LOVE AT FIRST

. It happened in t

the summer near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskuchny gardens. I wa

his 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 ol

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 i

op, and fancy myself a knight at a tournament. How gaily the wind whistled in my ears! or turning my face t

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

ng; I breathed in it, and it coursed through my veins with

were perpetually jumping onto 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 be let. One day – three weeks after the 9th of May – the blinds in the windows of this lodg

ked deferentially, as he handed a dish: 'they don't k

y mother, 'so m

r a chilly glance

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