Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/40

16 once took me to Alupka, to see the 70-year-old Countess, Elisabeth Vorontsov. I did not know then that I had the honour to kiss a hand which had been kissed half a century before by Pushkin.

In 1880, at the house of Countess Tolstoy, the widow of the poet, my father made the acquaintance of Dostoyevsky, and thereupon he took me to see him. I still remember the little apartment in Kolokolnaya Street, the narrow ante-room which was filled with copies of "The Brothers Karamazov," and the equally narrow study where Fyodor Mikhailovitch was sitting and correcting proofs. Turning red and pale, and stammering, I read him my wretched verses. He listened to me in silent annoyance. We had probably disturbed him in his work.

"Bad, very bad! Beneath all criticiem!" he said at length. "To write well it is first necessary to endure much, to suffer much."

"Then he had better not write; I do not want him to suffer," replied my father.

I can still remember the penetrating glance of Dostoyevsky's transparent, pale-blue eyes, and the pressure of his hand when we left. I never saw him again, and soon after that meeting I heard of his death. About the same time I made the acquaintance of an ensign at the military academy, who later was to become the famous poet Semyon Nadson. I loved him like a brother. Even then, he had consumption and was always