from thy womb good for nothing--not fit even for life. There goes a
cock-sparrow, hopping along with outspread wings; he chirrups, and
every note, every ruffled feather on his little body, is breathing with
health and strength....

What follows from that? Nothing. He is well and has a right to chirrup
and ruffle his wings; but I am ill and must die--that's all. It's not
worth while to say more about it. And tearful invocations to nature are
mortally absurd. Let us get back to my story.

I was brought up, as I have said, very badly and not happily. I had no
brothers or sisters. I was educated at home. And, indeed, what would my
mother have had to occupy her, if I had been sent to a boarding-school
or a government college? That's what children are for--that their
parents may not be bored. We lived for the most part in the country,
and sometimes went to Moscow. I had tutors and teachers, as a matter of
course; one, in particular, has remained in my memory, a dried-up,
tearful German, Rickmann, an exceptionally mournful creature, cruelly
maltreated by destiny, and fruitlessly consumed by an intense pining
for his far-off fatherland. Sometimes, near the stove, in the fearful
stuffiness of the close ante-room, full of the sour smell of stale
kvas, my unshaved man-nurse, Vassily, nicknamed Goose, would sit,
playing cards with the coachman, Potap, in a new sheepskin, white as
foam, and superb tarred boots, while in the next room Rickmann would
sing, behind the partition--

Herz, mein Herz, warum so traurig?
Was bekuemmert dich so sehr?
'Sist ja schoen im fremden Lande--
Herz, mein Herz--was willst du mehr?'