Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1862
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
The scholars after dinner gather for the first lesson of the second session, just as they did for the morning, and wait for the teacher in the same way.
As a general rule this lesson is devoted to sacred or Russian history, and all the classes take part in it. By the time this lesson begins, generally the twilight is coming on. The teacher stands or sits in the middle of the room, and the scholars gather around him as in an amphitheater; some on benches, some on chairs, some on the window-seats.
All these evening lessons, and especially this first one, have an absolutely different character from those of the morning, a character of calm dreaminess and poetry.
Come into the school at dusk; no lights are visible at the windows, it is almost quiet; only the snow newly tracked in on the stairs, a subdued murmur, and a slight motion behind the door, and perhaps some little lad seizing the balustrade and running up-stairs two steps at a time, give proof that school is in session.
Come into the room.
It is almost dark behind the frosted windows; the older and better scholars pressing together, crowding close to the teacher, and lifting their pretty heads, look him straight in the face. The independent little housemaid, with preoccupied face, always sits in a high chair and seems to swallow every word. The more mischievous and younger the children are, the farther away they manage to get. But they all listen attentively, even seriously; they behave themselves as well as the older ones; but, notwithstanding their attention, we cannot help being conscious that they will not be able to repeat anything of what they hear, although they remember much of it. One leans on another's shoulder; another stands by the table. Occasionally one of them, stretching over to the very middle of the throng across the back of some one else, scratches some figure with his finger-nail on some boy's back. Rarely will any one look at you.
When a new story begins, all sit still as death and listen. If it happen to be one they have heard before then, here and there conceited voices are heard from those who cannot refrain from reminding the teacher. However, if the old story is one they like, they will urge the teacher to repeat it in full, and they will not let him be interrupted.
"Can't you be patient! hush!" they will cry to the mischievous urchin.
It hurts them to have the character and artistic quality of the teacher's tale interrupted. During the last weeks it has been the story of the life of Christ. Each time they have insisted on hearing the whole of it. If any part were omitted, then they themselves added their favorite ending the story of Peter's denial and the Savior's sufferings.
It would seem as if there were no one alive in the room, not a motion can it be that they are asleep?
If you should go round in the twilight and look into the face of any youngster whatever, you would find him sitting with his eyes fastened on his teacher's face, his brow drawn into a frown of attention, and ten times he will shake off his mate's hand thrown over his shoulder. If you should tickle him in the neck, he would not even smile, but would shake his head as if to drive away a fly, and again give all his attention to the mysterious and poetic tale, how the veil of the temple was rent, and darkness covered the face of the earth, and it seems to him both painful and delightful.