LIBRARY UNIVMSin OP CALIFORNIA HALF A GUINEA PER ANNUM & UPWARL 3321 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME YEARS OF CHILDHOOD Demy 8vo. tos. 6d. net and A RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN Demy 8vo. 7$. 6d. net By SERGB AKSAKOFF Translated from the Russian by J. D. DUFF Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY BY SERGE AKSAKOFF TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY J. D. DUFF FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1917 All rights reserved, TO P. W. D. AND M. G. D. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE THESE recollections of school and college were published by Aksakoff in 1856, when he was in his sixty-fifth year. He called them merely Recollections : he did not then know that he would record other and still earlier memories in the book called Years of Childhood. A Russian Schoolboy, the title chosen for this transla- tion, is not a misnomer : when Aksakoff left Kazan in the spring of 1807, he was still a boy of fifteen, though his school had been promoted by imperial decree to the dignity of a university. As a student he wore a sword with his uniform, but little change took place in his oc- cupations. His university studies are remarkable : he learnt no Greek, no Lathi, no Mathematics, and very little Science hardly anything but Russian and French ; and even to these he seems to have given less time than to acting plays in the winter and collecting butterflies in spring and summer ; fishing and shooting were reserved for the vacation. If our universities adopted such a pleasant curriculum, would they produce writers like Aksakoff ? This is the third and last volume of these Memoirs, the right order being : (1) A Russian Gentleman ; (2) Years of Childhood ; (3) A Russian Schoolboy. But the first and third of these were published together by Aksakoff in 1856, and the second followed in 1858 ; he died on April 30, 1859. He himself did not use in this work the pseudonyms rii viii A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY which he kept up throughout the other two. Hence in this part of the translation Aksakoff and Aksakovo appear, not Bagrdff and Bagrdvo; but, to save confusion to the reader, three names those of AIexy& Stepanitch, Sdfya Nikolayevna, and Praskdvya Ivanovna are here retained, though they are all pseudonyms and were temporarily discarded by their author. The Appendix, as it describes an episode of college life, forms a natural part of this volume. It was the last thing that Aksakoff wrote, and was not printed till six months after his death. He had suffered much from disease, but his artistic faculty was not dimmed nor his temper embittered : he never wrote anything more vivid, more characteristic, more charming. This translation has been made from the Moscow edition of 1900. I know of no previous translation of the original into any language. I have now done what I meant to do, by translating the whole of these Memoirs into English. Whether I shall in future translate more of Aksakoff, I do not know. I can myself read with pleasure all that he wrote except his verse translation of Laharpe's French translation of the Philoctetes of Sophocles. But it will not hurt his reputation, if he is known to English readers by his best work only. What they cannot realise is the inimitable purity and simplicity, the lactea ubertas, of his Russian style. Aksakoff is his own best critic : he wrote to a friend on April 10, 1856 " The success of my life has surprised me. You know that my vanity was never excessive, and it remains what it was, in spite of all the praise, sometimes extravagant to folly, which has reached me in print or in letters or TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ix by word of mouth. ... To the end of a long life I have preserved warmth and liveliness of imagination ; and that is why talents that are not extraordinary have pro- duced an extraordinary effect." This may be over-modest, but it is not far from the truth. J. D. DUFF. August 23, 1917. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL .... 1 H. A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY .... 52 HI. MY RETURN TO SCHOOL 75 IV. LIFE AT COLLEGE 126 APPENDIX BUTTERFLY-COLLECTING, AN EPISODE OF COLLEGE LIFE 163 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY CHAPTER I MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL IN the middle of winter in the year 1799, when I was eight years old, we travelled to Kazan, the chief town of the Government. The frost was intense ; and it was a long time before we could find out the lodgings we had taken beforehand. They consisted of two rooms in a small house belonging to a M me Aristoff, the wife of an officer ; the house stood in Georgia Street, a good part of the town. We arrived towards evening, travelling in a common sledge of matting drawn by three of our own horses harnessed abreast ; our cook and a maid had reached Kazan before us. Our last stage was a long one, and we drove about the town for some hours in quest of our lodgings, with long halts caused by the stupidity of our country servants and I remember that I was chilled to the bone, that our lodgings were cold, and that tea failed to warm me ; when I went to bed, I was shaking like a sick man in a fever. I remem- ber also that my mother who loved me passionately was shivering too, not with cold but with fear that her darling child, her little Seryozha, 1 had caught a chill. She pressed me close to her breast, and laid over our coverlet a satin cloak lined with fox-fur that had been part of her dowry. At last I got warm and went to sleep ; and next morning I woke up quite well, to the inexpressible joy of my anxious mother. My sister and brother, both younger than I, had been left behind with our father's aunt, at her house of Choorassovo in the Government of Simbirsk. It was expected that we should inherit her property ; but for the present she would not give a penny to my father, so that he and his family were pretty often in difficulties ; 1 A pet-name for Serghei. A 2 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY she was unwilling even to lend him a single rouble. 1 I do not know the circumstances which induced my parents, straitened as they were for money, to travel to Kazan ; but I do know that it was not done on my account, though my whole future life was affected by this expedition. When I awoke next morning, I was much impressed by the movement of people in the street ; it was the first time I had seen anything of the kind, and the impression was so strong that I could not tear myself away from the window. Our maid, Parasha, who had come with us, could not satisfy me by her replies to my questions, for she knew as little as I did ; so I managed to get hold of a maid be- longing to the house and went on for some hours teasing her with questions, some of which she was puzzled to answer. My father and mother had gone off to the Cathedral to pray there, and to some other places on business of their own ; but they refused to take me, fearing for me the intense cold of that Epiphany season. They dined at home, but drove out again in the evening. Tired out by new sensations, I fell asleep earlier than usual, while chattering myself and hearing Parasha chatter. But I had hardly got to sleep when the same Parasha roused me with a kind and careful hand ; and I was told that a sledge had been sent for me, and I must get up at once and go to a party where I should find my parents. I was dressed in my best clothes, washed, and brushed ; then I was wrapped up and placed in the sledge, still in Parasha's company. I was naturally shy ; I had been caught up out of the sound sleep of childhood and was frightened by such an unheard-of event ; so that my heart failed me and I had a presentiment of something terrible, as we drove through the deserted streets of the town. At last we reached the house. Parasha took off my wraps in the hall, and, repeating in a whisper the encouragement she had given me several times on our way, led me to the drawing- room, where a footman opened the door and I walked in. The glitter of candles and sound of loud voices alarmed me so much that I stood stock-still by the door. My father was the first to see me ; he called out " Ah, there is the recruit ! " which alarmed me still more. " Your fore- 1 A rouble is ordinarily worth two shillings. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 3 head ! " cried out someone in a stentorian voice, and a very tall man rose from an arm-chair and walked towards me. I understood the meaning of this phrase, 1 and was so terrified by it that I turned instinctively to run away, till I was checked by the loud laughter of all the company. But the joke did not amuse my mother : her tender heart was troubled by the fears of her child, and she ran towards me, took me in her arms, and gave me courage by her words and caresses. I shed a few tears but soon grew calm. And now I must explain where I had been taken to. It was the house of an old friend of the family, Maxim Knyazhevitch, who, after living for several years at Ufa as my father's colleague in the law-courts, had moved with his wife to Kazan, to perform the same duties there. In early youth he had left his native country of Serbia, and at once received a commission in the Russian Horse Guards ; later he had been sent to Ufa in a legal capacity. He might be called a typical specimen of a Southern Slav, and was remarkable for his cordial and hospitable temperament. As he was very tall and had harsh features, his exterior was at first sight rather disturbing ; but he had the kindest of hearts. His wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of a Russian noble. Their house in Kazan was distinguished by this inscription over the entrance, " Good people, you are welcome " a true expression of Slav hospitality. When they lived at Ufa, we often met, and my sister and I used to play with the two elder sons, Dmitri and Alexander. The boys were in the room, though I did not recognise them at once ; but, when my mother explained and reminded me of them, I called out at once : " Why, mamma, surely these are the boys who taught me how to crack walnuts with my head ! " The company laughed at my exclamation, my shyness passed off, and I began in good spirits to renew acquaintance with my former playmates. They were dressed in green uniforms with scarlet collars, and J was told that they attended the grammar-school of Kazan. An hour later, they drove back to school ; it was Sunday, 1 I.e. " Present your forehead " to be shaved. In those days the hair on the forehead of recruits for the Army was shaved as soon as they were passed by the doctors. 4 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY and the two boys had leave to spend the day with their parents till eight in the evening. I soon grew weary ; and, as I listened to the talk be- tween my parents and our hosts, I was falling asleep, when suddenly my ear was caught by some words which filled me with horror and drove sleep far from me. " Yes, my good friends, Alexyei Stepanitch and Sofya Nikolayevna" M. Knyazhevitch was speaking in his loud positive voice " do take a piece of friendly advice, and send Seryozha to the grammar-school here. It is especially important, because I can see that he is his mother's darling ; and she will spoil him and coddle him till she makes an old woman of him. It is time for the boy to be learning something ; at Ufa the only teacher was Matvyei Vassilitch at the National School, and he was no great hand ; but now that you have gone to live in the country, you won't find any one even as good." My father said that he agreed entirely with this opinion ; but my mother turned pale at the thought of parting with her treasure, and replied, with much agitation, that I was still young and weak in health (which was true, to some extent) and so devoted to her that she could not make up her mind in a moment to such a change. As for me, I sat there more dead than alive, neither hearing nor understanding anything further that was said. Supper was served at ten o'clock, but neither my mother nor I could swallow a morsel. At last the same sledge which had brought me carried us back to our lodgings. At bed-time, when I embraced my mother as usual and clung close to her, we both began to sob aloud. My voice was choked, and I could only say, " Mamma, don't send me to school ! " She sobbed too, and for a long time we prevented my father from sleeping. At last she decided that nothing should induce her to part from me, and towards morning we fell asleep. We did not stay long at Kazan. I learnt afterwards that my father and the Knyazhevitches went on urging my mother to send me as a Government scholar to the school in that town. They pressed upon her that at present there was a vacancy, and there might be none later. But nothing would induce her to give way, and she said positively that she must have a year at least to MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 5 gain courage, to become accustomed herself and to accus- tom me to the idea. All this was concealed from me, and I believed that I should never be the victim of such a terrible calamity. We started on our long journey, taking our own horses, and travelled first to the Government of Simbirsk where we picked up my brother and sister, and then across the Volga to New Aksakovo, where my infant sister, Annushka, had been left. In those days you might travel along side- roads in the Government of Ufa for a dozen versts 1 without passing a single village ; and a winter journey of this kind seems to me now so horrible that the mere recollection of it is painful. A side-road was merely a track over the snow- drifts, formed by the passage of a few sledges ; and the least wind covered it entirely with fresh snow. On such a road the horses had to be harnessed in single file, and the traveller had to crawl on for seven hours without a break, the stages being as much as thirty-five versts or even longer ; and the length of each verst was by no means a fixed dis- tance. Hence it was necessary to start at midnight, to wake the children from their sleep, wrap them up in furs, and pack them into the sledges. The creaking of the runners on the dry snow was a constant trial to my sensi- tive nerves, and I always suffered from sickness during the first twenty-four hours. Then the stoppages for food and sleep, in huts full of smoke and packed with calves and lambs and litters of pigs, the dirt, the smell Heaven pre- serve any man from even dreaming of all this ! I say nothing of the blizzards which sometimes forced us to halt in some nameless hamlet and wait forty-eight hours till the fierce wind fell. The recollection is bad enough. But we did at last reach my dear Aksakovo, and all was forgotten. I began once more my life of blissful happiness in my mother's company and resumed all my old occupations. I read aloud to her my favourite books Reading for Children, to benefit the Heart and Head, and also Hippocrene, or the Delights of Literature not, indeed, for the first time but always with fresh satisfaction. I recited verses from the tragedies of Sumarokoff, in which I had a special pre- ference for messengers' parts, and put on a broad belt for 1 A verst is three quarters of a mile. 6 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY the purpose, with a window-prop stuck in it to represent a sword. I played with my sister whom I had loved dearly from infancy, and my baby brother, lying about with them on the floor, which for warmth was covered with a double thickness of snow-white Kalmuck mats. I began again teaching my sister to read ; but at first she made slow pro- gress and would not try, and I had naturally little notion how to set about my task, though I was tremendously in earnest over it. I well remember that I found it quite impossible to explain to my six-year-old pupil how to spell whole words. 1 I gave it up in despair, sat down on a stool in the corner, and began to cry ; and, when my mother asked what I was crying about, I answered, " Sister does not understand anything." As before, I took to bed with me my cat, which was so attached to me that she followed me everywhere like a dog ; and I snared small birds or trapped them and kept them in a small room which was practically converted into a spacious coop. I admired my pigeons with double tufts and feathered legs, which had been kept warm in my absence under the stoves in the houses of the outdoor servants. I watched the huntsmen catching magpies and pigeons or feeding the hawks in their winter quarters. The day was not long enough for the enjoyment of all these delights ! So winter passed by, and spring began with its green leaves and blossoms, revealing a multitude of new and poignant pleasures the clear waters of the river, the mill and mill-dam, the Jackdaw Wood, and the island, sur- rounded on all sides by the old and new channels of the Boogoorooslan, and planted with shady limes and birches. To the island I ran several times a day, hardly knowing myself why I went ; and there I stood motionless, as if under a spell, while my heart beat hard and my breath came unevenly. But what attracted me most of all was fishing, and I gave my whole soul to this sport, under the eye of my attendant, Yephrem Yevseitch. Fish swarmed in the clear and deep waters of the Boogoorooslan, which flowed right under the windows of the room built on to the old house by my grandfather in his lifetime, in order that his daughter-in-law might have a place to herself to live in. 1 Russians spell by syllables, not by single letters. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 7 Close under the window there grew a spreading birch, leaning over the water, and one thick crooked bough formed with the trunk a kind of arm-chair in which I loved to sit with my sister. But the river in the course of time bared the roots of the tree, so that it grew old prematurely and fell on its side ; yet it is still living and puts forth leaves. A young tree was planted beside it by a later owner. Ah, where is it now, that magic world, the fairy-tale of human life, which so many grown-up people treat roughly and rudely, shattering its enchantment by ridicule or pre- mature enlightenment ? The happiness of childhood is the Golden Age, and the recollection of it has power to move the old man's heart with pleasure and with pain. Happy is the man who once possessed it and is able to recall the memory of it in later years ! With many that time passes by unnoticed or unen joyed ; and all that remains in the ripeness of age is the recollection of the coldness or even cruelty of men. I spent that whole summer in the intoxication of a child's happiness, and suspected nothing ; but, when autumn came and I began to sit more in the house, to look more at my mother and listen to her more, I soon noticed a change of some kind in her. Her beautiful eyes were directed at me sometimes with a peculiar expression of secret sorrow ; I even noticed tears, though they were carefully concealed from me ; and then, in grief and excite- ment, with all the caresses of passionate love, I besieged her with questions. At first she assured me that it was nothing and of no importance ; but soon, in the course of our conversations, I began to hear her lamenting that I had no proper teacher, and saying that teaching was in- dispensable for a boy. She would rather die, she said, than see her children grow up in ignorance ; a man must serve the state, and was not fit to do so without education. My heart sank when I understood the drift of these words and realised that the dreaded calamity had not passed away but had come close, and that the school at Kazan was inevitable. My mother confirmed my surmise : she said that her mind was made up, and I knew that she did not readily change her resolves. For some days I could only 8 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY weep, not listening to what she said, and pretending not to understand it. At last her tears and entreaties, her sensible arguments accompanied by the tenderest caresses, and her eager desire to see me grow up an educated man all these became intelligible to me, young as I was, and I submitted with an aching heart to the destiny that awaited me. But all my country amusements suddenly lost their charm : I felt drawn to none of them ; everything seemed to me strange and repulsive, and only my love for my mother increased so much as actually to frighten her. And now my preparation for the school course began. I could read excellently for my age, but my writing was childish. In arithmetic, my father had tried earlier to impart to me the first four rules, which were all he knew himself ; but I was so dull and idle a pupil that he dropped it. Now there was a complete change : in two months I mastered these four rules, and, though I have forgotten all the rest of my mathematics, I remember the four rules still. The rest of the time until our departure for Kazan was spent in revising old lessons with my father. In the writing of copies also I became very proficient. All this I did under my mother's eye and wholly and solely for her sake. She had said, that she would burn with shame if I did not pass with credit the entrance-examination which had to be taken in these subjects, and that she was sure I would distinguish myself ; and I needed no other induce- ment. I would not go one step from her side. When she tried to send me out to play or look at my pigeons and hawks, I refused to go anywhere and always gave the same answer, " I don't want to, mamma." In order to accustom me to the thought of our parting, she spoke constantly to me of the school and of education ; she said that she was quite determined to take me to Moscow later, and place me at a boarding-school connected with the University, the school to which she had sent her brothers straight from Uf d, when she was herself a girl only seventeen years old. My intelligence was beyond my age ; for I had read many books to myself, and still more aloud to my mother, some of them too advanced for my years. To this I must add, that my mother was my constant companion ; and it is well known how the companionship of grown-up MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 9 people develops the minds of children. Hence it came about, that she was able to speak to me of the advantages the educated have over the ignorant, and that I was able to understand her. She was remarkably intelligent and had unusual powers of expression ; she could speak what was in her mind with a passion which it was hard to resist, and her influence over me was absolute and supreme. At last she inspired me with such courage, such zeal to carry out her darling wish as soon as possible and justify her hopes, that I even looked forward with impatience to our journey to Kazan. My mother seemed courageous and cheerful ; but how much the effort cost her ! She grew thinner and paler daily ; she never shed tears, but she shut herself up in her own room more than usual and prayed. This was the real proof of her love for her child, the real triumph of that infinitely disinterested and self-sacrificing passion ! As a child, I had been long ill, and there was a time when for whole years she never left my bedside ; when she slept, no one knew, and no hand but hers was suffered to touch me. And again, at a later time, when she heard that I had broken down at school and was lying sick in hospital, she crossed the river Kama at the time of the spring thaw, when all traffic over it had ceased and the discoloured and swollen ice might be expected to break up at any moment. But all this falls short of her determina- tion to send her child to school ; the school was under Government and 400 versts away, and the child, whom she literally idolised, was only nine and not strong and had been tenderly reared ; yet she did it, because there was no other means of procuring education for him. Winter came round once more, and in December we started for Kazan. In order that the return home might be less sad for my mother, my father insisted on taking my elder sister with us ; my brother and younger sister were left at home with our aunt Tatyana. At Kazan we had the same lodgings as the year before, in the house of M me Aristoff. Before leaving, my parents had been in corre- spondence with M. Knyazhevitch and had ascertained that there was a vacancy in the school for a Government scholar, and they had got ready all the papers required for my entrance. So, after a fortnight, when he had made 10 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY acquaintance through M. Knyazhevitch with all the officials concerned, my father, after fervent prayer to God, sent in his petition to M. Peken, the Rector of the school. The governing-body of the school appointed the head- master, M. Kamasheff, to examine me in my proficiency, and a Dr. Benis to conduct a medical examination. Kamasheff was then on leave, and his duties were dis- charged in part by Vassili Upadishevsky, master of one of the dormitories ; while the inspection of studies, of which Kamasheff had charge, was carried on by Lyoff Levitsky, the senior teacher of Russian Literature. Both these men proved kind and friendly, and Upadishevsky soon became a real guardian-angel to myself and my mother : I do not know what would have become of us, but for this kind old friend. When my father went to the Rector's house to give in his petition, he took me with him, and the Rector proved very friendly. Next, as Levitsky was unwell and could not attend the meeting of the governors, I was taken to his lodgings by my father. He too was very amiable and cheerful ; he had a high colour and, in spite of his youth, a considerable development behind his waistcoat. He charmed both of us by his reception. He began by kissing and embracing me. Then he set me something to read prose by Karamzin and verse by Dmitrieff and was delighted to find that I read with intelligence and feeling. Next he made me write ; and again my per- formance delighted him. In the four rules of arithmetic also I distinguished myself; but Levitsky, in the true spirit of a teacher of literature, expressed straight off his contempt for mathematics. When the examination was over, he praised me without stint, and expressed surprise that a boy of my age, living in the country, could be so well prepared. ' Now who, pray, taught him to write ? " he asked my father with a good-humoured laugh : " your own handwriting is hardly a model." My father, charmed and moved almost to tears by hearing his son praised, replied in the fulness of his heart, that I owed it all to my own hard work, under the supervision of my mother, from whom I was almost in- separable ; and that he himself had taught me nothing but MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 11 arithmetic. He added that we had only lately moved to the country, that my mother was a great lover of books and poetry, and had spent all her youth in a provincial capital, where her father held an important position. " Ah," exclaimed Levitsky, " now I understand the stamp of refinement, even of elegance, which marks your charm- ing boy ; it is the fruit of a woman's work of education, the result of a cultivated mother's labours." We left the house enchanted with him. Dr. Benis, who owned a fine house in Ladsky Street, received us very politely and made no difficulty in giving me a certificate of health and bodily vigour. On returning home, I noticed that my mother had been weeping,though her eyes had this peculiarity that tears did not cloud their brightness and left no trace behind them. My father eagerly reported all that had happened to us. My mother looked at me with an expression which I shall never forget, even if I live a hundred years to come. She took me in her arms and said, " You are my happiness, you are my pride ! " What more could I ask ? In my own way, I was proud and happy too, and courageous enough. My mother called on the wife of Dr. Benis and made the acquaintance of the doctor himself. It was hard to deny sympathy to my mother's youth and beauty, her intelli- gence and her tears : they both quite fell in love with her, and the doctor promised her, that in any illness, however trifling, I should enjoy all the resources of the medical art a dangerous promise, according to my present ideas, when I dread an excess of medical attention ; but it served then to comfort my poor mother to some extent. Vassili Upadishevsky was a widower, and two of his own sons were Government scholars. My father made his acquaintance and invited him to visit us at our lodgings. My mother received him so kindly that he took a great fancy to her and was able to appreciate her maternal devotion. At their very first interview, he promised her two things : to transfer me within a week to his own dormitory to have done this at once for a new boy would have been thought a clear case of favouritism ; and to look after me more closely than after his own " pair of scamps," by whom he meant his sons. Both promises were 12 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY scrupulously fulfilled. I seem to see him now, with his kind courteous face, and his right arm slung in a broad black ribbon ; the hand had been blown off by the burst- ing of a cannon, and he wore a black glove stuffed with cotton-wool attached to the arm. He could write, how- ever, very well and distinctly with his left hand. At last all the formalities were complete, and the governors decided to admit me to the school as a Govern- ment scholar. I was measured for my uniform, and the uniform was made. The excitement which my mother and I were feeling did not grow less. We drove to the Cathedral and offered prayers to the three wonder-working saints of Kazan, Gury, 1 Varsonofy, and Germanus ; and I was taken straight from the Cathedral to the school, and given over by my parents into the personal charge of Upadishev- sky. My attendant, Yephrem Yevs&tch, came with me, taking service in the school as a dormitory man. The parting was, as may be supposed, accompanied by tears and blessings and good advice ; but nothing remarkable took place. I was taken to the school at ten in the morning, when second lesson had just begun and all the boys were in the class-rooms upstairs. 2 The bedrooms downstairs were empty, and my mother was able to examine them and to see the very bed in which I was to sleep ; she seemed satisfied with all the arrangements. As soon as my parents had gone, Upadishevsky took my hand and led me to the writing-class, where he introduced me to the teacher as a very well-disposed boy and begged him to pay special attention to me. I was put down with other new boys at a separate desk, and we were made to copy pot-hooks and hangers. I was quite dumbfounded, and felt as if it was all a dream ; but I had no sensation of fear or grief. After dinner, of which I remember nothing, I was made to put on a uniform jacket, with a cloth stock round my neck, and my hair was cut close. Then we were 1 I.e. George. 2 In winter, first lesson began at 8 and second lesson at 10; work ended at noon and dinner came half an hour later. Jn summer, work began at 7 and ended at 11, and dinner was at noon exactly. At all seasons, afternoon school began at 2 and ended at 6 ; supper was at 8, and we went to bed at 9. We rose at 5 in the summer and 6 in winter. (Author' Note.) MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 13 placed on parade in a line two deep the boy next me was Vladimir Graff and we were taught at once how to march. I went mechanically through it all, as if I had nothing to do with it personally. When lessons were over, Upadish- evsky met me at the door and said, " Your mother is waiting for you." Then he took me to the reception-room where both my parents were standing. When my father saw me, he laughed and said, " Well, one would hardly know Seryozha again ! " but my mother, who had failed to recognise me at the first moment, threw up her hands, cried out, and feH fainting to the floor. I cried out wildly and fell at her feet. Upadish- evsky, who had been looking through the chink of the door, was alarmed and hurried to our aid. My mother's swoon, which lasted about half an hour, terrified my father and had such an effect upon poor Upadishevsky that he summoned from the hospital Ritter, the doctor's assistant, who gave some medicine to my mother and made me swallow something too. When my mother came to herself, she was very weak ; and the kind-hearted Upadishevsky volunteered to give me leave to go home for the night. " M. Kamasheff," said he, " may be angry with me, when he comes back and hears of it ; and he would never have given leave himself. But never mind I will take all the responsibility ; only please bring him back to-morrow at seven, just before breakfast." We could not find words to thank him for such kindness ; and off we went to our lodgings. At home my mother, on reflexion, plucked up courage herself and breathed courage into me. She forced herself to look calmly at my close-cropped head, where her hand sought in vain the soft fair curls, and at the stock, which had already begun to rub the tender skin of my neck, unused even to a silk handkerchief. For everything she found a good reason which we had to submit to. Our mutual firmness and determination took hold of us with fresh power. I was at the school next day before seven o'clock. My mother paid me two visits every day before dinner at midday, and again at six ; the morning visit lasted only half an hour, but I could stay with her in the evening for an hour and a half. While we were together, she seemed peaceful and even happy; but I guessed from 14 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY my father's sad face that matters were very different in my absence. Within a few days, my father became convinced that things could not go on as they were, and that these con- stant meetings and partings were only a source of useless suffering ; he took counsel with M. Knyazhevitch, and the two decided to take my mother back to the country without delay. It was easy to decide, but hard to carry out the decision, and this my father knew very well ; but, much to his satisfaction and contrary to his expectation, my mother soon yielded to the entreaties and arguments addressed to her. Dr. Benis took an interest in the matter, and his words were undoubtedly of great weight. He assured her that these constant interviews were a trial to my nerves and dangerous to my health, and that, unless she went away, it would take me a long time to get accustomed to my new life, and perhaps I never should settle down at all. Even the soft-hearted Upadishevsky urged the same course : when he declared that I could not work properly in such a condition of affairs, and that my teachers would form a bad opinion of me, then my mother consented to go away on the very next day. But there is one thing that still puzzles me how she could make up her mind to play a trick on me. Before dinner she told me that she would leave the next day or the day after, and that we should meet twice more ; she said too that she was spend- ing that evening with the Knyazhevitches, and would not visit me. To depart secretly and without saying goodbye that was an unlucky idea, urged by Benis and Upadi- shevsky. Of course, they wished to spare us both, and me especially, the pain of a final parting ; but their calculation was not verified. Even now I am convinced that this well-meant deception had many sad results. It was the first time that my mother had omitted her evening visit, and, though she had forewarned me, yet my heart ached with grief and a presentiment of some un- known calamity. I slept badly that night. Early next morning, when I began to dress, Yevseitch handed me a note : it was my mother's farewell to me. She wrote that, if I loved her and desired her life and happiness, I must not grieve but work hard at my lessons. She had left the MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 15 town at eight on the previous evening. I remember that moment clearly, but I cannot describe it : a feeling of pain pierced my heart and compressed it, and stopped my breathing ; and this was immediately followed by severe palpitation. I sat down on the bed half-dressed and looked round the room, dazed and despairing. Upadi- shevsky, who had moved me into his dormitory two days before, knew of my mother's departure and consequently understood the cause of my condition. Ordering that no one should touch me, he took all the other boys upstairs at once, handed them over to one of the masters, and hurried back to me. He found me sitting on my bed in the same position, and Yevseitch in tears standing beside me. To all that he could say I turned a deaf ear : I could not form a single thought, and my eyes, as I was told after- wards, stared wildly. I was taken to the hospital ; there too I sat down mechanically on a bed, and stared in silence as before. Within an hour Dr. Benis came ; he examined me, shook his head, and said something in French ; I heard later from others that the words were " pauvre enfant." I was given some repulsive medicine to swallow, undressed, and put to bed, where I was rubbed with flannel ; and soon a violent fit of shivering restored me to consciousness. I called out loudly, " Mother has gone away ! " and the streams of pent-up tears gushed from my eyes. This evidently relieved the doctor : he sat down beside me and began to speak of my mother's departure and of its necessity for the sake of her health, of the danger of a final interview, and of the way in which a sensible boy should behave in such a case, if he loved his mother and wished to set her mind at rest. His words were a real inspiration from above ; for the doctor, though a very worthy man, was not exactly remarkable for gentleness of disposition. Though my tears flowed still faster, yet I felt better. The doctor left, and I sobbed on for two hours till I cried myself to sleep ; and kindly sleep did something to restore my strength. Upadishevsky came to see me several times and brought a book for me to read, The Child's Instructor, which I had never seen ; he knew my passion for reading, but I was in no mood for it then. I asked leave to write, and wrote to my father 16 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY and mother all that day and all the evening, crying most of the time. Yevs&tch never left me. Next morning the doctor found me in better health, and discharged me from the hospital, thinking the society of invalids and the inactivity bad for me ; but he directed that I should not be worked hard. Upadishevsky himself took me back into school, where I found a writing-class going on ; and this was followed by a divinity lesson with the priest. For two hours I listened, while the other boys repeated their lessons on the Catechism and Bible history, and the priest set a fresh lesson and explained some difficulty at great length ; but I could not understand his explanations either on this occasion or on any other while I remained at the school. I had not learnt the lesson for that day, and the priest had been informed of my illness ; a strict and severe man, he did not go beyond a reprimand, but told me to have my lesson pre- pared next time. After dinner, in order that I might not remain idle and a prey to sad thoughts, Upadishevsky handed me over to one of the older boys who drew well, Ilya Zhevanoff, that he might amuse me in that way ; as a child, I had had a great fancy for drawing. I myself heard the kind old man say to Zhevanoff : " Please do me a great kindness which I shall never forget, and amuse this poor home-sick boy by drawing with him " ; and Zhevanoff consented. But neither then nor later did my drawing come to anything : the copying of circles, eye- brows, noses, eyes, and lips, had set me against drawing for good and all. At the end of afternoon school, Upadishevsky, still my good genius, made me repeat my lessons beside him ; and, when he saw that I did not understand what I was saying, he began to talk to me of my life at home and of my parents, and even allowed me to cry a little. I do not know how life would have gone on with me ; but at this point there came a complete and sudden change. The next day but one, during dinner, Yevs&tch handed me a note from my mother, which said that, after travelling ninety versts from Kazan, she had come back to have at least a momentary glimpse of me ; to leave without a proper parting had proved too much for her. I cannot explain MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 17 to myself why I did not at the first moment feel the immense happiness which I surely ought to have felt. I suppose I was afraid to believe it and took it for a dream. There was a note also for Upadishevsky : my mother asked him to give me leave from six till nine in the evening ; or, if that was impossible, she would come herself; she added that she would only spend one night in Kazan. He told me to write to my mother, that she was not to be anxious and not to come herself ; he would send me with Yevseitch, perhaps before six, as the teacher of the last lesson was not well and would probably not turn up ; and I might stay with her till seven next morning. As I wrote all this, I felt sure that I was in a dream. Yevseitch has- tened off with my letter, and returned in an hour and a half with an answer of such joy and gratitude to Upadishevsky that the old man's eyes grew wet as he read it. Yevseitch told us that his mistress had returned alone ; she had turned back at a village ninety versts away along the post- road ; his master had remained there with the young lady, who was not well ; and my mother had travelled with post-horses in a light courier's sledge, accompanied by one maid and one man. I began to realise the situation and to believe in my good fortune, and was soon so completely convinced of it that the last hour of suspense was a terrible trial. The teacher sent notice that he would not come ; and at five minutes past four I got into a hired sledge, attended by Yevseitch and crazy with happiness beyond description. My mother was staying with some friends whose name I forget ; but it was certainly not at an inn. When I ran into the room, I saw her, looking pale and thin, wrapped up in a warm cloak, and sitting beside a newly lighted stove, as the room was very cold. The first moment of our meeting it is impossible for me to describe ; but never in after life did I experience a thrill of happiness to compare with that. For some minutes we were silent and only wept for joy. But this did not last long : the thought of coming separation soon drove all other thoughts and feelings from me, and made my heart ache. With bitter tears I told my mother all that had happened to me since her sudden departure. I was frightened by the effect of B 18 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY my story. How my poor mother blamed herself, and repented of her promise to deceive me and go away without saying goodbye ! Then she told me about herself. She had fainted on getting into the sledge, and had no recol- lection of leaving Kazan. As she got farther away, her suffering increased every hour, and soon the idea of return- ing took hold of her ; but my father's arguments and her own good sense restrained her for some time from the course on which her heart was set. At last she was unable any longer to withstand her feelings, and she returned alone ; my sister, unwell already and unfit for travel, needed rest, and was to wait with my father till my mother rejoined them. That whole evening, with a great part of the night, was spent by us in talking and in weeping ; but, as there are limits to all things, we came to an end of our tears and went to sleep. I remember how I started in my sleep several times and began sobbing, till my mother took me in her arms and laid my head on her breast, and I fell asleep again. We were wakened at six o'clock. We were calmer and braver by that time. My mother promised that, as soon as the roads were open in summer, 1 she would come to Kazan and stay till the examinations were over ; and after the speech-day, which was always near the beginning of July, she would take me home for the holidays which would last till the middle of August. A feeling of comfort filled my heart ; and we said goodbye calmly enough. At seven my mother got into the sledge she had come in, and Yevseitch and I into another, and we all started together. She drove to the right, towards the town-gate, and I to the left, towards the school ; we soon turned off the main street, and her sledge vanished from my sight. My heart ached, and a load of pain lay on my breast ; but my head was perfectly clear, and I fully understood all that was going on around me and all that lay ahead of me in the future. The great white building of the school, with its bright green roof and cupola, stood on a hill, and the sudden appearance of it surprised me as much as if I had never seen it before. It seemed to me like a terrible enchanted castle such as I had read of, or a prison where I 1 The spring 1 thaw makes travelling impossible for a time. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL Id was to be shut up as a convict. The great door between columns at the top of a high flight of steps, which, when it was opened by the old pensioner, I felt had swallowed me up the two broad high staircases, lit from the cupola and leading from the hall to the first and second floors the shouting and confused noise of many voices, that came from all the class-rooms to meet me, the teachers being still absent all this I saw and heard and understood for the first time. I had already spent more than a week in the school, but had never realised it ; now for the first time I felt myself to be a Government scholar in a Government school. The whole day each thing that happened was new and surprising, and oh ! how repulsive it all seemed to me ! We rose at the sound of a' bell, long before daylight, when there was an intolerable smell in the rooms from the guttering or extinguished night-lights and tallow candles ; the cold in the dormitories 1 made rising even more un- pleasant for a poor child who could barely keep warm under his frieze coverlet ; we washed all together at copper basins which were always the scene of quarrels and fights ; we marched two and two to prayers, to breakfast, to lessons, and to everything ; our breakfast consisted of a roll and a glass of milk and water in equal proportions, with a glass of sbiten 2 instead of milk and water on fast-days ; we had three courses at dinner and two at supper, but they were not better meals than breakfast. How was all this likely to strike a boy whom his mother had petted and made much of and brought up as luxuriously as if we had been very rich ? But more terrible to me than anything else were my companions. The oldest boys and those in the middle of the school took no notice of me ; but those of my own age or even younger, who were at the bottom of the school, were for the most part intolerably rude and rough ; and, though there were exceptions, I had so little in common even with them, and we differed so much in ideas and interests and habits, that I could not make friends with 1 The temperature of the dormitories was kept at 53, as is still the custom in all Government schools. In my opinion, this is positively harmful to children ; it ought not to be lower than 58. (Author's Note.) - A drink made of honey and hot water. 20 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY them ; and I remained solitary in the midst of numbers. They were all healthy and contented and unbearably cheerful, and not a single one of them was in the least degree depressed or thoughtful or likely to sympathise with my constant sadness. If there had been, I would have rushed boldly into his arms and shared my secret with him. "How strange it is!" I said to myself; "these boys cannot have father or mother, brothers or sisters, nor house and garden in the country," and I was inclined to pity them. But I soon found out that almost all of them had parents and families, and some had even homes in the country with gardens ; but one thing they had not that feeling of intense attachment to home and family that filled my own heart. As a matter of course, I at once became an object of ridicule to my companions : I was a nincom- poop, a cry-baby, and a milksop who was always " blubbing for his mammy." Upadishevsky never ceased to watch over me night and day, but neither his authority nor his moral influence could shield me from this form of perse- cution. He told me himself never to complain of the boys' mockery, as he knew very well how " sneaks " are hated in schools, and that this label is attached to any persecuted boy who ventures to complain to the authorities. He put my bed between the beds of two much older boys ; their names were Kondiryoff and Moreyeff ; both were well- behaved boys and also hard workers. He handed me over to their protection, and, thanks to them, no young scamp ventured to approach my bed. I should mention that in those days our accommodation was so limited, that the Government scholars and pensioners * spent in their dormitories all the time that they were not in school. After definitively parting from my mother, I began at once to work hard at my lessons. Through Upadishevsky I asked my teachers to set me twice or thrice as much as the usual tasks, in order to catch up the older boys and get promotion from the newcomers' bench. My memory and power of understanding were already strongly developed, and within a month I had not only distanced my con- temporaries but was placed on the top bench in all sub- jects, side by side with the best scholars. This circum- 1 I.e. Boys who paid for their education and maintenance. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 21 stance made me even more unpopular both with those whom I had passed and those who were still my rivals. Just at this time the headmaster, Nikolai Kamasheff, returned to his duties. He was considered a very able man. I do not know if he deserved this reputation ; but he certainly was a cold hard man, who always spoke low and with a smile, but always acted with inflexible deter- mination. All without exception feared him much more than they did the Rector. He loved power, knew how to acquire it, and was exacting to pedantry in his use of it. Upadishevsky had foreseen that he would get into trouble ; and, in fact, Kamasheff at once discovered all the departures from school rules which had been sanctioned by his repre- sentative for my mother and me interviews with parents at times not recognised by the rules, unlawful leave home, and (worst of all) leave for the night. My benefactor got such a reprimand that the old gentleman walked about for a long time looking very serious. Kamasheff had said to him with his quiet smile : " If anything of the kind ever occurs in future, I shall request you, my dear Sir, to retire from your service in this school." When I heard of this, I shed bitter tears and conceived an invincible aversion and horror for the very name of the headmaster. And I had some reason ; for he took a dislike to me without cause and became my persecutor, and his oppression cost my poor mother many tears in the sequel. Three days after his return, Kamasheff summoned me out of the ranks to the centre of the hall and delivered for my benefit a rather long address : a spoilt boy, he said, was a regular nuisance ; and it was mean to take advantage of undue indulgence shown by authorities, and wrong to be ungrateful to the Government which generously took upon itself the considerable expense of my education. Though mild and quiet by disposition, I was naturally sensitive and excitable. I stood there, with my eyes on the floor, while a feeling hitherto unknown swelled within my breast, a feeling of anger at undeserved insult. " Why do you not look at me ? " Kamasheff called out ; " it is a bad sign, when a boy hides his eyes and dares not. or will not, look his master in the face." Then he raised his voice and said in a severe tone, " Look at me ! " I raised my 22 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY eyes ; and I suppose they expressed pretty clearly the feeling of insulted pride which filled my young breast ; for he turned away and said, as he went out, to Upadishev- sky, "That boy is by no means as mild and good-tempered as you make out." I heard afterwards that he wished to remove me from the dormitory I was in, and demanded reports from all my teachers and masters ; but, when he found in all of them " Conduct and diligence exemplary, proficiency remarkable," he left me where I was. During the whole of my first term, he constantly examined my books and note-books in form and made the teachers question me in his presence ; sometimes he found fault with me for trifles or told the masters that they must make me play with the other boys, adding, " I don't like your silent solitary boys." I understand now that such a criticism is justified in some cases, but it was quite un- suitable to mine and only increased my natural irritation. Upadishevsky really loved me and watched over me with a mother's care : every day he inspected my clothes and bedding, and saw that my hands were clean and my books in good order. He often impressed upon me that I must look the headmaster straight in the face and bear his remarks and reprimands in silence ; and I carried out these instructions exactly, because I loved Upadishevsky. But this did not conciliate Kamasheff. By the school rules, none of the boys might have private property or money of their own ; if they had money, it was kept by the dormitory-master and might not be spent without the headmaster's consent. To buy food or sweets was strictly forbidden ; of course, there were breaches of this rule, but they were carefully concealed. There was also a rule that boys' letters to their parents and relations should pass through the hands of the masters ; each boy was obliged to give up his letter, before it was sealed and sent to the post, to the dormitory-master, who had a right to read it, if he felt any distrust of the writer. Though this rule was in practice disregarded, Kamasheff instructed Upadishevsky to show him my letters. The kind old man had always added a postscript to my letters home, without reading them ; but now he was obliged to harden his heart and act as censor of what I wrote. My first letter which he read MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 23 placed him in a very difficult position : I described the grief I suffered daily, I complained of my companions and even of my teachers, and I expressed a burning desire to see my mother, and to leave the hateful school as soon as possible and spend the summer in the country ; and that was all. There was nothing wrong in it ; but the reader felt sure that every word would be criminal in the eyes of the headmaster : he would find there discontent, criticism of authority, calumny against the school, and ingratitude to Government. What was to be done ? Upadishevsky was unwilling at once to reveal to me the actual state of affairs, for that would be much the same as conspiring with a boy against his superior. He felt also that I would not understand him, and would be unable to write a letter of the kind that Kamasheff would approve ; but to deprive my mother of my frank and full letters which were her only consolation, was impossible to his kind heart. For a whole night and day he puzzled over the difficulty without finding a solution he told me this himself afterwards ; and at last he made up his mind to tell me the whole truth and at the same time to play a trick upon his senior and superior. Accordingly, he dictated to me another letter in a purely formal style, and showed this to Kamasheff, who naturally could find nothing in it to blame me for. Both letters were sent together to the post. After this I wrote two letters every time, one for show and the other private, and I went on with this, even after my tyrant had ceased to read my correspondence. Upadishevsky himself wrote at once to my mother, to explain the reason of this con- trivance. Yevseltch took the letters to the post in person. I could not then appreciate the full extent of my bene- factor's self-sacrifice, but my mother could, and she wrote to Upadishevsky and expressed the most ardent gratitude that a mother's heart could feel. I need hardly say, that, though she did not know all the details of it, she was much agitated by Kamasheff's persecution of her son. Things continued to go on as before ; but a change took place in me which ought to have seemed strange and un- natural to those around me. For, though in the course of six weeks I ought to have become accustomed to the new 24 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY life, I became thoughtful and sad ; and then sadness led on to fits of misery and finally to illness. The change was probably due to two causes. When I had caught up my class-mates in all our lessons, I was given ordinary tasks which were so short that I often learnt them before we were let out of school, and consequently had nothing to do in our free time ; and my active mind, deprived of proper nourishment, turned exclusively in one direction. I was constantly turning over and considering my present situation, constantly picturing all that was going on at home, dwelling on my mother's longing for me, and re- calling the old days of bliss spent in the country. In my heart I hated the school and was convinced in my own mind that the process of education was entirely useless and only served to turn innocent children into objectionable boys. The second and perhaps the main cause of the change was the unfair persecution of Kamasheff. Each time he appeared in the place, he gave a shock to my nerves ; and he paid two visits every day at unfixed times : there was no hour, either by day or night, at which he might not make a perfectly sudden and unexpected appearance in the school. I am able now to do justice to his ceaseless activity, though it was too strict and mechanical ; but then he seemed to me a mere tyrant, an ogre, an evil spirit, who appeared to spring out of the earth even in places that were safe from the eye of the other masters. His terrible image haunted my young brain, and the oppression of his presence was always with me. In the meantime, my secret letters to my mother became much shorter than before, and I wrote them with ever-increasing anxiety and caution. For I now under- stood the constraint which Upadishevsky was putting upon his honest and open nature, and the risk he ran. A third reason for the change in me was produced by the course of time. By the end of March and beginning of April the sun became very hot, the snow melted, and streams of water flowed through the streets ; there was a breath of spring in the air, and this was a trial to the nerves of a child who had a passionate if still unconscious love of nature. It is a known fact that the sun's rays in spring have a disturbing effect on the constitution ; and I dis- MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 25 tinctly remember that I was much more depressed on sunny days than when the weather was dull. Be that as it may, I became " absorbed " : I mean that I ceased to listen to the talk of others ; I learned my lessons and repeated them without interest ; I heard the criticism or approval of my teachers ; and all the time, while I was looking them straight in the face, I was fancy- ing myself at dear Aksakovo, sheltered by my mother's love in my peaceful home. This always passed for mere inattention. To give greater reality to my dreams, which grew more vivid every day, I used to shut my eyes, and was often jogged by my neighbours who thought I was sleeping. One day, during a lesson in Russian Grammar, a malicious boy named Rooshka called out, " Aksakoff is asleep ! " The teacher asked other boys whether this was true, and nearly punished me by making me kneel down, when they said that it was. I did not shut my eyes in school after that ; but, when I had said my lesson, I often made use of a familiar pretext to leave the room ; and then I could sometimes stand in peace for a quarter of an hour in some passage-corner, and close my eyes, and dream. When afternoon school was over, the boys romped for half an hour in the reception-hall, while I kept out of it, if I was allowed ; and then we had all to sit down, each at the little table by his bed, and learn the lessons for next day. I too sat down and placed a book before me ; and, amid the murmur of boys' voices conning over their lessons, my thoughts always travelled to the same spot, the Para- dise of my country home on the bank of the Boogoorooslan. Soon, however, this violent strain upon the imagination reached a pitch which proved injurious to my health. I began to suffer from hysterical fits, accompanied by such violent weeping and sobbing that I lost consciousness for some minutes ; and I was told later that at such times the muscles of my face were convulsed. I was able at first to conceal my condition to some extent from observation. I did this unconsciously ; perhaps a secret feeling told me that I should be prevented from giving myself up to those dreams which were my only comfort. The trouble generally came upon me in the evening ; I felt it coming, and used to run down the back stairs to an inner yard, 26 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY where all the boys might go in case of necessity ; or some- times I hid behind a pillar, sometimes in the corner formed by the high staircase where it rose from the centre of the building ; sometimes I ran upstairs and sat in a corner of the landing on the first floor, which was dimly lighted from below by a hanging lamp. The cold air probably helped to shorten the attack, and I could go back to my place in my usual condition. But once I took refuge in an open class-room which was being cleaned out, and hid, though I cannot remember doing this, under one of the desks. I fancy that this fit lasted unusually long, and perhaps this was due to the close atmosphere of the room where it came on. A porter noticed me and tried to turn me out ; but, when I did not answer him, he told a tutor, who recognised me and informed Upadishevsky. The old man ran upstairs in great alarm ; but it happened that I recovered at that very moment and went quietly back with him to the dormitory. Before this incident Upadishevsky had felt fairly easy about me : I had been nearly two months in the school and was showing diligence in my studies ; and, though he noticed that I was often either inattentive or absorbed in some way, he attached no special importance to this. Now he questioned me minutely; and I told him fully and frankly all I knew of my own condition ; but there was much I could not understand, and much I could not remember. Throughout the night, he and Yevseitch watched over me ; and I slept quite peacefully till morning. I ought to say that throughout the first period of my illness I always slept well at night ; I mention this because in the later stages sleeplessness was one of the chief symptoms. Early next morning, Dr. Benis came as usual to the hospital, where I had been taken by Upadishevsky ; he questioned me and examined me attentively, and found me rather thin and pale and my pulse irregular. Yet he prescribed no medicine and let me go back into school ; I was not to work too hard he did not believe me when I said my lessons were too easy and he gave directions that I was to be watched and not allowed to go anywhere alone. He added that he wished to see me every morning at the time of his visit to the hospital. Upadishevsky took all necessary measures : he MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 27 visited me constantly himself, and put me in charge of two boys who were to keep an eye on me whenever we were out of school ; and Yevseitch was told to go with me, every time I went out to the back-yard. A report spread throughout the school, that I was catching the " black sickness," l and I was frightened, though I did not under- stand the meaning of the words. It seemed to me very unpleasant that outsiders should keep constant watch over my every movement ; and I felt listless and sad all that evening. The pleasure of my day-dreams was now familiar, and the thought that I was being watched by several pairs of eyes prevented me from enjoying this pleasure and burying the bitter reality out of sight ; but, for all that, the evening passed off successfully I had no violent distress or hysterical attack. Upadishevsky and Yevseitch were delighted ; the doctor also was much pleased when I visited him next day in the hospital and he was told that I had spent the whole day and night in peace. Though he found my pulse as irregular as before, he gave me no medicine and let me go, declaring that things would come right and that Nature would overcome unaided whatever was amiss. But next day it turned out that the evil was not cured but only changed : at nine in the morning, during a lesson in arithmetic, I felt a sudden severe oppression on the chest, and a few minutes later burst out sobbing, and then fell senseless on the floor. There was a great stir, and Upadishevsky was sent for ; by good fortune, he was in the house, 2 and he had me carried to the dormitory, where I came to myself in a quarter of an hour, and even went back into school. But in the evening there was a second fit which lasted much longer. My kind benefactor and my devoted attendant were excessively alarmed. This time the doctor gave me some drops, which I was to take whenever I felt the oppression coming on ; on fast-days I was to have ordinary food from the hospital and a roll instead of brown bread ; but on no account was he 1 I.e. Epilepsy. 2 Of the four ushers, two were always on duty and on the spot ; but the other two might ahsent themselves during schooltime ; at dinner and supper all four were present. (Author's Note.) 28 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY willing that I should stay in the hospital. The drops did me good at first, and I had no fainting-fit for three days, though I was depressed and cried at times ; but then, whether it was that my system became accustomed to the medicine or that the illness was gaining strength the fits grew more frequent and more violent. No period of my childhood do I remember with more perfect distinctness than my first term at school. I could describe accurately and with every detail though I certainly have no intention of doing so the whole course of my strange malady. Like every one else, I believed at the time that no cause could be assigned for the coming-on of these fits ; but now I am convinced of the contrary : they were always produced by some sudden recollection of that past life, which presented itself to me in a moment, with all the liveliness and clearness of dreams at night. Sometimes I reached these manifestations consciously and gradually, by plunging into the inexhaustible treasury of recollection, but at other times they visited me without any wish or thought of mine. When I was thinking of something quite different, even when I was entirely taken up by my lessons, suddenly the sound of someone's voice, probably like some voice I had heard before, or a patch of sunlight on wall or window, such as had once before thrown light in just the same way upon objects dear and familiar, or a fly buzzing and beating against the panes, as I had often watched them do when I was a child such sights and sounds, instantly and for one instant, though no consciousness could detect the process, recalled the forgotten past and gave a shock to my overstrung nerves. In some cases, however, the explanation was clear at once. Thus I was saying a lesson one day, when suddenly a pigeon perched on the window-sill and began to turn round and coo ; at once I thought of my pet pigeons at home, and the oppression on my chest came on immediately and was followed by a fit. Another time I went for a drink of water or kvass 1 to the room used for that purpose ; and there I suddenly caught sight of a plain deal table which I had probably seen many times before without noticing it. But now it had been newly planed and looked notably clean 1 A drink of malt and rye. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 29 and white ; and instantly there flashed before me another wooden table which looked like that and was always perfectly white and smooth. It had belonged to my grandmother and afterwards stood in my aunt's room ; and on it were kept various trifles, precious in a child's eyes packets of melon-seeds with which my aunt used to make wonderful little baskets and trays ; little bags of carob- beans and pebbles out of crayfish ; and, above all, a large needle-book, which held not only needles but also fishing- hooks which my grandmother dealt out to me from time to time. In former days I used to gaze at all these treasures with intense interest and breathless excitement. As soon as the likeness between the tables struck me, the past flashed into life and brightness before me ; and the familiar sensations of uneasiness were soon followed by a severe attack. The result was the same, when I happened to see a sleeping cat curled up in the sun, and was reminded of my own pet cat at home. These instances are, I think, sufficient to justify the hypothesis of similar causes in the other cases of the kind. My condition went from bad to worse. The fits became more frequent, and lasted longer ; I lost appetite and became paler and thinner daily, and I lost also my eager- ness for study ; I owed my remaining strength to sleep alone. As the watchful eye of Upadishevsky had noticed that early rising was bad for me, one day he tried the experiment of not waking me till eight ; and all that day I felt much better. Yevseitch waited on me with the tenderness of a father. Kamasheff tried another method : he lectured me severely more than once, and even threat- ened to punish me, if I did not behave as a well-conducted boy ought to do. My illness, he said, was only the fanciful- ness of a spoilt child, and a bad example to the rest. At last, he gave a positive order that I should be moved to the hospital ; I wished this myself, and so did every one else ; and Dr. Benis, who alone took the opposite view, was now obliged to give way, and I was removed to the sick-room. When my mother was leaving Kazan for the second time, she made Yevseitch swear before a sacred picture that he would let her know if I fell ill. For a long time he 30 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY had been burning to fulfil his promise, and spoke of it to Upadishevsky, but the master always kept him back. Now, however, he decided to act without consulting any one, and got one of the servants, who had acquired the art, to write a letter, in which, with no precautions and without due regard to the facts, he reported that his young master was suffering from epilepsy and had been removed to the hospital. It is easy to imagine how this letter dropped like a thunderbolt upon my parents. The post was slow, and the letter reached them at the time of the spring thaw, when the roads are in a state quite inconceivable by people who live near Moscow. At every step the traveller came on places where the road was washed away, and every hollow was filled by melting snow-drifts ; for a carriage to pass was almost impossible. But nothing could keep my mother back : she started the same day for Kazan, attended by her devoted Parasha and Parasha's young husband, Theodor. She drove day and night in a rough peasant's sledge drawn by one horse without shoes ; x they had three sledges, each holding one passenger, while a fourth was given up to the baggage ; they had only such horses as the peasants could supply. This was the only way in which it was just possible to push on step by step ; and, even so, they had to take advantage of the morning frosts, which fortunately went on that year till the middle of April. Ten days of this travelling brought my mother to the large village of Murzicha on the bank of the Kama ; the main road used by the post passed here, and it was more possible to travel along it, as it was hardened by traffic. But, on the other hand, it was necessary to cross the Kama, in order to reach the village of Shooran, which is situated, I think, about eighty versts from Kazan. The river had not melted yet, but the ice was blue and swollen ; the post had been carried across it the day before by runners on foot ; but rain had fallen in the night, and the villagers all refused to convey my mother and her companions across to the other side. She was forced to spend the night in the village. Dreading every moment of delay, she walked 1 At this season, when the snow is deep on these side-roads, horses travel better unshod. (Author's Note.) 31 herself from house to house, imploring kind people to help her, explaining her grief, and offering all she possessed to recompense them. And she did find kind and brave hearts, who understood a mother's sorrow ; they promised that, if the rain stopped in the night and there was the least trace of frost in the morning, they would land her in safety on the farther bank, and would accept whatever she pleased to give them for their trouble. The whole of that night my mother spent upon her knees before the sacred picture which hung in a corner of the hut where she lodged. Her fervent prayer was heard : a wind rose and dispersed the clouds, and by morning frost had dried the road and covered the pools with a thin coating of ice. At daybreak six stout fellows presented themselves, all fishermen by calling, born on the banks of the river and accustomed to deal with it in all its aspects ; each was armed with a pole and carried a light burden bound on his back. Before starting, they crossed themselves, turning towards the Cross on the church. They gave Theodor a pole and also a creel which he was to drag by a rope ; the creel was a large basket with a projecting peak, and they took this in case the lady should be too weary to walk. Then they took by the hand the two women, who had put on men's long boots, and started, after sending ahead the most active of their mates to feel the way before them. The track over the ice was slanting, so that it was necessary to cover nearly three versts. To cross a great river on foot at that season is so dangerous, that only an adept can perform the feat, using all his courage and presence of mind. Theodor and Parasha simply howled, and said goodbye to this world and all their nearest and dearest ; and in some places force had to be used, to compel them to go on ; but my mother's courage and even cheerfulness increased with every step. Her guides kept wagging their heads in astonished admira- tion, when they looked at her. They had to go round gaps in the ice, and to cross crevasses on the poles laid side by side. My mother for long refused to make use of the creel ; but, when they were approaching the opposite side, and the track led over shallows close to the bank, and all danger was past, then she felt her strength leave her. 32 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY Pillows and a fur-lined coverlet were at once placed upon the creel ; and my mother lay down upon it and nearly fainted on the spot ; and in this condition the fishermen dragged her as far as the post-house of Shooran. She gave her guides a hundred roubles, just half the money she had upon her ; but the honest fishermen would not take it, and asked five roubles apiece. They listened with wonder to the thanks and blessings which my mother showered down upon them, and they said at parting, "God bring you safe to the end of your journey ! " Then they started at once on their homeward way ; and there was need for haste ; for the ice broke up the next day. All these details I heard later from Parasha. My mother travelled from Shooran to Kazan in forty-eight hours ; she stopped at the first inn she came to, and she was in the school-building an hour later. And now I go back to myself. I was very comfortably installed in the hospital, in a small room by myself ; it was intended for severe cases, but there happened to be none at the time. Yevseitch was transferred to the hospital to work there, and slept in my room. Andrei Ritter a surgeon or assistant-surgeon, I am not sure which had a room near me. He was a handsome lively fellow, tall and ruddy. He was at home only in the mornings until Dr. Benis came, and then went off immediately to visit his patients for he actually had some practice among the merchant class ; he was very dissipated and often returned home late at night and far from sober. I wonder that the headmaster tolerated him ; he paid more attention, how- ever, to the sound than to the sick, and Upadishevsky had greater influence in the hospital. I have entirely forgotten the name and surname of the good-natured old man who was then in charge of the place, though I have a clear recollection of his kindness to me. Upadishevsky took care that time should not hang heavy on my hands, and at once provided me with books The Child's Instructor in several volumes, The Discovery of America, and The Conquest of Mexico. How delighted I was with quiet and peace and books to read ! A dressing-gown instead of uniform, perfect freedom in the disposal of my time, no bell to listen for, and books to read all this did me more MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 83 good than any medicine or nourishing diet. Columbus and Pizarro aroused all my interest, and the hapless Montezuma excited all my sympathy. In a few days I had finished The Discovery of America and The Conquest of Mexico, and then set to work on The Child's Instructor. While I was reading this, I came across something that puzzled me very much ; indeed, I was much older before I found a complete solution of the difficulty. In one of the volumes I found a fairy tale called Beauty and the Beast. The first lines seemed to me familiar, and, the further I read, the more familiar it became, till at last I felt certain that this was the story which I knew by the title of The Scarlet Flower and had heard a score of times from our housekeeper Pelageya. This Pelageya was a remarkable woman in her way. While very young, she had run away with her father from her owners, the Alakayeffs, to Astrakhan, where she lived more than twenty years. Her father soon died ; she married, and lost her husband, and then went out to service in merchants' families. Growing tired of this, she some- how learnt that she had become the property of a different owner my grandfather, in fact a strict master but just and kind-hearted ; and, a year before his death, the truant turned up at Aksakovo. My grandfather respected her for coming back without compulsion, and received her kindly ; and soon, as she was a notable woman and could turn her hand to anything, he took a great fancy to her and made her his housekeeper, a kind of post which she had held before at Astrakhan. Apart from her skill in house- hold management, Pelageya brought with her a remarkable gift for telling fairy-tales, of which she knew an immense number. It is obvious that the natives of the East have imparted to the Russians at Astrakhan a strong taste for hearing and telling these stories. In the comprehensive repertory of Pelageya, there were not only Russian stories but a number of Eastern tales, including some from The Arabian Nights. My grandfather was delighted to possess such a treasure ; and, as he was beginning to fail in health and slept badly, Pelageya, who could boast of another valuable quality, the power of staying awake all night, did much to ease the old man in his suffering. From her C 34 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY I too heard no end of fairy-tales in the long winter evenings. The image of Pelageya, with her fresh healthy face and stout figure, and with the spindle and distaff in her hands, is ineffaceably engraved upon my memory ; and, if I were an artist, I could paint her to the life this very minute. The story of Beauty and the Beast or The Scarlet Flower was to surprise me once again : some years later I went to the theatre at Kazan to see an opera called Zemira and Azor, and found it was The Scarlet Flower over again, both in the general story and in the details. Meantime, in spite of interesting books and delightful easy conversations with Yevs&tch about life at home with its fishing and hawks and pigeons ; in spite of removal from school with its tiresome noise and troublesome companions ; in spite of the quantity of pills and powders and mixtures I swallowed down my illness, which seemed at first to be yielding to treatment and rest, did not grow less, and the fits recurred several times a day ; but, for some reason, they did not frighten me, and, when I com- pared it with the past, I was quite content with my con- dition. The hospital was on the second storey, with windows looking on the court. The school-building, now the University, stood on a hill and commanded a fine view : all the lower half of the city with its suburbs, and the great lake of Kaban, whose waters mingle in spring with the overflow of the Volga this was the picturesque panorama that spread out before my eyes. I remember clearly how the darkness settled down upon it, and how the morning dawn and the sunrise used little by little to light it up. In general, my stay in the hospital has left on my mind a lasting recollection of peace and consolation, though none of my schoolfellows ever visited me. The Knyazhe" vitch boys came only once ; I was not very intimate with them then, because we did not meet much : they were half-way up the school and lived in the " French dormitory," where Meissner was tutor. Besides, I was so much taken up with myself, or rather with my past life, that I never showed or felt the least attachment for them. But we became close friends in my second term at school, and, still more, in our college days. I wrote home by every post, and always said that I was MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 35 quite well. But a Monday came without bringing me a letter from my mother. I felt anxious and sad, and, when there was no letter on the following Monday, I was miser- able. Yevseitch tried to reassure me : he said that owing to the season and state of the roads it was impossible to send a carriage from Aksakovo to Boogoorooslan our country-town, twenty-five versts distant from our house. But I would not listen to him : I knew perfectly that in all weathers they sent once a week to the post without fail. I don't know what I should have done if my letter had failed me a third time. But, in the middle of the week the exact date was the 18th of April, in the morning my kind Yevseitch began in a roundabout way to this effect, that the absence of letters might be accounted for by a visit from my mother herself, and that perhaps she had actually arrived. After this preparation, he announced with a beaming face, that Sofya Nikolayevna was now in the school, and that, though she might not visit me in the absence of the doctor, the doctor was coming at once. Though I had been prepared for this news, 1 fainted away. When I recovered, my first words were, " Where is mamma ? " But- Dr. Benis was standing by me, and scolding Yevseitch. He was not in the least to blame : however cautiously I had been told of my mother's arrival, I could not have received such joyful and unexpected tidings without strong emotion, and any emotion would have brought on a seizure. The doctor was quite convinced that permission must be given for the mother to see her son, especially when the son knew of her arrival ; but he did not venture to give it without being authorised by the headmaster or Rector ; and he had sent notes to them both. The Rector's permission came first, and my mother was actually in my room, when an order came from Kamasheff, to await his arrival. For want of words, I shall not attempt to describe what I felt when my mother came into the room. She was so thin that I might not have known her ; but her joy at finding her child not only alive but much better than she expected what did not her anxious heart forebode ? shone so radiantly in her eyes which were always bright, that an onlooker might have supposed her both well and 86 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY cheerful. All my surroundings were forgotten ; I clasped her in my arms and for some time would not let her go. A few minutes later Kamasheff appeared. With cold politeness he told my mother that the regular rules of the school had been broken on her account : that relations or parents were not permitted to enter the inner rooms of the establishment but only the reception-room specially provided for the purpose ; and that admission to the hospital was absolutely forbidden, and especially undesir- able in the case of a lady so young and so attractive. The blood rushed to my mother's face ; she was naturally impulsive, and she now told Kamasheff more home-truths than was necessary. Among other things she said : " Your school must be the only school in the world that has such a barbarous rule ! A mother's presence is desirable in any place where her son is lying ill ! I am here by per- mission of the Rector, your immediate superior, Mr. Headmaster, and all you have to do is to obey ! " She had plunged her knife into the tender spot. Kamasheff turned pale. He then said : " The Rector has given leave for once only, and his order has been obeyed ; it will probably not be repeated, and I beg that you will now go away." But he did not know my mother ; nor did he understand the feelings common to all mothers' hearts. She told him that she would not leave that room till the Rector, either in person or by letter, ordered her to go ; until that happened, nothing short of actual violence should part her from her son. And this was said with such vehemence and in such a tone, that it was quite certain she would carry it out to the letter. She took a chair, pushed it up to my bed, and sat down on it, with her back turned to Kamasheff. What he would have done, I do not know, had not Dr. Benis and Upadishevsky induced him to go to another room, where, as I heard later from Upadishevsky, the doctor spoke firmly to him. "If," said he, " you venture on any violent measures, I will not be responsible for the consequences ; it may even kill the boy, and I am anxious about the mother too." Upadi- shevsky also implored him to be merciful to a poor woman, who was in such despair that she did not know what she was saying, and still more to have pity on a poor sick boy ; MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 37 and he promised that he would persuade my mother to go away before long. Kamasheff gave way very reluctantly, and went off with the doctor to report the whole affair to the Rector. Upadishevsky went back to my mother and tried to quiet her by saying that she might stay with me two hours. She did stay till dark, till nearly six in the evening. The scene with Kamasheff frightened me at first, and I was beginning to feel the familiar pressure on the chest ; but, when he left the room, the fit was stopped by my mother's presence, her conversation and caresses, and my own happiness. At parting, my mother said that she would remove me from the school altogether and take me back home ; and I believed her implicitly. I was accustomed to think that she could do whatever she liked, and a bright future began to shine before me in all the rainbow colours of the happy past. On leaving the school, my mother went straight to Dr. Benis' house. He was not at home ; and she threw herself, literally threw herself, at the feet of his wife and implored her with tears to help in rescuing her son from the school. M me Benis understood a mother's feeling and was keenly interested : she said that her husband would do what he could, and she would vouch for his assistance. The doctor soon came in, and both ladies, each in her own way, pressed him hard. But he needed no convincing : he said that he quite agreed and had hinted at this course to the Rector; but, unfortunately, the headmaster was there too, and his strong opposition to the plan had apparently prevailed with the Rector, a weak but not ill- natured man ; nevertheless, success was not beyond hope. Next, my mother described all the unfairness and petty tyranny which I had suffered from the headmaster. As Benis himself disliked the man for his usurpation of power that did not belong to him, he therefore increased rather than allayed my mother's exasperation, till she positively hated Kamasheff as the cruellest of enemies to herself and her son. The doctor and his wife treated her with the kindness of friends or relations : they made her lie down on a sofa and take some food, twenty-four hours having passed since she had tasted even tea ; they gave her some medicine, and, above all, they assured her that my illness 38 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY was purely nervous, and that I should soon get perfectly well in my country home. It was decided to wage open war against the headmaster. It was next settled that my mother should call on the Rector early next morning, before he received Kamasheff's report ; she was to ask permission to visit me twice a day in hospital, and then to ask him to promise, that, if the doctor thought it necessary, I should have leave to go home and stay there, with my parents to look after me, till I had quite recovered. Benis only asked of her not to complain of Kamasheff, not to abuse him, and not to allude to his personal dislike and persecution of me. My mother called down Heaven's blessing on the doctor and his wife, and expressed all the gratitude that a mother's heart can feel ; and then she went back to her lodgings to rest. Rest was a positive necessity for her : a day filled with such painful anxiety, after travelling twelve days under such conditions with little sleep or food, would have been enough to prostrate even a strong man ; and she was a woman, and not in robust health. But God reveals His power and might in the feeble ; and, after some hours of sleep, she awoke full of courage and determination. At nine in the morning she was already seated in the Rector's drawing-room. He came at once, and his manner clearly showed that he was prejudiced against her. But his mood soon changed, when the sincerity of grief and the eloquence of tears found the way to his heart. Without raising much difficulty, he gave her leave to visit her son in hospital twice a day and stay there till eight in the evening ; but her request that I might leave the school met with more opposition. Tears and entreaties would perhaps have won a second victory ; but suddenly the headmaster came in, and the scene changed. The Rector now raised his voice and said that it was an unheard-of proceeding to let Government scholars go home, either on the ground of ill-health, or because they suffered from home-sickness. In the former case, it would be an admission that there was insufficient medical attend- ance and care for the boys when ill ; and in the latter, it would be simply absurd : what boy, especially a spoilt boy accustomed to seek only his own amusement, would MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 89 not feel home-sick when sent to school ? Kamasheff at once chimed in and supported the Rector : he said a great deal, and there was much good sense in what he said, and as much ill-nature. He referred to the harm done by women as educators and by mothers who spoilt their children ; he spoke of dangerous examples of disrespect, insubordination, presumption, and ingratitude. Finally, he said, that when the Government spent money on the salaries of the staff and the maintenance of the scholars, it did not intend that the boys should leave the school before passing through the whole curriculum and making themselves competent to serve the State in the teaching profession. He added that the authorities of the school must attach special importance to a boy, whose excellent ability and conduct made it likely that he would turn out in future a successful teacher. This Jesuitical duplicity was too much for my mother : forgetting Benis' warning, she burst out with great warmth and little prudence : " It surprises me that M. Kamasheff should praise my son, because he has never ceased, since the poor boy entered the school, to vex and torment him for trifles, to rebuke him when he did not deserve it, and to make fun of him. He has applied to him many insulting nicknames, such as ' cry-baby ' and ' mammy's darling,' which of course have been taken up by all the boys ; and this un- just persecution on the part of the headmaster is the only reason why ordinary home-sickness has developed into a dangerous illness. I recognise the headmaster as my personal enemy. He usurps power that does not belong to him : he tried to turn me out of the hospital, although I had the Rector's permission. He is a partial judge, and has no right to decide this question ! " The Rector was a good deal disconcerted ; but Kama- sheff retorted angrily, that she herself and her unreasonable impetuosity were entirely to blame. " In my absence," he said, " she took advantage of the weakness of my substi- tute, and constantly took her son home or visited him here. Then she broke off her journey and came back to Kazan, and after two months has come back again. In this way she never gives the boy time to get accustomed to his new position. She herself, and not the severity of 40 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY his masters, is the cause of his illness ; and her present visit is doing a great deal of harm ; for her son, who was recovering, had a serious relapse early this morning." At these words, my mother cried out and fainted away. The good-natured Rector was horribly frightened and perplexed. The swoon lasted long : it was nearly an hour before she became conscious ; and her first words were, " Let me go to my son ! " The Rector, very sorry for her and frightened about her, was glad that at least she was not dead he much feared that she was, as he used to tell afterwards and he gave a positive order to Kamasheff that she was to be admitted at all times to the hospital ; and there she accordingly went on the spot. The doctor met her there and did his best to calm her fears. He gave her a solemn assurance that my new symptom, fever, was of no importance, being due merely to nervous excitement ; it might even have a good influ- ence on my regular attacks. In fact, the first fever-fit was very mild, and, though the second was more severe and was followed by others during the next fortnight, yet the hysterical seizures never returned. Nearly the whole of every day my mother spent with me. The Rector visited the hospital several times, and, each time that he found her there, showed much kindness to both of us : he could not look without pity at my thin pale face ; and the ex- pressive features of my mother, which clearly revealed her thoughts and feelings, also awakened his sympathy. But, when Kamasheff tried to enter my room next day, she locked the door and would not let him in ; and after- wards she asked the Rector to prevent the headmaster from visiting me in her presence. " I cannot control myself," she said, " at the sight of that man, and I am afraid of frightening the patient by an attack such as I had in your house." The Rector, who had a lively recol- lection of that event, expressed his willingness ; and Kamasheff, much insulted, ceased coming to see me at all. Meanwhile the plan of removing me from the school, which had gained strength from the doctor's consent and then been postponed by my fresh illness, was proceeding in due form. My mother wished to begin by discussing the plan with her friends, and went to see M. KnyazheVitch. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 41 That kind-hearted but rather gruff and positive Serbian disapproved of her purpose. " No, no ! my dear lady," he said ; "I cannot advise you to take your son and wrap him up in cotton wool, to dandle him and feed him on sugar and carry him off to the country, that he may run about there with the village boys and grow up ignorant and good-for- nothing. You will make nothing of him that way. I tell you frankly that, if I were in your husband's place, I should not allow you to do it." My mother was dis- pleased ; she said that she did not intend her son to grow up a dunce and a country bumpkin, but she did certainly wish to save his life and restore him to health. She had no further interviews with M. Knyazhevitch. Next she turned to a distant relation of my father's who lived at Kazan ; his name was Mikheyeff, and he was a lawyer. Though he also disapproved of her plan and declined to take any active steps in support of it, he was willing to do one thing she asked to write a petition for my release, to be submitted to the Governors. In the petition, my mother asked that her son might be restored to her, with a view to the recovery of his health ; and she pledged herself to place me again in the school as a Government scholar, as soon as I was well. This petition was accom- panied by a report from Dr. Benis, in which he said that, in his opinion, it was absolutely necessary to send young Aksakoff home to his parents ; the country was specially indicated, because my illness was of a kind which nothing but country air and home life could overcome ; treatment in the hospital would be quite useless ; my attacks threat- ened to develop into epilepsy, and epilepsy might end in apoplexy or injury to the brain. How far all this was true, I cannot tell ; but the doctor was not content to stop there. He asserted that I had some swelling of the knees and a tendency to crookedness in the bones of the leg ; and these symptoms called for exercise in the open air and a prolonged course of some syrup I don't re- member its name which he offered to supply out of the stock of medicines provided by Government for the school. I believe that all this last part of the report was fictitious : I really had very thick knees; but children often have, and it passes off without treatment. Nevertheless, these 42 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY trifling external symptoms were treated with great respect in the later stages of this affair. The business began at a meeting of the Governors. The Rector was in the chair, and the others present were Kamasheff and the three senior teachers. Kamasheff, who generally settled everything, asserted his influence, and the three teachers sided with him. The Rector could not make up his mind. The majority were for instructing Benis to invite to a consultation the senior medical officer in the town, and then to continue his treatment of me ; but Benis explained beforehand that he would not carry out such an instruction, and would report to the Governors in favour of letting me go at once ; for, as soon as the fever had passed off, symptoms had appeared, portending a renewal of the previous attacks. This, indeed, was perfectly true. My poor mother, seeing that things were not going well, became quite desperate. Finally Benis advised my mother to put this request before the Rector that he should order me to be examined in his presence by the school doctor and other doctors from outside, and that he should be guided by their opinion ; and she drove off at once to the Rector's house. Wishing to protect himself from tears and petitions, of which he was heartily weary, the Rector sent a message that he could not possibly receive her that day, and hoped she would come back another time. But this rebuff was not the first, and my mother was prepared : she had brought with her a letter, in which she said : " This is my last visit. If you refuse to see me, I will not leave your drawing-room till I am turned out. But I do not believe you will behave so harshly to an unhappy mother." The Rector could not help himself : he emerged into the drawing-room, and again he was not proof against the expression of genuine grief and even despair. He pledged his word to carry out all my mother's wishes, and he kept his word. The very next day, the Governors of the school passed a motion in perfect agreement with Benis' suggestion and my mother's request. But the Rector himself was the only person who was aware of this : every one else thought that Benis would resent an examination by outside doctors, and they were convinced that these doctors would disagree with Benis. MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 43 Two of the leading physicians in the town were called in. Benis, confident that they would concur in his opinion, waited calmly for the issue of events, and his confidence did something to calm my mother, who tried in her turn to soothe me. She repeated to me in minute detail all she had done and all she had said, and tried to convince me that, in spite of obstacles, she had not given up hope of success. I could share this hope only at times and not for long : deliverance from my stone prison, as I called the school, and restoration to my home in the country, seemed to me bliss beyond attainment and beyond possi- bility. The choice of doctors involved much correspond- ence with the authorities ; and the Rector, urged by Kamasheff, ordered that I should be discharged from hospital, the fever having entirely left me. Benis was forced to give his consent. So I went back to Upadi- shevsky's dormitory, where I found my bed empty. After a considerable spell of freedom in the peace and quiet of the sick-room, I disliked more than ever the regular rules and constant noise of school life ; and also the move struck me as a bad sign, unfavourable to my hopes of release. I saw my mother daily, but only in the general reception-room and not for long. All this brought depression back upon me, and my attacks began again as violent as before, as if there had been no cessation of them. But this painful condition did not last long, thank God! Just a week after my return, when supper was over and the boys came down to the dormitories and began to un- dress, Yevseitch pushed into my hand a note from my mother and said, " Don't let any one see you reading this ! " My mother told me not to get up next morning ; I was to tell Upadishevsky that my legs, and especially my knees, were aching, and to ask sick-leave to the hospital. I was told to burn the note, and I did so at once. I was very much surprised by these instructions ; for I was quite unaccustomed to tell lies, and my mother never passed over untruths without punishment. Though I had a dim suspicion in the back of my head, that this lie would help to set me free from school, yet I lay awake a long time ; I was made unhappy by the thought, that to-morrow I 44 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY must tell an untruth, and that Upadishevsky and the doctor would at once see through it and detect me. But, when Yevseitch woke me next morning, I told him that my legs were aching and that I wished to return to hospital. A suppressed smile curled the lips of my good Yevseitch, as he went off to inform Upadishevsky. To my surprise, Upadishevsky took it very coolly. ''Very well," he said, " let him stay in bed. I shall just take the boys upstairs and then come back for him and take him off to hospital." But the boys would not leave me in peace ; and a number of them, pulling off the coverlet which I had purposely drawn over my head, asked me why I did not get up. Blushing and confused, I was forced to repeat my lie several times. They laughed and said, "You 're shamming, you 're too lazy to work, you like hospital better." Then the crowd of noisy boys fell in and marched upstairs in order. Upadishevsky soon came back, and, without asking any questions about my ailment, took me to the hospital and handed me over to the charge of Hitter, the assistant-surgeon, and the superintendent. My old room was assigned to me, and at nine o'clock Benis came. On beginning his examination, he put this leading ques- tion : "I suppose you feel pain in the legs ? I quite expected it." Then he made the superintendent and the assistant-surgeon look at my knees, and added, " See how swollen they are in one week, and the inflammation is worse." There was not the least change in the state of my knees, and I felt no inflammation ; but I noticed with surprise, that there seemed to be a kind of general con- spiracy to keep up the pretence. I was even more sur- prised, when my mother arrived soon after Benis, and discussed quite calmly with him and the others my new and fictitious symptoms. When we were alone, I looked at her with wonder and asked what it all meant. She took me in her arms and said : " My dear, we cannot help it : it is the only way ; it is what Benis told us to do. You will soon be examined by the other doctors, and you must tell them that you have pains in your legs. Dr. Benis is positive that this will secure your discharge." A ray of hope flashed before my mind, though I saw no special reason to rely upon it. Two days later, my mother told me MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 45 at night that the examination would take place to- morrow ; she repeated all that I was to say about my afflicted legs, and urged me to answer boldly and without hesitation. At eleven next day a whole party entered my room the Rector, the headmaster, Benis and two strange doctors, the three teachers who were members of the governing body, and Upadishevsky. They filled my room, which was not large ; chairs were placed for them all, and they all sat solemnly down beside my bed. I was so confused that I began at once to feel faint, but I soon recovered without any medicine, and listened while Benis told his colleagues the history of my illness, sometimes speaking in Latin but chiefly in Russian. He referred again and again to Upadishevsky ; and the others cross-examined the dormitory-master on the spot. Yevseitch also was sum- moned, and several questions were put to him about my state of health before I entered the school. I too had to answer a great many inquiries ; the doctors came up to my bed again and again, sounded my chest and stomach, felt my pulse, and looked at my tongue. When my knees and leg-bones came under consideration, all three of them came round me, and all three suddenly began to prod me in the part supposed to be affected ; and they talked very earnestly and got very excited. I remember that they often repeated the terms, " serum," " lymph," " scorbutic habit." The examination lasted for an hour at least, and I was quite worn out by it ; but it ended at last, and I fell asleep as soon as they had all gone. When I woke, my mother was sitting by me, and my dinner was standing cold on the table. My mother was hopeful, but knew nothing yet for certain. She went off immediately to call on Benis, and, when she returned in two hours, her face was radiant with happiness. The doctors had gone straight from my room to a meeting of the Governors, where they all signed a certificate, to this effect : "In complete agreement with the opinion of Dr. Benis, we consider it absolutely necessary that the Govern- ment scholar, Aksakoff , should be sent home to the country, to be cared for by his parents. A syrup has already been prescribed for the patient ; but we think it as well to add 46 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY certain other medicines, to be followed by a course of cold baths to recuperate the strength." The Rector gave his consent in plain terms, and the three teachers followed his example ; only Kamasheff would not budge, and refused to sign the minutes ; * but that did no harm. And so the desired event, which for so long had seemed a mere castle in the air, really came to pass. My mother was radiant with bliss ; she laughed and cried and embraced everybody, especially Upadishevsky and Yevseitch, and she thanked God. I was so happy that at times I could not believe in my happiness : I thought it all a beautiful dream and feared to wake up ; I clasped my mother close and asked if it was really true. She sat with me longer than usual that evening, till Upadishevsky came in more than once, to ask her to go. Kamasheff behaved like him- self to the last : he proposed to the Governors to require my mother, in view of the five months I had spent at the school, to refund the whole cost of my maintenance and education. But the Rector did not agree : he said that I was not being expelled but only sent home for conva- lescence. Three days after the consultation, the Governors summoned my mother to appear before them, and made her sign a promise to send me back when I was well ; then they gave her leave to take me. She came straight from the meeting to visit the hospital for the last time ; Yevseitch had dressed me in my own clothes, returning my uniform and books and all other Government property. We said goodbye to Upadishevsky and to the hospital superintendent with tears of ardent gratitude. Then my mother took my hand, and she and Yevseitch brought me out upon the steps. I gave a cry of joyful surprise. The carriage from home was standing in front of the steps, drawn by four of our own horses bred at Aksakovo ; I knew the coachman on the box, and I knew the postillion still better, for he used always to supply me with worms for bait. Theodor and Yevs6itch placed me at my mother's side in the old carriage, and we drove off to our lodgings. In spite of the joy which filled or, I might say, intoxicated my heart, I cried so when 1 Copies of all the papers were long preserved in our house. (Author's Note.) MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 47 taking leave of Upadishevsky, that I went on crying even in the carriage. And surely this good man's unselfish kindness to us who had been mere strangers, and his tender sympathy which did not shrink from self-sacrifice, deserved the truest gratitude ; and it should be added, that his many years of service at the school could not fail to accustom him to cases of the kind, and there are few hearts that are not hardened by custom. At our lodgings Parasha was awaiting me with tears of joy ; and the lady of the house, our old acquaintance M me Aristoff, showed in the same way the interest she took in our situation. That same evening my mother and I called on Dr. Benis, to thank him and say goodbye. I must do full justice to him too : for some reason he passed in the town for a cold selfish man, but his conduct to us was obliging and disinterested. He would not take one penny from us, and even refused the present which my mother offered him as a souvenir of our obligations ; of course she repaid the 25 roubles which he had paid as consultation- fee to each of the doctors who had examined me. All she could do was to thank Benis by words and tears and prayers for his welfare ; and she did this with such warmth and sincerity that he and his wife were deeply touched. So far as I was concerned, I was somehow not touched ; and, though I knew very well that I owed my deliverance from school to Benis alone, I shed no tears, and my expression of thanks was so languid and trivial that my mother scolded me afterwards. Early next day we went to the Cathedral and then to the church of Our Lady of Kazan, and offered thankful prayers. We called on the Rector ; but he was either away from home or unwilling to receive us . On returning home, we found Upadishevsky, who had come for one more parting interview. He also refused to accept any souvenir. His answer to my mother was short and clear : " Please don't insult me, Sofya Nikolayevna." I did not part with him as I had parted with the doctor : I cried so terribly that for a long time I could not be stopped ; and one of the old attacks seemed to be coming on, when my excitement was soothed by some new drops. I ought to say of this medicine, that three times during these days it was successful in arresting 48 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY a fainting-fit. When Upadishevsky left, we had a hasty dinner and then set to work at once on our packing. We were afraid to stay in Kazan, and each hour before our departure seemed like a long day ; by evening all was ready. The evening set in warm, a real summer evening, and my mother and I went to bed in the carriage. At dawn the horses were put in very quietly ; and I was still asleep, when we drove slowly out of Kazan. When I awoke, bright sunlight was pouring into the carriage. Parasha was asleep ; my mother was sitting beside me, weeping tears of joy and gratitude to God ; and her eyes showed her feeling so clearly that any spectator of her tears would have rejoiced and not grieved. She embraced her darling child, and a torrent of tender words and caresses showed what she was feeling. It was the 19th of May, my sister's birthday. It was a real May day ; the spring morning was warm, even hot, and flooded all the landscape with burning light. The green fields of young corn, the meadows and woods, peeped in at the carriage-windows ; I felt such a desire to survey the whole wide prospect, that I asked to have the carriage stopped. Then I sprang out, and began to run and jump like a playful child of five, while my mother watched me with delight from the carriage. For the first time, I felt that I was really free. I embraced Yevs&tch and Theodor ; I exchanged greetings with the coachman and postillion, and the latter found time to tell me that when he left Aksakovo the fish were beginning " to take fine." Next I greeted all the horses : Yevs6itch held me up in his arms while I patted each of them. There were six of them, a splendid team of bays and dark-browns, of a breed which has long been quite extinct ; but, twenty years ago, it was still remembered and often spoken of in the Govern- ment of Orenburg. They were big horses, standing over sixteen hands high, and strong beyond belief. They generally trotted but could gallop without distress, and they never tired ; they used often to draw a heavy carriage eighty or ninety versts in a day. Ah, how delighted I was ! When I was obliged to get back into the carriage, I stuck my head out of the window and kept it there till we reached our halting-place, greeting MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 49 everything we passed with cries of joy. At last a streak of water sparkled before us : this was the Myosha, not a very large river, but deep and abounding with fish. A rather crazy raft worked by a rope crossed it ; and we took a long time to get over. Only one pair of horses could cross at a time, and the carriage could hardly be managed at all : even when all the heavy trunks were taken off it, it made the raft sink low in the water. My mother and I crossed first. The far side was covered with trees and bushes, whose fragrant blossom drove me nearly mad with delight. Our postillion was very fond of fishing, and had brought with him from home a rod and line ready for all emergencies. This was quickly unfastened from its place under the carriage ; and, while the horses were crossing, I was fishing w r ith bread for bait and pulling out roach. Except the Dyoma, I never saw a river better stocked than the Myosha : the fish swarmed in it and took as fast as you could bait your line and throw it back. Is it wonderful that to me, delivered from the prison of school, this halt seemed like heaven ? On the river-bank behind us there was a gentleman's estate, where we got hay and oats, a chicken and eggs, and all other necessary provisions. Yevseitch was a bit of a cook, and he cooked us a splendid dinner on a gridiron. The fish, fried in a pan, tasted excellent. We had driven thirty versts from Kazan, and we stopped four hours before starting again. Clouds came up, thunder began to roll, the ground was sprinkled with rain, the heat and dust disappeared. We started at a slow pace, but afterwards trotted so fast that we covered ten versts in an hour. The sky soon cleared, and a splendid sun dried up the traces of rain. We drove on forty versts farther and camped out for the night, having procured all we needed at our last stoppage. A fresh supply of pleasures and enjoyments for me ! The horses were taken out and hobbled, and allowed to crop the juicy young grass ; a bright fire was lit, and the travelling samovdr really a large teapot 1 with a funnel was placed on it ; a leather rug was spread out beside the carriage, the canteen was brought out, and tea 1 The samovdr is an urn with a central receptacle for charcoal : here the receptacle is inserted where the lid of the teapot should be. 50 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY served ; how good it was in the fresh evening air ! In two hours the horses had cooled down and were watered ; their nose-bags were opened and fastened either to the carriage-pole or to posts driven into the ground ; and then the horses were let loose upon the oats. My mother and I and Parasha lay down in the carriage ; and, as I sank into a delicious sleep, I listened to the horses munching their oats and snorting when the dusty particles got into their nostrils. Early next day we crossed the Kama, which was still in flood, a little above Shooran. I was afraid, as I am still, to cross a great river ; and a tolerable breeze was blowing that day. There was a large new ferry-boat, on which room was found for all our horses and the carriage. Parasha and I were shut up inside the carriage, with the blinds down, to prevent my seeing the rushing water ; and I tied a handkerchief round my head as well ; yet even then I shook with fear till we had got across. But there were no unpleasant consequences. We landed at Murzicha ; and my mother hunted up the fishermen who had guided her over the ice ; she had brought hand- some presents for them all, and the presents were received with no surprise but with pleasure and gratitude. Fifteen versts brought us to our next halt. And so our journey went on, till on the fifth day we arrived at Baitoogan, a village on the river Sok and not more than twenty versts from Aksakovo, where we spent a night. Though this is a good river for fishing, my mother feared the evening damp and would not allow me to go ; but our postillion took a run to the riverside, and came back with some perch and roach. By rising at dawn as usual, we avoided stopping at Nyeklyoodovo where relations of my grand- mother lived ; they were asleep when we passed, and so were we. Four miles from Aksakovo, just where our estate begins, I woke up suddenly, as if I had been roused on purpose ; we drove on between the two woods and came out on the slope of the hill ; from there we were bound soon to see Aksakovo the large pond and the mill, the long line of peasants' huts, our house and the birch woods beside it. I kept asking the coachman whether he could see it, and at last he bent down to the front window, MY FIRST TERM AT SCHOOL 51 and said, " There is our Aksakovo, as clear as if it lay in the palm of your hand ! " Then I begged so eagerly to sit on the box beside the coachman, that my mother could not refuse me. I shall not try to describe what I felt when I saw my dear Aksakovo. Human language has no words sufficient to express such feelings ! I continued throughout my life to feel, when approaching Aksakovo, the same emotion as I did then. But some years ago I was getting near the place after an absence of twelve years. Again it was early morning ; my heart beat fast with expectation, and I hoped to feel the happy excite- ment of former days. I called up the dear old times, and a swarm of memories came round me. Alas ! they brought no happiness to my heart but only pain and suffering, and I felt heavy and sad beyond expression. Like the magician, who sought in vain to hide from the spirits he had called up and could not control, so I did not know how to banish my recollections and lay the storm of my troubled heart. Old bottles will not hold new wine, and old hearts are unfit to bear the feelings of youth. But then ah, what were my feelings then ! Several times I felt the oppression on my chest and was pretty near falling ; but I said nothing and held tight to the rail of the box and pressed against the coach- man ; and the trouble passed off naturally. The carriage rolled quickly down the hill. We nearly stuck in a swampy place, but our strong horses pulled the carriage through it, and we passed the reed-beds, the pond, and the village. And there was our house at last, and standing on the steps were my father and my dear little sister. When we drove up, she clapped her little hands and screamed out, " Brother Seryozha is on the box ! " My aunt hurried out, bringing my brother ; and my baby sister was carried out by her foster-mother. How many embraces and kisses ! how many questions and answers ! how much happiness ! All the out-door servants collected, and even the labourers who happened to be at home, and a crowd of boys and girls from the village. My father was delighted. He was doubtful whether it would be possible to get me away from school ; and we were too busy during our last week in Kazan to let him know what was happening. 52 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY CHAPTER II A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY THE first days were days of unthinking and unresting activity. My earliest visit was paid to my pigeons and the two hawks which had lived through the winter. Then I ran round to every dear and familiar spot, and there were plenty of them. Round the house, in the garden and kitchen-garden, and in the wood with the jackdaws' nests near the house, my sister kept constantly at my side and held my hand ; sometimes she even pointed out to me, as if I were a stranger, some alteration which I had missed by my absence for instance, a steaming hot-bed, very large and high, planted with melons and gourds. We went together to the store-room, where some pretty boxes were kept ; they were made of copper or iron and adorned with carved ivory, and contained a number of specimens and fossils presented to my mother long ago by some friend who held an important position in the mines. We paid a visit also to the cellar, where Pelageya, the housekeeper, feasted us on cool thick cream and brown bread. To the river and across the river, my sister might not go with me ; and Yevseitch took her place for the time. He and I went over the gangway to the first island, where our summer-kitchen was, and a wide bark floor where the wheat was dried after it was washed clean. This little island was surrounded on two sides by the old channel of the river, which was now overgrown with osiers and begin- ning to dry up. We crossed this channel on planks and came at once to the other island. It was larger, and the old channel which surrounded it on one side was still deep and clear. This was a favourite spot with my aunt Tatyana ; it was divided in the middle by a lime avenue, and birches grew all along the river bank. My grandfather must have had a fancy for the place in old days ; for he A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY 53 planted the trees there long before the birth of his youngest daughter, Tanyusha 1 as he used to call her ; the trees were now fifty years old, and she was thirty-five. Like all her sisters, my aunt had received no education, but she loved nature and kept in her heart a kind of leaning towards culture. She possessed a few stray books, chiefly old novels, probably procured for her by her brother, and some plays. Of course, I read them all through, with permission or without permission ; I remember in particular a kind of vaudeville, called A Trifle for the Stage. My aunt was fond of sitting on the island, where she read a book and fished in the deep water of the old channel. On many of the birch-trees she had carved her own name and various dates, and even verses from her song-book. How I loved this island ! How pleasant it was in summer heats to sit there in the cool shade with the water all round ! On one side the new cutting from the mill-dam joined the stream that raced from under the mill-wheel ; and on the other side the old channel of the Boogoorooslan, then deep and clear, made a bend round the island. To this day my heart is strongly stirred when I recall summer afternoons which I spent there. Now, all is changed. The old channel is almost dry ; a fresh cutting carries away the water from the pond in another direction ; the osiers and alders have spread everywhere ; and the island, though it keeps the name, no longer deserves it. In a loose sense, indeed, the name may be applied to the whole plot of land extending to the mill-dam. When I had admired the island sufficiently, had examined each tree and read all my aunt's inscriptions, and had looked long enough at the chub and carp darting below me or hanging motionless in the water then I started off with Yevseitch for the mill ; but first I paid hasty visits to two other spots, "Antony's gangway" where I used to catch gudgeon, and the forge where I liked to watch the red-hot iron and the sparks leaping from under the hammer. When at last the expanse of the pond opened out before me with its green reeds and burdock-leaves, and the long mill-dam overgrown with young alder and teeming with a bird and fish population of its own, I was mute with 1 A pet-name for Tatyana. 54 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY wonder and delight and stood there some minutes, as if rooted to the ground. I was a favourite with the miller, who was nicknamed Boltunyonok ; J and he had prepared a surprise for me. Knowing that I was sure to come, he had set some wire lines among the weed for pike and left them unvisited till I came. Now he made Yevseitch and me get into a boat and rowed us to the place ; the water was very shallow, and I was not frightened this time. I drew up each line myself, and on one of them was a large pike which I pulled out with Yevseitch to help me, and carried in triumph all the way home in my own hands. Two days later my father took me farther afield to fish; he also drove with me to " Antony's Dyke," where an active spring spouted from the top of a hill, making a foaming waterfall ; to Koloda, where the water ran from a spring into wooden troughs ready to receive it ; to the Mordoff dyke, where a spring burst out of a rocky fissure at the foot of the hill ; to the lime-tree wood, and the " Sacred Wood," 1 and the place between them where the bee-hives were kept. The old bee-man, another great friend of mine, lived there summer and winter in a low turf hut ; and he had a tom-cat called Alka and a tabby called Sonya, which he had named, as a compliment, after my father and mother. Such were the pleasant occupations that took up my time during the first fortnight after our arrival at Aksakovo. I need not say how happy my mother was, when she saw me cheerful and enterprising and, to all appearance, well. Before leaving Kazan, in order to prevent my life in the country being spent in complete idleness, she had procured copies of the text-books used in the school. She never forgot, that, if by God's mercy I recovered my health, I must be sent back to school in the course of a year ; and she set apart two to three hours a day, in which I was to revise what I had learnt, and practise writing, and read aloud to her various books suitable to my age. I carried out this plan very willingly, and my outdoor amusements pleased me all the better 1 / e. " Little chatterbox " ; boltvn = chatterbox. ?< I.e. A wood preserved from the ravages of thieves by a religious service celebrated by the priest on the spot. A YEAR IN THE COUNTRY 55 after my tasks. I also began again to teach my dear little sister and pupil to read ; and this time my efforts were crowned with complete success. I said above that I was apparently quite well ; but it did not in fact turn out quite so. It is true that I had not a single seizure after leaving school ; and the feeling of oppression and palpitation passed away on our journey, and there was no return of these symptoms at home. But I now became excessively restless and began to talk in my sleep every night. At first my mother attached no import- ance at all to this, attributing it to over-exercise and the liveliness of a child's impressions ; this was all the more natural, because I had often talked in my sleep before I went to school, and many children are subject to it. But now the thing began by degrees to assume a different character. In the first place, I began to talk every night, and several times on some nights, and to talk very excitedly. In the second place, I began also to cry and sob in my sleep, to jump out of bed and try to walk out of the room. I slept with my parents in their bedroom, and my bed was close to theirs. The door was now locked on the inside, and Pelageya the housekeeper slept in the passage outside the door, to make it impossible for me to leave the room. My nocturnal distress grew worse every day, or rather every night, till at last it bore an evident resemblance to the fits front which I used to suffer, during the day only, at school : once again I cried and sobbed till I became unconscious, and this was followed by ordinary sound sleep. But these fresh attacks by night were much more violent and alarming than what I had experienced before ; and there was more variety in the symptoms. Sometimes I cried quietly and moaned, with hands always clenched against my chest and inarticulate muttering ; this went on for whoh hours, and passed into spasmodic and furious movements, in case an attempt was made to wake me. As time went on, these attempts were given up. When I was tired oit by tears and sobbing, I went quietly to sleep. But it was very difficult, especially at first, for the by- standers to look on at such suffering without trying to wake me aid afford me some relief. I was told afterwards, that not only my mother, who suffered terribly at the 56 A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY sight, but my father and my aunt and all my attendants, broke down themselves and could not witness my dis- tressing symptoms without tears. At other times I sprang to my feet with a piercing cry and stared wildly round, repeating again and again disjointed and meaningless phrases, such as, " Let me go ! " " Go away ! " " I can't " " Where is he ? " " Where shall I go ? " Then I dashed to the door or window or corners of the room, trying to get past and battering the wall with hands and feet. At such times I was so strong that two or three people could not hold me, and I dragged them about the room, with the sweat pouring from me. This kind of attack always ended with a severe fainting-fit, in the course of which it was hard to determine whether I was still breathing ; the swoon by degrees passed off into sleep, rather disturbed at first, but then sound and quiet, and sometimes lasting till nine in the morning. After such a night I woke up as fresh and lively as if I had been peacefully asleep all the time ; and, though the furious excitement and exertion left me rather weak and pale, these symptoms soon passed off, and I was quite cheerful all day, learning my lessons, running about, and giving myself up to my amusements. On waking, I jiad no clear recollection that anything had happened ; Sometimes I fancied vaguely that I had dreamt of something falling upon me and smothering me, or of monsters pursuing me ; sometimes, when the people holding me coujd not help coaxing me with kind words to lie down ar$l be quiet, their efforts roused me for an instant to a sensi of reality ; and then, when I was wide awake next morning, I remem- bered waking for some reason in the night, to find my parents and others standing by my bed, whil^ the night- ingales sang under the windows and the corn