horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman's
toothless mouth and into the caverns of her fading eyes.

For hours he would listen with morbid curiosity to the babble of the
idiot Feklusha. At home he read in the most desultory way. He deemed the
secrets of Eastern magic, Russian tales and folk-lore, skimmed Ossian,
Tasso, Homer, or wandered with Cook in strange lands. If he found
nothing to read he lay motionless all day long, as if he were exhausted
with hard work; his fancy carried him beyond Ossian and Homer, beyond
the tales of Cook, until fevered with his imaginings he rose tired,
exhausted, and unable for a long time to resume normal life.

People called him an idler. He feared this accusation, and wept over it
in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something
different, that no one but himself comprehended.

Unfortunately, there was no one to guide him in a definite direction. On
the one hand, his guardian merely saw to it that his masters came at
stated times and that Boris did not avoid school; on the other, his aunt
contented herself with seeing that he was in good health, ate and slept
well, was decently dressed, and as a well-brought-up boy should, did not
consort with every village lout.

Nobody cared to see what he read; his aunt gave him the keys of his
father's library in the old house, where he shut himself in, now to read
Spinoza, now a novel, and another day Voltaire or Boccaccio.

He made better progress in the arts than in the sciences. Here too he
had his tricks. One day the teacher set the pupils to draw eyes, but
Raisky grew tired of that, and proceeded to add a nose and a moustache.