The owner of eighty-two serfs, whom he set free before his death, an
old Gottingen student, and disciple of the 'Illuminati,' the author
of a manuscript work on 'transformations or typifications of the
spirit in the world'--a work in which Schelling's philosophy,
Swedenborgianism and republicanism were mingled in the most original
fashion--Bersenyev's father brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow
immediately after his mother's death, and at once himself undertook
his education. He prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself
with extraordinary conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he
was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull,
hesitating voice, used obscure and roundabout expressions,
metaphorical by preference, and was shy even of his son, whom he loved
passionately. It was not surprising that his son was simply bewildered
at his lessons, and did not advance in the least. The old man (he was
almost fifty, he had married late in life) surmised at last that
things were not going quite right, and he placed his Andrei in a
school. Andrei began to learn, but he was not removed from his
father's supervision; his father visited him unceasingly, wearying the
schoolmaster to death with his instructions and conversation; the
teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits; he was for ever
bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on education.
Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old man's
swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in a
sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this
grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long
nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost
as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them
about Washington: 'My young nurslings,' he began, but at the first
sounds of his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old