attracted me too, perhaps by his very open disregard for the generally accepted conventions and proprieties. I didn’t see, in fact, that he was simply a fool. Anyway, I got on to friendly terms with him at once, and as I got out of the train, I learnt from him that he would be in the Tverskoy Boulevard between eight and nine. It appeared that he had been a student. I went to the boulevard, and this was the diversion he taught me. We walked together up and down the boulevards, and, a little later, as soon as we noticed a respectable woman walking along the street, if there were no one else near, we fastened upon her. Without uttering a word we walked one on each side of her, and with an air of perfect composure, as though we didn’t see her, began to carry on a most unseemly conversation. We called things by their names, preserving unruffled countenances as though it were the natural thing to do; we entered into such subtleties in our description of all sorts of filth and obscenity as the nastiest mind of the lewdest debauchee could scarcely have conceived. (I had, of course, acquired all this knowledge at the boarding school, before I went to the Grammar School, though I knew only words, nothing of the reality.) The woman was dreadfully frightened, and made haste to try and get away, but we quickened our pace too, and went on in the same way. Our victim, of course, could do nothing; it would be no use to cry out, there were no spectators; besides, it would be a strange thing to complain of. I repeated this diversion for eight days. I can’t think how I can have liked doing it; although, indeed, I didn’t like doing it--I simply did it. At first I thought it original, as something outside everyday conventions and conditions, besides, I couldn’t endure women. I once told the student that in his _Confessions_ Jean Jacques Rousseau describes how, as a youth, he used to behave indecently to women. The student responded with his ‘Ture-lure-loo!’ I noticed that he was extraordinarily ignorant, and that his interests were astonishingly limited. There was no trace of any latent idea such as I hoped to find in him. Instead of originality, I found nothing but a wearisome monotony. I disliked him more and more. The end came quite unexpectedly. One night when it was quite dark, we persecuted a girl who was quickly and timidly walking along the boulevard. She was very young, perhaps sixteen, or even less, very tidily and modestly dressed, possibly a working girl hurrying home to an old widowed mother with other children; there is no need to be sentimental though. The girl listened for some time, and hurried fast as she could with her head bowed and her veil drawn over her face, frightened and trembling. But suddenly she stood still, threw back her veil, showing, as far as I remember, a thin but pretty face, and cried with flashing eyes: “‘Oh, what scoundrels you are!’