"What for?"

"Oh, nothing. A Greek promised me a job there. In short, till I was
sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no
roots till I got to Poltava. There a student, a Jew, found out that
I wanted to study, and gave me a letter to the Harkov students. Of
course, I went to Harkov. The students consulted together and began
to prepare me for the technical school. And, you know, I must say
the students that I met there were such that I shall never forget
them to the day of my death. To say nothing of their giving me food
and lodging, they set me on the right path, they made me think,
showed me the object of life. Among them were intellectual remarkable
people who by now are celebrated. For instance, you have heard of
Grumaher, haven't you?"

"No, I haven't."

"You haven't! He wrote very clever articles in the _Harkov Gazette_,
and was preparing to be a professor. Well, I read a great deal and
attended the student's societies, where you hear nothing that is
commonplace. I was working up for six months, but as one has to
have been through the whole high-school course of mathematics to
enter the technical school, Grumaher advised me to try for the
veterinary institute, where they admit high-school boys from the
sixth form. Of course, I began working for it. I did not want to
be a veterinary surgeon but they told me that after finishing the
course at the veterinary institute I should be admitted to the
faculty of medicine without examination. I learnt all Kühner; I
could read Cornelius Nepos, _à livre ouvert_; and in Greek I read
through almost all Curtius. But, you know, one thing and another,