harshness. In the matter of wit and sarcasm, on the other hand, he
was strikingly original.

At one period he spent several winters in succession with his
family in Moscow. One time, after a historic concert given by
Anton Rubinstein, at which Uncle Seryozha and his daughter
had been, he came to take tea with us in Weavers' Row.[13]

[13] Khamsvniki, a street in Moscow.


My father asked him how he had liked the concert.

"Do you remember Himbut, Lyovotchka? Lieutenant
Himbut, who was forester near Yasnaya? I once asked him
what was the happiest moment of his life. Do you know what he
answered?

"'When I was in the cadet corps,' he said, 'they used to take
down my breeches now and again and lay me across a bench and flog
me. They flogged and they flogged; when they stopped, that was the
happiest moment of my life.' Well, it was only during the entr'actes, when
Rubinstein stopped playing, that I really enjoyed myself."

He did not always spare my father.

Once when I was out shooting with a setter near
Pirogovo, I drove in to Uncle Seryozha's to stop the
night.