ABSTRACT
As an infant I was looked after by a wet nurse (a free woman) and a nursemaid (a household serf). The wet nurse, a fine woman who also nursed my sisters, is the one who lives with my surviving sister in Odessa; her husband, named Vakula, a private in an infantry battalion stationed in Tiflis, was an inveterate drunkard who often quarreled with her in my presence, when he came to visit her. Our nursemaid’s husband, a serf, waited on tables and like Vakula was a quarrelsome drunkard. The wet nurse was to become my second nursemaid.
