knows where we are, what we are about—while with us is poetry, we are saturated in it, intoxicated with it, something solemn, grand, mysterious is happening to us…. Punin, by preference, kept to poetry, musical, sonorous poetry; he was ready to lay down his life for poetry. He did not read, he declaimed the verse majestically, in a torrent of rhythm, in a rolling outpour through his nose, like a man intoxicated, lifted out of himself, like the Pythian priestess. And another habit he had: first he would lisp the verses through softly, in a whisper, as it were mumbling them to himself…. This he used to call the rough sketch of the reading; then he would thunder out the same verse in its ‘fair copy,’ and would all at once leap up, throw up his hand, with a half-supplicating, half-imperious gesture…. In this way we went through not only Lomonosov, Sumarokov, and Kantemir (the older the poems, the more they were to Punin’s taste), but even Heraskov’s Rossiad. And, to tell the truth, it was this same Rossiad which aroused my enthusiasm most. There is in it, among others, a mighty Tatar woman, a gigantic heroine; I have forgotten even her name now; but in those days my hands and feet turned cold as soon as it was mentioned. ‘Yes,’ Punin would say, nodding his head with great significance, ‘Heraskov, he doesn’t let one off easily. At times one comes upon a line, simply heart-breaking…. One can only stick to it, and do one’s best…. One tries to master it, but he breaks away again and trumpets, trumpets, with the crash of cymbals. His name’s been well bestowed on him—the very word, Herrraskov!’ Lomonosov Punin found fault with for too simple and free a style; while to Derzhavin he maintained an attitude almost of hostility, saying that he was more of a courtier than a poet. In our house it was not merely that no attention was given to literature, to poetry; but poetry, especially Russian poetry, was looked upon as something quite undignified and vulgar; my grandmother did not even call it poetry, but ‘doggrel verses’; every author of such doggrel was, in her opinion, either a confirmed toper or a perfect idiot. Brought up among such ideas, it was inevitable that I should either turn from Punin with disgust—he was untidy and shabby into the bargain, which was an offence to my seignorial habits—or that, attracted and captivated by him, I should follow his example, and be infected by his passion for poetry…. And so it turned out. I, too, began reading poetry, or, as my grandmother expressed it, poring over doggrel trash…. I even tried my hand at versifying, and composed a poem, descriptive of a barrel-organ, in which occurred the following two lines:

  ‘Lo, the barrel turns around,

  And the cogs within resound.’

Punin commended in this effort a certain imitative melody, but disapproved of the subject itself as low and unworthy of lyrical treatment.

Alas! all those efforts and emotions and transports, our solitary readings, our life together, our poetry, all came to an end at once. Trouble broke upon us suddenly, like a clap of thunder.

* * * * *

My grandmother in everything liked cleanliness and order, quite in the spirit of the active generals of those days; cleanliness and order were to be maintained too in our garden. And so from time to time they ‘drove’ into it poor peasants, who had no families, no land, no beasts of their own, and those among the house serfs who were out of favour or superannuated, and set them to clearing the paths, weeding the borders, breaking up and sifting the earth in the beds, and so on. Well, one day, in the very heat of these operations, my grandmother went into the garden, and took me with her. On all sides, among the trees and about the lawns, we caught glimpses of white, red, and blue smocks; on all sides we heard the scraping and clanging of spades, the dull thud of clods of earth on the slanting sieves. As she passed by the labourers, my grandmother with her eagle eye noticed at once that one of them was working with less energy than the rest, and that he took off his cap, too, with no show of eagerness. This was a youth, still quite young, with a wasted face, and sunken, lustreless eyes. His cotton smock, all torn and patched, scarcely held together over his narrow shoulders.

‘Who’s that?’ my grandmother inquired of Filippitch, who was walking on tiptoe behind her.

‘Of whom … you are pleased …’ Filippitch stammered.

‘Oh, fool! I mean the one that looked so sullenly at me. There, standing yonder, not working.’

‘Oh, him! Yes … th … th … that’s Yermil, son of Pavel Afanasiitch, now deceased.’

Pavel Afanasiitch had been, ten years before, head butler in my grandmother’s house, and stood particularly high in her favour. But suddenly falling into disgrace, he was as suddenly degraded to being herdsman, and did not long keep even that position. He sank lower still, and struggled on for a while on a monthly pittance of flour in a little hut far away. At last he had died of paralysis, leaving his family in the most utter destitution.

‘Aha!’ commented my grandmother; ‘it’s clear the apple’s not fallen far from the tree. Well, we shall have to make arrangements about this fellow too. I’ve no need of people like that, with scowling faces.’

My grandmother went back to the house—and made arrangements. Three hours later Yermil, completely ‘equipped,’ was brought under the window of her room. The unfortunate boy was being transported to a settlement; the other side of the fence, a few steps from him, was a little cart loaded with his poor belongings. Such were the times then. Yermil stood without his cap, with downcast head, barefoot, with his boots tied up with a string behind his back; his face, turned towards the seignorial mansion, expressed not despair nor grief, nor even bewilderment; a stupid smile was frozen on his colourless lips; his eyes, dry and half-closed, looked stubbornly on the ground. My grandmother was apprised of his presence. She got up from the sofa, went, with a faint rustle of her silken skirts, to the window of the study, and, holding her golden-rimmed double eyeglass on the bridge of her nose, looked at the new exile. In her room there happened to be at the moment four other persons, the butler, Baburin, the page who waited on my grandmother in the daytime, and I.

My grandmother nodded her head up and down….

‘Madam,’ a hoarse almost stifled voice was heard suddenly. I looked round. Baburin’s face was red … dark red; under his overhanging brows could be seen little sharp points of light…. There was no doubt about it; it was he, it was Baburin, who had uttered the word ‘Madam.’

My grandmother too looked round, and turned her eyeglass from Yermil to Baburin.

‘Who is that … speaking?’ she articulated slowly … through her nose.

Baburin moved slightly forward.

‘Madam,’ he began, ‘it is I…. I venture … I imagine … I make bold to submit to your honour that you are making a mistake in acting as … as you are pleased to act at this moment.’

‘That is?’ my grandmother said, in the same voice, not removing her eyeglass.

‘I take the liberty …’ Baburin went on distinctly, uttering every word though with obvious effort—’I am referring to the case of this lad who is being sent away to a settlement … for no fault of his. Such arrangements, I venture to submit, lead to dissatisfaction, and to other—which God forbid!—consequences, and are nothing else than a transgression of the powers allowed to seignorial proprietors.’

‘And where have you studied, pray?’ my grandmother asked after a short silence, and she dropped her eyeglass.

Baburin was disconcerted. ‘What are you pleased to wish?’ he muttered.

‘I ask you: where have you studied? You use such learned words.’

‘I … my education …’ Baburin was beginning.

My grandmother shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. ‘It seems,’ she interrupted, ‘that my arrangements are not to your liking. That is of absolutely no consequence to me—among my subjects I am sovereign, and answerable to no one for them, only I am not accustomed to having people criticising me in my presence, and meddling in what is not their business. I have no need of learned philanthropists of nondescript position; I want servants to do my will without question. So I always lived till you came, and so I shall live after you’ve gone. You do not suit me; you are discharged. Nikolai Antonov,’ my grandmother turned to the steward, ‘pay this man off; and let him be gone before dinner-time to-day! D’you hear? Don’t put me into a passion. And the other too … the fool that lives with him—to be sent off too. What’s Yermilka waiting for?’ she added, looking out of window, ‘I have seen him. What more does he want?’ My grandmother shook her handkerchief in the direction of the window, as though to drive away an importunate fly. Then she sat down in a low chair, and turning towards us, gave the order grimly: ‘Everybody present to leave the room!’

We all withdrew—all, except the day page, to whom my grandmother’s words did not apply, because he was nobody.

My grandmother’s decree was carried out to the letter. Before dinner, both Baburin and my friend Punin were driving away from the place. I will not undertake to describe my grief, my genuine, truly childish despair. It was so strong that it