endure him.'... This idea grew and strengthened in the old man's head.
They say all persons in power, as they grow old, are readily caught by
that bait, the bait of exclusive personal devotion....

Semyon Matveitch had good reason to call Mr. Ratsch his Araktcheev....
He might well have called him another name too. 'You're not one to make
difficulties,' he used to say to him. He had begun in this
condescendingly familiar tone with him from the very first, and my
stepfather would gaze fondly at Semyon Matveitch, let his head droop
deprecatingly on one side, and laugh with good-humoured simplicity, as
though to say, 'Here I am, entirely in your hands.'

Ah, I feel my hands shaking, and my heart's thumping against the table
on which I write at this moment. It's terrible for me to recall those
days, and my blood boils.... But I will tell everything to the end... to
the end!

A new element had come into Mr. Ratsch's treatment of me during my brief
period of favour. He began to be deferential to me, to be respectfully
familiar with me, as though I had grown sensible, and become more on a
level with him. 'You've done with your airs and graces,' he said to me
one day, as we were going back from the big house to the lodge. 'Quite
right too! All those fine principles and delicate sentiments--moral
precepts in fact--are not for us, young lady, they're not for poor
folks.'

When I had fallen out of favour, and Michel did not think it necessary
to disguise his contempt for Mr. Ratsch and his sympathy with me, the
latter suddenly redoubled his severity with me; he was continually
following me about, as though I were capable of any crime, and must be