Such did Ivan Petrovich find him when he returned; and, without losing time he at once began to apply his system to him.

“I want, above all, to make a man of him—­un homme,” he said to Glafira Petrovna “and not only a man, but a Spartan.”  This plan he began to carry out by dressing his boy in Highland costume.  The twelve-year-old little fellow had to go about with bare legs, and with a cock’s feather in his cap.  The Swedish governess was replaced by a young tutor from Switzerland, who was acquainted with all the niceties of gymnastics.  Music was utterly forbidden, as an accomplishment unworthy of a man.  Natural science, international law, and mathematics, as well as carpentry, which was selected in accordance with the advice of Jean Jacques Rousseau; and heraldry, which was introduced for the maintenance of chivalrous ideas—­these were the subjects to which the future “man” had to give his attention.  He had to get up at four in the morning and take a cold bath immediately, after which he had to run round a high pole at the end of a cord.  He had one meal a day, consisting of one dish; he rode on horseback, and he shot with a cross-bow.  On every fitting occasion he had to exercise himself, in imitation of his father, in gaining strength of will; and every evening he used to write, in a book reserved for that purpose, an account of how he had spent the day, and what were his ideas on the subject.  Ivan Petrovich, on his side, wrote instructions for him in French, in which he styled him mon fils, and addressed him as vous.  Fedia used to say “thou” to his father in Russian, but he did not dare to sit down in his presence.

The “system” muddled the boy’s brains, confused his ideas, and cramped his mind; but, as far as his physical health was concerned, the new kind of life acted on him beneficially.  At first he fell ill with a fever, but he soon recovered and became a fine fellow.  His father grew proud of him, and styled him in his curious language, “the child of nature, my creation.”  When Fedia reached the age of sixteen, Ivan Petrovich considered it a duty to inspire him in good time with contempt for the female sex—­and so the young Spartan, with the first down beginning to appear upon his lips, timid in feeling, but with a body full of blood, and strength, and energy, already tried to seem careless, and cold, and rough.

Meanwhile time passed by.  Ivan Petrovich spent the greater part of the year at Lavriki—­that was the name of his chief hereditary estate; but in winter he used to go by himself to Moscow, where he put up at a hotel, attended his club assiduously, aired his eloquence freely, explained his plans in society, and more than ever gave himself out as an Anglomaniac, a grumbler, and a statesman.  But the year 1825 came and brought with it much trouble[A].  Ivan Petrovich’s intimate friends and acquaintances underwent a heavy tribulation.  He made haste to betake himself far away into the country, and there