“The first thing,” he said, “is to get knowledge. You must learn, somehow, to read and write, and count figures. I must tell you all I know, about everything in the world, but that’s very little; and it’s so mixed up in my head, that I don’t rightly know where to begin. It’s a blessing that I’ve not forgotten much; what I picked up I held on to, and now I see the reason why. There’s nothing you can’t use, if you wait long enough.”
“Tell me about France!” Sasha cried.
“France and Germany, too! I was two or three years, off and on, in those foreign parts, and I could talk smartly in the speech of both—Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!”
Gregor stopped and straightened his bent back, his eyes flashed, and he laughed long and heartily.
“Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!” repeated Sasha.
Gregor caught up the boy in his arms, and kissed him. “The very thing!” he cried: “I’ll teach you both tongues,—and all about the strange habits of the people, and their houses and churches, and which way the battle went, and what queer harness they have on their horses, and a talking bird I once saw, and a man that kept a bottle full of lightning in his room——.”
So his tongue ran on. It was a great delight to him to recall his memories of more than thirty years and he was constantly surprised to find how many little things that seemed forgotten came back to his mind. Sasha’s breath came quick, as he listened; his whole body felt warm and nimble, and it suddenly seemed to him possible to learn anything and everything. Before reaching home, he had fixed twenty or thirty French words in his memory. There they were, hard and tight; he knew he should never forget them.
From that day began a new life for both. Old Gregor’s method of instruction would simply have confused a pupil less ignorant and less eager to be taught; but Sasha was so sure that knowledge would in some way help him to become a free man that he seized upon everything he heard. In a few months he knew as much German and French as his grandfather, and when they were alone they always spoke, as much as possible, in one or the other language. But the boy’s greatest desire was to learn how to read. During the following winter he made himself useful to the priest in various ways, and finally succeeded in getting from him the letters of the alphabet and learning how to put them together. Of course, he could not keep secret all that he did; it was enough that no one guessed his object in doing it.
One day, in the spring, just after the Baron had returned with his wife from St. Petersburg, Sasha was sent on an errand to the castle. He was bareheaded and barefooted; his shirt and wide trousers were very coarse, but clean, and his hair floated over his shoulders like a mass of shining silk. When he reached the castle, the Baron and Baroness, with a strange lady, were sitting on the balcony. The latter said, in French, “There’s a nice-looking boy!”
Sasha was so glad to find that he understood, and so delighted with the remark, that he looked up suddenly and blushed.