boiling; my father, seated near the window, had just opened the
_Court Almanac_ which he received every year. This book had great
influence over him; he read it with extreme attention, and reading
prodigiously stirred up his bile. My mother, knowing by heart all
his ways and oddities, used to try to hide the miserable book, and
often whole months would pass without a sight of it. But, in revenge
whenever he did happen to find it, he would sit for hours with the
book before his eyes.

Well, my father was reading the _Court Almanac_, frequently shrugging
his shoulders, and murmuring: "'General!' Umph, he was a sergeant
in my company. 'Knight of the Orders of Russia.' Can it be so long
since we--?"

Finally he flung the _Almanac_ away on the sofa and plunged into deep
thought; a proceeding that never presaged anything good.

"Avoditia," said he, brusquely, to my mother, "how old is Peter?"

"His seventeenth precious year has just begun," said my mother.
"Peter was born the year Aunt Anastasia lost her eye, and that
was--"

"Well, well," said my father, "it is time he should join the army.
It is high time he should give up his nurse, leap-frog and pigeon
training."

The thought of a separation so affected my poor mother that she let
the spoon fall into the preserving pan, and tears rained from her eyes.