The Brothers Karamazovtrembling and fainting with terror almost every day, afraid
he would fall ill, would catch cold, do something naughty,
climb on a chair and fall off it, and so on and so on. When
Kolya began going to school, the mother devoted herself to
studying all the sciences with him so as to help him, and go
through his lessons with him. She hastened to make the ac-
quaintance of the teachers and their wives, even made up to
Kolya’s schoolfellows, and fawned upon them in the hope of
thus saving Kolya from being teased, laughed at, or beaten
by them. She went so far that the boys actually began to
mock at him on her account and taunt him with being a
‘mother’s darling.’
But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute
boy, ‘tremendously strong,’ as was rumoured in his class,
and soon proved to be the fact; he was agile, strong-willed,
and of an audacious and enterprising temper. He was good
at lessons, and there was a rumour in the school that he
could beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic and uni-
versal history. Though he looked down upon everyone, he
was a good comrade and not supercilious. He accepted his
schoolfellows’ respect as his due, but was friendly with them.
Above all, he knew where to draw the line. He could restrain
himself on occasion, and in his relations with the teachers
he never overstepped that last mystic limit beyond which a
prank becomes an unpardonable breach of discipline. But
he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion as the
smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of
mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something,
something effective and conspicuous. He was extremely