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studied at Kazan. He was not a notable student. It used to be said of the three brothers : “Sergius wants to, and can; Dmitri wants to, and can’t; Leo can’t, and doesn’t want to.”

He passed through the period which he terms “the desert of adolescence”; a desert of sterile sands, blown upon by gales of the burning winds of folly. The pages of Boyhood, and in especial those of Youth, are rich in intimate confessions relating to these years.

He was a solitary. His brain was in a condition