nicknamed Nikitushka Lomof. In fact, he acquired and, without sparing any time, he kept up his mighty strength. "This is necessary," he used to say; "it gives you respect and love among the common people. This is useful, and it may come handy sometime."
This entered his mind when he was half-way through his sixteenth year, because from that time his peculiarities began to develop themselves. At sixteen he came to Petersburg, as a commonplace, good-natured graduate of the gymnasium, a commonplace, kind, and honest youth, and he spent three or four months in an ordinary way, as all new students do. But he began to learn that there were among the students some very clever heads, who had different ideas from the rest, and he learned the names of half a dozen such students. At that time there were only a few; they interested him, and he began to try to make their acquaintance. He happened to get acquainted with Kirsánof, and from this time dated his regeneration into an extraordinary man, the future Nikitushka Lomof and the rigorist. He listened eagerly to Kirsánof the first evening. He wept; he interrupted him with exclamations of curses against all that was to vanish, and blessings on all that must live. "What books shall I begin to read?" Kirsánof directed him. On the next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, he was walking down the Nevsky, from the Admiralty to the Police Bridge, wondering which German or French bookstore would be the first to open. He took what he wanted, and read steadily for more than seventy-two hours in succession,—from eleven o'clock on Thursday morning till nine o'clock Sunday evening,—eighty-two hours. The first two nights he did not sleep at all. On the third he drank eight cups of the strongest coffee; but on the fourth night coffee refused to support his strength. He fell down on the floor, and slept for fifteen hours. At the end of a week he came to Kirsánof, asked what books further he should read, and some explanations. They became friends; and through him he afterwards met the Lopukhófs. In six months, though he was only seventeen, while they were each one and twenty, they didn't look upon him as only a young fellow compared to themselves; and he had indeed become an extraordinary man.
What earnest was there in his past life for such a course? Not a very great one, but still there was something. His father was a man of despotic character, very clever, educated, and
