I went away with the "Secrets of Peterburg," by Prince Meshtcheski, and began to read the book with great attention. But before I had read many pages I saw that the Peterburgian "secrets" were considerably less interesting than those of Madrid, London, or Paris. The only part which took my fancy was the fable of _Svoboda_ (Liberty) and _Palka_ (stick). "I am your superior," said _Svoboda_, "because I am cleverer." But _Palka_ answered her: "No, it is I who am your superior, because I am stronger than you." They disputed and disputed and fought about it. _Palka_ beat _Svoboda_, and, if I remember rightly, _Svoboda_ died in the hospital as the result of her injuries. There was some talk of nihilists in this book. I remember that, according to Prince Meshtcheski, a nihilist was such a poisonous person that his very glance would kill a fowl. What he wrote about nihilists struck me as being offensive and rude, but I understood nothing else, and fell into a state of melancholy. It was evident that I could not appreciate good books; for I was convinced that it was a good book. Such a great and beautiful lady could never read bad books. "Well, did you like it?" she asked me when I took back the yellow novel by Meshtcheski. I found it very hard to answer no; I thought it would make her angry. But she only laughed, and going behind the _portière_ which led into her sleeping-chamber, brought back a little volume in a binding of dark-blue morocco leather. "You will like this one, only take care not to soil it." This was a volume of Pushkin's poems. I read all of them at once, seizing upon them with a feeling of greed such as I experienced whenever I happened to visit a beautiful place that I had never seen before. I always tried to run all over it at once. It was like roaming over mossy hillocks in a marshy wood, and suddenly seeing spread before one a dry plain covered with flowers and bathed in sun-rays. For a second one gazes upon it enchanted, and then one begins to race about happily, and each contact of one's feet with the soft growth of the fertile earth sends a thrill of joy through one. Pushkin had so surprised me with the simplicity and music of poetry that for a long time prose seemed unnatural to me, and it did not come easy to read it. The prologue to "Ruslan" reminded me of grandmother's best stories, all wonderfully compressed into one, and several lines amazed me by their striking truth. There, by ways which few observe, Are the trails of invisible wild creatures.