“That’s the one that stands?” Stepan Arkadyevitch inquired, smiling.

“Yes, you want pluck for it, and cleverness too, especially when they stop all of a sudden, or someone falls down.”

“Yes, that must be a serious matter,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, watching with mournful interest the eager eyes, like his mother’s; not childish now—­no longer fully innocent.  And though he had promised Alexey Alexandrovitch not to speak of Anna, he could not restrain himself.

“Do you remember your mother?” he asked suddenly.

“No, I don’t,” Seryozha said quickly.  He blushed crimson, and his face clouded over.  And his uncle could get nothing more out of him.  His tutor found his pupil on the staircase half an hour later, and for a long while he could not make out whether he was ill-tempered or crying.

“What is it?  I expect you hurt yourself when you fell down?” said the tutor.  “I told you it was a dangerous game.  And we shall have to speak to the director.”

“If I had hurt myself, nobody should have found it out, that’s certain.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Leave me alone!  If I remember, or if I don’t remember?...what business is it of his?  Why should I remember?  Leave me in peace!” he said, addressing not his tutor, but the whole world.

Chapter 20

Stepan Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg.  In Petersburg, besides business, his sister’s divorce, and his coveted appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he said, after the mustiness of Moscow.

In spite of its cafes chantants and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a stagnant bog.  Stepan Arkadyevitch always felt it.  After living for some time in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was conscious of a depression of spirits.  After being a long time in Moscow without a change, he reached a point when he positively began to be worrying himself over his wife’s ill-humor and reproaches, over his children’s health and education, and the petty details of his official work; even the fact of being in debt worried him.  But he had only to go and stay a little while in Petersburg, in the circle there in which he moved, where people lived—­really lived—­instead of vegetating as in Moscow, and all such ideas vanished and melted away at once, like wax before the fire.  His wife?...  Only that day he had been talking to Prince Tchetchensky.  Prince Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up pages in the corps,...and he had another illegitimate family of children also.  Though the first family was very nice too, Prince Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he used to take his eldest son with him to his second family, and told Stepan Arkadyevitch that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas.  What would have been said to that in Moscow?