t, although he had never read a single line of their
writings: reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken:
Diderot and Voltaire really were sticking in his son's head, and not they
only,--but Rousseau and Raynal and Helvetius, and many other writers of
the same sort, were sticking in his head,--but only in his head. Ivan
Petrovitch's former tutor, the retired abbe and encyclopedist, had
contented himself with pouring the whole philosophy of the XVIII century
into his pupil in a mass, and the latter went about brimful of it; it
gained lodgment within him, without mingling with his blood, without
penetrating into his soul, without making itself felt as a firm
conviction.... And could convictions be demanded of a young fellow of
fifty years ago, when we have not even yet grown up to them? He also
embarrassed the visitors to his father's house: he loathed them, and they
feared him; and with his sister, Glafira, who was twelve years older than
he, he did not get on at all.

This Glafira was a strange being; homely, hunchbacked, gaunt, with
stern, staring eyes and thin, tightly compressed lips; in face, voice,
and quick, angular movements, she recalled her grandmother, the gipsy,
the wife of Andrei. Persistent, fond of power, she would not even hear
of marriage. The return of Ivan Petrovitch did not please her; so long
as the Princess Kubenskoy had kept him with her, she had cherished the
hope of receiving at least half of the parental estate: she resembled her
grandmother in her avarice. Moreover, Glafira was envious of her
brother: he was so cultivated, he spoke French so well, with a Parisian
accent, while she was scarcely able to say: "_bon jour_," and "_comment
vous portez vous_?" To tell the truth, her parents did not understand any
French at all,--but that did not render it any the more pleasant for her.

Ivan Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for tedium and
melancholy; he spent nearly a year in the country, and it seemed to him
like ten years.--Only with his mother did he relieve his heart, and he
was wont to sit, by the hour, in her low-ceiled rooms, listening to the
simple prattle of the good woman, and gorging himself with preserves. It
so happened, that among Anna Pavlovna's maids there was one very pretty
girl, with clear, gentle eyes and delicate features, named Malanya, both
clever and modest. She pleased Ivan Petrovitch at first sight, and he
fell in love with her: he fell in l