I tried to find pleasure in the new life which stood before me; I tried to believe in the endearing words with which Theodor Ivanovich enticed me to him; I tried not to perceive the contempt with which the other children received me, because I was smaller than they; I tried to think that it was a shame for a big boy to go on living with little girls, and there was no good at all in the life upstairs with my nurse; but at heart I was frightfully miserable, and I knew that I had lost beyond recall innocence and happiness, and only the feeling of my own dignity, the consciousness that I was doing my duty, sustained me.
“Many times, subsequently, in the course of my life it has been my lot to experience such moments at the turning-points of life as I turned into fresh paths. I have experienced a silent misery at irreparable losses. Whatever they may have said to me about going down to the other children, the chief thing I remember is the khalat[1] with the strap sewn on to the back, which they put on me so as to separate me for ever from the life upstairs, and then for the first time I observed not all those with whom I had lived upstairs hitherto, but the chief person with whom I lived and whom I did not remember before. This was my aunt, T. A. I remember her as a smallish, stout, dark-haired, kind, fresh, compassionate person. She dressed me in my khalat, fitted it round me, fastened my belt, and kissed me, and I saw that she felt the same thing as I did; she felt that it was sad, terribly sad, but
- ↑ A long jacket.
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