Cupid--naked and very puffy in the body--played a leading part in these illustrations.
In one of them, under the heading, "Saffron and the Rainbow," the interpretation appended was: "Of this, the influence is vast;" opposite another, entitled "A heron, flying with a violet in his beak," stood the inscription: "To thee they are all known." "Cupid and the bear licking his fur" was inscribed, "Little by little." Fedya used to ponder over these pictures; he knew them all to the minutest details; some of them, always the same ones, used to set him dreaming, and afforded him food for meditation; he! knew no other amusements.

When the time came to teach him languages and music, Glafira Petrovna engaged, for next to nothing, an old maid, a Swede, with eyes like a hare's, who spoke French and German with mistakes in every alternate word, played after a fashion on the piano, and above all, salted cucumbers to a perfection.

In the society of this governess, his aunt, and the old servant maid, Vassilyevna, Fedya spent four whole years.

Often he would sit in the corner with his "Emblems"; he sat there endlessly; there was a scent of geranium in the low pitched room, the solitary candle burnt dim, the cricket chirped monotonously, as though it were weary, the little clock ticked away hurriedly on the wall, a mouse scratched stealthily and gnawed at the wall-paper, and the three old women, like the Fates, swiftly and silently plied their knitting needles, the shadows raced after their hands and quivered strangely in the half darkness, and strange, half dark ideas swarmed in the child's brain.

No one would have called Fedya an interesting child; he was rather pale, but stout, clumsily built and awkward--a thorough peasant, as Glafira Petrovna said; the pallor would soon have vanished from his cheeks, if he had been allowed oftener to be in the open air.