Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Lichonin procured a stocking knitting machine for her, on terms.  The art, the mastery of this instrument—­promising, to judge by the advertisement, three roubles of clear profit a day—­proved to be so uncomplicated that Lichonin, Soloviev, and Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few hours; while Lichonin even contrived to knit a whole stocking of uncommon durability, and of such dimensions that it would have proven big even for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, whose statues are in Moscow, on Krasnaya Square.  Only Liubka alone could not master this trade.  At every mistake or tangle she was forced to turn to the co-operation of the men.  But then, she learned pretty rapidly to make artificial flowers and, despite the opinion of Simanovsky, made them very exquisitely, and with great taste; so that after a month the hat specialty stores began to buy her work.  And, what is most amazing, she had taken only two lessons in all from a specialist, while the rest she learned through a self-instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings supplemental to it.  She did not contrive to make more than a rouble’s worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the very first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a mouthpiece for smoking.

Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in the university and as a lawyer.  This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka, possessed some instinctive domesticity, some imperceptible ability of creating a bright and easy quietude around her.  It was precisely she who attained the fact that Lichonin’s quarters very soon became a charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Lichonin, who, as well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to sustain a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt somehow at ease, as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy tribulations, need, and starvation.  Lichonin recalled with grateful sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on those evenings around the samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued and dreamt.

In learning, things went with great difficulty.  All these self-styled cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must flow out of individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with just that which seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable, and tried to overcome together with her those scientific obstacles, which, without any loss, might have been left aside.