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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD 125
ferent man when he was in our house; and in view
of the fact that our stay in Petersburg was not to
be long, he began to come to us very often — three
or four times a week.
It was especially pleasant when he came in the
evening, and when there were no other visitors. Then
he brightened up, and became unusually agreeable
and attractive. Feödor Mikhåilovitch could not
endure general conversation; he talked only in
monologues, and that only on condition that all present
were in sympathy with him, and listened to him with
strained attention. On the other hand, if these
conditions were fulfilled, he could talk better, more
picturesquely, and more vividly, than any other person I
ever heard.
Sometimes he related to us the contents of the
romances he had conceived, sometimes scenes and
episodes from his own life. I remember vividly for
example how he described the moments when he was
obliged to stand condemned to be shot, with bound
eyes, before the file of soldiers, awaiting the fatal
command, "Fire!"—when suddenly instead of that
the drums began to beat, and the news of the
commutation of his sentence arrived.
I remember still another of his stories. My sister
and I knew that Feödor Mikhåilovitch suffered from
epilepsy; but that disease was surrounded in our eyes
with such a magic terror that we could never make up
our minds to touch the subject, even with the remotest
hint. To our amazement lie began himself to speak
of it, and told us under what circumstances he had
his first attack. Afterward I heard another totally
different version of the affair — to the effect that
Dostoévsky acquired epilepsy through the beatings
with rods to which he was subjected in the Siberian
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