I was puzzled at first. “I mean your handwriting,” he added.
I said I had none of my own writing on me.
“Bring paper and a pen,” and Alenitsin handed me a pen.
“What shall I write?”
“What you please,” said the clerk; “write, Upon investigation it turned out.”
The Governor looked at the writing and said with a sarcastic smile, “Well, we shan’t ask you to correspond with the Tsar.”
§2
While I was still at Perm, I had heard much about Tufáyev, but the reality far surpassed all my expectations.
There is no person or thing too monstrous for the conditions of Russian life to produce.
He was born at Tobolsk. His father was, I believe, an exile and belonged to the lowest and poorest class of free Russians. At thirteen he joined a band of strolling players, who wandered from fair to fair, dancing on the tight rope, turning somersaults, and so on. With them he went all the way from Tobolsk to the Polish provinces, making mirth for the lieges. He was arrested there on some charge unknown to me, and then, because he had no passport, sent back on foot to Tobolsk as a vagabond, together with a gang of convicts. His mother was now a widow and living in extreme poverty; he rebuilt the stove in her house with his own hands, when it came to pieces. He had to seek a trade of some kind; the boy learned to read and write and got employment as a clerk in the town office. Naturally quick-witted, he had profited by the variety of his experience; he had learned much from the troupe of acrobats, and as much from the gang of convicts in whose company he had tramped from one end of Russia to the other. He soon became a sharp man of business.