Chapter 8

June 1st

MY BELOVED MAKAR ALEXIEVITCH,--So eager am I to do something that
will please and divert you in return for your care, for your
ceaseless efforts on my behalf--in short, for your love for me--
that I have decided to beguile a leisure hour for you by delving
into my locker, and extracting thence the manuscript which I send
you herewith. I began it during the happier period of my life,
and have continued it at intervals since. So often have you asked
me about my former existence--about my mother, about Pokrovski,
about my sojourn with Anna Thedorovna, about my more recent
misfortunes; so often have you expressed an earnest desire to
read the manuscript in which (God knows why) I have recorded
certain incidents of my life, that I feel no doubt but that the
sending of it will give you sincere pleasure. Yet somehow I feel
depressed when I read it, for I seem now to have grown twice as
old as I was when I penned its concluding lines. Ah, Makar
Alexievitch, how weary I am--how this insomnia tortures me!
Convalescence is indeed a hard thing to bear!

B. D.

ONE

UP to the age of fourteen, when my father died, my childhood was
the happiest period of my life. It began very far away from here-
in the depths of the province of Tula, where my father filled the
position of steward on the vast estates of the Prince P--. Our
house was situated in one of the Prince's villages, and we lived
a quiet, obscure, but happy, life. A gay little child was I--my
one idea being ceaselessly to run about the fields and the woods
and the garden. No one ever gave me a thought, for my father was
always occupied with business affairs, and my mother with her
housekeeping. Nor did any one ever give me any lessons--a
circumstance for which I was not sorry. At earliest dawn I would
hie me to a pond or a copse, or to a hay or a harvest field,
where the sun could warm me, and I could roam wherever I liked,
and scratch my hands with bushes, and tear my clothes in pieces.
For this I used to get blamed afterwards, but I did not care.

Had it befallen me never to quit that village--had it befallen me
to remain for ever in that spot--I should always have been happy;
but fate ordained that I should leave my birthplace even before
my girlhood had come to an end. In short, I was only twelve years
old when we removed to St. Petersburg. Ah! how it hurts me to
recall the mournful gatherings before our departure, and to
recall how bitterly I wept when the time came for us to say
farewell to all that I had held so dear! I remember throwing
myself upon my father's neck, and beseeching him with tears to
stay in the country a little longer; but he bid me be silent, and
my mother, adding her tears to mine,