The same day, learning that Yermil was still in the village, and would not till early next morning be despatched to the town for the execution of certain legal formalities, which were intended to check the arbitrary proceedings of the landowners, but served only as a source of additional revenue to the functionaries in superintendence of them, I sought him out, and, for lack of money of my own, handed him a bundle, in which I had tied up two pocket-handkerchiefs, a shabby pair of slippers, a comb, an old night-gown, and a perfectly new silk cravat. Yermil, whom I had to wake up--he was lying on a heap of straw in the back yard, near the cart--Yermil took my present rather indifferently, with some hesitation in fact, did not thank me, promptly poked his head into the straw and fell asleep again. I went home somewhat disappointed. I had imagined that he would be astonished and overjoyed at my visit, would see in it a pledge of my magnanimous intentions for the future--and instead of that ... ‘You may say what you like--these people have no feeling,’ was my reflection on my homeward way. My grandmother, who had for some reason left me in peace the whole of that memorable day, looked at me suspiciously when I came after supper to say good-night to her. ‘Your eyes are red,’ she observed to me in French; ‘and there’s a smell of the peasant’s hut about you. I am not going to enter into an examination of what you’ve been feeling and doing--I should not like to be obliged to punish you--but I hope you will get over all your foolishness, and begin to conduct yourself once more in a manner befitting a well-bred boy. However, we are soon going back to Moscow, and I shall get you a tutor--as I see you need a man’s hand to manage you. You can go.’ We did, as a fact, go back soon after to Moscow. II 1837 Seven years had passed by. We were living as before at Moscow--but I was by now a student in my second year--and the authority of my grandmother, who had aged very perceptibly in the last years, no longer weighed upon me. Of all my fellow-students the one with whom I was on the friendliest terms was a light-hearted and good-natured youth called Tarhov. Our habits and our tastes were similar. Tarhov was a great lover of poetry, and himself wrote verses; while in me the seeds sown by Punin had not been without fruit. As is often the case with young people who are very close friends, we had no secrets from one another. But behold, for several days together I noticed a certain excitement and agitation in Tarhov.... He disappeared for hours at a time, and I did not know where he had got to--a thing which had never happened before. I was on the point of demanding, in the name of friendship, a full explanation.... He anticipated me. One day I was sitting in his room.... ‘Petya,’ he said suddenly, blushing gaily, and looking me straight in the face, ‘I must introduce you to my muse.’