He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul.

His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge.

And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers.

The spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its waters did their work in another channel.

His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out happily for Seryozha.