I am this year twenty-eight years old. Here are my earliest
recollections; I was living in the Tambov province, in the country house
of a rich landowner, Ivan Matveitch Koltovsky, in a small room on the
second storey. With me lived my mother, a Jewess, daughter of a dead
painter, who had come from abroad, a woman always ailing, with an
extraordinarily beautiful face, pale as wax, and such mournful eyes,
that sometimes when she gazed long at me, even without looking at her, I
was aware of her sorrowful, sorrowful eyes, and I would burst into tears
and rush to embrace her. I had tutors come to me; I had music lessons,
and was called 'miss.' I dined at the master's table together with my
mother. Mr. Koltovsky was a tall, handsome old man with a stately
manner; he always smelt of _ambre_. I stood in mortal terror of him,
though he called me Suzon and gave me his dry, sinewy hand to kiss under
its lace-ruffles. With my mother he was elaborately courteous, but he
talked little even with her. He would say two or three affable words, to
which she promptly made a hurried answer; and he would be silent and sit
looking about him with dignity, and slowly picking up a pinch of Spanish
snuff from his round, golden snuff-box with the arms of the Empress
Catherine on it.

My ninth year has always remained vivid in my memory.... I learnt then,
from the maids in the servants' room, that Ivan Matveitch Koltovsky was
my father, and almost on the same day, my mother, by his command, was
married to Mr. Ratsch, who was something like a steward to him. I was
utterly unable to comprehend the possibility of such a thing, I was
bewildered, I was almost ill, my brain suffered under the strain, my
mind was overclouded. 'Is it true, is it true, mamma,' I asked her,
'that scented bogey' (that was my name for Ivan Matveitch) 'is my
father?' My mother was terribly scared, she shut my mouth.... 'Never
speak to any one of that, do you hear, Susanna, do you hear, not a