us proceed on this understanding.” [19] When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to a small town “to render him harmless,” he was shocked. Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would have suspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at school was thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess’ house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man was hateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and a hypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment. At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him. Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it. [20] [20] CHAPTER III. PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY. A LESSON in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only became the more aware of the foreigner’s struggles with Russian and made the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why, then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was merely transferred to another school? The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics[21] emerged from one of the glass doors, his deformity
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