extraordinary
conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a
bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used
obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was
shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising
that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance
in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in
life) surmised at last that things were not going quite right, and he
placed his Andrei in a school. Andrei began to learn, but he was
not removed from his father's supervision; his father visited him
unceasingly, wearying the schoolmaster to death with his instructions
and conversation; the teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits;
he was for ever bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on
education. Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old
man's swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in
a sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this
grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long
nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost
as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them about
Washington: 'My young nurslings,' he began, but at the first sounds of
his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old Gottingen
student did not lie on a bed of roses; he was for ever weighed down by
the march of history, by questions and ideas of every kind. When young
Bersenyev entered the university, his father used to drive with him
to the lectures, but his health was already beginning to break up. The
events of the year 1848 shook him to the foundation (it necessitated the
re-writing of his whole book), and he died in the winter of 1853, before
his son's time at the university was over, but he was able beforehand to
congratulate him on his degree, and to consecrate him to the service of
science. 'I pass on the torch to you,' he said to him two hours before
his death. 'I held it while I could; you, too, must not let the light
grow dim before the end.'

Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The embarrassment
he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp was less marked.
The conversation passed on to the university.

'Tell me,' Elena asked him, 'were there any remarkable men among your
comrades?'

Bersenyev was again reminded