As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher had no great sum been required, or had he not been called upon to touch the fund which he had decided should remain intact.

In other words, the father's injunction, "Guard and save every kopeck," had become a hard and fast rule of the son's.

Yet the youth had no particular attachment to money for money's sake; he was not possessed with the true instinct for hoarding and niggardliness.

Rather, before his eyes there floated ever a vision of life and its amenities and advantages--a vision of carriages and an elegantly furnished house and recherche dinners; and it was in the hope that some day he might attain these things that he saved every kopeck and, meanwhile, stinted both himself and others.

Whenever a rich man passed him by in a splendid drozhki drawn by swift and handsomely-caparisoned horses, he would halt as though deep in thought, and say to himself, like a man awakening from a long sleep: "That gentleman must have been a financier, he has so little hair on his brow." In short, everything connected with wealth and plenty produced upon him an ineffaceable impression.