"Now look here; don't you go telling my wife or my mother, or there will be a row."
Then he smiled kindly and said:
"You are very persevering, devil take you! Never mind; it is a good thing. Anyhow, give up books. When the New Year comes, I will order a good paper, and you can read that."
And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-time, I read aloud to my employers "The Moscow Gazette," the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin, Rudinskovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of people who suffered from deadly dullness.
I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from understanding what I read. But my employers listened attentively, with a sort of reverential eagerness, sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes, and saying proudly to one another:
"And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know nothing of such things, thank God!"
They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of the famous brigand Churkin to the post-boy Thoma Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I corrected their mistakes they were surprised.
"What a memory he has!"
Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared in "The Moscow Gazette." I was delighted with them. I copied several of them into a note-book, but my employers said of the poet:
"He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry." "A drunkard or an imbecile, it is all the same."