him in the face. My father was old and very thin but his delicate
muscles must have been as strong as leather, for his blows hurt a
good deal.

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