me and fed me almost into my grave.'

'To the point, to the point,' we shouted. 'Surely it's not your own
adventures you're going to tell us?'

'No, gentlemen!' the small man replied composedly. 'I am an ordinary
mortal. And so I lived at my German's, as the saying is, in clover. I
did not attend lectures with too much assiduity, while at home I did
positively nothing. In a very short time, I had got to know all my
comrades and was on intimate terms with all of them. Among my new
friends was one rather decent and good-natured fellow, the son of a
town provost on the retired list. His name was Bobov. This Bobov got in
the habit of coming to see me, and seemed to like me. I, too ... do you
know, I didn't like him, nor dislike him; I was more or less
indifferent.... I must tell I hadn't in all Moscow a single relation,
except an old uncle, who used sometimes to ask me for money. I never
went anywhere, and was particularly afraid of women; I also avoided all
acquaintance with the parents of my college friends, ever after one
such parent (in my presence) pulled his son's hair--because a button
was off his uniform, while at the very time I hadn't more than six
buttons on my whole coat. In comparison with many of my comrades, I
passed for being a person of wealth; my father used to send me every
now and then small packets of faded blue notes, and consequently I not
only enjoyed a position of independence, but I was continually
surrounded by toadies and flatterers.... What am I saying?--why, for
that matter, so was my bobtail dog Armishka, who, in spite of his
setter pedigree, was so frightened of a shot, that the very sight of a
gun reduced him to indescribable misery. Like every young man, however,
I was not without that vague inward fermentation which usually, after
bringing forth a dozen more or less shapeless poems, passes off in a