Raisky was silent.
“What profession have you selected?”
Raisky almost answered that he meant to be an artist, but he remembered in time the reception that this proposition had received from his guardian and his aunt. “I shall write verses,” he answered in a low tone.
“But that is not a profession. You may write verses and yet....”
“Stories too.”
“Naturally, you can write stories as well. You have talent and means to develop it. But what profession—profession, I asked.”
“For the moment I shall enter the Guards, later on the Civil Service—I mean to be a barrister, a governor....”
The Dean smiled. “You begin by being an ensign, that is comprehensible. You and Leonid Koslov are exceptions; every other man has made his decision.”
When Koslov was asked his intentions he replied that he would like to be a schoolmaster somewhere in the interior, and from this intention he refused to be turned aside.
Raisky moved among the golden youth of St. Petersburg society, first as young officer, then as bureaucrat, fulfilled his duties in devotion to the beauty of many an Armide, suffering to some degree, and gaining some experience in the process. After a time his dreams and his artistic consciousness revived. He seemed to see the Volga flowing between its steep banks, the shady garden, and the wooded precipice. He abandoned the Civil Service in its turn to enter the Academy of Arts. His education would never be finished, but he was determined to be a creative artist. His aunt scolded him by letter for having left the Guards; his guardian advised him to seek a position in the Senate, and sent him letters of recommendation.