!

Thus Ivan Petrovitch found him, and without loss of time he set to work
to apply his system to him.

"I want above all to make a man, un homme, of him," he said to Glafira
Petrovna, "and not only a man, but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began
carrying out his intentions by putting his son in a Scotch kilt; the
twelve-year-old boy had to go about with bare knees and a plume stuck
in his Scotch cap. The Swedish lady was replaced by a young Swiss tutor,
who was versed in gymnastics to perfection. Music, as a pursuit unworthy
of a man, was discarded. The natural sciences, international law,
mathematics, carpentry, after Jean-Jacques Rousseau's precept, and
heraldry, to encourage chivalrous feelings, were what the future "man"
was to be occupied with. He was waked at four o'clock in the morning,
splashed at once with cold water and set to running round a high pole
with a cord; he had only one meal a day, consisting of a single
dish; rode on horseback; shot with a cross-bow; at every convenient
opportunity he was exercised in acquiring after his parent's example
firmness of will, and every evening he inscribed in a special book an
account of the day and his impressions; and Ivan Petrovitch on his side
wrote him instructions in French in which he called him mon fils, and
addressed him as vous. In Russian Fedya called his father thou, but
did not dare to sit down in his presence. The "system" dazed the boy,
confused and cramped his intellect, but his health on the other hand was
benefited by the new manner of his life; at first he fell into a fever
but soon recovered and began to grow stout and strong. His father was
proud of him and called him in his strange jargon "a child of nature,
my creation." When Fedya had reached his sixteenth year, Ivan Petrovitch
thought it his duty in good time to instil into him a contempt for the
female sex; and the young Spartan, with timidity in his heart and the
first down on his lip, full of sap and strength and young blood, already
tried to seem indifferent, cold, and rude.

Meanwhile time was passing. Ivan Petrovitch spent the great part of the
year in Lavriky (that was the name of the principal estate inherited
from his ancestors). But in the winter he used to go to Moscow alone;
there he stayed at a tavern, diligently visited the club, made speeches
and developed his plans in drawing-rooms, and in his behaviour was more
than ever Anglomaniac, grumbling and political. But the year 1825 c