ged away from him. In short, I
remember finding my first day a most depressing affair.

When the professor entered, and there was a general stir and a cessation
of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at him, as also
that he began his discourse with a sentence which I thought devoid of
meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from first to last, so clever
that not a word ought to be taken from or added to it. Disappointed in
this, I at once proceeded to draw beneath the heading "First Lecture"
with which I had adorned my beautifully-bound notebook no less than
eighteen faces in profile, joined together in a sort of chaplet, and
only occasionally moved my hand along the page in order to give the
professor (who, I felt sure, must be greatly interested in me) the
impression that I was writing something. In fact, at this very first
lecture I came to the decision which I maintained to the end of my
course, namely, that it was unnecessary, and even stupid, to take down
every word said by every professor.

At subsequent lectures, however, I did not feel my isolation so
strongly, since I made several acquaintances and got into the way of
shaking hands and entering into conversation. Yet for some reason or
another no real intimacy ever sprang up between us, and I often found
myself depressed and only feigning cheerfulness. With the set which
comprised Iwin and "the aristocrats," as they were generally known, I
could not make any headway at all, for, as I now remember, I was always
shy and churlish to them, and nodded to them only when they nodded to
me; so that they had little inducement to desire my acquaintance. With
most of the other students, however, this arose from quite a different
cause. As soon as ever I discerned friendliness on the part of a
comrade, I at once gave him to understand that I went to luncheon with
Prince Ivan Ivanovitch and kept my own drozhki. All this I said merely
to show myself in the most favourable light in his eyes, and to induce
him to like me all the more; yet almost invariably the only result of
my communicating to him the intelligence concerning the drozhki and my
relationship to Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was that, to my astonishment, he
at once adopted a cold and haughty bearing towards me.

Among us we had a Crown student named Operoff--a very modest,
industrious, and clever young fellow, who always offered one his hand
like a slab of wood (that is to say, without closing his fing