He was as to his birthplace hardly a German, but a Russian, as he first saw the light in Moscow, in the year 1845.
"So you are now twenty-four ?" "Last May.

Are you frightened at such an age, fraulein ?" "That is not so old, twenty-four--particularly for a man," she protested with great earnestness.
His father, he went on, was from Konigsberg, had studied philology, and when he left the university had become a tutor in a distinguished Russian family.

He was the child of poor parents, and had to take the first opportunity which presented itself of earning his living.

So he went to Russia, where he lived for twenty years as a tutor in private families, and then as a teacher in a Moscow gymnasium.

He married late in life, an only child of German descent, who helped her middle-aged husband by a calm observance of duty and a mother's love for his children.