in five languages. Cupid, with a plump, naked body,
played a great part in these pictures. To one of them, labelled "Saffron
and Rainbow," was appended the explanation: "The action of this is great
..."; opposite another, which represented "A Heron flying with a violet
blossom in his mouth," stood the inscription: "All of them are known unto
thee." Cupid and a bear licking its cub was designated as: "Little by
little." Fedya contemplated these pictures; he was familiar with the
most minute details of them all; some of them--always the same ones--set
him to thinking and excited his imagination; he knew no other diversions.
When the time came to teach him languages and music, Glafira Petrovna
hired, for a paltry sum, an elderly spinster, a Swede, with frightened,
hare-like eyes, who spoke French and German indifferently, played the
piano after a fashion, and, in addition, knew how to salt cucumbers in
first-class style. In the society of this instructress, of his aunt, and
of an old chambermaid, Vasilievna, Fedya passed four whole years. He
used to sit in the corner with his "Emblems"--and sit ... and sit ...
while the low-ceiled room smelled of geraniums, a solitary tallow candle
burned dimly, a cricket chirped monotonously, as though it were bored,
the little clock ticked hastily on the wall, a mouse stealthily scratched
and gnawed behind the wall-hangings, and the three old maids, like the
Parcae, moved their knitting-needles silently and swiftly to and fro, the
shadows cast by their hands now flitted, again quivered strangely in the
semi-darkness, and strange thoughts, also half-dark, swarmed in the
child's head. No one would have called Fedya an interesting child: he
was quite pallid, but fat, awkwardly built, and clumsy,--"a regular
peasant," according to Glafira Petrovna's expression; the pallor would
speedily have disappeared from his face if he had been permitted to go
out of doors more frequently. He studied tolerably well, although he
frequently idled; he never wept; on the other hand, at times a fierce
obstinacy came over him; then no one could do anything with him. Fedya
loved none of the persons around him.... Woe to the heart which loves not
in its youth!

Thus did Ivan Petrovitch find him, and without loss of time he set to
work to apply his system to him.--"I want to make a man of him first of
all, _un homme_,"--he said to Glafira Petrovna:--"and not only a man,
but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began the e