h the interest they might excite would be dramatic
enough, they would be in danger of dealing too much with the animal
world to interest adult readers; nor would the narrative have made an
attractive book for boys, since I felt it would be too full of fun (for
my spirits were very high in those days) to suit juvenile tastes. I knew
little of the world, but had seen much of boys (though I had never
belonged to the species), and was well aware that, except as regards
practical jokes, the boy is not gifted with humour. I accordingly looked
about me for some dramatic material of a wholly different kind, and
eventually found it in the person of Count Gotsuchakoff.

It was a mistake to call such a sombre and serious individual by so
ludicrous a name, but it was a characteristic one. My disposition was at
that time lively (not to say frivolous), and the atmosphere I usually
lived in was one of mirth, but, as often happens, it had another side to
it, which was melancholy almost to melodrama. In after years I found
this to be the case in an infinitely greater story-teller, who, while he
delighted all the world with humour and pathos, in reality nourished a
taste for the weird and terrible, which, though its ghastly face but
very rarely showed itself in his writings, was the favourite topic of
his familiar and confidential talk. Tickeracandua himself was not dearer
to me than the Count, who was almost entirely the offspring of my own
invention; and though I have since seen in Nihilist novels a good many
gentlemen of the same type, I venture to think that, slightly as he is
sketched, he will bear comparison with the best of them. The conception
of his long years of enforced silence, and even of the terrible moment
in which he forgot that he was dumb, owed its origin, if I remember
right, to a child's game that was popular in our nursery. It consisted
in resisting the temptation to laugh, and the resolution to reply in
tones of gravity when such questions as 'Have you heard the Emperor of
Morocco is dead?' were put. The adaptation of it, in the substitution of
speech for laughter, suddenly suggested itself, like any other happy
thought.

[Illustration: COUNT GOTSUCHAKOFF]

Instead of writing straight ahead, as the fancy prompted, which, in my
less ambitious attempts at Fiction (like all young writers) I had
hitherto done, I had all these materials pretty well arranged in my mind
before sitting down to write my first book. It was,