Chapter 36 - Page 2

of me, with his legs resting in free and
easy style on another bench (a hit, somehow I thought, at
myself), and conversing with a student as he threw occasional
glances in my direction. Iwin's set by my side were talking in
French, yet every word which I overheard of their conversation
seemed to me both stupid and incorrect ("Ce n'est pas francais,"
I thought to myself), while all the attitudes, utterances, and
doings of Semenoff, Ilinka, and the rest struck me as uniformly
coarse, ungentlemanly, and "comme il ne faut pas."

Thus, attached to no particular set, I felt isolated and unable
to make friends, and so grew resentful. One of the students on
the bench in front of me kept biting his nails, which were raw to
the quick already, and this so disgusted me that I edged away
from him. In short, I remember finding my first day a most
depressing affair.

When the professor entered, and there was a general stir and a
cessation of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at
him, as also that he began his discourse with a sentence which I
thought devoid of meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from
first to last, so clever that not a word ought to be taken from
or added to it. Disappointed in this, I at once proceeded to draw
beneath the heading "First Lecture" with which I had adorned my
beautifully-bound notebook no less than eighteen faces in
profile, joined together in a sort of chaplet, and only
occasionally moved my hand along the page in order to give the
professor (who, I felt sure, must be greatly interested in me)
the impression that I was writing something. In fact, at this
very first lecture I came to the decision which I maintained to
the end of my course, namely, that it was unnecessary, and even
stupid, to take down every word said by every professor.

At subsequent lectures, however, I did not feel my isolation so
strongly, since I made several acquaintances and got into the way
of shaking hands and entering into conversation. Yet for some
reason or another no real intimacy ever sprang up between us, and
I often found myself depressed and only feigning cheerfulness.
With the set which comprised Iwin and "the aristocrats," as they
were generally known, I could not make any headway at all, for,
as I now remember, I was always shy and churlish to them, and
nodded to them only when they nodded to me; so that they had
little inducement to desire my acquaintance. With most of the
other students, however, this arose from quite a different cause.
As soon as ever I discerned friendliness on the part of a
comrade, I at once gave him to understand that I went to luncheon
with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch and kept my own drozhki. All