Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/210

174 from my earliest childhood to my grave. I have always been paid with evil for the good which I have done people, and my reward is not here, but there," he said, pointing to heaven. "If you knew my history and all I have suffered in this life! I was a shoemaker, I was a soldier, I was a deserter, I was a manufacturer, I was a teacher, and now I am zero, and I have, like the Son of God, no place where to lay any head," he concluded and, closing his eyes, dropped down into his chair.

Noticing that Karl Ivánovich was in that sentimental frame of mind when he paid no attention to his hearers and expressed his secret thoughts to himself, I seated myself on my bed, and in silence fixed my eyes on his good face.

"You are not a child, you can understand! I shall tell you my history and all I have suffered in this life. Some day you will think of your old friend who loved you children very much!"

Karl Ivánovich leaned with his arm against the small table which was standing near him, took a pinch of snuff, and, rolling his eyes to haven, began his story in that peculiar, even, guttural voice, in which he generally dictated to us:

"I vos unhappy even in de lap of my moder. Das Unglück verfolgte mich schon im Schosse meiner Mutter!" he repeated with greater feeling.

Since Karl Ivánovich told me his history often afterward, following the same order, and using the same expressions and ever unchanged intonations, I hope I shall be able to render it almost word for word, except, of course, for the irregularities of language, of which the reader may judge by the first sentence. I have not yet decided whether it was his real history, or the production of his fancy, which originated during his lonely life in our house, and which he had himself come to believe from his frequent repetitions, or whether he had adorned the