anger. Even if he had struck me at the time of which I am now speaking
(namely, when I was fourteen years old), I should have submitted quietly
to the correction, for I loved him, and had known him all my life,
and looked upon him as a member of our family, but St. Jerome was a
conceited, opinionated fellow for whom I felt merely the unwilling
respect which I entertained for all persons older than myself. Karl
Ivanitch was a comical old 'Uncle' whom I loved with my whole heart, but
who, according to my childish conception of social distinctions, ranked
below us, whereas St. Jerome was a well-educated, handsome young dandy
who was for showing himself the equal of any one.
Karl Ivanitch had always scolded and punished us coolly, as though he
thought it a necessary, but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome,
on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when
correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction
as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his
grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis
on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when
angry, had never said anything beyond, 'What a foolish puppet-comedy it
is!' or 'You boys are as irritating as Spanish fly!' (which he always
called 'Spaniard' fly). St. Jerome, however, had names for us like
'mauvais sujet,' 'villain,' 'garnement,' and so forth--epithets which
greatly offended my self-respect. When Karl Ivanitch ordered us to
kneel in the corner with our faces to the wall, the punishment consisted
merely in the bodily discomfort of the position, whereas St. Jerome, in
such cases, always assumed a haughty air, made a grandiose gesture with
his hand, and exclaiming in a pseudo-tragic tone, 'A genoux, mauvais
sujet!' ordered us to kneel with our faces towards him, and to crave his
pardon. His punishment consisted in humiliation.
However, on the present occasion the punishment never came, nor was the
matter ever referred to again. Yet, I could not forget all that I had
gone through--the shame, the fear, and the hatred of those two days.
From that time forth, St. Jerome appeared to give me up in despair, and
took no further trouble with me, yet I could not bring myself to treat
him with indifference. Every time that our eyes met I felt that my
look expressed only too plainly my dislike, and, though I tried hard
to assume a careless air, he seemed to divine my hypocrisy, until I was
forced to blush and turn away.
In short, it was a terrible trial to me to have anything to do with him.
XVIII. THE MAIDSERVANTS' ROOM
I BEGAN to feel more and more lonely, until my chief solace lay in
solitary reflection and observation. Of the favourite subject of
my reflections I shall speak in the next chapter. The scene where I
indulged in them was, for preference, the maidservants' room, where
a plot suitable for a novel was in progress--a plot which touched and
engrossed me to the highest degree. The heroine of the romance was, of
course, Masha. She was in love with Basil, who had known her before she
had become a servant in our house, and who had promised to marry her
some day. Unfortunately, fate, which had separated them five years ago,
and afterwards reunited them in Grandmamma's abode, next proceeded to
interpose an obstacle between them in the shape of Masha's uncle, our
man Nicola, who would not hear of his niece marrying that 'uneducated
and unbearable fellow,' as he called Basil. One effect of the obstacle
