1ST LOVE

‘They arrived in three hired flies,’ the butler remarked deferentially, as he handed a dish: ‘they don’t keep their own car- riage, and the furniture’s of the poorest.’ ‘Ah,’ replied my mother, ‘so much the better.’ My father gave her a chilly glance; she was silent. Certainly the Princess Zasyekin could not be a rich woman; the lodge she had taken was so dilapidated and small and lowpitched that people, even moderately well-off in the world, would hardly have consented to occupy it. At the time, however, all this went in at one ear and out at the other. The princely title had very little effect on me; I had just been reading Schiller’s Robbers.