"My father was a very honest, sensible, cultivated, and unfortunate man. Fate had no harder blows for him than for others, but he could not bear the first one that he felt from her. He had married early--a love match; his wife, my mother, soon died, and I was left a six months' old baby. My father took me to his country estates, and for twelve whole years he lived there in absolute seclusion. He himself took charge of my education, and would never have been separated from me if my uncle, his brother, had not come to visit us in our country house. This uncle lived in Petersburg, where he held a rather important post. He persuaded my father, who could not be induced to quit his home under any consideration, to trust me to his care. He showed his brother what an injury it was to a boy of my age to live in such complete isolation, and that, with a companion always melancholy and silent as my father, I should inevitably remain behind boys of my age--yes, that my character might easily be endangered by such a life. For a long time my father resisted his brother's arguments, but at last he yielded. I cried at parting from my father, whom I loved, though I had never seen a smile on his face; but Petersburg once reached, our gloomy and silent nest was soon forgotten. I went to school, and was afterward placed in a regiment of the Guards. Every year I spent some weeks at our country house, and with every year I found my father more melancholy, more reserved, and depressed to an alarming degree. He went to church daily, and had almost given up speech. On one of my visits--I was then in my twentieth year--I saw for the first time about the house a little lean, black-eyed girl, who might have been about ten years old. It was Assja. My father said she was an orphan whose care he had undertaken: those were his own words. I gave her no further attention. She was as wild, quick, and shy as a little animal, and if I entered my father's favorite room, a great dismal chamber in which my mother had died, and which had to be lighted even by day, she always slunk out of sight behind my father's old-fashioned easy chair, or hid behind the bookcase. It happened that for the three or four years following I was prevented by my service from visiting our estate. Every month I received a short letter from my father, in which Assja was spoken of seldom and always incidentally. My father was already past his fiftieth year, but looked still a young man. Imagine my distress then when I suddenly received a perfectly unexpected letter from our steward, announcing the fatal illness of my father, and begging me urgently to come home as quickly as possible if I wished to see him alive. I rushed headlong home, and found my father, though in the last agony. My presence seemed the greatest joy to him; he clasped me in his wasted arms, turned on me his gaze half doubtful, half imploring, and after he had obtained from me a promise that I would