Chapter 9

HOW I PREPARED MYSELF FOR THE EXAMINATIONS

On the Thursday in Easter week Papa, my sister, Katenka, and Mimi
went away into the country, and no one remained in my
grandmother's great house but Woloda, St. Jerome, and myself. The
frame of mind which I had experienced on the day of my confession
and during my subsequent expedition to the monastery had now
completely passed away, and left behind it only a dim, though
pleasing, memory which daily became more and more submerged by
the impressions of this emancipated existence.

The folio endorsed "Rules of My Life" lay concealed beneath a
pile of school-books. Although the idea of the possibility of
framing rules, for every occasion in my life and always letting
myself be guided by them still pleased me (since it appeared an
idea at once simple and magnificent, and I was determined to make
practical application of it), I seemed somehow to have forgotten
to put it into practice at once, and kept deferring doing so
until such and such a moment. At the same time, I took pleasure
in the thought that every idea which now entered my head could be
allotted precisely to one or other of my three sections of tasks
and duties--those for or to God, those for or to my neighbour, and
those for or to myself. "I can always refer everything to them,"
I said to myself, "as well as the many, many other ideas which
occur to me on one subject or another." Yet at this period I
often asked myself, "Was I better and more truthful when I only
believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so
now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and
am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?" To
this I could return no positive answer.

The sense of freedom, combined with the spring-like feeling of
vague expectation to which I have referred already, so unsettled
me that I could not keep myself in hand--could make none but the
sorriest of preparations for my University ordeal. Thus I was
busy in the schoolroom one morning, and fully aware that I must
work hard, seeing that to-morrow was the day of my examination in
a subject of which I had the two whole questions still to read
up; yet no sooner had a breath of spring come wafted through the
window than I felt as though there were something quite different
that I wished to recall to my memory. My hands laid down my book,
my feet began to move of themselves, and to set me walking up and
down the room, and my head felt as though some one had suddenly
touched in it a little spring and set some machine in motion--so
easily and swiftly and naturally did all sorts of pleasing
fancies of which I could catch no more than the radiancy begin