Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

Meanwhile, momentous circumstances were unfolding. Lizaveta Ivanovna fell ill. The house doctor said it was a slight cold, flooded her insides with chamomile, plastered the illness with a mustard plaster, and was very surprised to find his recovering patient on the table one fine morning. Yes, she had passed away. Karl Karlovich was her executor and at that time quarreled with Lizaveta Ivanovna's nephew, the carriage-maker Schmalschhof, whose nose was a reddish-purple. I remember her funeral as if it were now: I accompanied the old woman’s body to the Catholic cemetery, and I wept.

Many things changed in my life: Lizaveta Ivanovna’s stories came to an end, her patriarchal reign over me came to an end; the immeasurable kindness with which she stood up for the slights inflicted upon me came to an end. In a word, the entire previous way of life was overturned; during Lizaveta Ivanovna's time, I was looked after by a nanny just as kind as she, Vera Artamonovna, who looked as much like a turkey in a kerchief as two drops of water: the same neck in folds and wrinkles; the same look of the ingénu innocent/naive one. Now they assigned me a valet, Vanyushka, to whom I owe the first foundations of the art of smoking tobacco (rolling it in a piece of damp paper, twisted into a tube) and a rich phraseology in which the "Russian spirit" spread out as the master. The time when a child is handed over from female hands into male ones is an epoch, a turning point; with a boy, this happens at the age of seven or eight; with a girl, at seventeen or eighteen.

Childhood was ending prematurely; I abandoned my toys and began to read. Thus, sometimes on warm days in February, buds swell on the trees, daily risking death from frost and depriving the tree of its best juices. I turned to books out of boredom—naturally, not to textbooks. A developing passion for reading taught me French and German very quickly, and at the same time served as an eternal obstacle to finishing my studies. The first book I read con amore with love was "Lotte and Fanfan," the second, "Alexis, or the House in the Forest." With the help of Mademoiselle Lotte, I started reading without selection, without fatigue, understanding and not understanding, old and new, the tragedies of Sumarokov, the "Rossiad," the "Russian Theater," etc. And, I repeat, this immoderate reading was a significant obstacle to learning. Leaving some volume