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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
35
hands and tossing us up in the air. On days of high
festival, when father was going off somewhere for
official presentation, and was dressed in his full parade
uniform, with his orders and stars, we were
summoned to the drawing-room "to admire papa on
parade," and this spectacle afforded us remarkable
satisfaction; we danced around him, clapping our
hands with delight at the sight of his glittering
epaulets and orders.
But on our arrival in the country these benign
relations which had hitherto existed between father and
us suddenly underwent a change. As not
unfre-quently happens in Russian families, father suddenly
made the unexpected discovery that his children were
not such models, such beautifully educated children,
as he had supposed.
The beginning of it all was apparently that my
sister and I ran away from home one day, got lost,
and were missing for an entire day, and when they
found us toward evening, we had managed to
overeat ourselves on herb-Paris berries, and were sick for
several days afterward.
This occurrence demonstrated that the oversight
over us was very bad. This first discovery was
followed by others; one revelation followed another.
Up to that time every one had stoutly asserted that
my sister was a remarkable, almost a phenomenal,
child—clever and accomplished beyond her age. But
now it suddenly appeared that not only was she
dreadfully spoiled, but ignorant to the last degree
for a twelve-year old girl, and that she did not even
know how to write correctly in Russian.
What was still worse, something was discovered
about our French governess, so bad that no one was
permitted to speak of it before us children.
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