with your grandmamma, whether he has obtained the situation he was promised?'
'I don't know.'
Punin cleared his throat. 'Ah! if one could be settled here, if only for a while! Or else one may wander and wander far, and find not a place to rest one's head; the disquieting alarms of life are unceasing, the soul is confounded. . . ..'
'Tell me,' I interrupted: 'are you of the clerical profession?'
Punin turned to me and half closed his eyelids. 'And what may be the cause of that question, gentle youth?'
'Why, you talk so—well, as they read in church.'
'Because I use the old scriptural forms of expression? But that ought not to surprise you. Admitting that in ordinary conversation such forms of expression are not always in place; but when one soars on the wings of inspiration, at once the language too grows more exalted. Surely your teacher—the professor of Russian literature—you do have lessons in that, I suppose?—surely he teaches you that, doesn't he?"
'No, he doesn't,' I responded. 'When we stay in the country I have no teacher. In Moscow I have a great many teachers.'
'And will you be staying long in the country?'
88
