Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake...
(Here Olga and I used always to interpolate a short prayer of our own
invention: "Please, dear God, do not on any account let us die to-night.
Amen.")--when Vassili interrupted me.
"Haven't you finished?" he cried, putting his arm round my neck. "You
are very tiresome. You bore me to extinction."
"You bore me!" That was the perpetual refrain of all his days. I always
bored him. Perhaps it was not surprising. At seventeen one is not always
clever and entertaining, especially outside the family circle. At home I
had always been considered rather witty and intelligent, but to Vassili
I was never anything but "a dreadful bore."
When I caught sight of him pinching Rosalia's cheek and I burst into
tears: "You are a fearful bore," he said crossly. If I noticed the scent
of musk or patchouli on his coat and ventured to question him about
it--"You are an insufferable little bore," would be all the answer I got.
When he went out (taking the music of "My Savage Plains" with him) and
stayed away all night, on his return next morning I sobbed out my
anguish on his breast. "I must say you bore me to death," he yawned.
And one day I heard that he had had a child by a German baroness.
At the sight of my paroxysm of despair he grew angry. "What does it
matter to you, silly creature, since you have not got one yourself?" he
exclaimed. "Wearisome little bore that you are; you can't even have a
child."