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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD 109
by him, but by a journalist who had come from
Petersburg.
And now all of a sudden my sister was a writer.
I found no words with which to express my rapture
and astonishment; I only flung myself on her neck,
and we hugged each other for a long time, and
laughed and talked all sorts of nonsense in our joy.
My sister could not make up her mind to tell any
other member of the household about her triumph;
she knew that all, even mother, would be alarmed,
and would tell father. In father’s eyes her action in
writing to Dostoévsky without permission, and
subjecting herself to his condemnation and laughter, would
have appeared a dreadful crime,
My poor father! He did so hate women writers,
and suspected every one of them of behavior which
had nothing to do with literature. And he was fated
to be the father of an authoress.
My father was personally acquainted with but one
authoress, the Countess Rostöptchin. He had seen
her in Moscow at the period when she was a brilliant
society beauty, with whom all the fashionable young
men of the day—my father among the number—had
been hopelessly in love. Then, many years afterward,
lie had met her somewhere abroad, in Baden-Baden I
think, in the gambling hall.
" I looked, and I coidd not believe my eyes," my
father often related the story. " The countess entered,
followed by a whole string of sharpers, each more
vulgar than the other. They were all shouting, and
laughing, and gabbling, and treating her like a boon
companion. She went up to the gaming-table, and
began to fling one gold piece after another. Her eyes
shone, her face was red, her chignon was askew.
She lost everything, to her very last gold piece, and
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