e had any experience at such hands, it is bitterly plain
that of all merciless cruelty of civilized lands, that of boys under
twenty-five is the most remorseless.

It is, then, not difficult to understand that, from the first days, Ivan
was in a situation undreamed-of even by his father. In the immediate
beginning Becker, awed by his knowledge of the enormous power wielded by
Prince Michael, would have treated Michael's son with some sort of
consideration. He was soon shown his mistake. The boys he was supposed
to teach had none of them, as yet, ever come under the eye of the
mysterious, hardly-credited "Third Section." Upon the day following
Ivan's arrival, therefore, there was held, in the dormitory inhabited by
the upper ten of the dreaded "first class," a solemn conclave, headed by
the lords of the school: Sitsky, Sablef, Osinin, Pryanishikoff, and
Blashkov--this last actually a second cousin of Ivan. The decision
resulting from the debate, held when the lower school was at drill, was
spread abroad without delay by certain methods known only to the boys.
By nightfall every cadet knew that young Gregoriev's status had been
fixed; and henceforth none would dream of disputing it till the boy in
question had passed his second year. By the third day the masters had
read and accepted the decree, quietly assigning the new boy to his
destined oblivion. For Ivan was a Gregoriev, son of a trans-Moskva
house, and had never even seen the Equerries' Quarter! grandson,
moreover, of a creature who had _worked_. Worse yet, he was the son of
what was really no more than a police officer. (For, though officialdom
meant much in their ranks, the police was beyond the pale of their
bigoted respect.) Thus it is easy to recognize Ivan's natural place, and
why he must henceforth regard himself honored if a member of the upper
school so much as addressed to him a command. This much the week
decided. But it was Sunday night before active persecution began.

Boys' schools, be they in what country they may, are as much alike as
boy nature is alike and unalterable the world over, from age to age.
Only the details differ. At Rugby, new boys undergo blanket-tossing. In
France there is a custom less vigorous though physically more painful.
In the Moscow _Corps des Cadets_, in the fifties, matters were as much
more savage as Russian civilization was, at that day, lower than that of
England. In the Kishinaia, then, the popular form of hazing is--or