My dear Falaléy Trifónovich, my beloved child, my shining light, my clever son, I am not feeling well! It will be hard for me to go away from you. To whose care shall I leave you? That fiend will ruin you; that old brute will maim you some day. Take good care of yourself, my shining light, take the best care you can of yourself! Leave him alone, for you can’t do anything with that devil, the Lord forgive me for saying so! Come to our estate, my dear one, as soon as you can. Let me get a look at you, for my heart has the presentiment that my end has come. Good-bye, my dear one, good-bye, my shining light: I, your mother Akulína Sidórovna, send you my blessing and my humblest greeting, my shining light. Good-bye, my dove: do not forget me! FOOTNOTES: [144] French criminals had the lily burnt upon their backs, hence they wanted to be buried unwashed, that their disgrace should not become apparent. [145] For which the punishment would be a penance of fasting. [146] His wife’s name. Denís Ivánovich Fon-Vízin. (1744-1792.) Denís Fon-Vízin tells us in his _Confession_ (given below) what his early education was. Even the Moscow University was filled with ignorant, corrupt teachers, and in the country the conditions were naturally much worse. Nor could it have been different in the early part of Catherine’s reign. The older generation was steeped in ignorance and superstition, and the upper classes, who carried Voltaire and liberalism on their lips, ranted of a culture of the heart, which was nothing else than an excuse for extreme superficiality, as something superior to culture of the mind. Such a period is naturally productive of characters for comedy and satire. Fon-Vízin, who had the talent for satirical observation, was himself a product of the superficiality of his time. In his letters from abroad he assumed a haughty air of Russian superiority over matters French, German and European in general, aiding in the evolution of a sickly Slavophilism which a Russian critic has characterised as “subacid patriotism.” Unfortunately for their originality, most of these attacks on the French and Germans are taken from French and German sources.