I HAVE sad and ludicrous reasons for remembering the burdensome humiliations, insults, and alarms which my swiftly developed passion for reading brought me.

The books of the tailor’s wife looked as if they were terribly expensive, and as I was afraid that the old mistress might burn them in the stove, I tried not to think of them, and began to buy small colored books from the shop where I bought bread in the mornings.

The shopkeeper was an ill-favored fellow with thick lips. He was given to sweating, had a white, wizen face covered with scrofulous scars and pimples, and his eyes were white. He had short, clumsy fingers on puffy hands. His shop took the place of an evening club for grown-up people; also for the thoughtless young girls living in the street. My master’s brother used to go there every evening to drink beer and play cards. I was often sent to call him to supper, and more than once I saw, in the small, stuffy room behind the shop, the capricious, rosy wife of the shopkeeper sitting on the knee of Victorushka or some other young fellow. Apparently this did not offend the shop-keeper; nor was he offended when his sister, who helped him in the shop, warmly embraced the drunken men, or soldiers, or, in fact any one who took her fancy. The business done at the shop was small. He explained this by the fact that it was a new business, al — though the shop had been open since the autumn. He showed obscene pictures to his guests and customers, allowing those who wished to copy the disgraceful verses beneath them.

I read the foolish little books of Mischa Evstignev, paying so many copecks for the loan of them. This was dear, and the books afforded me no pleasure at all. “Guyak, or, the Unconquerable Truth,” “Franzl, the Venitian,” “The Battle of the Russians with the Kabardines,” or “The Beautiful Mahomedan Girl, Who Died on the Grave of her Husband,” — all that kind of literature did not interest me either, and often aroused a bitter irritation. The books seemed to be laughing at me, as at a fool, when they told in dull words such improbable stories.

“The Marksmen,” “Youri Miloslavski,” “Monks’ Secrets,” “Yapacha, the Tatar Freebooter,” and such books I like better. I was the richer for reading them; but what I liked better than all was the lives of the saints. Here was something serious in which I could believe, and which at times deeply stirred me. All the martyrs somehow reminded me of “Good Business,” and the female martyrs of grandmother, and the holy men of grandfather in his best moments.

I used to read in the shed when I went there to chop wood, or in the attic, which was equally uncomfortable and cold. Sometimes, if a book interested me or I had to read it quickly, I used to get up in the night and light the candle; but the old mistress, noticing that my candle had grown smaller during the night, began to measure the candles with a piece of wood, which she hid away somewhere. In the morning, if my candle was not as long as the measure, or if I, having found the measure, had not broken it to the length of the burned candle, a wild cry arose from the kitchen. Sometimes Victorushka called out loudly from the loft:

“Leave off that howling, Mamasha! You make life unbearable. Of course he burns the candles, because he reads books. He gets them from the shop. I know. Just look among his things in the attic.”

The old woman ran up to the attic, found a book, and burned it to ashes.

This made me very angry, as you may imagine, but my love of reading increased. I understood that if a saint had entered that household, my employers would have set to work to teach him, tried to set him to their own tune. They would have done this for something to do. If they had left off judging people, scolding them, jeering at them, they would have forgotten how to talk, would have been stricken with dumbness, and would not have been themselves at all. When a man is aware of himself, it must be through his relations with other people. My employers could not behave themselves toward those about them otherwise than as teachers, always ready to condemn; and if they had taught somebody to live exactly as they lived themselves, to think and feel in the same way, even then they would have condemned him for that very reason. They were that sort of people.

I continued to read on the sly. The old woman destroyed books several times, and I suddenly found my — self in debt to the shopkeeper for the enormous amount of forty-seven copecks. He demanded the money, and threatened to take it from my employers’ money when they sent me to make purchases.

“What would happen then?” he asked jeeringly.

To me he was unbearably repulsive. Apparently he felt this, and tortured me with various threats from which he derived a peculiar enjoyment. When I went into the shop his pimply face broadened, and he would ask gently:

“Have you brought your debt?”

“No.”

This startled him. He frowned.

“How is that? Am I supposed to give you things out of charity? I shall have to get it from you by sending you to the reformatory.”

I had no way of getting the money, my wages were paid to grandfather. I lost my presence of mind. What would happen to me? And in answer to my entreaty that he wait for settlement of the debt, the shopkeeper stretched out his oily, puffy hand, like a bladder, and said:

“Kiss my hand and I will wait.”

But when I seized a weight from the counter and brandished it at him, he ducked and cried:

“What are you doing? What are you doing? I was only joking.”

Knowing well that he was not joking, I resolved to steal the money to get rid of him. In the morning when I was brushing the master’s clothes, money jingled in his trousers’ pockets, and sometimes it fell out and rolled on the floor. Once some rolled into a crack in the boards under the staircase. I forgot to say anything about this, and remembered it only several days afterward when I found two greven between the boards. When I gave it back to the master his wife said to him:

“There, you see! You ought to count your money when you leave it in your pockets.”

But my master, smiling at me, said:

“He would not steal, I know.”

Now, having made up my mind to steal, I remembered these words and his trusting smile, and felt how hard it would be for me to rob him. Several times I took silver out of the pockets and counted it, but I could not take it. For three days I tormented myself about this, and suddenly the whole affair settled itself quickly and simply. The master asked me unexpectedly:

“What is the matter with you, Pyeshkov? You have become dull lately. Aren’t you well, or what?”

I frankly told him all my troubles. He frowned.

“Now you see what books lead to! From them, in some way or another, trouble always comes.”

He gave me half a ruble and admonished me sternly:

“Now look here; don’t you go telling my wife or my mother, or there will be a row.”

Then he smiled kindly and said:

“You are very persevering, devil take you! Never mind; it is a good thing. Anyhow, give up books. When the New Year comes, I will order a good paper, and you can read that.”

And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-time, I read aloud to my employers “The Moscow Gazette,” the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin, Rudinskovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of people who suffered from deadly dullness.

I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from understanding what I read. But my employers listened attentively, with a sort of reverential eagerness, sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes, and saying proudly to one another:

“And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know nothing of such things, thank God!”

They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of the famous brigand Churkin to the post-boy Thoma Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I corrected their mistakes they were surprised.

“What a memory he has!”

Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared in “The Moscow Gazette.” I was delighted with them. I copied several of them into a note-book, but my employers said of the poet:

“He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry.” “A drunkard or an imbecile, it is all the same.”

I liked the poetry of Strujkin, and the Count Memento Mori, but both the women said the verses were clumsy.

“Only the Petrushki or actors talk in verse.”

It was a hard life for me on winter evenings, under the eyes of my employers, in that close, small room. The dead night lay outside the window, now and again the ice cracked. The others sat at the table in silence, like frozen fish. A snow-storm would rattle the windows and beat against the walls, howl down the chimney, and shake the flue-plate. The children cried in the nursery. I wanted to sit by myself in a dark corner and howl like a wolf.

At one end of the table sat the women, knitting socks or sewing. At the other sat Victorushka, stooping, copying plans unwillingly, and from time to time calling out:

“Don’t shake the table! Goats, dogs, mice!”

At the side, behind an enormous embroidery-frame, sat the master, sewing a tablecloth in cross-stitch. Under his fingers appeared red lobsters, blue fish, yellow butterflies, and red autumn leaves. He had made the design himself, and had sat at the work for three winters. He had grown very tired of it, and often said to me in the daytime, when I had some spare time :

“Come along, Pyeshkov; sit down to the tablecloth and do some of it!”

I sat down, and began to work with the thick needle.

I was sorry for my master, and always did my best to help him. I had an idea that one day he would give up drawing plans, sewing, and playing at cards, and begin doing something quite different, something interesting, about which he often thought, throwing his work aside and gazing at it with fixed, amazed eyes, as at something unfamiliar to him. His hair fell over his forehead and cheeks; he looked like a laybrother in a monastery.

“What are you thinking of?” his wife would ask him.

“Nothing in particular,” he would reply, returning to his work.

I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a man what he was thinking of. It was a question which could not be answered. One’s thoughts were always sudden and many, about all that passed before one’s eyes, of what one saw yesterday or a year ago. It was all mixed up together, elusive, constantly moving and changing.

The serial in “The Moscow Gazette” was not enough to last the evening, and I went on to read the journals which were put away under the bed in the bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously:

“What do you find to read there? It is all pictures.”

But under the bed, besides the “Painting Review,” lay also “Flames,” and so we read “Count Tyatin–Baltiski,” by Saliass. The master took a great fancy to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed mercilessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the mel — ancholy adventures of the hero, crying:

“Really, that is most amusing!”

“Piffle!” said the mistress to show her independence of mind.

The literature under the bed did me a great service. Through it, I had obtained the right to read the papers in the kitchen, and thus made it possible to read at night.

To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the nursery for the nurse had a drunken fit. Victorushka did not interfere with me. As soon as the household was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have a light, for they took the candles into the bedrooms, and I had no money to buy them for myself; so I began to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also poured lamp oil, and, making a wick with some thread, was able to make a smoky light. This I put on the stove for the night.

When I turned the pages of the great volumes, the bright red tongue of flame quivered agitatedly, the wick was drowned in the burning, evil-smelling fat, and the smoke made my eyes smart. But all this unpleasantness was swallowed up in the enjoyment with which I looked at the illustrations and read the description of them. These illustrations opened up be — fore me a world which increased daily in breadth — a world adorned with towns, just like the towns of story-land. They showed me lofty hills and lovely sea — shores. Life developed wonderfully for me. The earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abounding in towns and all kinds of things. Now when I gazed into the distance beyond the Volga, I knew that it was not space which lay beyond, but before that, when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly miserable. The meadows lay flat, bushes grew in clumps, and where the meadows ended, rose the indented black wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull, cold blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place. And my heart also was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped it; all desires had departed, and I thought of nothing. All I wanted was to shut my eyes. This melancholy emptiness promised me nothing, and sucked out of my heart all that there was in it.

The description of the illustrations told me in language which I could understand about other countries, other peoples. It spoke of various incidents of the past and present, but there was a lot which I did not understand, and that worried me. Sometimes strange words stuck in my brain, like “metaphysics,” “chiliasm,” “chartist.” They were a source of great anx — iety to me, and seemed to grow into monsters obstruct — ing my vision. I thought that I should never under — stand anything. I did not succeed in finding out the meaning of those words. In fact, they stood like sentries on the threshold of all secret knowledge. Often whole phrases stuck in my memory for a long time, like a splinter in my finger, and hindered me from thinking of anything else.

I remembered reading these strange verses:

“All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land, Silent and gloomy as the grave, Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla. Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying, ‘Where, then, is Rome; where is Rome the mighty? ”

That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth were the Huns? I simply had to find that out.

Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master.

“The Huns?” he cried in amazement. “The devil knows who they are. Some trash, I expect.”

And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:

“That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov.”

Bad or good, I wanted to know.

I had an idea that the regimental chaplain. Soloviev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him. The pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:

“And what is that to do with you, eh?”

Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:

“What-a-t?”

Then I concluded that the right person to ask about the Huns was the dispenser at the chemist’s. He always looked at me kindly. He had a clever face, and gold glasses on his large nose.

“The Huns,” said the dispenser, “were a nomad race, like the people of Khirgiz. There are no more of these people now. They are all dead.”

I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were dead, but because the meaning of the word that had worried me for so long was quite simple, and was also of no use to me.

But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision with the word ceased to worry me so much, and thanks to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of the dispenser Goldberg.

This man knew the literal meaning of all words of wisdom. He had the keys to all knowledge. Setting his glasses straight with two fingers, he looked fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving small nails into my forehead:

“Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If we want to find out why the leaves take one form instead of another, we must learn how the tree grows. We must study books, my dear boy. Men are like a good garden in which everything grows, both pleasant and profitable.”

I often had to run to the chemist’s for soda-water and magnesia for the adults of the family, who were continually suffering from heartburn, and for castor-oil and purgatives for the children.

The short instructions which the dispenser gave me instilled into my mind a still deeper regard for books.

They gradually became as necessary to me as vodka to the drunkard. They showed me a new life, a life of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite people to deeds of heroism and crimes. I saw that the people about me were fitted for neither heroism nor crime. They lived apart from everything that I read about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they found interesting in their lives. I had no desire to live such a life. I was quite decided on that point. I would not.

From the letterpress which accompanied the drawings I had learned that in Prague, London, and Paris there are no open drains in the middle of the city, or dirty gulley............