him like a doll, gave him teachers of every kind, and placed him
under the care of a French tutor--an ex-abbé, a pupil of Jean Jacques
Rousseau--a certain M. Courtin de Vaucelles an adroit and subtle
intriguer--"the very _fine fleur_ of the emigration," as she expressed
herself; and she ended by marrying this _fine fleur_ when she was
almost seventy years old. She transferred all her property to
his name, and soon afterwards, rouged, perfumed with amber _á la
Richelieu_, surrounded by negro boys, Italian grey-hounds, and noisy
parrots, she died, stretched on a crooked silken couch of the style of
Louis the Fifteenth, with an enamelled snuff-box of Petitot's work
in her hands--and died deserted by her husband. The insinuating M.
Courtin had preferred to take himself and her money off to Paris.

Ivan was in his twentieth year when this unexpected blow struck him.
We speak of the Princess's marriage, not her death. In his aunt's
house, in which he had suddenly passed from the position of a wealthy
heir to that of a hanger-on, he would not slay any longer. In
Petersburg, the society in which he had grown up closed its doors upon
him. For the lower ranks of the public service, and the laborious and
obscure life they involved, he felt a strong repugnance. All this, it
must be remembered, took place in the earliest part of the reign of
the Emperor Alexander I[A]. He was obliged, greatly against his will,
to return to his father's country house. Dirty, poor, and miserable
did the paternal nest seem to him. The solitude and the dullness of a
retired country life offended him at every step. He was devoured by
ennui; besides, every one in the house, except his mother, regarded
him with unloving eyes. His father disliked his metropolitan
habits, his dress-coats and shirt-frills, his books, his flute, his
cleanliness--from which he justly argued that his son regarded him
with a feeling of aversion. He was always grumbling at his son, and