triarchs before the Flood. He did not know one of
them, except Enoch, who had been taken up alive to heaven. Last
time he had remembered their names, but now he had forgotten them
utterly, chiefly because Enoch was the personage he liked best in
the whole of the Old Testament, and Enoch's translation to heaven
was connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought, in
which he became absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes
at his father's watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned button on his
waistcoat.

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seryozha
disbelieved entirely. He did not believe that those he loved
could die, above all that he himself would die. That was to him
something utterly inconceivable and impossible. But he had been
told that all men die; he had asked people, indeed, whom he
trusted, and they too, had confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said
the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it
followed that everyone did not die. "And why cannot anyone else
so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?" thought Seryozha.
Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might die,
but the good might all be like Enoch.

"Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?"

"Enoch, Enos--"

"But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very
bad. If you don't try to learn what is more necessary than
anything for a Christian," said his father, getting up, "whatever
can interest you? I am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch"
(this was the most important of his teachers) "is displeased with
you.... I shall have to punish you."

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha,
and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it
could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was
far cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to
Seryozha. In his father's opinion, he did not want to learn what
he was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could
not, because the claims of his own soul were more binding on him
than those claims his father and his teacher made upon him.
Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict
with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but
he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as
the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no
one into his soul. His teachers complained that he would not
learn, while his