crying. Once more I found myself in the same protracted dilemma.
Though vexed, I felt sorry for her, since her tears appeared to be
genuine--even though I also had an idea that it was not so much for my
mother that she was weeping as for the fact that she was unhappy, and
had known happier days. How it would all have ended I do not know, had
not her son reappeared and said that his father desired to see her.
Thereupon she rose, and was just about to leave the room, when the
General himself entered. He was a small, grizzled, thick-set man, with
bushy black eyebrows, a grey, close-cropped head, and a very stern,
haughty expression of countenance.

I rose and bowed to him, but the General (who was wearing three stars
on his green frockcoat) not only made no response to my salutation, but
scarcely even looked at me; so that all at once I felt as though I were
not a human being at all, but only some negligible object such as a
settee or window; or, if I were a human being, as though I were quite
indistinguishable from such a negligible object.

"Then you have not yet written to the Countess, my dear?" he said to his
wife in French, and with an imperturbable, yet determined, expression on
his countenance.

"Good-bye, Monsieur Irtenieff," Madame said to me, in her turn, as she
made a proud gesture with her head and looked at my eyebrows just as her
son had done. I bowed to her, and again to her husband, but my second
salutation made no more impression upon him than if a window had just
been opened or closed. Nevertheless the younger Iwin accompanied me to
the door, and on the way told me that he was to go to St. Petersburg
University, since his father had been appointed to a post in that city
(and young Iwin named a very high office in the service).

"Well, his Papa may do whatsoever he likes," I muttered to myself as I
climbed into the drozhki, "but at all events I will never set foot in
that house again. His wife weeps and looks at me as though I were the
embodiment of woe, while that old pig of a General does not even give
me a bow. However, I will get even with him some day." How I meant to do
that I do not know, but my words nevertheless came true.

Afterwards, I frequently found it necessary to remember the advice of
my father when he said that I must cultivate the acquaintanceship of the
Iwins, and not expect a man in the position of General Iwin to pay any
attention to a boy like myself. But I had figured in that