However, in my own case I may have been deceived by my excessive capacity for, and love of, analysis.  Possibly Woloda did not feel at all as I did.  Passionate and frank, but unstable in his likings, he was attracted by the most diverse things, and always surrendered himself wholly to such attraction.  For instance, he suddenly conceived a passion for pictures, spent all his money on their purchase, begged Papa, Grandmamma, and his drawing master to add to their number, and applied himself with enthusiasm to art.  Next came a sudden rage for curios, with which he covered his table, and for which he ransacked the whole house.  Following upon that, he took to violent novel-reading—­procuring such works by stealth, and devouring them day and night.  Involuntarily I was influenced by his whims, for, though too proud to imitate him, I was also too young and too lacking in independence to choose my own way.  Above all, I envied Woloda his happy, nobly frank character, which showed itself most strikingly when we quarrelled.  I always felt that he was in the right, yet could not imitate him.  For instance, on one occasion when his passion for curios was at its height, I went to his table and accidentally broke an empty many-coloured smelling-bottle.

“Who gave you leave to touch my things?” asked Woloda, chancing to enter the room at that moment and at once perceiving the disorder which I had occasioned in the orderly arrangement of the treasures on his table.  “And where is that smelling bottle?  Perhaps you—?”

“I let it fall, and it smashed to pieces; but what does that matter?”

“Well, please do me the favour never to dare to touch my things again,” he said as he gathered up the broken fragments and looked at them vexedly.

“And will you please do me the favour never to order me to do anything whatever,” I retorted.  “When a thing’s broken, it’s broken, and there is no more to be said.”  Then I smiled, though I hardly felt like smiling.

“Oh, it may mean nothing to you, but to me it means a good deal,” said Woloda, shrugging his shoulders (a habit he had caught from Papa).  “First of all you go and break my things, and then you laugh.  What a nuisance a little boy can be!”

“Little boy, indeed?  Then you, I suppose, are a man, and ever so wise?”

“I do not intend to quarrel with you,” said Woloda, giving me a slight push.  “Go away.”

“Don’t you push me!”

“Go away.”

“I say again—­don’t you push me!”

Woloda took me by the hand and tried to drag me away from the table, but I was excited to the last degree, and gave the table such a push with my foot that I upset the whole concern, and brought china and crystal ornaments and everything else with a crash to the floor.

“You disgusting little brute!” exclaimed Woloda, trying to save some of his falling treasures.

“At last all is over between us,” I thought to myself as I strode from the room.  “We are separated now for ever.”