Poor Folk and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read Free Book Online

little dove; I expect what you want is poetry, lovers’ complaints, amours – well, I shall obtain poetry for you, I shall obtain everything; they have a notebook with verses copied in it there.
    As for myself, I am well. Please do not worry about me, little mother. What Fedora told you about me is all nonsense; you tell her that she’s been spreading lies about me, the gossip!… I certainly have not sold my new uniform. I mean, judge for yourself, what on earth would induce me to go and do that? They tell me that I’m to receive forty rubles in bonus pay soon, so why should I need to sell my uniform? Don’t you let yourself be upset, little mother; she is mistrustful, that Fedora, she has a suspicious mind. We shall be all right, my little dove! Only, my angel, you must get better, do youhear, you must get better, and not make an old man unhappy. Who told you that I have grown thin?
    Slander, more slander! I am thoroughly healthy and have put on so much weight that I have a bad conscience about it – I am stuffed full to the gullet; all I want is for you to get better! Well, goodbye my little angel; I kiss each one of your fingers and remain,
    Your eternal, constant friend,
    M AKAR D EVUSHKIN
    PS Oh, my darling, why do you write this again?… What game are you playing with me? How can I visit you so often, little mother, how? I ask you. Perhaps under cover of darkness; but it hardly gets dark at nights now, * at this time of the year. You know, my little mother, little angel, I hardly left your side during all the time you were ill, when you lay unconscious; even now I don’t really know how I managed to do all that I did; and afterwards I stopped visiting you, because people had started to get nosy and ask questions. Even without all that, there had been some kind of gossip going around here. I put my faith in Teresa; she knows how to hold her tongue; but even so, little mother, imagine how it will be when they find out everything about us, what they will think and what they will say. So you must be strong, my darling, and wait until you are better again; and then we shall arrange a rendezvous somewhere out of doors.
    June 1
    Dearest Makar Alekseyevich,
    I so much want to do something nice for you in return for all the effort and trouble you have put yourself to because of me, and in recognition of your love for me, that I have finally determined to get the better of my reluctance to rummage around in my locker and fish out my exercise-book, which I am sending you now. I began it at a happy time in my life. You often used to ask with curiosity about the way I used to live, about my mother, about Pokrovsky, about the time I spent in the home of Anna Fyodorovna and about my recent troubles, and you were so impatient in your wish to read this exercise-book, in which I had the idea, heaven knows why, of jotting down random moments of my life, that I have no doubt my parcelwill bring you great enjoyment. As for myself, however – reading it over made me feel sad. I seem to have aged twice over since the time I wrote the last line of these notes. They were all written at different times. Goodbye, Makar Alekseyevich! I feel terribly low just now, and I am frequently tormented by insomnia. What a tiresome convalescence!
    V. D.
    I
    I was only fourteen years old when Father died. My childhood was the happiest time of my life. It began not here, but far away, in the provinces, in the wilds. Father was the manager of the enormous estate belonging to Prince P., in the province of T. We lived in one of the Prince’s villages, and our life was quiet, unobserved, and happy… I was ever such a playful little child; all I ever did was run around the fields, the woods and the orchard, and no one ever paid me the slightest attention. Father was constantly preoccupied with business matters, and my mother took care of the household; no one tried to give me any education, for which I was grateful. I