It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are speaking, the private institutions—­male pensions and institutes, as well as academies for cadets—­represented some sort of hot-house nurseries.  The care of the mind and morality they tried to entrust as much as possible to educators who were bureaucrats-formalists; and in addition impatient, captious, capricious in their sympathies and hysterical, just like old maid lady teachers.  Now it is otherwise.  But at that time the boys were left to themselves.  Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from the maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses; from morning and evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they were ashamed of every manifestation of tenderness as “womanishness,” they were still irresistibly and sweetly drawn to kisses, contacts, conversations whispered in the ear.

Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in the open air—­precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises, each to his own taste—­could have always put off the coming of this climacteric period or soften and make it understandable.

I repeat—­then there was nothing of this.

The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother, sister, nurse, so roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into deformed forms of courting (every whit like the “crushes” in a female institute) of good-looking boys, of “fairies”; they loved to whisper in corners and, walking arm in arm, or embracing in dark corridors, to tell in each other’s ears improbable histories of adventures with women.  This was partly both childhood’s need of the fairy-tale element and partly awakening sensuality as well.  Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old chubby, for whom it was just the proper time to be playing at popular tennis or to be greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk, would be telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels, of how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain, handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately enamored of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and precious wine; and how furiously and passionately she makes love to him.

Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged reading, like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl has undergone.  No matter how strict in this respect the class surveillance may be, the striplings did read, are reading, and will read just that which is not permitted them.  Here is a special passion, chic, the allurement of the forbidden.  Already in the third class went from hand to hand the manuscript transcripts of Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful sins of Lermontov and others:  “The first night,” “The cherry,” “Lucas,” “The festival at PETERHOF,” “The she uhlan, grief through wisdom,” “The priest,” &c.