Nina Krivosheina. FOUR-THIRDS OF OUR LIVES (№ 426140)

When my father's parents died, his older brother Alexander Pavlovich, who was 12 years older than him, became his guardian and sent him to the military corps in Moscow, and the boy lived in the Noble boarding house. I often asked my father about life in this boarding house; he retained good memories of this life. The husband and wife were in charge of the housekeeping at the boarding house, as well as the upbringing of students, he was Russian, she was French. The way of life was family, the pupils did not feel lonely or unhappy; one thing they could not reconcile with was the soups that the French headmistress fed them: the soups were purely vegetable, pureed and ... without meat. It seemed to the boys with a wolfish appetite that the French Madame was saving on them and did not give them the usual borscht with fat and a good piece of beef!