Novels Author:Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AC I A I At that time I was five-and-twenty, began N. N.,—it was in days long past, as you perceive. I had only just gained my freedom and gone abroad, not t... more »o ' finish my education,' as the phrase was in those days ; I simply wanted to have a look at God's world. I was young, and in good health and spirits, and had plenty of money. Troubles had not yet had time to gather about me. I existed without thought, did as I liked, lived like the lilies of the field, in fact. It never occurred to me in those days that man is not a plant, and cannot go on living like one for long. Youth will eat gilt gingerbread and fancy it's daily bread too ; but the time comes when you 're in want of dry bread even. There's no need to go into that, though. I travelled without any sort of aim, without a plan; I stopped wherever I liked the place, and went on again directly I felt a desire to see new faces—faces, nothing else. I was interested in people exclusively ; I hated famous monuments and museums of curiosities, the very sight of a guide produced in me a sense of weariness and anger; I was almost driven crazy in the Dresden ' Griine-Gewolbe.' Nature affected me extremely, but I did not care for the so-called beauties of nature, extraordinary mountains, precipices, and waterfalls; I did not like nature to obtrude, to force itself upon me. But faces, living human faces—people's talk, and gesture, and laughter—that was what was absolutely necessary to me. In a crowd I always had a special feeling of ease and comfort. I enjoyed going where others went, shouting when others shouted, and at the same time I liked to look at the others shouting. It amused me to watch people . . . though I didn't even watch them—I simply stared at them with a sort of delighted, ever-eager curiosity. But I am diverging ag...« less