Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/36

12 father's huge, two-storied official residence had any number of rooms, both for use and for show. They were large and gloomy, the windows faced towards the north, and the decorations were dull and pompous. My father could not bear the children to make a noise and disturb him in his work; we always crept past his study door on tiptoe.

I now believe that my father had many good qualities. But, always morose and harassed by the heavy official duties of those old days, he was a man who never managed to lead a real family life. There were nine of us, six boys and three girls. As children we lived on fairly good terms with each other, but later, each went his own way, for we lacked the spiritual ties which always come from the father.

I was the youngest boy and my mother loved me more than her other sons. If there is any good in me at all, I have to thank her for it. When I was 7 or 8, I nearly died of diphtheria; I owe my life to my mother's devoted care.

My father used to go on long official journeys abroad, and to Livadia in the Crimea, where the invalid Empress was then residing, and he left us children in the care of Amalia Christianovna, the old housekeeper, a German woman from Reval. She was a good-natured, but narrow-minded and shy sort of person. What I felt for her was not so much love, as childlike pity. I also had an