Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

of Madame Proveau's virtues: she did not force one to repeat a request and, continuing to knit her stocking, began a story. She knitted incessantly. I suppose if one were to sew together everything she had knitted in 58 years, it would make a jacket, if not for the globe, then for the moon (it needs it more for its night walks). May God grant her the kingdom of heaven! She did not outlive Napoleon for long and died just as far from her homeland as he did—only in the other direction. But what did she tell me? First of all—this was her favorite topic—how her late husband had been some kind of maître d'hôtel steward/house manager in a Masonic lodge; how she once went there: everything was draped in black cloth, and on the table lay a skull on two swords... I trembled like an aspen leaf while listening to her. On the walls hung portraits, and if anyone betrayed them, they would shoot at the portrait, and the original would drop dead, even if he were in the ends of the earth, in a far-away kingdom. Then she told interesting excerpts from the history of the French Revolution: how her late partner again had almost ended up hanging from a lamppost; how blood flowed in the streets, what horrors Robespierre committed—and excerpts from her own history: how she lived with the children of a landowner in the Tver Governorate, who convinced her that bears walked in his garden. "Well, so I went into the garden once, I look, I look, and a most terrifying bear is walking toward me: I just gasped 'ah!' and fainted"—and the venerable partner almost shot the bear; it seems the only reason he didn't was that he didn't have a gun with him; and the bear was the master's valet, whom he had ordered to put on a fur coat with the fur side out." Lord, how I liked these stories! I looked for them later for a long time in the "Thousand and One Nights"—and never found them.

In Russian literacy, we both were not far along at that time: since then, I have learned by hearsay, and Lizaveta Ivanovna has died and can finish her studies firsthand from Cyril and Methodius.

However, the sorrowful time of schooling approached. One evening, father was talking with uncle about whether or not to send me to a boarding school. Phew!.. upon hearing this terrible word, I almost died of fear, ran out to the maid's room, and wept bitterly: at night I would wake up, look around to see if I was in the boarding school, and try to convince myself that the terrible word was just a dream. However, father decided to educate