"And how is your dear father?" But when he saw that the mother was
dead (a fact of which he was perfectly well aware) his face clouded
over. "She was a child of God," he said, as if he were talking to
himself, in a gushing, sympathetic, whining voice, but the remark
conveyed at the same time a certain reproach against the "dear father,"
who was only a professor and knight. After that Theodore could go.

When he left the assembly-room he felt that he had gone through an
almost impossible experience. Were all those lads really depraved
because they used oaths and coarse language, as his companions, his
father, his uncle, and all the upper classes did at times? What did
the minister mean when he talked of immorality? They were more savage
than the spoilt children of the wealthy, but that was because they
were more fully alive. It was unfair to blame them for missing
marriage certificates. True, his father had never committed a theft,
but there was no necessity for a man to steal if he had an income of
six thousand crowns and could please himself. The act would be absurd
or abnormal in such a case.

Theodore went back to school realising what it meant "to have received
an education"; here nobody was badgered for small faults. As little
notice as possible was taken of one's own or one's parent's weaknesses,
one was among equals and understood one another.

After school one "held the reviews," sneaked into a cafe and drank a
liqueur, and finally went to the fencing-room. He looked at the young
officers who treated him as their equal, observed all those young
bloods with their supple limbs, pleasant manners and smiling faces,
every one of them certain that a good dinner was awaiting him at home,
and became conscious of the existence of two worlds: an upper and an