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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
65
ashamed. I fancied that it was I who had taken the
slipper from his foot and struck him with it on the
cheeks.
" Uncle, darling, forgive me! I spoke without
thinking!" I said, cuddling up to him, and hiding
my face, which was crimson with shame, on his
bosom. And my kind uncle had to comfort me for
my indiscretion.
From that day forth I never returned to that
prohibited subject. But about everything else I could
question Uncle Piötr Vasilievitch boldly. I was
regarded as his favorite, and we used to sit together
for hours at a time, chatting about all sorts of things.
When he was interested in any idea, he could think
and speak of nothing else. Quite forgetful of the
fact that he was addressing a child, he frequently
developed before me the most abstract theories. And
this it was precisely which pleased me, that he
conversed with me as with a grown-up person, and I
bent all my efforts to understand him, or at least to
present the appearance of understanding him.
Although he had never studied mathematics, he
cherished the most profound respect for that science.
He had gathered a certain amount of mathematical
knowledge from various books, and loved to
philosophize about them, on which occasions it frequently
happened that he thought aloud in my presence. I
heard from him for the first time, for example, about
the quadrature of the circle, about the asymptotes
which the curve always approaches without ever
attaining them, and about many other things of the
same sort—the sense of which I could not of course
understand as yet; but which acted on my inspiration,
imbuing me with a reverence for mathematics, as for
a very lofty and mysterious science, which opened out
5
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