Chapter 17

I GET READY TO PAY SOME CALLS

On awaking next morning my first thoughts were of the affair with
Kolpikoff. Once again I muttered to myself and stamped about the
room, but there was no help for it. To-day was the last day that
I was to spend in Moscow, and it was to be spent, by Papa's
orders, in my paying a round of calls which he had written out
for me on a piece of paper--his first solicitude on our account
being not so much for our morals or our education as for our due
observance of the convenances. On the piece of paper was written
in his swift, broken hand-writing: "(1) Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
WITHOUT FAIL; (2) the Iwins WITHOUT FAIL; (3) Prince Michael; (4)
the Princess Nechludoff and Madame Valakhina if you wish." Of
course I was also to call upon my guardian, upon the rector, and
upon the professors.

These last-mentioned calls, however, Dimitri advised me not to
pay: saying that it was not only unnecessary to do so, but not
the thing. However, there were the other visits to be got
through. It was the first two on the list--those marked as to be
paid "WITHOUT FAIL"--that most alarmed me. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a
bachelor. Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation
between him and myself--myself a sixteen-year-old student!--was
not likely to be interesting. As for the Iwins, they too were
rich--the father being a departmental official of high rank who
had only on one occasion called at our house during my
grandmother's time. Since her death, I had remarked that the
younger Iwin had fought shy of us, and seemed to give himself
airs. The elder of the pair, I had heard, had now finished his
course in jurisprudence, and gone to hold a post in St.
Petersburg, while his brother Sergius (the former object of my
worship) was also in St. Petersburg, as a great fat cadet in the
Corps of Pages.

When I was a young man, not only did I dislike intercourse with
people who thought themselves above me, but such intercourse was,
for me, an unbearable torture, owing partly to my constant dread
of being snubbed, and partly to my straining every faculty of my
intellect to prove to such people my independence. Yet, even if I
failed to fulfil the latter part of my father's instructions, I
felt that I must carry out the former. I paced my room and eyed
my clothes ready disposed on chairs--the tunic, the sword, and
the cap. Just as I was about to set forth, old Grap called to
congratulate me, bringing with him Ilinka. Grap pere was a
Russianised German and an intolerably effusive, sycophantic old
man who was more often than not tipsy. As a rule, he visited us
only when he wanted to ask for something, and