that I was free to do what I liked with it.
But it seemed to me that he already despised me a little less.
I was fully persuaded that I should never again expose myself to the
reproach of weakness of character, for the watch, the disgusting
present from my disgusting godfather, had suddenly grown so
distasteful to me that I was quite incapable of understanding how I
could have regretted it, how I could have begged for it back from the
wretched Trofimitch, who had, moreover, the right to think that he had
treated me with generosity.
Several days passed.... I remember that on one of them the great news
reached our town that the Emperor Paul was dead and his son Alexandr,
of whose graciousness and humanity there were such favourable rumours,
had ascended the throne. This news excited David intensely: the
possibility of seeing--of shortly seeing--his father occurred to him
at once. My father was delighted, too.
'They will bring back all the exiles from Siberia now and I expect
brother Yegor will not be forgotten,' he kept repeating, rubbing his
hands, coughing and, at the same time, seeming rather nervous.
David and I at once gave up working and going to the high school; we
did not even go for walks but sat in a corner counting and reckoning
in how many months, in how many weeks, in how many days 'brother
Yegor' ought to come back and where to write to him and how to go to
meet him and in what way we should begin to live afterwards. 'Brother
Yegor' was an architect: David and I decided that he ought to settle
in Moscow and there build big schools for poor people and we would go
to be his assistants. The watch, of course, we had completely
forgotten; besides, David had new cares.... Of them I will speak
later, but the watch was destined to remind us of its existence again.
VII
One morning we had only just finished lunch--I was sitting alone by
the window thinking of my uncle's release--outside there was the steam
and glitter of an April thaw--when all at once my aunt, Pelageya
Petrovna, walked into the room. She was at all times restless and
fidgetty, she spoke in a shrill voice and was always waving her arms
about; on this occasion she simply pounced on me.
'Go along, go to your father at once, sir!' she snapped out. 'What
pranks have you been up to, you shameless boy! You will catch it, both
of you. Nastasey Nastasyeitch has shown up all your tricks! Go along,
your father wants you.... Go along this very minute.'
Understanding nothing, I followed my aunt, and, as I crossed the
threshold of the drawing-room, I saw my father, striding up and down
and ruffling up his hair, Yushka in tears by the door and, sitting on
a chair in the corner, my godfather, Nastasey Nastasyeitch, with an
expression of peculiar malignancy in his distended nostrils and in his
fiery, slanting eyes.
My father swooped down upon me as soon as I walked in.
'Did you give your watch to Yushka? Tell me!'
I glanced at Yushka.
'Tell me,' repeated my father, stamping.
'Yes,' I answered, and immediately received a stinging slap in the
face, which afforded my aunt great satisfaction. I heard her gulp, as
though she had swallowed some hot tea. From me my father ran to
Yushka.
'And you, you rascal, ought not to have dared to accept such a
present,' he said, pulling him by the hair: 'and you sold it, too, you
good-for-nothing boy!'
Yushka, as I learned later had, in the simplicity of his heart, taken
my watch to a neighbouring watchmaker's. The watchmaker had displayed
