This was partly both childhood's need of
the fairy-tale element and partly awakening sensuality as well.
Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old chubby, for whom it was
just the proper time to be playing at popular tennis or to be
greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk, would be
telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels, of
how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately
enamored of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and
precious wine; and how furiously and passionately she makes love
to him.
Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged
reading, like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl
has undergone. No matter how strict in this respect the class
surveillance may be, the striplings did read, are reading, and
will read just that which is not permitted them. Here is a special
passion, CHIC, the allurement of the forbidden. Already in the
third class went from hand to hand the manuscript transcripts of
Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful sins of Lermontov and
others: "THE FIRST NIGHT," "THE CHERRY," "LUCAS," "THE FESTIVAL AT
PETERHOF," "THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF THROUGH WISDOM," "THE PRIEST,"
&c.
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