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      Table of Contents

       Childhood

       Boyhood

       Youth

       Family Happiness

       The Cossacks

       War and Peace

       Anna Karenina

       The Death of Ivan Ilyich

       The Kreutzer Sonata

       Resurrection

       The Forged Coupon

       Hadji Murad

      Childhood

      First published : 1852

      Translation : C. J. Hogarth (1869-1942)

       Chapter 1 — The Tutor, Karl Ivanitch

       Chapter 2 — Mamma

       Chapter 3 — Papa

       Chapter 4 — Lessons

       Chapter 5 — The Idiot

       Chapter 6 — Preparations for the Chase

       Chapter 7 — The Hunt

       Chapter 8 — We Play Games

       Chapter 9 — A First Essay in Love

       Chapter 10 — The Sort of Man My Father was

       Chapter 11 — In the Drawing-Room and the Study

       Chapter 12 — Grisha

       Chapter 13 — Natalia Savishna

       Chapter 14 — The Parting

       Chapter 15 — Childhood

       Chapter 16 — Verse-Making

       Chapter 17 — The Princess Kornakoff

       Chapter 18 — Prince Ivan Ivanovitch

       Chapter 19 — The Iwins

       Chapter 20 — Preparations for the Party

       Chapter 21 — Before the Mazurka

       Chapter 22 — The Mazurka

       Chapter 23 — After the Mazurka

       Chapter 24 — In Bed

       Chapter 25 — The Letter

       Chapter 26 — What Awaited Us at the Country-House

       Chapter 27 — Grief

       Chapter 28 — Sad Recollections

      On the 12th of August, 18 — (just three days after my tenth birthday, when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven o’clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing- gown fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.

      “Suppose,” I thought to myself,” that I am only a small boy, yet why should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda’s bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long — how to tease me. He knows very well that he has woken me up and frightened me, but he pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and cap and tassel too — they are all of them disgusting.”

      While I was thus inwardly venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail, then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned round to us.

      “Get up, children! It is quite time, and your mother is already in the drawing-room,” he exclaimed in his strong German accent. Then he crossed over to me, sat down at my feet, and took his snuff-box out of his pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanitch sneezed, wiped his nose, flicked his fingers, and began amusing himself by teasing me and tickling my toes as he said with a smile, “Well, well, little lazy one!”

      For all my dread of being tickled, I determined not to get out of bed or to answer him, but hid my head deeper in the pillow, kicked out with all my strength, and strained every nerve to keep

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