I staggered back into the passage, and there he snatched up his umbrella, and with it hit me several times on the head and shoulders; at that moment my sister opened the drawing-room door to find out what the noise was, but at once turned away with a look of horror and pity without uttering a word in my defence.

My determination not to return to the Government office, but to begin a new life of toil, was not to be shaken.  All that was left for me to do was to fix upon the special employment, and there was no particular difficulty about that, as it seemed to me that I was very strong and fitted for the very heaviest labour.  I was faced with a monotonous life of toil in the midst of hunger, coarseness, and stench, continually preoccupied with earning my daily bread.  And—­who knows?—­as I returned from my work along Great Dvoryansky Street, I might very likely envy Dolzhikov the, engineer, who lived by intellectual work, but, at the moment, thinking over all my future hardships made me light-hearted.  At times I had dreamed of spiritual activity, imagining myself a teacher, a doctor, or a writer, but these dreams remained dreams.  The taste for intellectual pleasures—­for the theatre, for instance, and for reading—­was a passion with me, but whether I had any ability for intellectual work I don’t know.  At school I had had an unconquerable aversion for Greek, so that I was only in the fourth class when they had to take me from school.  For a long while I had coaches preparing me for the fifth class.  Then I served in various Government offices, spending the greater part of the day in complete idleness, and I was told that was intellectual work.  My activity in the scholastic and official sphere had required neither mental application nor talent, nor special qualifications, nor creative impulse; it was mechanical.  Such intellectual work I put on a lower level than physical toil; I despise it, and I don’t think that for one moment it could serve as a justification for an idle, careless life, as it is indeed nothing but a sham, one of the forms of that same idleness.  Real intellectual work I have in all probability never known.

Evening came on.  We lived in Great Dvoryansky Street; it was the principal street in the town, and in the absence of decent public gardens our beau monde used to use it as a promenade in the evenings.  This charming street did to some extent take the place of a public garden, as on each side of it there was a row of poplars which smelt sweet, particularly after rain, and acacias, tall bushes of lilac, wild-cherries and apple-trees hung over the fences and palings.  The May twilight, the tender young greenery with its shifting shades, the scent of the lilac, the buzzing of the insects, the stillness, the warmth—­how fresh and marvellous it all is, though spring is repeated every year!  I stood at the garden gate and watched the passers-by.  With most of them I had grown up and at one time played pranks; now they might have