A general with lumbago, full of years and honours, who was looking about him for a wife, began to lay siege on me. I saw a great deal more of him than I wished to, and as I didn’t like to have that tiresome old man bothering after me, I often pretended to have a bad headache and went to my room. His company was too odious for words, he was dull as ditch water. This general got me alone one day, and proposed to me, saying that his hand, his heart and his purse were freely at my command. The idea of that old scarecrow indulging in matrimonial schemes! A husband of that sort would never do for me, and I gave him a brilliant rebuke. Distressed by my unreachableness, he disappeared from our horizon. I was so happy to be rid of him! I took a walk between two and three every afternoon up the “Nevski Prospect,” a place of _rendezvous_ with a number of my admirers. I came back one day from my walk with a terrible headache and throwing myself on my bed, I burst into a loud fit of hysterical laughter and weeping which terrified my cousins who stood beside me wringing their hands, and wanted to send the maid after the doctor, but my aunt, who came home at that moment, did something more practical: she stamped her foot and ordered me to stop instantly all that nonsense, otherwise she would countermand the dancing-party that was to take place that evening. My hysterical fit passed as if by magic; I recovered my self-control, and bounding to my feet in the liveliest manner, I began to prepare the dessert for our _soirée_. The young men about me were very incendiary, a tiny spark thrown among them set them on fire. Stenger, one of my most ardent partners, a youth of about nineteen years of age, took a desperate fancy to me; when we danced together he held me in his arms so tightly I could hardly breathe, and as we swung round he murmured soft things into my willing ears. That boy managed to make his way into our house and found means to see me almost daily.