how fervently I would embrace my parents, as though I had not
seen them for ten years. Such a fussing would there be--such a
talking and a telling of tales! To everyone I would run with a
greeting, and laugh, and giggle, and scamper about, and skip for
very joy. True, my father and I used to have grave conversations
about lessons and teachers and the French language and grammar;
yet we were all very happy and contented together. Even now it
thrills me to think of those moments. For my father's sake I
tried hard to learn my lessons, for I could see that he was
spending his last kopeck upon me, and himself subsisting God
knows how. Every day he grew more morose and discontented and
irritable; every day his character kept changing for the worse.
He had suffered an influx of debts, nor were his business affairs
prospering. As for my mother, she was afraid even to say a word,
or to weep aloud, for fear of still further angering him.
Gradually she sickened, grew thinner and thinner, and became
taken with a painful cough. Whenever I reached home from school I
would find every one low-spirited, and my mother shedding silent
tears, and my father raging. Bickering and high words would
arise, during which my father was wont to declare that, though he
no longer derived the smallest pleasure or relaxation from life,
and had spent his last coin upon my education, I had not yet
mastered the French language. In short, everything began to go
wrong, to turn to unhappiness; and for that circumstance, my
father took vengeance upon myself and my mother. How he could
treat my poor mother so I cannot understand. It used to rend my
heart to see her, so hollow were her cheeks becoming, so sunken
her eyes, so hectic her face. But it was chiefly around myself
that the disputes raged. Though beginning only with some trifle,
they would soon go on to God knows what. Frequently, even I