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RUDIN deserve it. Leave off teasing me,’ she added, in an appealing voice, ‘You had much better tell me about his youth.’

‘Rudin’s youth?’

‘Yes, of course. Didn’t you tell me you knew him well, and had known him a long time?’

Lezhnyov got up and walked up and down the room.

‘Yes,’ he began, ‘I do know him well. You want me to tell you about his youth? Very well. He was born in T, and was the son of a poor landowner, who died soon after. He was left alone with his mother. She was a very good woman, and she idolised him; she lived on nothing but oatmeal, and every penny she had she spent on him. He was educated in Moscow, first at the expense of some uncle, and afterwards, when he was grown up and fully fledged, at the expense of a rich prince whose favour he had courted—there, I beg your pardon, I won’t do it again—with whom he had made friends. Then he went to the university. At the university I got to know him and we became intimate friends. I will tell you about 95