All the same, no work seemed done well enough to satisfy himself, and often his mother surprised him as he got up at night on the sly, because he was afraid that what he had learned by heart had escaped his memory.
That he should go to a better school, like his brothers, was not to be thought of. His mother had for some time cherished the plan of letting him follow the two elder ones as soon as they had passed their examination, for it pained her mother’s heart that he should be behind the others; but in the end she gave in, and that was certainly for the best.
Paul himself had never expected anything else. He considered himself as a creature totally subordinate compared to his brothers, and had long since given up trying ever to be like them. When they came home for their holidays—velvet caps on their wavy hair, many-colored ribbons on their breasts, for they belonged to some forbidden school corporation—he looked up to them as to beings from a higher world. Eagerly he listened when they began to talk to each other about Sallust and Cicero, and the tragedies of Aeschylus—and they liked to speak about them a great deal, if only to impress him. But the object of his highest admiration was the thick book, on the first page of which was written “Table of Logarithms,” and which from the first page to the last contained nothing but figures—figures in long, close rows, the mere sight of which made him giddy. “How learned he must be, to have all that in his head,” he said to himself, caressing the cover of the book, for he imagined that they had to do no less than learn all those figures by heart.
The brothers were unusually affable and condescending to him; when they wished to have anything in the house, when they desired a saddled horse or an extra stiff glass of grog, they always addressed him confidentially, and he felt highly honored to be allowed to help them.
As regards farming matters, he was as well acquainted with them as if he were the master of the house himself; to them were devoted all his efforts and his care.
What was it that had made him so prematurely serious?
Was it the helplessness of his lonely mother, who had initiated him so early into all her cares? Was it the brooding, striving spirit, ever looking to the future, which was peculiar to him?
Very often when he sat musing, his elbows leaning on the table—in his manners, too, he was quite like a grown-up person—his mother stroked his hair, and said,
“Let us see a bright face, my boy; be glad that you have no cares yet.” Oh, he had cares enough! Care cleaved to him like his own flesh and blood: whether the hen which had strayed to-day would be found again to-morrow; whether the ointment which his father had brought from the town yesterday would agree with a dun-colored horse; whether the hay had been dry enough before it was turned; and how the starlings in the gutter on the roof would bring up their little ones without the cat getting at them.
And he had to care about everything. Care had been born with him; only for himself he never took any care.