Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

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me. However, father decided to educate me.

But what was it she told me? First—this was her favorite topic—how her late husband had been a steward in a Masonic lodge; how she had once stopped by there: everything was covered in black cloth, and on the table lay a skull upon two swords... I would tremble like an aspen leaf listening to her. Portraits hung on the walls, and if anyone betrayed them, they would shoot at the portrait, and the original would fall down dead, even if he were in the furthest reaches, in a distant kingdom. Then she would tell interesting snippets from the history of the French Revolution: how her late partner had nearly been strung up on a lamppost; how blood flowed in the streets, the horrors that Robespierre wrought—and snippets from her own history: how she had lived with the children of a landowner in the Tver Governorate, who had convinced her that bears walked about in his garden. "Well, so I went out into the garden once, I look, I look, and a most terrifying bear is walking along: I just let out an 'ah!' and fainted"—and the venerable companion nearly shot the bear; it seems the only thing that stopped him was that he had no gun with him; and the bear was the master's valet, whom he had ordered to put on his fur coat with the fur side out. Lord, how I loved those stories! I searched for them for a long time afterward in the "Thousand and One Nights"—and did not find them.

In Russian literacy, we were both not very advanced at the time: since then, I have learned by hearsay, and Lizaveta Ivanovna has died and can complete her learning firsthand from Cyril and Methodius.

However, the sorrowful time of schooling approached. One evening, my father was speaking with my uncle about whether to send me to a boarding school. Phew!.. upon hearing this terrible word, I nearly died of fear, ran out into the maid's room, and wept bitterly: at night I would wake up, check my surroundings to see if I was in the boarding school, and try to convince myself that the terrible word was only a dream. However, my father decided to educate