Dear Sir, Iván Ivánovich:--I received yesterday your Excellency’s letter of May 24th, in which I see an unchangeable token of your distinguished favour to me, and which has greatly pleased me, especially because you have deigned to express your assurance that I would never abandon the sciences. I do not at all wonder at the judgment of the others, for they really have had the example in certain people who, having barely opened for themselves the road to fortune, have at once set out on other paths and have sought out other means for their farther advancement than the sciences, which they have entirely abandoned; their patrons ask little or nothing of them, and are satisfied with their mere names, not like your Excellency who ask for my works in order to judge me. In these above-mentioned men, who in their fortune have abandoned science, all can easily perceive that all they know is what they have acquired in their infancy under the rod, and that they have added no new knowledge since they have had control of themselves. But it has been quite different with me (permit me, dear sir, to proclaim the truth not for the sake of vainglory, but in order to justify myself): my father was a good-hearted man, but he was brought up in extreme ignorance; my step-mother was an evil and envious woman, and she tried with all her might and main to rouse my father’s anger by representing to him that I eternally wasted my time with books; so I was frequently compelled to read and study anything that fell into my hands, in lonely and deserted places, and to suffer cold and hunger, until I went to the School of the Redeemer. Now that I have, through your fatherly intercession, a complete sufficiency from her august Imperial Highness, and your approbation of my labours, and that of other experts and lovers of the sciences, and almost their universal delight in them, and finally no longer a childish reasoning of an imperfect age,--how could I in my manhood disgrace my early life? But I shall stop troubling your patience with these considerations, knowing your just opinion of me. So I shall report to your Excellency that which your praiseworthy zeal wishes to know of the sciences.