Memoirs

In the winter of 1799, we arrived in Kazan, a provincial city. I was then in my ninth year. It was bitterly cold, and although two rooms in a small house belonging to Captain Arisova had been arranged for us in advance, finding lodging took a while. Meanwhile, it was located on a decent street called Georgian.

We arrived in the evening in an ordinary peasant cart covered with coarse matting, pulled by our three horses (the cook and the maid reached earlier). The move turned out exhausting: we made a long stretch without stopping, wandered around the city for a long time asking for directions to the apartment, and we also had to wait quite a bit because the village lackeys were slow. I clearly remember how freezing I was, how cold it was in the rooms, how tea didn’t warm me up, and how I went to bed shivering as if I had a fever. I remember even more vividly another thing: my mother—who loved me dearly—was also trembling, not from the cold, but from anxiety that her beloved child, little Seryozhenka, might catch a chill.