"Very much?" "Yes." "But how?" "I don't know." "Thank you! You are a good boy. I like people to love me." She smiled, looked as if she were going to say something more, but remained silent, still keeping me in her arms. "Come oftener to see me; come whenever you can." I took advantage of this, and she did me a lot of good. After dinner my employers used to lie down, and I used to run down-stairs. If she was at home, I would stay with her for an hour and sometimes even longer. "You must read Russian books; you must know all about Russian life." She taught me, sticking hair-pins into her fragrant hair with rosy fingers. And she enumerated the Russian authors, adding: "Will you remember them?" She often said thoughtfully, and with an air of slight vexation: "We must have you taught, and I am always forgetting. _Ach_, my God!" After sitting with her, I ran down-stairs with a new book in my hands, feeling as if I had been washed inside. I had already read Aksakov's "Family Chronicle," the glorious Russian poem "In the Forests," the amazing "Memoirs of a Hunter," several volumes of Grebenkov and Solugub, and the poetry of Venevitinov, Odoevski, and Tutchev. These books laved my soul, washing away the husks of barren and bitter reality. I felt that these were good books, and realized that they were indispensable to me. One result of reading them was that I gained a firm conviction that I was not alone in the world, and the fact that I should not be lost took root in my soul. When grandmother came to see me I used to tell her joyfully about Queen Margot, and she, taking a pinch of snuff with great enjoyment, said heartily: "Well, well; that is very nice. You see, there are plenty of good people about. You only have to look for them, and then you will find them." And one day she suggested: "How would it be if I went to her and said thank you for what she does for you?" "No; it is better not." "Well, if you don't want me to----Lord! Lord! how good it all is! I would like to go on living for ever and ever!" Queen Margot never carried out her project of having me taught, for an unpleasant affair happened on the feast of the Holy Trinity that nearly ruined me. Not long before the holiday my eyelids became terribly swollen, and my eyes were quite closed up. My employers were afraid that I should go blind, and I also was afraid. They took me to the well-known doctor, Genrikh Rodzevich, who lanced my eyelids and for days I lay with my eyes bandaged, in tormenting, black misery. The day before the feast of the Trinity my bandages were taken off, and I walked about once more, feeling as if I had come back from a grave in which I had been laid alive. Nothing can be more terrible than to lose one's sight. It is an unspeakable injury which takes away a hundred worlds from a man.