confessor has arrived; please come down stairs to listen to the precepts," Nikolai came to announce.

I hid my blank-book in the table, looked in the glass, brushed my hair up, which, in my opinion, gave me a thoughtful look, and went to the boudoir, where stood a covered table with the images and the wax candles for sacramental preparation.  Papa entered by another door at the same time as myself.  The confessor, a gray-haired monk with a stern, aged face, gave papa his blessing.  Papa kissed his small, broad, dry hand; I did the same.

"Call Waldemar," said papa; "where is he?  But no, he is making his fasting preparation and confession at the university."

"He is engaged with the prince," said Katenka, and looked at Liubotchka.  Liubotchka suddenly blushed, frowned for some reason, pretended that she felt ill, and quitted the room.  I followed her.  She paused in the drawing room, and wrote something more on her paper.

"What, have you committed a fresh sin?" I asked.

"No, it's nothing," she replied, turning red.

At that moment Dmitry's voice became audible in the anteroom, as he took leave of Volodya.

"Everything is a temptation to you," said Katenka, entering the room, and addressing Liubotchka.

I could not understand what had happened to my sister; she was so confused that tears rose to her eyes, and her agitation, attaining the highest point, passed into anger at herself and Katenka, who was evidently teasing her.

"It's plain that you are a *foreigner* [nothing could be more insulting to Katenka than the appellation of "foreigner," and therefore Liubotchka made use of it]: before such a sacrament," she continued, with dignity in her voice, "and you are distracting me intentionally; you ought to understand that this is not a jest at all."

"Do you know what she has written, Nikolenka?" said Katenka, offended by the word "foreigner."  "She has written ...."

"I did not expect that you would be so malicious," said Liubotchka, breaking down completely, and leaving us.  "She leads me into sin, and on purpose, at such a moment.  I do not bother you with your feelings and sufferings."


Chapter VI

Confession

With these and other similar distracting thoughts, I returned to the boudoir, when all were assembled there, and the confessor, rising, prepared to read the prayer before confession.  But as soon as the stern, expressive voice of the monk resounded amid the universal silence, and especially when he addressed us with the words, *"Disclose all your sins without shame, fear, or secrecy, and your soul shall be purified before God; but if ye conceal aught, so shall ye have greater sin,"* the feeling of devout agitation which I had felt on the preceding morning, at the thought of the coming sacrament, returned to me.  I even took pleasure in the consciousness of this state, and tried to retain it, putting a stop to all thoughts which occurred to me, and trying to fear something.

The first who approached to confess was papa.  He remained for a very long time in grandmamma's room, and meanwhile all of us in the boudoir remained silent, or discussed in whispers who should go first.  At length the monk's voice was again audible behind the door, as he read a prayer, and then papa's footsteps.  The door creaked, and he emerged, coughing, as was his wont, twitching his shoulders, and not looking at any of us.

"Come, do you go now, Liuba, and see that you tell everything.  You are my great sinner," said papa, gayly, pinching her cheek.

Liubotchka reddened and turned pale, pulled her list from her apron and hid it again, and, hanging her head, and seeming to shorten her neck, as though expecting a blow from above, she passed through the door.  She did not stay long, but when she came out her shoulders were heaving with sobs.

Finally, after pretty Katenka, who came out smiling, my turn came.  I entered the half-lighted room with the same dull terror, and a desire deliberately to augment that terror, in myself.  The confessor stood before the reading-desk, and slowly turned his face toward me.

I did not remain more than five minutes in grandmamma's room, and came out happy, and, according to my convictions at the time, a perfectly pure, morally changed, and new man.  Although all the old surroundings of life struck me unpleasantly, the same rooms, the same furniture, the same face in myself (I should have liked to change my exterior, just as all my interior had been changed, as I thought) - still, notwithstanding this, I remained in this refreshing frame of mind until I went to bed.

I had already fallen into a doze, as I was going over in imagination all the sins of which I had been purified, when all at once I recalled one shameful sin which I had kept back in confession.  The words of the prayer preceding confession came back to me, and resounded in my ears without intermission.  All my composure vanished in a moment.  "And if ye conceal aught, so shall ye have greater sin," I heard incessantly.  I saw that I was such a terrible sinner that there was no punishment adequate for me.  Long did I toss from side to side, as I reflected on my situation, and awaited God's punishment and even sudden death from moment to moment, - a thought which threw me into indescribable terror.  But suddenly the happy thought occurred to me, to go or ride to the confessor at the monastery as soon as it was light, and confess again; and I became calm.


Chapter VII

The Trip to the Monastery

I woke up several times during the night, fearing to oversleep myself in the morning, and at six o'clock I was already on my feet.  It was hardly light at the windows yet. I put on my clothes and my boots, which lay in a heap and unbrushed by the bed, for Nikolai had not succeeded in carrying them off; and, without washing myself or saying my prayers, I went out into the street alone for the first time in my life.

From behind the big, green-roofed house on the other side of the street, the red flush of the dull, cold dawn appeared.  A rather hard spring morning frost bound the mud and the rivulets, crackled under foot, and bit my face and hands.

There was not a single cabman in our lane as yet, though I had counted on it in order that I might go and return the more speedily.  Only a few carts were dragging slowly along the Arbata, and a couple of working stone-masons passed along the sidewalk in conversation.  After I had gone a thousand paces, I began to meet men and women going to market with their baskets, and with casks going for water.  A pie-seller had come out at the corner; one kalatch-baker's shop [Footnote:  Kalatch, a famous and favorite kind of wheaten roll. -Tr.] was open, and at the Arbatsky gate I came across an old cabman asleep on his worn, blue, patched drozhky.  It must have been in his sleep that he asked me twenty kopeks to the monastery and back, but then he suddenly recollected himself; and only when I was about to take my seat did he lash his horse with the ends of the reins, and attempt to drive off.  "I must feed my horse!  Impossible, master!" he muttered.

It was with difficulty that I persuaded him to stop by offering him forth kopeks.  He pulled up his horse, looked me over carefully, and said, "Get in, master."  I confess that I was rather afraid that he would drive me to some secluded lane, and rob me.  Catching hold of his tattered coat-collar, whereupon his wrinkled neck, mounted upon a deeply bowed spine, was laid bare in a pitiful way, I climbed up to the blue, undulating, rocking seat, and we went shaking down the Vosdvizhenka.  On the way, I observed that the back of the drozhky was lined with bits of the greenish material from which the driver's coat was made; and this fact calmed me, for some reason, and I was no longer afraid that the izvoshtchik would carry me off to an obscure alley and rob me.

The sun was already quite high, and had gilded the cupolas of the churches brilliantly, when we arrived at the monastery.  Frost still lingered in the shade; but along the road flowed swift turbid streams, and the horse splashed along through liquid mud.  On entering the inclosure of the monastery, I inquired of the first person I saw where I could find the confessor.

"Yonder is his cell," said the passing monk, pausing for a moment, and pointing at a tiny house with a tiny portico.

"I am extremely obliged," said I.

But what could the monks, who all stared at me as they came out of the church one by one, think of me?  I was neither an adult nor a child; my face was unwashed, my hair uncombed, my clothing dusty, my shoes uncleaned and still muddy.  To what class did the monks, who were surveying me, mentally assign me?  And they examined me attentively.  Nevertheless, I walked in the direction indicated to me by the young monk.

An old man in a black garment, with thick gray eyebrows, met me in the narrow path which led to the cell, and asked what I wanted.

For a moment, I wanted to say, "Nothing," run back to the carriage, and drive home; but the old man's face inspired confidence, in spite of his contracted brows. I said that I must see the confessor, and mentioned his name.

"Come, young sir, I will conduct you," said he, turning back, and apparently divining my situation at once.  "The father is at matins; he will soon be here."

He opened the door, and led me through a clean vestibule and anteroom, over a clean linen floor-covering, into the cell.

"Wait here," said he, with a kindly, soothing glance, and went out.

The little room in which I found myself was extremely small, and arranged with the greatest neatness.  A little table covered with oil-cloth, that stood between two double-leaved windows, upon which stood two pots of geraniums, a stand supporting the images, and a lamp which swung before them, one arm-chair and two common chairs, comprised the entire furniture.  In the corner hung a wall-clock, its dial adorned with painted flowers, and with its brass weights on chains half unwound; two cassocks hung from nails in the partition, behind which was probably the bed, and which was joined to the ceiling by whitewashed wooden poles.

The windows opened on a white wall about four feet and a half distant.  Between them and the wall was a little bush of syringa.  Not a sound from without penetrated to the room, so that the regular, pleasant tick of the pendulum seemed a loud noise in this stillness.  As soon as I was alone in this quiet nook, all my former ideas and memories suddenly leaped out of my head, as if they had never been there, and I became wholly absorbed in an inexpressibly agreeable reverie.  That yellow nankeen cassock, with its threadbare lining, the worn black leather bindings of the books and their brass clasps, the dull green hue of the plants, the carefully watered earth and well-washed leaves, and the monotonous, interrupted sound of the pendulum in particular, spoke to me distinctly of a new life hitherto unknown to me, - a life of solitude, of prayer, of calm quiet happiness.

"Months pass by, years pass by," I thought; "he is always alone, always calm; he always feels that his conscience is pure in the sight of God, and that his prayers are heard by Him."  For about half an hour I sat on that chair, trying not to move, not to breathe loudly, in order that I might not disturb the harmony of sounds which had been so eloquent to me.  And the pendulum ticked on as before:  loudly to the right, more softly to the left.


Chapter VIII

A Second Confession

The confessor's footsteps aroused me from this reverie.

"Good-morning," said he, adjusting his gray hair with his hand.  "What would you like?"

I asked him to bless me, and kissed his small yellowish hand with peculiar satisfaction.

When I explained my petition to him, he made no reply to me, but went to the holy pictures and began the confession.

When the confession was finished, I conquered my shame, told him all that was in my soul; he laid his hands upon my head, and in his quiet, melodious voice, he said, "My son, may the blessing of our Heavenly Father be upon you, and may He preserve faith, peace, and gentleness within you evermore.  Amen."

I was perfectly happy; tears of bliss rose in my throat; I kissed the folds of his lady's-cloth cassock, and raised my head.  The monk's face was quite calm.

I felt that I was taking delight in the sensation of emotion; and, fearing that I might banish it in some way, I took leave of the confessor in haste, and without glancing aside, in order not to distract my attention, quitted the inclosure, and seated myself again in the motley and jolting drozhky.  But the jolts of the equipage, the variety of objects which flashed before my eyes, speedily dissipated that sensation, and I already began to think that the confessor was probably thinking by this time that such a fine soul of a young man as I he had never met, and never would meet in all his life, and that there were no others like me.  I was convinced of it, and this conviction called forth in me a feeling of cheerfulness of such a nature that it demanded communication to some one.

I wanted dreadfully to talk to some one; but as there was no one at hand except the izvoshtchik, I turned to him.

"Well, was I gone long?" I asked.

"Not so very long; but it was time to feed the horse long ago, because I am a night-cabman," relied the old izvoshtchik, who, now that the sun was up, seemed quite lively, compared with what he had been before.

"It seemed to me that it was only a minute," said I.  "And do you know why I went to the monastery?" I added, changing my seat to the hollow which was nearer the old driver.

"What business is that of mine?  I take my passengers wherever they order me," he replied.

"No, but nevertheless what do you think?" I went on with my interrogations.

"Well, probably, some one is to be buried, and you went to buy a place," said he.

"No, brother; but do you know why I went?"

"I can't know, master," he repeated.

The izvoshtchik's voice seemed to me so kind, that I determined to relate to him the cause of my journey, and even the feeling which I had experienced, for his edification.

"I will tell you, if you like.  You see .... "

And I told him everything, and described all my beautiful sentiments.  I blush even now at the memory of it.

"Yes, sir," said the izvoshtchik, incredulously.

And for a long time after that, he sat silent and motionless, only now and then adjusting the tail of his coat, that escaped from beneath his motley feet which jogged up and down in their big boots on the foot-board.  I was already thinking that he was thinking about me in the same way as the confessor, - that is, as such a very fine young man, whose like did not exist in the world; but he suddenly turned to me.

"Well, master, are you a gentleman?"

"What?" I inquired.

"A gentleman, are you a gentleman?"

"No, he has not understood me," I thought, but I said nothing more to him until we reached home.

Although the feeling of agitation and devotion did not last the whole way, self-satisfaction in having experienced it did, in spite of the people who dotted the streets everywhere with color in the brilliant sunlight; but, as soon as I reached home, this feeling entirely disappeared.  I did not have my two twenty-kopek pieces to pay the driver.  Gavrilo the butler, to whom I was already indebted, would not lend me any more.  The izvoshtchik, after seeing me run through the courtyard twice to get the money, must have guessed why I was running, climbed down from his drozhky, and, although he had seemed to me so kind, began to talk loudly, with an evident desire to wound me, about swindlers who would not pay for their rides.

Every one was still asleep in the house, so there was no one of whom I could borrow the forty kopeks except the servants.  Finally Vasily, on my sacred, most sacred word of honor, in which *I could see it by his face) he did not put the slightest faith, but because he loved me and remembered the service which I had rendered him, paid the izvoshtchik for me.  When I went to dress for church, in order that I might receive the Holy Communion with the rest, and it turned out that my clothes had not been mended and I could not put them on, I sinned to an incalculable extent.  Having donned another suit, I went to the Communion in a strange state of agitation of mind, and with utter disbelief in my very fine proclivities.


Chapter IX

How I Prepare for Examination

On the Friday after Easter, papa, my sister Mimi, and Katenka went to the country; so that in all grandmamma's great house there remained Volodya, myself, and St. Jerome.  The frame of mind in which I had found myself on the day of confession, and when I went to the monastery, had completely disappeared, and had left behind only a troubled though agreeable memory, which was more and more dulled by the new impressions of a free life.

The blank-book with the heading "Rules of Life" had also been hidden under roughly written note-books of my studies.  Although the idea of the possibility of establishing rules for all the contingencies of life, and of guiding myself always by them, pleased me, and seemed very simple and at the same time very grand, and I intended all the same to apply it to life, I seemed again to have forgotten that it was necessary to do this at once, and I kept putting it off to some indefinite time.  But one fact delighted me, and that was that every thought which occurred to me now ranged itself immediately under one or other of the classifications of my rules and duties, - either under the head of duty to my neighbor, to myself, or to God.  "Now I will set it down there," I said to myself, "and many, many other thoughts which will occur to me then on this subject."  I often ask myself now:  When was I better or more correct, - then, when I believed in the omnipotency of the human intellect, or now that I have lost faith in the power of development, and doubt the power and significance of the human mind?  And I cannot give myself any positive answer.

The consciousness of freedom, and that spring feeling of expecting something, which I have already mentioned, agitated me to such a degree that I positively could not control myself, and I was very badly prepared for my examination.  Suppose you are busy in the school-room in the morning, and know that it is necessary to work, because tomorrow there is to be an examination on a subject, two whole questions on which you have not read up at all, when, all of a sudden, a spring perfume wafts in at the window:  it seems as though it were indispensably necessary to recall something; your hands drop of themselves, your feet begin to move of their own will, and to pace back and forth, and some spring seems to be pressed in your head which sets the whole machine in motion; and it is so light and natural in your mind, and divers merry, motley reveries begin to run through it, and you can only succeed in catching their gleam.  Thus an hour, two hours, pass unnoticed.  Or, you are sitting over your book, and concentrating your attention, after a fashion, on what you are reading; and suddenly you hear the sound of a woman's footsteps and dress in the corrider, and everything has sprung out of your head, and there is no possibility of sitting still in one place, although you know very well that nobody can be passing through that corridor except Gascha, grandmother's old maid-servant.  "Well, but if it should be *she* all at once?" comes into your mind; "and what if it should be beginning now, and I let the opportunity slip?"  And you spring out into the corridor, and see that it is actually Gascha; but you do not recover control of your head for a long time. The spring has been pressed, and again a frightful disorder has ensued.  Or, you are sitting alone in the evening, with a tallow candle, in your room; and all at once you tear yourself from your book for a moment in order to snuff the candle or to place a chair, and you see that it is dark everywhere, at the doors and in the corners, and you hear how quiet it is all over the house; and again it is impossible not to stop and listen to that silence, and not to stare at that obscurity of the door which is open into a dark chamber, and not to remain for a long, long time immovable in the same attitude, or not to go downstairs, or pass through all the empty rooms.  Often, too, I have sat unperceived, for a long time, in the hall, listening to the sound of the "Nightingale," which Gascha was playing with two fingers on the piano, as she sat alone with one tallow candle in the great apartment.  And when there was moonlight I could not resist rising from my bed, and lying on the window toward the yard, and gazing at the illuminated roof of the Schaposchnikoff house, and the graceful bell-tower of our parish church, and at the night shadows of the hedge and bushes as they lay upon the garden paths; and I could not help sitting there so long, that I was only able to rouse myself with difficulty at ten o'clock in the morning.

So that, had it not been for the masters who continued to come to me, St. Jerome, who now and then unwillingly tickled my vanity, and most of all the desire to show myself a capable young fellow in the eyes of my friend Nekhliudoff, that is, by passing an excellent examination, which in his opinion was a matter of great importance, - if it had not been for this, the spring and liberty would have had the effect of making me forget everything I had known before, and I should not have been able to pass the examination on any terms.


Chapter X

The Examination in History

On the sixteenth of April I went to the great hall of the university for the first time, under the protection of St. Jerome.  We drove there in our rather dandified phaeton.  I was in a dress-coat for the first time in my life; and all my clothing, even my linen and stockings, was perfectly new, and of the very best.  When the Swiss took off my overcoat, and I stood before him in all the beauty of my costume, I was rather ashamed of being so dazzling; but I no sooner stepped into the bright hall, with its polished floor, which was filled with people, and beheld hundreds of young men in gymnasium uniforms and dress-coats, several of whom glanced at me with indifference, and the dignified professors at the farther end, walking freely about among the tables, and sitting in large arm-chairs, than I was instantly disenchanted in my hope of turning the general attention upon myself; and the expression of my countenance, which at home and even in the anteroom had indicated that I possessed that noble and distinguished appearance against my will, changed into an expression of the most excessive timidity, and to some extent of depression.  I even fell into the other extreme, and rejoiced greatly when I beheld at the nearest desk an excessively ugly, dirtily dressed gentleman, not yet old but almost entirely gray, who sat on the last bench, at a distance from all the rest.  I immediately seated myself beside him, and began to observe the candidates for examination, and to draw my conclusions about them.  Many and varied were the figures and faces there; but all, according to my opinion at the time, were easily divisible into three classes.

There were those who, like myself, presented themselves for examination, accompanied by their tutors or parents; and among their number was the youngest Ivin with Frost, already so well known to me, and Ilinka Grap with his aged father.  All such had down chins, prominent linen, and sat quietly without opening the books and blank-books which they had brought with them, and regarded the professors and examination tables with evident timidity.  The second class of candidates were the young men in the gymnasium uniforms, many of whom had already shaved.  Most of these knew each other, talked loudly, mentioned the professors by their names and patronymics, were already preparing questions, passing their note-books to each other, walking over the stools in the anteroom, and bringing in patties and slices of bread-and-butter, which they immediately devoured, merely bending their heads to a level with the desks.  And lastly, there was a third class of candidates, very few in number, however, who were quite old, were attired in dress-coats, though the majority wore surtouts, and were without any visible linen.  The one who consoled me by being certainly dressed worse than I was belonged to this last class.  He leaned his head on both hands, and between his fingers escaped disheveled locks of half-gray hair; he was reading a book, and merely glanced at me for a moment with his brilliant eyes in anything but a good-natured way, scowled darkly, and thrust out a shiny elbow in my direction, so that I might not move any nearer to him.  The gymnasium men, on the other hand, were too familiar, and I was a little afraid of them.  One said, as he thrust a book into my hand, "Give this to that man yonder;" another said, as he passed me, "Let me pass, my good fellow;" a third, as he climbed over the desk, leaned on my shoulder as though it had been a bench.  All this was coarse and disagreeable to me.  I considered myself much better than these fellows from the gymnasium, and thought they had no business to permit themselves such liberties with me.  At last they began to call the family names; the gymnasium fellows stepped out boldly, answered well for the most part, and returned cheerfully.  Our set were much more timid, and answered worse, it appeared.  Some of the elder men answered excellently, others very badly indeed.  When Semenoff was called, my neighbor with the hair and glittering eyes stepped over my feet with a rude push, and went up to the table.  On returning to his place, he took up his note-books, and quietly went away without finding out how he had been rated.  I had already shuddered several times at the sound of the voice which called the family names, but my turn had not yet come, according to the alphabetical list, although some whose names began with I had already been called up.  "Ikonin and Teneff," shouted some one in the professors' corner all of a sudden.  A shiver ran through my back and my hair.

"Who is called?  Who is Barteneff?" they began to say around me.

"Go, Ikonin, you are called; but is Barteneff, Mordeneff?  I do not know, confess," said a tall, ruddy gymnasist as he stood before me.

"It is you," said St. Jerome.

"My name Irteneff," said I to the red-faced gymnasist.  "Did they call for Irteneff?"

"Yes; why don't you go?  What a fop!" he added, not loudly, but so that I heard his words, as I left the bench.  In front of me walked Ikonin, a tall young man of five and twenty, who belonged to the third class of old candidates.  He wore a tight olive coat, a blue satin neckerchief, upon which behind hung his long, light hair, dressed a la muzhik.  [Footnote:  Peasant; cut square all round. -Tr.]  I had already remarked his personal appearance on the seats.  He was rather good-looking and talkative.

What especially struck me in him was the queer reddish hair which he had allowed to grow on his throat; and, still more, a strange custom which he had of incessantly unbuttoning his waistcoat, and scratching his breast under his shirt.

Three professors were seated at the table which Ikonin and I were approaching; not one of them returned our salute.  The young professor was shuffling tickets like a pack of cards; the second professor, with a star on his coat, was staring at the gymnasist who was saying something very rapidly about Charlemagne, adding "at last" to every word; and the third, an old man, looked at us through his spectacles, and pointed to the tickets.  I felt that his gaze was directed upon Ikonin and me jointly, and that something in our appearance displeased him (possibly Ikonin's red beard), because as he looked at us again in the same way he made an impatient sign with his head to us that we should take our tickets as quickly as possible.  I felt vexed and insulted, in the first place, because no one had returned our bow, and, in the second, because they were evidently including me and Ikonin in one classification, that of candidates for examination, and were already prejudiced against me because of Ikonin's red hair.  I took my ticket without timidity, and prepared to answer, but the professor directed his gaze at Ikonin.  I read my ticket through; I knew it, and, while calmly awaiting my turn, I observed what was going on before me.  Ikonin was not in the least embarrassed, and was even too bold, for he moved sideways to take his ticket, shook back his hair, and read what was printed on it in a dashing way.  He was on the point of opening his mouth to reply, I thought, when the professor with the star, having dismissed the gymnasist with praise, glanced at him.  Ikonin seemed to recollect something, and paused.  The general silence lasted for a couple of minutes.

"Well," said the professor in spectacles.

Ikonin opened his mouth, and again remained silent.

"Come, you are not the only one; will you answer or not?" said the young professor, but Ikonin did not even look at him.  He stared intently at the ticket, and did not utter a single word.  The professor in spectacles looked at him through his glasses, and over his glasses, and without his glasses, because by this time he had managed to remove them, wipe them carefully, and put them on again.  Ikonin never uttered a word.  Suddenly a smile dawned upon his face, he shook back his hair, again turned full broadside to the table, looked at all the professors in turn, then at me, turned, and flourishing his hands walked jauntily back to his bench.  The professors exchanged glances.

"A fine bird!" [Footnote:  *Golubtchik*, little dove], said the young professor; "he studies at his own expense."

I stepped nearer the table, but the professors continued to talk almost in a whisper among themselves, as though none of them even suspected my existence.  Then I was firmly convinced that all three professors were very much occupied with the question as to whether I would stand the examination, and whether I would come out of it well, but that they were only pretending, for the sake of their dignity, that it was a matter of utter indifference to them, and that they did not perceive me.

When the professor in spectacles turned indifferently to me, inviting me to answer the questions, I looked him full in the eye, and was rather ashamed for him that he should so dissemble before me, and I hesitated somewhat in beginning my answer; but afterward it became easier and easier, and, as the question was from Russian history, which I knew very well, I finished in brilliant style, and even gained confidence to such an extent that, desiring to make the professors feel that I was not Ikonin, and that it was impossible to confound me with him, I proposed to take another ticket; but the professor shook his head and said, "Very good, sir," and noted down something in his journal.  When I returned to the benches, I immediately learned from the gymnasists, who had found out everything, God knows how, that I had received five.


Chapter XI

The Examination in Mathematics

In the succeeding examinations I had many new acquaintances besides Grap, - whom I deemed unworthy of my acquaintance, - and Ivin, who shunned me for some reason.  Several already exchanged greetings with me.  Ikonin was even rejoiced when he saw me, and confided to me that he should be reexamined in history, that the history professor had had a spite against him since the last examination, at which, also, he asserted the latter had thrown him into confusion. Semenoff, who was going to enter the same course as I, mathematics, was shy of every one until the very end of the examinations, sat silent and alone, leaning on his elbows, with his hands thrust into his gray hair, and passed his examinations in excellent style.  He was second; a student from the first gymnasium was first.  The latter was a tall, thin, extremely pale, dark-complexioned man, with a cheek bound up in a black neck-cloth, and a forehead covered with pimples.  His hands were thin and red, with remarkably long fingers, and nails so bitten that the ends of his fingers seemed to be wound with thread.  All this seemed very beautiful to me, and just as it should be in the case of the *the leading gymnasist*.  He spoke to everybody exactly like anybody else, and I even made his acquaintance; but it seemed too me that there was something unusually *magnetic* in his walk, the movements of his lips, and his black eyes.

In the mathematical examination I was called up earlier than usual.  I knew the subject pretty well; but there were two questions in algebra which I had contrived in some way to hide from my teacher, and which I knew absolutely nothing about.  They were, as I now recall them, the theory of combinations, and Newton's binomial theorem.  I seated myself at the desk in the rear, and looked over the two unfamiliar questions; but the fact that I was not accustomed to work in a noisy room, and the lack of time, which I foresaw, prevented my understanding what I read.

"Here he is; come here, Nekhliudoff," said Volodya's familiar voice behind me.

I turned, and saw my brother and Dmitry, who were making their way toward me between the benches, with coats unbuttoned and hands flourishing.  It was immediately apparent that they were students in their second year, who were as much at home in the university as in their own houses.  The sight of their unbuttoned coats alone expressed disdain for us who were entering, and inspired us with envy and respect.  It flattered me very much to think that all about me could see that I was acquainted with two students in their second year, and I rose hastily to meet them. 

Volodya could not even refrain from expressing his superiority.

"Oh, you poor wretch!" said he; "how goes it?  Have you been examined yet?"

"No."

"What are you reading?  Aren't you prepared?"

"Yes; but not quite on two questions.  I don't understand them."

"What! this one here?" said Volodya, and began to explain to me Newton's binomial theorem, but so rapidly and in such a confused manner, that, reading disbelief in his knowledge in my eyes, he glanced at Dmitry, and probably reading the same in his, he turned red, but went on, nevertheless, to say something which I did not understand.

"No, Volodya, stop; let me go through it with him, if we have time," said Dmitry, glancing at the professors' corner; and he seated himself beside me.

I immediately perceived that my friend was in that gentle, complacent mood which always came upon him when he was satisfied with himself, and which I specially liked in him.  As he understood mathematics well, and spoke clearly, he went over the subject so splendidly with me, that I remember it to this day.  But scarcely had he finished, when St. Jerome said in a loud whisper, "It's your turn, Nikolas," and I followed Ikonin from behind the desk, without having succeeded in looking over the other unfamiliar question.  I approached the table where the two professors sat, and a gymnasist was standing before the blackboard.  The gymnasist had cleverly deduced some formula, breaking his chalk with a tap on the board, and still went on writing, although the professor had already said, "Enough!" and ordered us to take our tickets.  "Now, what if I get that theory of the combination of numbers?" thought I, picking out my ticket with trembling fingers from the soft pile of cut paper.  Ikonin took the topmost ticket, without making any choice, with the same bold gesture and sideways lunge of his whole body as in the preceding examination.

"I always have such devilish luck!" he muttered.

I looked at mine.

Oh, horror!  It was the theory of combinations.

"What have you got?" asked Ikonin.

I showed him.

"I know that," said he.

"Will you change?"

"No, it's no matter; I feel that I'm not in condition," Ikonin barely contrived to whisper, when the professor summoned us to the board.

"Well, all's lost!" I thought.  "Instead of the brilliant examination which I dreamed of passing, I shall cover myself with eternal disgrace, even worse than Ikonin."  But all at once Ikonin turned to me, right before the professor's eyes, snatched the card from my hand, and gave me his.  I glanced at his card.  It was Newton's binomial theorem.

The professor was not an old man; and he had a pleasant, sensible expression, to which the extremely prominent lower part of his forehead particularly contributed.

"What is this, gentlemen? You have exchanged cards?"

"No, he only gave me his to look at, professor," said Ikonin, inventing, - and again the word *professor* was the last one he uttered in that place; and again, as he retired past me, he glanced at the professors, at me, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, with an expression as much as to say, "No matter, brother!"  (I afterward learned that this was the third year that Ikonin had presented himself for the entrance examination.)

I answered the question which I had just gone over, excellently, - even better, as the professor told me, than would have been required, - and received five.


Chapter XII

The Latin Examination

All went on finely until the Latin examination.  The gymnasist with his cheek bound up was first, Semenoff second, I was the third.  I even began to feel proud, and seriously to think that, in spite of my youth, I was not to be taken in jest.

From the very first examination, everybody had been talking with terror of the Latin professor, who was represented as a kind of wild beast who took delight in the destruction of young men, especially of such as lived at their own homes, and as speaking only in the Latin or Greek tongue.  St. Jerome, who was my instructor in the Latin language, encouraged me; it really seemed to me that, since I could translate from Cicero and several odes of Horace without a lexicon, and since I knew Zumpt very well indeed, I was no worse prepared than the rest.  But it turned out otherwise.  All the morning there was nothing to be heard but tales of the failures of those who preceded me; this man had been marked zero; another, one; and still another had been scolded terribly, and had been on the point of getting turned out, and so forth, and so forth.  Semenoff and the first gymnasist alone went up and returned with as much composure as usual, having each received five.  I already had a presentiment of disaster, when I was called up with Ikonin to the little table, facing which the terrible professor sat quite alone.  The terrible professor was a small, thin, yellow man, with long oily hair and a very thoughtful countenance.

He gave Ikonin a volume of Cicero's Orations, and made him translate.

To my great amazement, Ikonin not only read, but even translated several lines, with the aid of the professor, who prompted him.  Conscious of my superiority over such a feeble rival, I could not refrain from smiling, and from doing so in a rather scornful way too, when the question of analysis came up, and Ikonin, as before, sank into stubborn silence.  I meant to conciliate the professor by that intelligent, slightly ironical smile; but it turned out the other way.

"You evidently know better, since you smile," said the professor to me in bad Russian.  "Let me see.  Come, do you say it."

I learned afterward that the Latin professor was Ikonin's protector and that Ikonin even lived with him.  I immediately replied to the question in syntax which had been propounded to Ikonin; but the professor put on a sad expression, and turned away from me.

"Very good, sir; your turn will come; we shall see how much you know," said he, not looking at me, and began to explain to Ikonin what he had questioned him on.

"Go," said he; and I saw him set down four for Ikonin in the register.  "Well," thought I, "he is not nearly as stern as they said."  After Ikonin's departure, - for at least five minutes, which seemed to me five hours, - he arranged his books and cards, blew his nose, adjusted his arm-chair, threw himself back in it, and looked round the room, and on all sides except in my direction.  But all this dissimulation seemed to him insufficient.  He opened a book, and pretended to read it, as though I were not there.  I stepped up nearer, and coughed.

"Ah, yes!  Are you still there?  Well, translate something," said he, handing me a book.  "But no; better take this one."  He turned over the leaves of a copy of Horace, and opened it at a passage which it seemed to me nobody ever could translate.

"I have not prepared this," said I.

"And you want to recite what you have learned by heart?  Very good!  No; translate this."

I managed to get the sense of it after a fashion; but the professor only shook his head at each of my inquiring glances, and merely answered "No," with a sigh.  At last he closed his book with such nervous quickness that he pinched his own finger between the leaves.  He jerked it out angrily, gave me a card in grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, he continued to preserve the most malicious silence.  I was on the point of answering; but the expression of his countenance fettered my tongue, and everything which I said appeared to me to be wrong.

"That's not it!  That's not it!  That's not it at all!" he suddenly broke out with his horrible pronunciation, as he briskly changed his attitude, leaned his elbows on the table, and played with the gold ring which clung weakly to a thin finger of his left hand.  "It's impossible, gentlemen, to prepare for the higher educational institutions in this manner.  All you want is to wear the uniform, with its blue collar, and brag of being first, and think that you can be students.  No, gentlemen; you must be thoroughly grounded in your subject;" and so forth, and so forth.

During the whole of this speech, which was uttered in distorted language, I gazed with dull attention at his eyes, which were fixed on the floor.  At first, the disenchantment of not being third tortured me; then the fear of not getting through my examination at all; and, finally, a sense of injustice was added, of wounded vanity and unmerited humiliation.  Besides this, contempt for the professor because he was not, in my opinion, a man *comme il faut* - which I discerned by looking at his short, strong, round nails, - influenced me still more, and rendered all these feelings venomous.  He glanced at me; and, perceiving my quivering lips and my eyes filled with tears, he must have construed my emotion into a prayer to increase my mark, and he said, as though compassionating me (and before another professor, too, who came up at that moment): -

"Very good, sir.  I will give you a very fine mark" (that meant two), "although you do not deserve it, out of respect to your youth, and in the hope that you will not be so light-minded in the university."

This last phrase, uttered in the presence of the strange professor, who looked at me as if to say, "There, you see, young man!" completed my confusion.  For one moment a mist veiled my eyes; the terrible professor, with his table, seemed to me to be sitting somewhere in the far distance, and the wild thought came into my mind, with a terrible one-sided distinctness:  "And what if - what will come of this?"  But I did not do it, for some reason; on the contrary, I saluted both professors mechanically, with special courtesy, and left the table, smiling slightly, with the same smile, apparently, that Ikonin had exhibited.

This injustice affected me so powerfully at the time, that, had I been master of my own actions, I should not have gone to any more examinations.  I lost all my vanity (it was impossible to think any longer of being number three), and I let the remaining examinations pass without any exertion, and even without emotion.  My average, however, was somewhat over four, but this did not interest me in the least; I made up my mind, and proved it to myself very clearly, that it was bad form to try to be first, and that one ought to be neither too good nor too bad, like Volodya.  I meant to keep to this in the university, although I, for the first time, differed from my friend on this point.

I was already thinking of my uniform, my three-cornered hat, my own drozhky, my own room, and, most of all, of my freedom.


Chapter XIII

I Am Grown Up

Moreover, even these thoughts had their charm.

On my return from the last examination in the Law of God, on the eighth of May, I found at the house a tailor's apprentice, whom I knew, from Rosanoff, who had already brought my hastily finished uniform and a coat of glossy black cloth, open at the throat, and had marked the *revers* with chalk, and had now brought the finished garment with brilliant gilt buttons, enveloped in papers.

I put on this garment, and thought it very fine (although St. Jerome declared that it wrinkled in the back), and went downstairs with a self-satisfied smile, which spread over my face quite involuntarily, to Volodya's rooms, conscious of the glances of the domestics which were eagerly fixed on me from the anteroom and corridor, but pretending that I was not.  Gavrilo, the butler, overtook me in the hall, congratulated me on my entrance, handed over to me, by papa's orders, four white bank-bills, and also, by papa's direction, Kuzma the coachman, a prolyotka [Footnote:  A kind of drozhky], and the brown horse Beauty, to be at my exclusive disposal from that day forth.  I was so rejoiced at this almost unlooked-for happiness, that I could not manage to appear indifferent before Gavrilo, and in some confusion I said, with a sigh, the first thing which came into my head, which was that "Beauty was a very fine trotter!"  Glancing at the heads which were thrust out of the doors leading from the anteroom and corridor, I could no longer control myself; and I rushed through the hall at a trot, in my new coat and shining gilt buttons.  As I entered Volodya's room, I heard the voices of Dubkoff and Nekhliudoff, who had come to congratulate me, and to propose that we should go somewhere to dine and drink champagne, in honor of my entrance.  Dmitry told me that, although he did not care to drink champagne, he would go with us that day in order to drink with me on our beginning to call each other *thou*.  Dubkoff, for some reason, declared that I resembled a colonel.  Volodya did not congratulate me, and only said, very dryly, that now we should be able to set out for the country on the next day but one.  It seemed as though, while glad of my entrance, it was rather disagreeable to him that I should now be as much grown up as he.  St. Jerome, who had also come to the house, said in a very haughty way that his duties were now at an end, and he did not know whether they had been fulfilled well or ill, but that he had done all he could, and he should go to his Count on the next day.  In answer to all that was said to me, I felt a sweet, blissful, rather foolishly self-satisfied smile dawn upon my countenance against my will; and I perceived that this smile even communicated itself to all who talked with me. 

And here I am, without a tutor; I have a drozhky of my own; my name is inscribed on the register of students; I have a sword in my belt; the sentries might sometimes salute me.  "I am grown up," and I think I am happy.

We decided to dine at Jahr's at five o'clock; but as Volodya went off with Dubkoff, and Dmitry also disappeared somewhere according to custom, saying that he had an affair to attend to before dinner, I could dispose of two hours as I pleased.  I walked about through all the rooms for quite a while, inspecting myself in all the mirrors, now with my coat buttoned, again with it quite unbuttoned, then with only the upper button fastened; and every way seemed excellent to me.  Then, ashamed as I was to exhibit too much joy, I could not refrain from going to the stable and coach-house, to inspect Beauty, Kuzma, and the drozhky; then I went back and began to wander through the rooms, looking in the mirrors, counting the money in my pocket, and smiling in the same blissful manner all the while.  But an hour had not elapsed when I felt rather bored, or sorry that there was no one to see me in that dazzling state; and I craved movement and activity.  As a consequence of this, I ordered the drozhky to be brought round, and decided that it would be better to go to the Kuznetzky Most [Footnote:  ?The Smith's Bridge; the principal street for fashionable shopping in Moscow. --Tr.] with glances turned on me from all sides, with the bright sunlight on my buttons, on the cockade in my hat, and on my sword, and drew up near Daziaro's picture-shop.  I glanced about me on all sides, and entered.  I did not want to buy Victor Adam's horses, lest I should be accused of aping Volodya; but, hurrying to make my choice as quickly as possible, out of shame at the trouble to which I was putting the polite shopman, I took a female head painted in water-colors, which stood in the window, and paid twenty rubles for it.  But after expending twenty rubles I felt rather conscience-stricken at having troubled two handsomely dressed shopmen with such trifles, and yet it seemed as though they looked at me in altogether too negligent a way.  Desirous of letting them understand who I was, I turned my attention to a small silver piece which lay beneath the glass, and, learning that it was a pencil-holder worth eighteen rubles, I ordered it done up in paper, paid my money, and, learning also that good pipes and tobacco were to be had in the adjoining tobacco-shop, I bowed politely to the two shopmen, and stepped into the street with my picture under my arm.  In the neighboring shop, on whose sign was painted a negro smoking a cigar, I bought (also out of a desire not to imitate any one) not Zhukoff, but Sultan tobacco, a Turkish pipe, and two chibouks, one of linden, the other of rosewood.  On emerging from the shop, on my way to my drozhky, I perceived Semenoff, who was walking along the sidewalk at a rapid pace, dressed in civil costume, and with his head bent down.  I was vexed that he did not recognize me.  I said in quite a loud tone, "Drive up!" and, seating myself in the drozhky, I overtook Semenoff.

"How do you do?" I said to him.

"My respects," he answered, pursuing his way.

"Why are you not in uniform?" I inquired.

Semenoff halted, screwed up his eyes, and showed his white teeth, as though it pained him to look at the sun, but in reality to express his indifference toward my drozhky and uniform, gazed at me in silence, and walked on.

From the Kuznetzky Most I drove to a confectioner's shop in the Tverskoy; and though I tried to pretend that the newspapers in the shop interested me principally, I could not restrain myself, and I began to devour one sweet tart after another.  Although I was ashamed before the gentlemen who gazed at me with curiosity from behind their papers, I ate eight cakes, of all the sorts which were in the shop, with great rapidity.

On arriving at home, I felt a little heartburn, but, paying no attention to it, I busied myself with examining my purchases.  The picture so displeased me, that I not only did not have it framed, and hand it in my room, as Volodya had done, but I even hid it behind the chest of drawers, where no one could see it.  The porte-crayon did not please me either, now that I had got it home.  I laid it on the table, comforting myself with the thought that the thing was made of silver, first-class, and extremely useful to a student.

But I resolved to put my smoking utensils into immediate use, and try them.

Having unsealed a quarter-pound package, and carefully filled my Turkish pipe with the reddish-yellow, fine-cut Sultan tobacco, I laid a burning coal upon it, and taking one of my pipe-stems between my middle and third fingers (the position of the hand pleased me extremely), I began to draw in the smoke.

The odor of the tobacco was very agreeable, but my mouth tasted bitter, and my breathing was interrupted.  But I took courage, and drew the smoke into myself for quite a long time, tried to puff it out in rings, and draw the smoke in.  The whole room was soon filled with clouds of bluish smoke; the pipe began to bubble, the hot tobacco to leap; I felt a bitterness in my mouth, and a slight swimming in my head; I tried to rise, and look at myself in the glass with my pipe; when, to my amazement, I began to stagger, the room whirled round, and as I glanced in the mirror, which I had reached with difficulty, I saw that my face was as pale as a sheet.  I barely succeeded in dropping upon a divan, when I was sensible of such illness and feebleness, that, fancying the pipe had been fatal to me, I thought that I was dying.  I was seriously alarmed, and wanted to summon assistance, and send for the doctor.

But this terror did not last long.  I quickly understood where the trouble was; and I lay for a long time on the lounge, weak, with a frightful pain in my head, gazing with dull attention at Bostandzhoglo's coat of arms delineated upon the quarter-pound package, on the pipe and cigar ends, and the remains of the confectioner's cakes rolling on the floor, and thought sadly in my disenchantment, "I surely am not grown up yet, if I cannot smoke like other people; and it is plain that it is not my fate to hold my pipe, like others, between my middle and my third fingers, to swallow my smoke, and puff it out through my blond mustache."

When Dmitry came for me at five o'clock, he found me in this unpleasant condition.  But after I had drunk a glass of water I was nearly well again, and ready to go with him.

"What made you want to smoke?" he said, as he gazed upon the traces of my smoking; "it's all nonsense, and a useless waste of money.  I have promised myself that I will never smoke.  However, let's set out as quickly as possible, for we must go after Dubkoff."


Chapter XIV

How Volodya and Dubkoff Occupied Themselves

As soon as Dmitry entered the room, I knew by his face, his walk, and by a gesture which was peculiar to him when in a bad humor, - a winking of the eyes and a grotesque way of drawing his head down on one side, as though for the purpose of adjusting his cravat, - that he was in the coldly rigid frame of mind which came over him when he was displeased with himself, and which always produced a chilling effect upon my feeling for him.  I had lately begun to notice and judge my friend's character, but our friendship had suffered no change in consequence; it was still so youthful and so strong, that, from whatever point of view I looked at Dmitry, I could not be perceive his perfection.  There were two separate men in him, both of whom were very fine in my eyes.  One, whom I warmly loved, was courteous, good, gentle, merry, and with a consciousness of these amiable qualities; when he was in this mood, his whole appearance, the sound of his voice, his every movement, seemed to say, "I am gentle and virtuous; I enjoy being gentle and virtuous, as you can all of you perceive."  The other - I have only now begun to comprehend him and to bow before his grandeur - was cold, stern toward himself and others, proud, religious to fanaticism, and pedantically moral.  At the present moment, he was that second man.

With the frankness which constituted the indispensable condition of our relations, I told him, when we were seated in the drozhky, that it pained me and made me sad to see him in such a heavy, disagreeable frame of mind toward me on the day which was such a happy one to me.

"Surely something has disturbed you; why will you not tell me?" I asked.

"Nikolenka!" he replied deliberately, turning his head nervously to one side, and blinking, "since I have given my word not to hide anything from you, you have no cause to suspect me of secrecy.  It is impossible to be always in the same mood; and if anything has disturbed me, I cannot even give an account of it to myself."

"What a wonderfully frank, honorable character!" I thought, and I said no more to him.

We drove to Dubkoff's in silence.  Dubkoff's quarters were remarkably handsome, or seemed so to me.  There were rugs, pictures, curtains, highly colored wall-paper, portraits, curving arm-chairs, and sofa-chairs everywhere; on the walls hung guns, pistols, tobacco-pouches, and some heads of wild animals in cardboard.  At the sight of this study, I saw whom Volodya had been imitating in the adornment of his own chamber.  We found Volodya and Dubkoff playing cards.  A gentleman who was a stranger to me (and who must have been of little importance, judging from his humble attitude) was sitting at the table, and watching the game with great attention.  Dubkoff had on a silk dressing-gown and soft shoes.  Volodya in his shirt-sleeves was sitting opposite him on the divan; and, judging from his flushed face, and the dissatisfied, fleeting glance which he tore away from the cards for a moment to cast at us, he was very much absorbed in the game.  On catching sight of me, he turned still redder.

"Come, it's your turn to deal," he said to Dubkoff.  I comprehended that it displeased him to have me know that he played cards.  But there was no confusion discernible in his glance, which seemed to say to me, "Yes, I'm playing, and you are only surprised at it because you are young yet.  It is not only not bad, but even necessary at our age."

I immediately felt and understood this.

Dubkoff did not deal the cards, however, but rose, shook hands with us, gave us seats, and offered us pipes, which we declined.

"So this is our diplomat, the hero of the festival!" said Dubkoff.  "By heavens, he's awfully like a colonel."

"Hm!" I growled, as I felt that foolishly self-satisfied smile spreading over my face.

I respected Dubkoff as only a boy of sixteen can respect an adjutant of twenty-seven whom all the grown-up people declare to be a very fine young man, who dances beautifully, and talks French, and who, while he in his soul despises my youth, evidently strives to conceal the fact.

But in spite of all my respect for him, I had always, Heaven knows why, during the whole period of our acquaintance, found it difficult and awkward to look him in the eye.  And I have since observed that there are three classes of people whom it is difficult for me to look in the eye, - those who are much worse than myself; those who are much better than myself; and those with whom I cannot make up my mind to mention things that we both know, and who will not mention them to me.  Possibly Dubkoff was better than I, Perhaps he was worse; but one thing was certain, that he often lied, but without confessing it; that I detected this weakness in him, of course, but could not bring myself to speak of it.

"Let's play one more game," said Volodya, twisting his shoulders like papa, and shuffling the cards.

"How persistent he is!" said Dubkoff.  "We'll play it out later.  Well, all right, then, one."

While they played, I watched their hands.  Volodya had a large, handsome hand.  He separated his thumb and bent the other fingers out when he held his cards, and it was so much like papa's hand that at one time it really seemed to me that Volodya held his hands so on purpose, in order to resemble a grown-up person; but, when I glanced at his face, it immediately became evident that he was thinking of nothing except his game.  Dubkoff's hands, on the contrary, were small, plump, bent inwards, and had extremely soft and skilful fingers; just the kind of hands, in fact, which wear rings, and which belong to people who are inclined to manual labor, and are fond of having fine things.

Volodya must have lost; for the gentleman who looked over his cards remarked that Vladimir Petrovitch had frightfully bad luck; and Dubkoff got his pocket-book and noted something down in it, and said, as he showed what he had written to Volodya, "Is that right?"  

"Yes," said Volodya, glancing at the note-book with feigned abstraction.  "Now let's go."

Volodya drove Dubkoff, and Dmitry took me in his phaeton.

"What were they playing?" I inquired of Dmitry.

"Piquet.  It's a stupid game, and gambling is a stupid thing, anyway." 

"Do they play for large sums?"

"Not very; but it's not right, all the same."

"And do you not play?"

"No, I have given my word not to; but Dubkoff can't give his not to win all somebody's money anyway."

"But that surely is not right on his part," said I.  "Volodya must play worse than he."

"Of course it's not right; but there's nothing particularly wicked about it.  Dubkoff loves to play, but still he's an excellent fellow."

"But I had no idea ... " said I.

"You must not think any ill of him, because he really is a very fine man; and I am very fond of him, and shall always love him in spite of his weaknesses."

It seemed to me, for some reason, that, just because Dmitry stood up for Dubkoff with too much warmth, he no longer loved or respected him, but that he would not confess it, out of obstinacy, and in order that no one might reproach him with fickleness.  He was one of those people who love their friends for life, not so much because the friends always remain amiable toward them, as because, having once taken a liking to a man, even by mistake, they consider it dishonorable to cease to like him.


Chapter XV

I Receive Congratulations

Dubkoff and Volodya knew all the people at Jahr's by name; and every one, from the porter to proprietor, showed them the greatest respect.  We were immediately assigned to a private room, and served with a wonderful dinner, selected by Dubkoff from the French bill of fare.  A bottle of iced champagne, which I endeavored to survey with as much indifference as possible, was already prepared.  The dinner passed off very agreeably and merrily, although Dubkoff, as was his custom, related the strangest occurrences as though they were true, - among others, how his grandmother had shot three robbers, who had attacked her, with a blunderbuss (whereupon I blushed, dropped my eyes, and turned away from him), - and although Volodya was visibly frightened every time that I undertook to say anything (which was quite superfluous, for I did not say anything particularly disgraceful, so far as I can remember).  When the champagne was served, all congratulated me, and I drank through my hand "to thou" with Dubkoff and Dmitry, and exchanged kisses with them.  As I did not know to whom the bottle of champagne belonged (it was in common, as they afterward explained to me), and I wanted to entertain my friends on my own money, which I felt of incessantly in my pocket, I quietly got hold of a ten-ruble note; and, summoning the waiter, I gave him the money, and told him in a whisper, but in such a manner as they all heard it, to please to bring another small half bottle of champagne.  Volodya turned red, writhed, and looked at me and the rest in such affright that I felt I had committed a blunder; but the bottle was brought, and we drank it with the greatest satisfaction.  Things continued to go merrily.  Dubkoff lied without intermission; and Volodya, too, told such funny stories, and told them better than I had ever expected of him; and we laughed a great deal.  The character of their wit - that is, Dubkoff's and Volodya's - consisted in mimicry, and exaggeration of the well-known anecdote:  "Well, have you been abroad?" says one.  "No, I have not," replies the other, "but my brother plays on the violin."  They had attained such perfection in this sort of comic nonsense, that they even related that anecdote thus:  "My brother never played on the violin either."  They replied to every one of each other's questions in this style;' and sometimes they tried, without questions, to join two utterly incongruous things, - talked this nonsense with sober faces, - and it proved extremely laughable.  I began to understand the point and I also tried to tell something funny; but they all looked frightened, or tried not to look at me while I was speaking, and the anecdote was not a success.  Dubkoff said, "The diplomat has begun to lie, brother;" but I felt so well with the champagne I had drunk, and in the company of these grown-up people, that this remark hardly wounded me at all.  Dmitry alone, though he had drunk evenly with us, continued in the stern, serious mood, which put some restraint upon the general merriment.

"Now listen, gentlemen!" said Dubkoff.  "After dinner, the diplomat must be taken in hand.  Shall we not go to our aunt's?  We'll soon settle him there."

"Nekhliudoff won't go," said Volodya.

"The intolerable goody!  You're an intolerable goody," Dubkoff, turning to him.  "Come with us, and you'll see what a charming lady auntie is."

"I not only will not go, but I won't let him," answered Dmitry, turning red.

"Who?  The diplomat? - Do you want to go, diplomat?  Look, he beemed all over as soon as we mentioned auntie."

"I don't mean that I won't let him," continued Dmitry, rising from his seat, and beginning to pace the room, without looking at me, "but I do not advise him nor wish him to go.  He is no longer a child, and if he wishes he can go alone without you.  But you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dubkoff; what you are doing is not right, and you want others to do so too."

"What's the harm," said Dubkoff, winking at Volodya, "if I invite you all to my aunt's for a cup of tea?  Well, if it's not agreeable to you to go with us, then Volodya and I will go. - Are you coming, Volodya?"

"Hm!" said Volodya, affirmatively.  "We'll go there, and then we'll come to my rooms, and go on with our piquet."

"Well, do you want to go with them, or not?" said Dmitry, coming up to me.

"No," I answered, moving along on the divan to make room for him beside me; "if you do not advise it, I will not go, on any account.

"No," I added afterward, "I do not speak the truth when I say that I do not want to go with them; but I am glad that I am not going."

"Excellent," said he; "live according to your own ideas, and don't dance to any one's pipe; that's the best way of all."

This little dispute not only did not disturb our pleasure, but even heightened it.  Dmitry all at once came into the gentle mood which I loved so well.  Such an influence, as I afterward more than once observed, did the consciousness of a good deed have upon him.  He was pleased with himself now for having deterred me from going.  He grew very merry, ordered another bottle of champagne (which was against his rules), called a strange gentleman into the room and began to give him wine, sand Gaudeamus igitur, requested all should join in, and proposed to ride to Sokolniki, whereupon Dubkoff remarked that it was too sentimental.  [Footnote:  "Sokolniki Forest," now a suburban park, pine wood, and pleasure ground near Moscow; formerly the primeval forest, the hunting-ground of the Tzars of Moscow. -Tr.]

"Let's be jolly to-day," said Dmitry, with a smile; "in honor of his entrance to the university, I will get drunk for the first time; so be it."  This gayety sat rather strangely on Dmitry.  He resembled a tutor or a kind father who is satisfied with his children, and wishes to please them, and at the same time to show that he can be gay in an honorable and respectable fashion; nevertheless, this unexpected mirth seemed to act infectiously upon us, the more so as each of us had drunk about half a bottle of champagne.

It was in this agreeable frame of mind that I stepped out into the public apartment to smoke a cigarette which Dubkoff had given me.

When I rose from my seat, I perceived that my head was a little unsteady, and that my feet walked and my hands were in a natural condition only when I fixed my attention firmly upon them.  Otherwise my feet crept off to one side, and my hands executed various gestures.  I fixed my whole attention upon these limbs, ordered my hands to rise, and button my coat, and smooth my hair (in the course of which, my elbows jerked themselves up fearfully high), and my legs to carry me to the door; which command they complied with, but set themselves down either too hard to too gently, and the left foot in particular stood constantly on its toe.

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