"at home, everybody, mother, my sisters, prince s., even that detestable colia! if they don’t say it, they think it. i told them all so to their faces. i told mother and father and everybody. mamma was ill all the day after it, and next day father and alexandra told me that i didn’t understand what nonsense i was talking. i informed them that they little knew me i was not a small child i understood every word in the language that i had read a couple of paul de kok’s novels two years since on purpose, so as to know all about everything. no sooner did mamma hear me say this than she nearly fainted!"