“Nothing! only board and lodging, and a cast-off dressing-gown that the gentleman gave me. In that dressing-gown I went back to my brother, and he said: ‘What are you hanging about here for, doing nothing? can’t you set to and learn something, if it’s only singing—you might get to be choir-master in time.’ So I began to study singing, and then my brother got tired of hearing me. ‘Confound it all!’ he said, ‘I’m sick of this; go home to father.’ Well, then I went home. Of course my people abused me:—‘Always hanging about in the way! We’ve had enough of this!’ What would you have me do, sir, when I couldn’t get a situation anywhere? I thought one time of going into a monastery; but just then I got a letter from my brother, telling me to come to him. I went, and he said, ‘The prince’s steward wants to start a choir. You must engage yourself as choir-master.’ I asked him how did he suppose I was to do that when I don’t know how to sing myself? But all he would say was: ‘Don’t be afraid! you’ll learn in teaching your class.’ So I took the post. They gave me a tuning-fork——”
“May I ask,” interrupted the gentleman, “whether you were attired in the dressing-gown?”...
“No, in my mother’s cloak; the dressing-gown was worn out.... It was a short cloak, ... home-made....”
“Well, and how did you get on?”
“Very well. There was quite a fair choir. My brother sang tenor; Ivàn Alexèyich (at the present moment a teacher of patrology and hermeneutics) bass; then there were a few more volunteers. We got perfect in ‘Kol Slàven,’[[25]] and two sort of ... a ... choral part-songs, ‘Vzỳde’ and’ Polozhìl yesi.’ The steward was quite surprised at us; he was a critic in musical matters; and he wrote a letter to Moscow, to the prince, about a salary for the choir-master. Meanwhile we began to practice: ‘Kto Bog?’ and ‘Kheruvìmskaya Razòrennaya’[[26]].... All of a sudden the prince wrote back, ‘I don’t want a choir; I am going away for my health.’...
“So after that I got appointed at the village school at Bezzùbov. The people there are very poor; many of the peasants used to sleep in their ovens in winter-time. One day the priest came into a cottage to bless the household; he looked round, and there was no one there, so he began to sing the tropar.[[27]] Suddenly the people crawled out from the oven and came up to kiss the crucifix.... A good many of my pupils went about begging. For all that, though, a great gentleman from St. Petersburg passed through our village, and he said the people were not averse to education—really.”
“Do you mean that ironically?” asked the master of the house.
“Oh dear no!”
“Of course, even a poor man may desire education; just take the case of Lomonòsov: he was a peasant and became an academician.”
“Exactly so.”