cord: he called
himself an attorney. His sister, my aunt, kept the house. She was an
old maid of fifty: my father had already left his fortieth year behind
him. She was a very pious woman. In fact, to tell the truth, she was a
great hypocrite, gossiping and meddlesome, and she did not have a kind
heart like my father. We were not poor, but we had no more than we
really needed. My father had also a brother, named Gregory, but he had
been accused of seditious actions and Jacobinical sentiments (so it
ran in the _ukase_), and he had been sent to Siberia in 1797.

Gregory's son David, my cousin, was left on my father's hands, and he
lived with us. He was only a year older than I, but I gave way to him
and obeyed him as if he had been a most important personage. He was a
bright boy of a good deal of character, sturdy and broad-shouldered,
with a square, freckled face, red hair, small gray eyes, thick lips, a
short nose and short fingers, and of a strength far beyond his years.
My aunt could not endure him, and my father was afraid of him, or
perhaps had a consciousness of guilt before him. There had been a
rumor that if my father had not told too much and left his brother in
the lurch, David's father would not have been sent to Siberia. We
were both in the same class in the gymnasium, and we both made good
progress--I somewhat better than David. My memory was stronger than
his, but boys, as every one knows, do not appreciate that advantage:
they are not proud of it; and in spite of it I always looked up to
David.

II.

My name, as you know, is Alexis. I was born on the seventh of March,
and celebrate my birthday on the seventeenth. They gave me, according
to the old custom, the name of one of those saints whose anniversary
fell ten days after my birth. My godfather was a certain Anastasius
Anistasiovitch Putschkow, or Nastasa Nastasaitch, as he was always
called. He was a fearful liar and slanderer and cheat--a thoroughly
bad man: he had been turned out of a government office, and had been
brought before the court more than once; but my father needed him:
they "worked" together. In appearance he was stout and bloated, with a
face like a fox, a nose as sharp as a needle, little dark, glistening
eyes, like a fox's eyes, and he kept them always moving from side to
side; and he moved his nose too, as if he were sniffing something in
the air. He wore high-heeled shoes, and he powdered his hair every
day, which was con