boots, trousers, ant coat, ant go srough ze room. Ven I come to ze wall
where my gon hangs I take it, ant says, 'You are a Spion, so defent
you!' I give one stroke left, one right, ant one on ze head. Ze Spion
lay precipitated on ze floor! Zen I taket my cloak-bag ant money, ant
jompet out of ze vintow. I vent to Ems, where I was acquainted wis one
General Sasin, who loaft me, givet me a passport from ze Embassy, ant
taket me to Russland to learn his chiltren. Ven General Sasin tiet, your
Mamma callet for me, ant says, 'Karl Ivanitch, I gif you my children.
Loaf them, ant I will never leave you, ant will take care for your olt
age.' Now is she teat, ant all is forgotten! For my twenty year full of
service I most now go into ze street ant seek for a try crust of preat
for my olt age! Got sees all sis, ant knows all sis. His holy will be
done! Only-only, I yearn for you, my children!'--and Karl drew me to
him, and kissed me on the forehead.
XI. ONE MARK ONLY
The year of mourning over, Grandmamma recovered a little from her grief,
and once more took to receiving occasional guests, especially children
of the same age as ourselves.
On the 13th of December--Lubotshka's birthday--the Princess Kornakoff
and her daughters, with Madame Valakhin, Sonetchka, Ilinka Grap, and the
two younger Iwins, arrived at our house before luncheon.
Though we could hear the sounds of talking, laughter, and movements
going on in the drawing-room, we could not join the party until our
morning lessons were finished. The table of studies in the schoolroom
said, 'Lundi, de 2 a 3, maitre d'Histoire et de Geographie,' and this
infernal maitre d'Histoire we must await, listen to, and see the back
of before we could gain our liberty. Already it was twenty minutes past
two, and nothing was to be heard of the tutor, nor yet anything to be
seen of him in the street, although I kept looking up and down it with
the greatest impatience and with an emphatic longing never to see the
maitre again.
'I believe he is not coming to-day,' said Woloda, looking up for a
moment from his lesson-book.
'I hope he is not, please the Lord!' I answered, but in a despondent
tone. 'Yet there he DOES come, I believe, all the same!'
'Not he! Why, that is a GENTLEMAN,' said Woloda, likewise looking out of
the window, 'Let us wait till half-past two, and then ask St. Jerome if
we may put away our books.'
'Yes, and wish them au revoir,' I added, stretching my arms, with the
book clasped in my hands, over my head. Having hitherto idled away my
time, I now opened the book at the place where the lesson was to begin,
and started to learn it. It was long and difficult, and, moreover, I
was in the mood when one's thoughts refuse to be arrested by anything at
all. Consequently I made no progress. After our last lesson in history
(which always seemed to me a peculiarly arduous and wearisome subject)
the history master had complained to St. Jerome of me because only two
good marks stood to my credit in the register--a very small total. St.
Jerome had then told me that if I failed to gain less than THREE marks
at the next lesson I should be severely punished. The next lesson was
now imminent, and I confess that I felt a little nervous.
So absorbed, however, did I become in my reading that the sound of
goloshes being taken off in the ante-room came upon me almost as a
shock. I had just time to look up when there appeared in the doorway the
servile and (to me) very disgusting face and form of the master, clad in
a blue frockcoat with brass buttons.
Slowly he set down his hat and books and
