“Where are you going to?” asked a well-known voice.  “I want you, my boy.”

I would have passed on, but Papa caught hold of me, and said sternly: 

“Come here, you impudent rascal.  How could you dare to do such a thing as to touch the portfolio in my study?” he went on as he dragged me into his room.  “Oh! you are silent, eh?” and he pulled my ear.

“Yes, I was naughty,” I said.  “I don’t know myself what came over me then.”

“So you don’t know what came over you—­you don’t know, you don’t know?” he repeated as he pulled my ear harder and harder.  “Will you go and put your nose where you ought not to again—­will you, will you?”

Although my ear was in great pain, I did not cry, but, on the contrary, felt a sort of morally pleasing sensation.  No sooner did he let go of my ear than I seized his hand and covered it with tears and kisses.

“Please whip me!” I cried, sobbing.  “Please hurt me the more and more, for I am a wretched, bad, miserable boy!”

“Why, what on earth is the matter with you?” he said, giving me a slight push from him.

“No, I will not go away!” I continued, seizing his coat.  “Every one else hates me—­I know that, but do you listen to me and protect me, or else send me away altogether.  I cannot live with him.  He tries to humiliate me—­he tells me to kneel before him, and wants to strike me.  I can’t stand it.  I’m not a baby.  I can’t stand it—­I shall die, I shall kill myself.  He told Grandmamma that I was naughty, and now she is ill—­she will die through me.  It is all his fault.  Please let me—­W-why should-he-tor-ment me?”

The tears choked my further speech.  I sat down on the sofa, and, with my head buried on Papa’s knees, sobbed until I thought I should die of grief.

“Come, come!  Why are you such a water-pump?” said Papa compassionately, as he stooped over me.

“He is such a bully!  He is murdering me!  I shall die!  Nobody loves me at all!” I gasped almost inaudibly, and went into convulsions.

Papa lifted me up, and carried me to my bedroom, where I fell asleep.

When I awoke it was late.  Only a solitary candle burned in the room, while beside the bed there were seated Mimi, Lubotshka, and our doctor.  In their faces I could discern anxiety for my health, so, although I felt so well after my twelve-hours’ sleep that I could have got up directly, I thought it best to let them continue thinking that I was unwell.

XVII.  HATRED

Yes, it was the real feeling of hatred that was mine now—­not the hatred of which one reads in novels, and in the existence of which I do not believe—­the hatred which finds satisfaction in doing harm to a fellow-creature, but the hatred which consists of an unconquerable aversion to a person who may be wholly deserving of your esteem, yet whose very hair, neck, walk, voice, limbs, movements, and everything else are disgusting to you, while all the while an incomprehensible force attracts you towards him, and compels you to follow his slightest acts with anxious attention.