The first German who was engaged to look after me was a native of Silesia and was called Jokisch; to my mind the surname was more than sufficient reason not to have engaged him.
He was a tall, bald man, distinguished by an extreme l ack of cleanliness; he used to boast of his knowledge of agricultural science, and I imagine it must have been on that account that my father engaged him. I looked on the Silesian giant with aversion, and the only thing that reconciled me to him was that he used, as we walked about the Devichy grounds and to the 10 A man, usually 2 serf, "·hose duties resembled those of the paedagogus in a household in ancient Rome. ( R.)
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Presnensky ponds, to tell me smutty stories which I passed on to the hall. He st<�yed no more than a year; he did something disgraceful at our country place and the gardener tried to kill him with a scythe, so my father told him to take himself off.
HC' \Yas sucCC'C'ded by a Brunswick-\Yolfenbiittel soldier (probably a deserter) called Fedor Karlovich, who wa s distinguished by his fine handwriting and extreme stupidity. He had been in the same position in two families before and had acquired some experience, so adopted the tonp of a tutor; moreover, when he spoke French he would say 'sh' for 'zh', and invariably put the accent on the wrong syllable.n
I had uot a particle of respect for him and poisoned every moment of his existence, especially after I had convinced myself that he wa s incapable of understanding decimal fractions and the rule of threP. As a rule there is a great deal of ruthlessness and even cruelty in boys' hearts; with positive ferocity I persect1ted the poor \YolfC'nbi.ittd Jager with proportion sums; this so interested me that I triumphantly informed my father of Fedor Karlovich"s stupidity, though I was not given to discussing such subjects with him.
l\Ioreover, Fedor Karlovich boasted to me that he had a ne\v swallow-tail coat, dark blue with gold buttons, and I actually did see him on one occasion setting off to attend a wedding in a swallow-tail coat which was too big for him but had gold buttons. The boy whose duty it was to v\·ait upon him informed me that he had borrowed the coat from a friend who served at the counter of a perfumery shop. \Yithout the slightest sympathy I pestered the poor fellow to tell me where his blue dress-coat was.
'There are so many moths in your house,' he said, 'that I have left it with a tailor I know, to be taken care of.'
'\\'here does that tailor live?'
'\Vhat i s that to you?'
'\Vhv not tell me?'
'Yot; needn't poke your nose into other people's business.'
'V\'ell, perhaps not, but it is my name-day in a week, so please do get the blue coat from the tailor for that day.'
'l':o, I won't. You don't desPrve it because you are so impertinent.'
And I would threaten him with my finger.
For his final discomfiture Fedor Karlovich must needs one day 1 1 The English speak French worse than the Germans, but they only distort the language, while tiH' Germans dPgt adr it.
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brag before Bouchot, m:v French teacher, of having been a recruit at Waterloo, and of the Germans having given the French a terrible thrashing. Bouchot merely stared at him and took a pinch of snuff with such a terrible air that the conqueror of Napoleon was a good deal disconcerted. Bouchot walked off leaning angrily on his gnarled stick and never referred to him afterwards except as 'le soldat de Vilain-ton.' I did not know at the time that this pun was perpetrated by Beranger and could not boast of having sprung from Bouchot's fertile fancy.
At last Blucher's companion in arms had some quarrel with my father and left our house ; after that my father did not worry me with any more Germans.
While our Brunswick-Wolfenbii ttel friend held the field I sometimes used to visit some boys with whom a friend of his lived, also in the capacity of a 'German' ; and with these boys we used to take long walks; after his departure I was left again in complete solitude. I was bored, struggled to get out of it, and found no means of escape. As I had no chance of overriding my father's will I might perhaps have been broken in to this existence if a new intellf'ctual interest am! two meetings, of which I will speak in the following chapter, had not soon afterwards saved me. I am quite certain that my father had not the faintest notion what sort of l ife he was forcing upon me, or he would not have thwarted me in the most innocent desires nor have refused my most natural requests.
Sometimes he allowed me to go with the Senator to the French theatre, and this was the greatest enjoyment for me; I was passionately fond of seeing acting, but this pleasure brought me as much pain as joy. The Senator used to arrive with me when the play was half over and, as he invariably had an invitation for the evening, would take me, away before the end. The theatre was in Apraxin's house, at the Arbatsky Gate, and we lived in Old Konyushennaya Street, that is very close by, but my father sternly forbade my returning without the Senator.
I was about fifteen when my father engaged a priest to give me Divinity lessons, so far as was necessary for entering the University. The Catechism came into my hands after I had read Voltaire. Nowhere does religion play so modest a part in education as in Russia, and that, of course, is a great piece of good fortune. A priest is always paid half-price for lessons in religion, and, indeed, if the same priest gives Latin lessons also, he is paid more for them than for teaching the Catechism.
My father regarded religion as among the essential belongings of a well-bred man; he used to say that one must believe in the
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Holy Scriptures without criticism, because one could do nothing in that domain with reason, and all intellectual considerations merely obscured the subject; that one must observe the rites of the religion in which one was born, without, however, giving way to excessive devoutness, which was all right for old women, but not proper in men. Did he himself believe? I imagine that he did believe a little, from habit, from regard for propriety, and from a desire to be on the safe side. He did not himself, however, take part in any church observances, sheltering ·himself behind the delicate state of his health. He scarcely ever received a priest; at most he would ask him to perform a service in the empty salon and would send him out there a five-rouble note. In the winter he excused himself on the plea that the priest and the deacon always brought such chilliness with them that he invariably caught cold. In the country he used to go to church and have the priest to his house, but with an eye more to the considerations of society and authority than to God-fearing ones.