there, on Sparrow Hills, and I will once again drink my fill of the bliss of first friendship; and I will remember you, "old house"—

Then you too, comrades of the lecture hall, will surround me, and with you, my angel, I will see myself in the cemetery...
Oh, with what rapture I will meet every memory... Come out from the grave. I will press each one to my heart and with love place it back in the grave...

I.

CHILDHOOD.

The highest thing we have received from God and Nature

is life...

Goethe.

Until the age of five, I do not remember anything clearly, nothing in sequence... The blue floor in the little room where I lived; a large garden and in it a multitude of crows. Going into the garden, one had to pass through a shed; usually, the coachman Mosey with a huge beard sat there; he used to pet me, and I looked at him with a kind of sycophancy; for nothing in the world would I have dared to remain alone with him. At that time, Madame Proveau was already with me; she led me by the hand along the staircase, attended to my upbringing, and, moreover, out of friendship, in her free hours, looked after the household. Another two or three years are filled with vague, unclear memories; then, little by little, the images become clearer; like trees and mountains emerging from a fog, the small details of childhood and the major events that everyone spoke about and that reached even me began to stand out. I remember the death of Napoleon. People rejoiced that God had taken away this monster, about whom it had been predicted; the astute did not believe in his death; the more astute assured everyone that he was in Greece. The one who rejoiced the most was a pious old woman who wandered from house to house because of her poverty and did not work out of a sense of nobility: she could not forgive Napoleon for the fire in Zvenigorod, during which two of her cows, who were bound to her by the tenderest friendship, had burned. I was lulled to sleep by stories about the burning of Moscow; moreover, I had cards, where for every letter there was a caricature of Napoleon with sharp couplets, for example:

and with even sharper illustrations; for example, Napoleon riding on a pig, etc. Is it any wonder that I too rejoiced at his death? I remember the killing of Kotzebue. Why Sand killed him, I could not understand at all, but I very well remember that the nephew of Madame Proveau, a clerk in a pharmacy on Maroseyka Street, who always smelled of rhubarb and rose oil, a desperate and learned man, brought a picture representing a young man with long hair and told us that he had killed a venerable old man and that the young man had his head cut off.

I was completely alone; toys soon began to bore me, and I had many of them: what didn't my uncle give me! A kitchen, in which dinner was being prepared for three weeks—it would be preparing to this day and hour if I hadn't peeled off the back wall to peek at the secret—and a hut covered with moss, in which a cupid lived, all in foil, and a lanterne magique magic lantern, which occupied me more than anything else... Here a bright spot appears on the wall and nothing more; what don't you imagine there: something will appear in these rays of glory and the curved glass... Suddenly an elephant steps out, it increases, it decreases, just like a living one; sometimes it walks upside down, which a living elephant could not do; then David and Goliath fight and move both together; then a Moor, black as the pug dog of Karl Ivanovich, the uncle's valet (and she has already died, poor thing!). It was fun to watch such a society, both head-up and upside-down. But an important addition was missing: there was no one to show it to me, and therefore I often abandoned the toys and asked Lizaveta Ivanovna to tell me something, humbly sat on a little stool, and for whole hours listened to her with the most intense attention. Taciturnity did not belong to the number