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Table of Contents
Childhood
First published : 1852
Translation : C. J. Hogarth (1869-1942)
Chapter 1 — The Tutor, Karl Ivanitch
Chapter 6 — Preparations for the Chase
Chapter 9 — A First Essay in Love
Chapter 10 — The Sort of Man My Father was
Chapter 11 — In the Drawing-Room and the Study
Chapter 17 — The Princess Kornakoff
Chapter 18 — Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
Chapter 20 — Preparations for the Party
Chapter 21 — Before the Mazurka
Chapter 23 — After the Mazurka
Chapter 26 — What Awaited Us at the Country-House
Chapter 28 — Sad Recollections
Chapter 1 — The Tutor, Karl Ivanitch
On the 12th of August, 18 — (just three days after my tenth birthday, when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven o’clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing- gown fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.
“Suppose,” I thought to myself,” that I am only a small boy, yet why should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda’s bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long — how to tease me. He knows very well that he has woken
