He was distinguished, too, by intentional untidiness, thinking this, for some reason, witty.

In his very last year at school he began writing Russian poetry.
Of his native language he had only an ungrammatical knowledge, like many of his race in Russia.

This turn for versifying drew him to a gloomy and depressed schoolfellow, the son of a poor Russian general, who was considered in the school to be a great future light in literature.

The latter patronised him.

But it happened that three years after leaving school this melancholy schoolfellow, who had flung up his official career for the sake of Russian literature, and was consequently going about in torn boots, with his teeth chattering with cold, wearing a light summer overcoat in the late autumn, met, one day on the Anitchin bridge, his former protege, "Lembka," as he always used to be called at school.