Thy sparkling springs
Mine only drink.
From earliest childhood Tichon was subject to a strange sensation, quite unlike anything else; a feeling of almost painful anguish, coupled with a delicious sweetness: it seemed ever new, yet ever familiar, and generally intimated the approach of a fit. Terror and surprise mingled with a reminiscence as from some other world, but the prevalent elements were curiosity and expectation, and a desire, that what was about to happen should happen quickly. He never mentioned this to any one, and even if he would, he could not have found words to express it. Later on, when his consciousness and thinking power increased, this sensation became tinged with thoughts about the end of the world and the second coming.
At times the most sinister croaking of the old men would leave him unmoved, while something unexpected, a colour, a sound, a scent could rouse in him the same feeling with sudden force. His house stood on the slope of the Sparrow hills, beyond the river Moscow. The garden abruptly terminated in a steep cliff. From this spot the whole of Moscow could be seen: a mass of black log structures—very much like a village—and towering above them, the white stone walls of the Kremlin and the countless golden domes of churches. Hence, too, the boy would often watch those grand and terrible sunsets, which sometimes occur in a late, stormy autumn. In the clouds, which appeared now livid blue, purple, black or flaming red, now as it were bloody, he fancied he could discern at one time a giant serpent which had coiled round Moscow, at another a Beast with seven heads with a woman sitting on it, having a cup in her hand full of abominations: now he saw the host of angels pursuing demons, wounding them with arrows of fire and causing streams of blood to flow over the heavens, or again the radiant Zion, the invisible city, which descending out of heaven, was resplendent with the glory of the coming Lord. It seemed as though the mystery, destined to be revealed on earth, was already being enacted in the heavens. And the familiar presentiment of the final end of all things entranced the boy. This same presentiment was also roused by everyday occurrences, even by the merest trifles; by the smell of tobacco; by the first sight of a Russian book printed in Amsterdam by order of Peter, in the new civil characters; by the signs over the new shops in the German quarter; by a special form of wig, which had long, curious locks like Jew’s ringlets or dog’s ears; or by the peculiar expression on Russian faces, recently bearded, now clean-shaven.
One day, Yereméich, the beekeeper, an old man of eighty years, who lodged in their garden, was captured by the royal commissioners at the town gate; they forcibly shaved off his beard and cut short the lappets of his coat according to the regulation measure. The old man returned sobbing like a child, fell ill and shortly died of grief. Tichon loved the old man and was sorry for him, yet when he first caught sight of him, clean-shaven, with his coat shortened, sobbing most piteously, the boy burst into a laugh, but one so strange and unnatural that Pahómitch dreaded another fit. In this laugh, too, there was the fear of the end of the world.
Once in winter a comet appeared, “a star with a tail,” so Pahómitch called it. The boy all the time longed to see it, yet did not dare to look; he used to purposely turn away his head, and close his eyes. But one night he saw it quite unexpectedly, when Pahómitch was carrying him across a snowdrifted lane to the bath-house. At the end of this lane between the black log-houses, rising just above the white snow, at the very edge of the dark blue sky, sparkled a large, delicately transparent star; it seemed to be gliding away, as it were, into infinite space. It was not terrible, on the contrary so familiar, so welcome, so fair, that he gazed and could not gaze enough. The old feeling, stronger than ever, clutched his heart with unendurable terror and delight. He stretched himself towards the star, as if now only awakening, with a tender, dreamy smile. At the same time Pahómitch felt terrible convulsions shake the little body. A cry escaped the boy; he had his second epileptic fit.
At the age of sixteen, he was compelled, together with other children belonging to the nobility, to attend the school of “Mathematical, Nautical, that is Maritime, and cunning Arts.” The school was located in the Súkharev tower, where James Bruce was engaged on astronomical observations. The astronomer was considered to be a sorcerer and magician: a squinting woman, who sold soaked apples in a street close by, had seen Bruce one winter’s night flying from the tower straight to the moon, astride of a telescope. Nothing in this world would have induced Pahómitch to send the child to this cursed place, but the boys were taken there by force.
Minors,[1] who had been in hiding on their estates, some even married, babes of thirty or forty years of age, had been brought hither by compulsion, and now sat next to children on the same bench. They learnt from the same book, which had a picture representing a teacher beating with rods a schoolboy laid across a bench. Below ran the inscription, “Let every boy learn in quiet.” All the primers were well supplied with verses about the rod:
God bless the woods for evermore,