Chapter I: Sergeant of the Guards

My father, Andrei Petrovich Grinyov, served in his youth under Count Münnich and retired as a premier-major in 17—. From then on he lived in his village in the province of Simbirsk, where he married Avdotya Vasilyevna, the daughter of a poor nobleman of the district. There were nine of us children; all my brothers and sisters died in infancy.

Before I was born I was enrolled as a sergeant in the Semyonovsky regiment of the Guards, by the favour of Prince B., a near relation of ours, and I was counted on leave until my studies were done. In those days we were not brought up as they are now. At five I was given into the care of the groom Savelyich, who for his sober conduct was made my dyadka, my guardian. Under him, by the age of twelve, I had learned to read and write Russian, and could judge very soundly the points of a borzoi. Then my father hired a Frenchman, Monsieur Beaupré, who came from Moscow along with the year's supply of wine and olive oil. Savelyich did not like it at all. "The child is washed, combed and fed, thank God," he grumbled. "What need to spend money on a Monsieur, as if our own people weren't enough!"

Beaupré had been a hairdresser in his own country, then a soldier in Prussia, and had come to Russia to be a tutor without quite knowing what the word meant. He was a good fellow, but flighty, and no enemy, as he put it, of the bottle. He was engaged to teach me French, German and all the sciences, but he preferred to learn a little Russian chatter from me, and then each of us went about his own business. We lived as friends.

Fate soon parted us. One day my father came into the schoolroom just as I was making a kite out of the map of the world, with a bast tail tied to the Cape of Good Hope, while Monsieur slept the sleep of innocence after a morning's drinking. Beaupré was pulled up by the ear and turned out of the house, to Savelyich's inexpressible joy. That was the end of my education. I chased pigeons and played leapfrog with the servants' boys until I was sixteen. Then my fate changed.

One autumn day my mother was making honey jam in the parlour, and my father sat at the window reading the Court Calendar, which always agitated him. Suddenly he put it down and said: "Avdotya Vasilyevna, how old is Petrusha?"

"Going on seventeen," said my mother.

"Good. It's time he went into the service. He's run about the maids' rooms and climbed the dovecotes long enough."

I was delighted: the service meant Petersburg, I thought, and the Guards, and freedom. But my father had other ideas. "What will he learn in Petersburg? To squander money and play the rake. No: let him serve in the army, let him drag the strap and smell gunpowder, and be a soldier and not an idler." He wrote to his old comrade Andrei Karlovich R. in Orenburg, and gave me the letter with these words: "Farewell, Pyotr. Serve faithfully the one you have sworn to serve. Obey your superiors and do not run after their favour. Do not ask for duties and do not refuse them. And remember the proverb: take care of your coat while it is new, and of your honour from youth."

My mother wept; I was dressed in a hareskin coat with a fox fur over it, and set out with Savelyich in a kibitka, crying bitterly.

At Simbirsk, where we stopped a day for purchases, I wandered into the inn's billiard room and met a tall gentleman of about thirty-five with a long black moustache: Ivan Ivanovich Zurin, a captain of hussars. He gave me dinner, made me drink, told me army stories that made me hold my sides, and offered to teach me billiards. "It's essential for us soldiers. On the march you come to some little town — what is there to do?" I was persuaded. Soon we were playing for a kopek a game, "so as not to play for nothing"; then he ordered punch; then the stakes went up; and in an hour I had lost a hundred roubles.

In the morning Savelyich nearly died. "A hundred roubles! Is that a child's debt?" But I had drunk my first punch and made my first debt, and I had my pride. "I am your master, and you are my servant," I said. "The money is mine; I lost it because I chose to. Do as you're told." The old man clasped his hands and went to pay; and I left Simbirsk with a heavy conscience.