We paid such a high salary to this teacher that my step-mother found it necessary to dismiss him, in order to add one hundred roubles to the cook’s wages, and another cheaper teacher was hired for me. He belonged to the class of people who write in their will that they are to be buried without being washed. His affection for his ungrateful country was so strong that he always had the name of Paris in his mouth, in spite of the fact that he had been driven out of his country with the coat of arms of a full-blown lily imprinted on his back.[144] He knew by heart the names of all the streets of Paris, and the external walls of all the prominent buildings of that city were familiar to him, but he had never had the courage to enter them. He was so adorned with wisdom that he knew everything without having studied anything. He had an absolute contempt for everything that did not transpire in France. For other things he had no mind, for frequently, in a fit of abstraction, he put other people’s property into his pockets, the result of which was a certain misunderstanding, as he called it, between him and the police. The police proved that he had stolen, but he affirmed the word “steal” was the invention of crass ignorance, and that an honest man must defend his honour from the police by means of the rapier. So he invited the commissary of police to fight a duel with him. The latter not being as good a talker as he was wont to stick to incontrovertible proofs, ordered my mentor to be cast into prison. My mother was quite put out about him, for she said she did not know where to get another cheap teacher like him. However, there arrived at that time some guests at our house who assured her that that very day there had arrived in Moscow the coachman of the French ambassador, with his scullion, hair-dresser, courier and lackey, who did not wish to return with him, and that for the common good of the people of Moscow they had the intention of imparting their arts to those who wanted to be instructed for a reasonable consideration, though somewhat higher than the price they had received in the stable, kitchen, kennel, or for blackening shoes and making wigs.