lours and pencil. Though
I had only one cake of colour, and it was blue, I determined to draw a
picture of the hunt. In exceedingly vivid fashion I painted a blue boy
on a blue horse, and--but here I stopped, for I was uncertain whether
it was possible also to paint a blue HARE. I ran to the study to consult
Papa, and as he was busy reading he never lifted his eyes from his book
when I asked, "Can there be blue hares?" but at once replied, "There
can, my boy, there can." Returning to the table I painted in my blue
hare, but subsequently thought it better to change it into a blue bush.
Yet the blue bush did not wholly please me, so I changed it into a tree,
and then into a rick, until, the whole paper having now become one blur
of blue, I tore it angrily in pieces, and went off to meditate in the
large arm-chair.

Mamma was playing Field's second concerto. Field, it may be said, had
been her master. As I dozed, the music brought up before my imagination
a kind of luminosity, with transparent dream-shapes. Next she played the
"Sonate Pathetique" of Beethoven, and I at once felt heavy, depressed,
and apprehensive. Mamma often played those two pieces, and therefore I
well recollect the feelings they awakened in me. Those feelings were a
reminiscence--of what? Somehow I seemed to remember something which had
never been.

Opposite to me lay the study door, and presently I saw Jakoff enter it,
accompanied by several long-bearded men in kaftans. Then the door shut
again.

"Now they are going to begin some business or other," I thought. I
believed the affairs transacted in that study to be the most important
ones on earth. This opinion was confirmed by the fact that people only
approached the door of that room on tiptoe and speaking in whispers.
Presently Papa's resonant voice sounded within, and I also scented
cigar smoke--always a very attractive thing to me. Next, as I dozed, I
suddenly heard a creaking of boots that I knew, and, sure enough,
saw Karl Ivanitch go on tiptoe, and with a depressed, but resolute,
expression on his face and a written document in his hand, to the study
door and knock softly. It opened, and then shut again behind him.

"I hope nothing is going to happen," I mused. "Karl Ivanitch is
offended, and might be capable of anything--" and again I dozed off.

Nevertheless something DID happen. An hour later I was disturbed by
the same creaking of boots, and saw Karl come out, and disappear up
the stair