"Lord, they have laid that rotten creature on my shoulders, and Victor is again pushed on one side." Victorushka began to mock the manners of my stepfather,--his leisurely walk, the assured movements of his lordly hands, his skill in tying a cravat, and his dainty way of eating. He would ask coarsely: "Maximov, what's the French for 'knee'?" "I am called Evgen Vassilevich," my stepfather reminded him calmly. "All right. Well, what is 'the chest'?" Victorushka would say to his mother at supper: "Ma mère, donnez moi encore du pickles!" "Oh, you Frenchman!" the old woman would say, much affected. My stepfather, as unmoved as if he were deaf or dumb, chewed his meat without looking at any one. One day the elder brother said to the younger: "Now that you are learning French, Victor, you ought to have a mistress." This was the only time I remember seeing my stepfather smile quietly. But the young mistress let her spoon fall on the table in her agitation, and cried to her husband: "Are n't you ashamed to talk so disgustingly before me?" Sometimes my stepfather came to me in the dark vestibule, where I slept under the stairs which led to the attic, and where, sitting on the stairs by the window, I used to read. "Reading?" he would say, blowing out smoke. There came a hissing sound from his chest like the hissing of a fire-stick. "What is the book?" I showed it to him. "Ah," he said, glancing at the title, "I think I have read it. Will you smoke?" We smoked, looking out of the window onto the dirty yard. He said: "It is a great pity that you cannot study; it seems to me that you have ability." "I am studying; I read." "That is not enough; you need a school; a system." I felt inclined to say to him: "You had the advantages of both school and system, my fine fellow, and what is the result?" But he added, as if he had read my thoughts: "Given the proper disposition, a school is a good educator. Only very well educated people make any mark in life." But once he counseled me: "You would be far better away from here. I see no sense or advantage to you in staying." "I like the work." "Ah--what do you find to like?" "I find it interesting to work with them." "Perhaps you are right." But one day he said: "What trash they are in the main, our employers--trash!" When I remembered how and when my mother had uttered that word, I involuntarily drew back from him. He asked, smiling: "Don't you think so?" "I don't know." "Well, they are; I can see that." "But I like the master, anyhow." "Yes, you are right; he is a worthy man, but strange." I should have liked to talk with him about books, but it was plain that he did not care for them, and one day he advised me: "Don't be led away; everything is very much embellished in books, distorted one way or another. Most writers of books are people like our master, small people." Such judgments seemed very daring to me, and quite corrupted me. On the same occasion he asked me: