And yet all of
his personages still thirst after this shameful love; weep
radiantly and laugh joyously from it; and it shuts out all the
world for them. But since boys think entirely differently than we
grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden, everything not
said fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an enormous, not
only twofold but threefold interest--it is therefore natural that
out of reading they drew the hazy thought that the grown-ups were
concealing something from them.
And it must be mentioned--had not Kolya (like the majority of
those of his age) seen the chambermaid Phrociya--so rosy-cheeked,
always merry, with legs of the hardness of steel (at times he, in
the heat of playing, had slapped her on the back), had he not seen
her once, when Kolya had by accident walked quickly into papa's
cabinet, scurry out of there with all her might, covering her face
with her apron; and had he not seen that during this time papa's
face was red, with a dark blue, seemingly lengthened nose? And
Kolya had reflected: "Papa looks like a turkey." Had not Kolya--
partly through the fondness for pranks and the mischievousness
natural to all boys, partly through tedium--accidentally
discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa's writing table an
enormous collection of cards, whereon was represented just that
which shop clerks call the crowning of love, and worldly
nincompoops--the unearthly passion?
And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the
sweet-scented and bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with
some embassy, with whom mamma, in imitation of the fashionable St.
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