giving lessons in different
good families.

She went away leaving behind her the faint fragrance of a woman's
clothes. For a long time afterwards Vorotov could not settle to
work, but, sitting at the table stroking its green baize surface,
he meditated.

"It's very pleasant to see a girl working to earn her own living,"
he thought. "On the other hand, it's very unpleasant to think that
poverty should not spare such elegant and pretty girls as Alice
Osipovna, and that she, too, should have to struggle for existence.
It's a sad thing!"

Having never seen virtuous Frenchwomen before, he reflected also
that this elegantly dressed young lady with her well-developed
shoulders and exaggeratedly small waist in all probability followed
another calling as well as giving French lessons.

The next evening when the clock pointed to five minutes to seven,
Mdlle. Enquete appeared, rosy from the frost. She opened Margot,
which she had brought with her, and without introduction began:

"French grammar has twenty-six letters. The first letter is called
_A_, the second _B_ . . ."

"Excuse me," Vorotov interrupted, smiling. "I must warn you,
mademoiselle, that you must change your method a little in my case.
You see, I know Russian, Greek, and Latin well. . . . I've studied
comparative philology, and I think we might omit Margot and pass
straight to reading some author."

And he explained to the French girl how grown-up people learn
languages.

"A friend of mine," he said, "wanting to learn modern languages,
laid before him the French, German, and Latin gospels, and read
them side by side, carefully analysing each word, and would you
believe it, he attained his object in less than a year. Let us do
the same. We'll take some author and read him."

The French girl looked at him in perplexity. Evidently the suggestion
seemed to her very naive and ridiculous. If this strange proposal
had been made to her by a child, she would certainly have been angry
and have scolded it, but as he was a grown-up man and very stout
and she could not scold him, she only shrugged her shoulders hardly
perceptibly and said:

"As you please."

Vorotov rummaged in his bookcase and picked out a dog's-eared French
book.

"Will this do?"

"It's all the same," she said.

"In that case let us begin, and good luck to it! Let's begin with
the title . . . 'Memoires.'"

"Reminiscences," Mdlle. Enquete translated.

With a good-natured smile, breathing