I also became conscious how still the house was,
and felt as though I could do nothing else than go on listening to that
stillness, and gazing into the black square of that open doorway, and
gradually sinking into a brown study as I sat there without moving.
At intervals, however, I would get up, and go downstairs, and begin
wandering through the empty rooms. Once I sat a long while in the small
drawing-room as I listened to Gasha playing "The Nightingale" (with two
fingers) on the piano in the large drawing-room, where a solitary candle
burned. Later, when the moon was bright, I felt obliged to get out of
bed and to lean out of the window, so that I might gaze into the garden,
and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff mansion, the straight
tower of our parish church, and the dark shadows of the fence and the
lilac-bush where they lay black upon the path. So long did I remain
there that, when I at length returned to bed, it was ten o'clock in the
morning before I could open my eyes again.

In short, had it not been for the tutors who came to give me lessons, as
well as for St. Jerome (who at intervals, and very grudgingly, applied
a spur to my self-conceit) and, most of all, for the desire to figure
as "clever" in the eyes of my friend Nechludoff (who looked upon
distinctions in University examinations as a matter of first-rate
importance)--had it not been for all these things, I say, the spring and
my new freedom would have combined to make me forget everything I
had ever learnt, and so to go through the examinations to no purpose
whatsoever.

X. THE EXAMINATION IN HISTORY

ON the 16th of April I entered, for the first time, and under the wing
of St. Jerome, the great hall of the University. I had driven there with
St. Jerome in our smart phaeton and wearing the first frockcoat of my
life, while the whole of my other clothes--even down to my socks and
linen--were new and of a grander sort. When a Swiss waiter relieved me
of my greatcoat, and I stood before him in all the beauty of my attire,
I felt almost sorry to dazzle him so. Yet I had no sooner entered the
bright, carpeted, crowded hall, and caught sight of hundreds of other
young men in gymnasium [The Russian gymnasium = the English grammar or
secondary school.] uniforms or frockcoats (of whom but a few threw me an
indifferent glance), as well as, at the far end, of some solemn-looking
professors who were seated on chairs or walking carelessly about amon