I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a man what he was thinking of. It was a question which could not be answered. One's thoughts were always sudden and many, about all that passed before one's eyes, of what one saw yesterday or a year ago. It was all mixed up together, elusive, constantly moving and changing. The serial in "The Moscow Gazette" was not enough to last the evening, and I went on to read the journals which were put away under the bed in the bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously: "What do you find to read there? It is all pictures." But under the bed, besides the "Painting Review," lay also "Flames," and so we read "Count Tyatin-Baltiski," by Saliass. The master took a great fancy to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed mercilessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the melancholy adventures of the hero, crying: "Really, that is most amusing!" "Piffle!" said the mistress to show her independence of mind. The literature under the bed did me a great service. Through it, I had obtained the right to read the papers in the kitchen, and thus made it possible to read at night. To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the nursery for the nurse had a drunken fit. Victorushka did not interfere with me. As soon as the household was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have a light, for they took the candles into the bedrooms, and I had no money to buy them for myself; so I began to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also poured lamp oil, and, making a wick with some thread, was able to make a smoky light. This I put on the stove for the night.