ten o’clock in the
morning before
At intervals , however , I would get up , and go downstairs , and begin wandering through the empty rooms . Once I sat a long while in the small drawing-room as I listened to Gasha playing `` The Nightingale '' -LRB- with two fingers -RRB- on the piano in the large drawing-room , where a solitary candle burned . Later , when the moon was bright , I felt obliged to get out of bed and to lean out of the window , so that I might gaze into the garden , and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff mansion , the straight tower of our parish church , and the dark shadows of the fence and the lilac-bush where they lay black upon the path . So long did I remain there that , when I at length returned to bed , it was ten o'clock in the morning before I could open my eyes again . In short , had it not been for the tutors who came to give me lessons , as well as for St. Jerome -LRB- who at intervals , and very grudgingly , applied a spur to my self-conceit -RRB- and , most of all , for the desire to figure as `` clever '' in the eyes of my friend Nechludoff -LRB- who looked upon distinctions in University examinations as a matter of first-rate importance -RRB- -- had it not been for all these things , I say , the spring and my new freedom would have combined to make me forget everything I had ever learnt , and so to go through the examinations to no purpose whatsoever . ON the 16th of April I entered , for the first time , and under the wing of St. Jerome , the great hall of the University . I had driven there with St. Jerome in our smart phaeton and wearing the first frockcoat of my life , while the whole of my other clothes -- even down to my socks and linen -- were new and of a grander sort .