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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
81
But once a year, in the winter, father generally
took my mother and sister to Petersburg, for a six
weeks’ visit at our aunts’. But these trips, which
cost a quantity of money, did no real good. They
only fired Aniuta’s taste for pleasures, and afforded
it no gratification. The month in Petersburg
always passed so quickly that she had not time to
collect herself. She could not meet a man competent to
direct her mind to serious matters, in the society to
which she was introduced; neither did any suitable
offers of marriage present themselves. They fitted
her out with toilettes, took her three or four times to
the theater, or to a ball at the Club of the Nobility.
One of her relatives gave an evening party in her
honor. She heard compliments on her beauty. Then,
just as she had begun to enter into the real spirit of
the thing, she was taken back to Palibino, and again
there began for her solitude, idleness, tedium, roaming
hour after hour from one corner to another of the
huge rooms in our Palibino house, living over again
in fancy the recent joys, and passionate, fruitless
dreams of new triumphs in the same career.
In order, in some degree, to fill up the void of her
life, my sister was constantly inventing artificial
diversions, and, as the life of the members of the
household was also very poor in inward contents, every one
in the house generally flung themselves eagerly into
each new scheme of hers, as a pretext for discussions
and excitement. Some blamed her, others
sympathized with her, but she provided for all an agreeable
contrast to the usual monotony of life.
When Aniuta was about fifteen years of age she
exhibited her first act of independence by pouncing
upon all the novels in our country library, and
devouring an incredible number of them. Fortunately
6
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