Katia

This novel revolves around the life of Katia, a seventeen years old lady. Excerpt: «Sergius Mikaïlovitch was our nearest neighbor…I had been too accustomed, from my childhood, to love and respect him…of all my acquaintances, he was the one before whom I would be most unwilling to appear in an unfavorable light. Not only did I feel the old attachment for Sergius Mikaïlovitch which was shared by everyone in the house, from Sonia, who was his god-daughter, down to the under-coachman, but this attachment had derived a peculiar character from a few words Mamma had once let fall before me. She had said that he was just the husband that she would have wished for me. At the moment such an idea had appeared to be very extraordinary and even somewhat disagreeable; the hero of my imagination was different. My hero was to be slender, delicate, pale, and melancholy. Sergius Mikaïlovitch, on the contrary, was no longer young, he was tall and large, full of vigor, and, so far as I could judge, had an extremely pleasant temper; nevertheless, my mother's remark had made a strong impression on my imagination. This had happened six years before, when I was only eleven, when he still said „thou“ to me, played with me, and gave me the name of La petite Violette, yet ever since that day I had always felt some secret misgivings whenever I had asked myself the question what I should do if he should suddenly take a fancy to marry me?»