Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/74

64 candles to light his pipe. Ivan and Feodor were both horrified, and Ivan said, "How can you do that? The saint will be angry, and some harm will happen to you."

"My dear innocent babe, when you know a little more you will believe a little less. Ah, here comes Mousié, our French professor.—M. Thomassin, here is your new pupil, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch Pojarsky."

A dapper little Frenchman glided noiselessly towards them, and bowed profoundly. But the ceremony of introduction accomplished, Adrian went off with him, much to the relief of the boys, whom he left in the charge of a servant, bidding him supply Feodor plentifully with fruit.

That day was the beginning of a new life for Ivan. His versatile, imitative Russian nature stood him in good stead. Ashamed of his ignorance of what Adrian and Leon Wertsch knew so well, and perhaps with the same feelings of emulation towards them as of old towards Michael, he devoted his quick intelligence and his retentive memory to two branches of study,—the French language and the art of reading. The average Russian is a remarkably good linguist, and Ivan was much more than an average Russian. It very soon became unsafe for "Mousié" to say anything in his presence which he was not intended to understand; nor was it long before he could read sufficiently well to amuse his leisure with the worthless sentimental romances then, unhappily, popular in Russia.

In other ways his education made rapid progress. He soon appreciated the attractions of the French theatre; he learned to like the taste of champagne; and cards and loto were substituted for the homely babshkys of his childhood. Under the tutelage of M. Thomassin—as worthless and unprincipled a Frenchman as ever professed and propagated the doctrines of Voltaire—the Wertsches were growing up into frivolous, dissipated young men of fashion, and open scoffers at what they styled a stupid and antiquated superstition. Their mother, a thoroughly