The general receives him, and he is just as frank and simple with the general as he has been with the servant. He is entirely without means, and has nothing in the world save his little bundle. The general inquires whether his handwriting is good, and resolves to get him some secretarial work; he gives him 25 roubles, and arranges that the prince shall live in his secretary’s house. The general makes the prince stay for luncheon, and introduces him to his family. The general’s wife is a charming, rather childish person, and she has three daughters, Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaia. The prince astonishes them very much by his simplicity. They cannot quite understand at first whether he is a child or a knave, but his simplicity conquers them. After they have talked of various matters, his life in Switzerland, the experiences of a man condemned to death, which had been related to him and which I have already quoted, an execution which he had witnessed, one of the girls asks him if he was ever in love. “No,” he says, “I have never been in love ... I was happy otherwise.” “How was that?” they ask. Then he relates the following: “Where I was living they were all children, and I spent all my time with the children, and only with them. They were the children of the village; they all went to school. I never taught them, there was a schoolmaster for that.... I perhaps did teach them too, in a way, for I was more with them, and all the four years that I spent there went in this way. I had need of nothing else. I told them everything, I kept nothing secret from them. Their fathers and relations were angry with me because at last the children could not do without me, and always came round me in crowds, and the schoolmaster in the end became my greatest enemy. I made many enemies there, all on account of the children. And what were they afraid of? You can tell a child everything--everything. I have always been struck by the thought of how ignorant grown-up people are of children, how ignorant even fathers and mothers are of their own children. You should conceal nothing from children under the pretext that they are small, and that it is too soon for them to know. That is a sad, an unhappy thought. And how well children themselves understand that their fathers are thinking they are too small and do not understand anything--when they really understand everything. Grown-up people do not understand that a child even in the most difficult matter can give extremely important advice. Heavens! when one of these lovely little birds looks up at you, confiding and happy, it is a shame to deceive it. I call them birds because there is nothing better than birds in the world. To go on with my story, the people in the village were most angry with me because of one thing: the schoolmaster simply envied me. At first he shook his head, and wondered how the children understood everything I told them, and almost nothing of what he told them. Then he began to laugh at me