My first romantic love

. It happened in t

he summer near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskutchny gardens. I was p

is face for days together. My father treated me with careless kindness; my mother scarcely noticed me, though she had no children except me; other cares completely absorbed her. My father, a man still young and very handsome, had married her from mercenary considerations; she was ten years olde

ed into it, and more often than anything declaimed verses aloud; I knew a great deal of poetry by heart; my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached – so sweetly and absurdly; I was all hope and anticipation, was a little frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; my im

rides, break into a rapid gallop and fancy myself a knight at a tournament.

iance and blue into my soul, t

se in definite shape in my brain; but in all I thought, in all I felt, lay hidden a ha

ing; I breathed in it, it coursed through my veins with ev

who were perpetually jumping on to wooden levers, that pressed down the square blocks of the press, and so by the weight of their feeble bodies struck off the variegated patterns of the wall-papers. The lodge on the right stood empty, and was to let. One day – three weeks after the 9th of May – the blinds in the windows of this lodg

d deferentially, as he handed a dish: 'they don't keep

y mother, 'so m

r a chilly glance

that people, even moderately well-off in the world, would hardly have consented to occupy it. At the time, however, all this wen