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Updated: July 1, 2025
When we arrived at a steep descent, we all got out and ran down it to a little bridge, while Vassili and Jakoff followed, supporting the carriage on either side, as though to hold it up in the event of its threatening to upset. After that, Mimi gave permission for a change of seats, and sometimes Woloda or myself would ride in the carriage, and Lubotshka or Katenka in the britchka.
In everything she was simple and natural, so that, whereas Katenka always looked as though she were trying to be like some one else, Lubotshka looked people straight in the face, and sometimes fixed them so long with her splendid black eyes that she got blamed for doing what was thought to be improper.
After "cat and mouse", another game followed in which the gentlemen sit on one row of chairs and the ladies on another, and choose each other for partners. The youngest princess always chose the younger Iwin, Katenka either Woloda or Ilinka, and Sonetchka Seriosha nor, to my extreme astonishment, did Sonetchka seem at all embarrassed when her cavalier went and sat down beside her.
Katenka and I cared nothing for serious works, but preferred, above all things, "Le Fou" and "The Nightingale" the latter of which Katenka would play until her fingers almost became invisible, and which I too was beginning to execute with much vigour and some continuity.
Thus I brought myself to such a condition that, for the first two days after our arrival home, I somehow considered it incumbent upon me always to appear sad and moody in the presence of the household, and especially before Katenka, whom I looked upon as a great connoisseur in matters of this kind, and to whom I threw out a hint of the condition in which my heart was situated.
For instance, the fact that she always signed the sign of the cross over Papa before going to bed, that she and Katenka invariably wept in church when attending requiem masses for Mamma, and that Katenka sighed and rolled her eyes about when playing the piano all these things seemed to me sheer make-believe, and I asked myself: "At what period did they learn to pretend like grown-up people, and how can they bring themselves to do it?"
"Let her teach the girls. WE have our Karl Ivanitch." I shared to the full his dislike of "certain people." "Ask Mamma to let us go hunting too," Katenka whispered to me, as she caught me by the sleeve just when the elders of the family were making a move towards the dining-room. "Very well. I will try." Grisha likewise took a seat in the dining-room, but at a little table apart from the rest.
I shall meet much more of the same kind during my life," but at all events Woloda had never yet looked upon Katenka with a man's eyes. All that summer Woloda appeared to find things very wearisome a fact which arose out of that contempt for us all which, as I have said, he made no effort to conceal.
After discoursing awhile of the weather and the amenities of country life, he skilfully directed the conversation to piano-tuners, music, and pianos generally, and ended by saying that he himself played and in truth he did sit down and perform three waltzes, with Mimi, Lubotshka, and Katenka grouped about the instrument, and watching him as he did so.
Woloda was wearing a new blue frockcoat with brass buttons, a gold watch, and shiny boots. At the door stood Papa's phaeton, which Nicola duly opened; and presently, when Woloda and St. Jerome set out for the University, the girls particularly Katenka could be seen gazing with beaming faces from the window at Woloda's pleasing figure as it sat in the carriage.
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