My past and thoughts, vol. 2 (of 6) : The memoirs of Alexander Herzen

By Herzen

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Title: My past and thoughts, vol. 2 (of 6)
        The memoirs of Alexander Herzen

Author: Aleksandr Herzen

Translator: Constance Garnett


        
Release date: March 31, 2026 [eBook #78332]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78332

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PAST AND THOUGHTS, VOL. 2 (OF 6) ***




THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDER HERZEN

II




NOTE


This translation has been made by arrangement from the sole complete
and copyright edition of _My Past and Thoughts_, that published in the
original Russian at Berlin, 1921.




                          _MY PAST AND THOUGHTS_

                              THE MEMOIRS OF
                             ALEXANDER HERZEN

                        _THE AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
                        TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
                           BY CONSTANCE GARNETT_

                                 VOLUME II

                              [Illustration]

                                 NEW YORK
                              ALFRED A. KNOPF

                        PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
                     T. & A. CONSTABLE LTD. EDINBURGH
                                     *
                                ALL RIGHTS
                                 RESERVED

                           FIRST PUBLISHED 1924




CONTENTS


                                 PART III
                         VLADIMIR ON THE KLYAZMA
                               (1838-1839)

    CHAPTER XIX:—The Two Princesses                                _page 1_

    CHAPTER XX:—The Forlorn Child                                 _page 11_

    CHAPTER XXI:—Separation                                       _page 29_

    CHAPTER XXII:—In Moscow while I was away                      _page 50_

    CHAPTER XXIII:—The Third of March and the Ninth of May 1838   _page 63_

    CHAPTER XXIV:—The Thirteenth of June 1839                     _page 87_

                                 PART IV
                     MOSCOW, PETERSBURG, AND NOVGOROD
                               (1840-1847)

    CHAPTER XXV:—Dissonance—A New Circle—Desperate Hegelianism—V.
  Byelinsky, M. Bakunin, and others—A Quarrel with Byelinsky and
  Reconciliation—Argument with a Lady at Novgorod—Stankevitch’s
  Circle                                                         _page 104_

    CHAPTER XXVI:—Warnings—The Promotion Office—A Minister’s
  Secretariat—The Third Section—The Story of a Sentry—General
  Dubbelt—Count Benckendorf—Olga Alexandrovna Zherebtsov—My
  Second Exile                                                   _page 151_

    CHAPTER XXVII:—The Provincial Government—I am under my own
  Supervision—The Duhobors and Paul—The Paternal Rule of the
  Landowners—Count Araktcheyev and the Military Settlements—A
  Ferocious Investigation—Retirement                             _page 188_

    CHAPTER XXVIII:—Grübelei—Moscow after Exile—Pokrovskoe—The
  Death of Matvey—Father Ioann                                   _page 207_

    CHAPTER XXIX:—OUR FRIENDS—The Moscow Circle—Table Talk—The
  Westerners (Botkin, Ryedkin, Kryukov, and Yevgeny Korsh)—On
  the Grave of a Friend                                          _page 227_

    CHAPTER XXX:—OUR ‘OPPONENTS’—The Slavophils and
  Panslavism—Homyakov—The Kireyevskys—K. S. Aksakov—P. Y.
  Tchaadayev                                                     _page 254_

    CHAPTER XXXI:—My Father’s Death—My Heritage—The
  Partition—Two Nephews                                          _page 304_

    CHAPTER XXXII:—The Last Visit to Sokolovo—The Theoretical
  Rupture—A Strained Position—Dahin! Dahin!                      _page 340_

    CHAPTER XXXIII:—A Police-Officer in the Part of a Valet—The
  Police-Master Kokoshkin—‘Disorder in Order’—Dubbelt Once
  More—The Passport                                              _page 353_

    APPENDIX (TO CHAPTER 29):—N. H. Ketscher—Basil and Armance   _page 365_




PART III

VLADIMIR ON THE KLYAZMA

(1838-1839)

    _Do not expect from me long accounts of my inner life of
    that period.... Terrible events, troubles of all sorts, are
    more easily put upon paper than quite bright and cloudless
    memories.... Can happiness be described?_

    _Fill in for yourselves what is lacking, divine it with the
    heart—while I will tell of the external side, of the setting,
    only rarely, rarely touching by hint or by word, on its holy
    secrets._




Chapter 19

THE TWO PRINCESSES


When I was five or six years old and was very naughty, Vera Artamonovna
used to say: ‘Very well, very well, you wait a bit, I’ll tell the
princess as soon as she comes.’ I was at once subdued by this threat and
begged her not to complain.

Princess Marya Alexeyevna Hovansky, my father’s sister, was a stern,
forbidding old woman, stout and dignified, with a birth-mark on her cheek
and false curls under her cap; she used to screw up her eyes as she
spoke, and to the end of her days, that is to the age of eighty, rouged
and powdered a little. Whenever I fell into her hands she worried me;
there was no end to her lecturing and grumbling; she would scold me for
anything, for a crumpled collar, or a stain on my jacket, would declare
I had not gone up to kiss her hand properly, and make me go through the
ceremony again. When she had finished lecturing me, she would sometimes
say to my father, as with her finger-tips she took a pinch out of a tiny
gold snuff-box: ‘My dear, you should send your spoilt child to me to be
corrected; he would be as soft as silk when he had been a month in my
hands.’ I knew that they would not give me up to her, but I shivered
with horror at those words.

My terror of her passed off with the years, but I never liked the old
princess’s house; I could not breathe freely in it, I was not myself
there, but like a trapped hare looked uneasily from one side to the other
to make my escape.

The old princess’s household was not in the least like my father’s or
the Senator’s. It was an old-fashioned, orthodox Russian household in
which they kept the fasts, went to early matins, put a cross on the doors
on the Eve of Epiphany, made marvellous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, ate
pork with horse-radish, dined exactly at two o’clock and supped at nine.
The European influences which had infected her brothers and turned them
somewhat out of their native rut had not touched the old princess’s
existence; on the contrary, she disapproved of the way in which ‘Vanyusha
and Lyovushka,’ as she called my father and uncle, had been corrupted by
‘that France.’

Princess Marya Alexeyevna lived in the lodge of the house occupied by her
aunt, Princess Anna Borissovna Meshtchersky, a maiden lady of eighty.

This Princess Meshtchersky was the living and almost solitary link
connecting all the seven ascending and descending branches of the
family. At the chief holidays all the relations gathered about her. She
reconciled those who were at variance and brought together those who had
drifted apart. She was respected by all, and she deserved it. At her
death family ties were loosened and lost their rallying-point, and the
relations forgot each other.

She had finished the education of my father and his brothers; after the
death of their parents she looked after their property until they came
of age. She put them into the Guards, and she made marriages for their
sisters. I do not know how far she was satisfied with the results of
her bringing up, which with the help of a French engineer, a kinsman of
Voltaire, had turned them into landowners and _esprits forts_, but she
knew how to retain their esteem, and her nephews, though not greatly
disposed to feelings of obedience and reverence, respected their old aunt
and often obeyed her to the end of her life.

Princess Anna Borissovna’s house, by some miracle preserved at the time
of the fire of 1812, had not been repaired nor redecorated for fifty
years: the hangings that covered the walls were faded and blackened; the
lustres on the chandeliers, discoloured by heat and turned into smoky
topazes by time, shook and tinkled, shining dingily when any one walked
across the room. The heavy, solid mahogany furniture, ornamented with
carvings that had lost all their gilt, stood gloomily along the walls;
chests of drawers with Chinese incrustations, tables with little copper
trellis-work, rococo porcelain dolls—all recalled a different age and
different manners.

Grey-headed flunkeys sat in the vestibule, occupied with quiet dignity in
various trifling tasks, or sometimes reading half aloud a prayer-book or
a psalter, the pages of which were darker than its cover. Boys stood at
the doors, but they were more like old dwarfs than children—they never
laughed nor raised their voices.

A deathly silence reigned in the inner apartments; only, from time to
time, there was the mournful cry of a cockatoo, its luckless faltering
effort to repeat a human word, the bony tap of its beak against its
perch, covered with tin, and the disgusting whimper of a little old
monkey, shrunken and consumptive, that lived in the big drawing-room,
on a little shelf of the tiled stove. The monkey, dressed like a
_débardeur_, in full, red trousers, gave to the whole room a peculiar and
extremely unpleasant smell. In another big drawing-room hung a number of
family portraits of all sizes, shapes, periods, ages, and costumes. These
portraits had a peculiar interest for me, especially from the contrast
between the originals and their semblances. The young man of twenty with
a powdered head, dressed in a light-green embroidered, full-skirted coat,
smiling courteously from the canvas, was my father. The little girl with
dishevelled curls and a bouquet of roses, her face adorned with a patch,
mercilessly tight-laced into the shape of a wine-glass, and thrust into
an enormous crinoline, was the formidable old Princess Marya Alexeyevna.

The stillness and the stiffness grew more marked as one approached the
princess’s room. Old maidservants in white caps with wide frills moved
to and fro with little teapots, so softly that their footsteps were
inaudible; from time to time a grey-headed manservant in a long coat of
stout dark-blue cloth appeared at the doors, but his footsteps too were
as inaudible, and when he gave some message to the elder maidservant, his
lips moved without making a sound.

The little, withered, wrinkled, but by no means ugly, old lady, Princess
Anna Borissovna, was usually sitting or reclining on the big clumsy sofa,
propped up with cushions. One could scarcely distinguish her; everything
was white, her dressing-jacket, her cap, the cushions, the covers on the
sofa. Her waxen white face of lace-like fragility together with her faint
voice and white dress gave her an air of something that had passed away
and was scarcely breathing.

The big English clock on the table with its loud-measured
spondee—tick-tack, tick-tack—seemed marking off the last quarters of an
hour of her life.

Between twelve and one, Princess Marya Alexeyevna would enter and settle
herself with dignity in a big easy-chair. She was dull in her empty
apartments. She was a widow, and I still remember her husband, a little
grey-headed old gentleman who drank liqueurs and home-made beverages
on the sly; he never played an important part in the house, and was
accustomed to obey his wife implicitly—though he sometimes rebelled
against her in words, especially after his secret potations. The princess
would be surprised at the great effect produced on her spouse by the
minute glass of vodka which he drank officially before dinner, and she
would leave him in peace to play the whole morning with his blackbirds,
nightingales, and canaries, which trilled shrilly against each other; he
trained some of them with a little organ, others by whistling to them
himself; he used to drive off very early to the bird-market to exchange,
sell, and buy birds; he took an artistic delight in succeeding, as
he supposed, in cheating a dealer.... And so he spent his profitable
existence, until one morning, after whistling to his canaries, he fell
forward on his face and two hours afterwards died.

His widow was left alone. She had had two daughters, both of whom married
not for love but simply to escape from the maternal yoke. Both died in
their first childbirth. The princess was really an unlucky woman, but her
troubles rather warped her character than softened it. Her misfortunes
made her not milder, not kinder, but harder and more forbidding.

Now she had no one left but her brothers and her old maiden aunt. She had
scarcely parted from the latter all her life, and after her husband’s
death she took complete control of the old lady’s household, and ruled
her with a rod of iron under the pretext of looking after her and caring
for her wants.

Old women of all sorts, either living with Princess Anna Borissovna or
staying temporarily in her house, were always ranged along the walls or
sitting in the various corners. Half saints and half vagrants, rather
depraved and very devout, sickly and extremely unclean, these old women
trailed from one old-fashioned house to another: in one they were fed,
in another presented with an old shawl; from one place they were sent
grain and fuel, from another linen and cabbage; and so they somehow made
both ends meet. Everywhere they were regarded as a nuisance, everywhere
they were passed over, everywhere put in the lowest seat, and everywhere
received through dullness and emptiness and, most of all, through love
of gossip. In the presence of other company these mournful figures were
usually silent, looking with envious hatred at each other.... They
sighed, shook their heads, made the sign of the cross, and muttered to
themselves the number of their stitches, prayers, and perhaps even words
of abuse. On the other hand, _tête à tête_ with their benefactresses,
they made up for their silence by the most treacherous gossip about all
the other benefactresses who received them, fed them, and made them
presents.

They were continually begging from Princess Anna Borissovna, and in
return for her presents, often made without the knowledge of Princess
Marya Alexeyevna, who did not like indulging them, brought her holy
bread, hard as a stone, and useless woollen and knitted articles of
their own make, which the old lady afterwards sold for their benefit,
regardless of the unwillingness of the purchasers.

Besides birthdays, namedays, and other holidays, the most solemn
gathering of kinsmen and friends in Princess Anna Borissovna’s house
took place on New Year’s Eve. On that day she ‘elevated’ the Iversky
Madonna. The holy ikon was carried through all the apartments by monks
and priests, chanting. Princess Anna Borissovna, the first to kiss the
cross, walked under it, and after her all the visitors, men and maid
servants, old people and children. Then they all congratulated her on the
New Year, and made her all sorts of trifling presents such as are given
to children. She would play with them for a few days, then give them away.

My father used to drag me off every year to this heathen ceremony;
everything was repeated in exactly the same order, except that some old
men and women were every year missing, and their names were intentionally
avoided, until the old lady herself would say: ‘Our Ilya Vassilyevitch
is no longer here, the Kingdom of Heaven be his!... Whom will the Lord
summon this year?’ and she would shake her head dubiously.

And the ticking of the English clock would go on marking off the days,
the hours, the minutes, and at last it reached the fatal second. The old
lady felt unwell on getting up one day; she walked about the rooms and
was no better; her nose began bleeding, and very violently; she felt
faint and exhausted, and lay down fully dressed on her sofa, fell quietly
asleep ... and never woke again. She was over ninety.

She left her house and the greater part of her property to her niece,
the widowed princess, but did not hand on to her the inner significance
of her life. Princess Marya Alexeyevna could not maintain the—in its
own way—artistic rôle of head of the family, of the patriarchal link
connecting many threads. With the death of Princess Anna Borissovna
an aspect of gloom came over everything, as in mountainous places at
sunset, long dark shadows lay upon all. Princess Marya Alexeyevna shut
up her aunt’s house and remained living in the lodge; the big house was
surrounded by weeds, the walls and frames grew blacker and blacker; the
porch, in which ungainly yellow dogs were for ever asleep, fell out of
the perpendicular.

Friends and relations came less frequently, her house was deserted, she
was distressed at it, but did not know how to improve things.

The only survivor of the whole family, she began to be apprehensive for
her own useless life, and mercilessly repulsed everything that could
disturb her physical or moral equilibrium and cause her uneasiness or
annoyance. Afraid of the past and of memories, she removed every object
that had belonged to her daughters, even their portraits. It was the same
with her aunt’s belongings—the cockatoo and the monkey were exiled to the
servants’ hall, and then turned out of the house. The monkey lived out
its days in the coachman’s quarters at the Senator’s, choking with the
smell of rank tobacco and amusing the stable-boys.

The egoism of self-preservation has a fearfully hardening effect on the
heart of the old. When her last surviving daughter’s condition was quite
hopeless, the mother was persuaded to leave her and return home, _and she
went_. At home she at once ordered spirits of various sorts and cabbage
leaves for putting on her head to be got ready, that she might have
everything necessary at hand when the _terrible news_ should come. She
did not take leave of her dead husband nor of her daughter, she did not
see them after their death and was not at their funerals. When later on
the Senator, her favourite brother, died, she guessed what had happened
from a few words dropped by her nephew, and _begged him_ not to tell her
the melancholy news nor any details of the end. With these precautions
against one’s own heart, and such an accommodating heart, one may well
live to eighty or ninety in perfect health and with undisturbed digestion.

However, in justification of Princess Marya Alexeyevna, I must say
that this monstrous avoidance of everything melancholy was more in
fashion with the spoilt aristocrats of last century than it is now. The
celebrated Kaunitz[1] in his old age sternly forbade any one’s death, or
the smallpox, of which he was very much afraid, to be mentioned before
him. When the Emperor Joseph II. died, his secretary, not knowing how to
announce the fact to Kaunitz, decided to say, ‘the Emperor now reigning,
Leopold.’ Kaunitz understood and, turning pale, sank into an armchair,
asking no questions. His gardener avoided the word ‘grafting’ (in Russian
the same word as ‘inoculation’) for fear of reminding him of smallpox.

He heard of the death of his own son by chance from the Spanish
ambassador. And people laugh at ostriches who hide their heads under
their wings to escape danger!

To preserve her peace untroubled, the old princess established a special
sort of police, and entrusted the supervision of her safety to skilled
hands.

Besides the old women dependents inherited from Princess Anna Borissovna,
she had a permanent lady companion living with her. This post of honour
was filled by the healthy, rosy-cheeked widow of a Zvenigorod government
clerk, very proud of ‘being a lady’ and of her dead husband’s rank of
assessor; a quarrelsome and irrepressible woman who could never forgive
Napoleon the premature death of her Zvenigorod cow, who perished in the
war of 1812. I remember how seriously troubled she was on the death of
Alexander I. upon the question of the width of the crape weepers that
would be appropriate to her rank.

This woman played a very insignificant part in the household while
Princess Anna Borissovna was alive, but afterwards she managed so
adroitly to humour the widowed princess’s caprices and apprehensive
anxiety about herself, that she obtained the same control over her as the
princess herself had had over her aunt.

Draped in her official weepers, this Marya Stepanovna bounced about the
house like a ball from morning to night; she shouted and made an uproar,
gave the servants no peace, made complaints against them, investigated
the misdeeds of the maids, slapped the boys and pulled them by the ears,
raced off into the kitchen, raced off into the stable, brushed away the
flies, rubbed the princess’s feet, and made her take her medicine. The
members of the household no longer had access to their mistress; the
woman was a regular Araktcheyev, a Biron, in fact, a Prime Minister. The
widowed princess, a haughty and, in the old-fashioned style, well-bred
woman, was often, especially at first, annoyed by the Zvenigorod widow,
by her shrill voice and market-woman’s manners, but she gradually
put more and more confidence in her, and saw with delight that Marya
Stepanovna considerably decreased the household expenses, which had not
been over-high before. For whom the princess was saving her money it is
hard to say; she had no near relatives except her brothers, who were
twice as wealthy as she was.

For all that, the princess was really dull after the death of her husband
and daughters, and was glad when an old Frenchwoman who had been her
daughters’ governess, came to spend a fortnight with her, or when her
niece from Kortcheva paid her a visit. But these were only passing and
exceptional distractions, and the tedious society of her ‘lady companion’
did not fill the intervals satisfactorily.

An occupation, a plaything, and an entertainment had been provided for
her in a very natural way not long before her aunt’s death.




Chapter 20

THE FORLORN CHILD


In the middle of 1825 ‘the Chemist,’ who found his father’s affairs
in great confusion, sent his brothers and sisters from Petersburg to
the Shatskoye estate; he assigned them the house there and their keep,
proposing to arrange for their education and their future later on. My
aunt, Princess Marya Alexeyevna, drove over to have a look at them. A
child of eight caught her attention by her mournfully pensive face; my
aunt put her in the carriage, took her home and kept her.

The mother was delighted, and went off with the other children to Tambov.

The Chemist gave his consent—it did not matter to him.

‘Remember all your life,’ Marya Stepanovna kept saying to the little
girl when they had reached home, ‘remember that the Princess is your
_benefactress_ and pray that her days may be long. What would you be
without her?’

And so into this lifeless house, gloomily oppressed by two irrepressible
old women, one full of whims and caprices, the other her indefatigable
spy, devoid of all trace of delicacy or tact, a child was brought, torn
from everything familiar to her, strange to everything surrounding her,
and adopted out of boredom as people take a puppy, or as my aunt’s
husband used to keep canaries.

The little girl with a pale face and blue shadows under her eyes was
sitting at the window in a long woollen dress of deep mourning when my
father brought me a few days later to visit my aunt the princess. She
was sitting in silence, scared and bewildered, gazing out of the window,
afraid to look at anything else.

My aunt called her up and introduced her to my father. Always frigid and
ungracious, he patted her carelessly on the shoulder, observed that his
late brother had not known what he was about, abused ‘the Chemist,’ and
began talking of something else.

The little girl had tears in her eyes; she sat down again by the window
and again fell to looking out.

A hard life was beginning for her. Not one warm word, not one tender
glance, not one caress; beside her, around her, strangers, wrinkled
faces, yellow cheeks, decrepit creatures whose life was smouldering out.
Princess Marya Alexeyevna was always stern, exacting, and impatient, and
she kept the forlorn child at such a distance that it could never enter
her head to take refuge with her, to find warmth or comfort in being near
her, or to shed tears. Visitors took no notice of her. Marya Stepanovna
put up with her as one of the princess’s whims, as something superfluous
which she must not harm; she even made a show of protecting the child and
making a fuss over her before the princess, especially if visitors were
present.

The child did not grow used to her surroundings, and a year later was as
little at home as on the day of her arrival, and was even more depressed.
Even Princess Marya Alexeyevna was surprised at her ‘seriousness,’ and
sometimes, seeing her sitting dejectedly for hours together at her little
embroidery frame, would say to her: ‘How is it you don’t play and run
about?’ The little girl would smile, flush, and thank her, but stay where
she was.

And the old lady left her in peace, in reality caring nothing about the
child’s sadness and doing nothing to relieve it. Holidays came, other
children were given playthings, other children talked of treats, of new
clothes.... No presents were given to the little orphan. The princess
considered that she had done enough for her in giving her shelter; she
had shoes, what did she want with dolls? And in fact she did not need
them—she did not know how to play; besides, she had no one to play with.

Only one creature realised the forlorn child’s position; an old nurse
had been put in charge of her, and she alone loved the child simply and
naïvely. Often in the evening when she undressed her she would ask: ‘But
why is it you are so sad, my little lady?’ The child would throw herself
on her neck and weep bitterly, and the old woman would shed tears and
shake her head as she went away with the candlestick in her hand.

So the years passed. She did not complain, she did not murmur; only, at
twelve she longed for death.

‘It always seemed to me,’ she wrote, ‘that I had come by mistake into
this life, and that soon I should go home again—but where was my home?...
When we drove out of Petersburg I saw a great mound of snow over my
father’s grave; when my mother left me in Moscow she vanished on the
wide unending road.... I wept bitterly and prayed God to take me quickly
home.... My childhood was most mournful and bitter; how many tears I
shed unseen, how many times before I understood what prayer meant I
would get up secretly at night (not even daring to say my prayers except
at the fixed time) and pray to God that some one might love me and pet
me. I had no amusement nor plaything which could interest or comfort
me, for, if anything were given me, it was invariably accompanied by
the words: “You don’t deserve it.” Every rag I received from them I
paid for with my tears: afterwards I got over that; I was overcome by a
craving for knowledge, and envied other children for nothing more than
for their lessons. Many praised me, thought I had abilities, and said
compassionately: “If only that child had a chance.” “She would astonish
the world,” I added inwardly, and my cheeks glowed; I hurried away with
visions of my pictures, my pupils, and meanwhile they would not give me
a piece of paper nor a pencil.... The longing to get into another world
grew stronger and stronger, and with it my scorn for my dark prison-house
and its cruel sentinels; I was continually repeating the lines from “The
Monk”:

            “A mystery this; already I know
    All the sorrow of life, in the spring of my days.”

‘Do you remember, we were once staying with you long ago in the other
house and you asked me if I had read Kozlov and repeated just that
passage from him? A shudder ran over me, I smiled, hardly able to keep
from crying.’

There was always a strain of deep melancholy in her heart; it was never
quite absent, and only at times hushed at some radiant moment.

Two months before her death, going back once more to her childhood, she
wrote: ‘Around me all was old, bad, cold, dead, false; my education began
with upbraidings and insults, and the result of this was estrangement
from all, distrust of their kindness, aversion for their sympathy, and
absorption in my own inner life....’

But to be able to be absorbed in one’s own inner life one must have not
only a terribly deep nature into which one can retreat at will, but a
terrific strength of independence and self-sufficiency. Very few can live
their own life in hostile and vulgar surroundings from the oppression of
which there is no escape. Sometimes the spirit is broken by it, sometimes
the health gives way.

Loneliness and harsh treatment at the tenderest age left a dark trace on
her soul, a wound which never fully healed.

‘I do not remember,’ she writes in 1837, ‘any time when I could utter the
word “mother” freely and spontaneously, any person on whose bosom I could
lay my head in security, forgetting everything. I have been a stranger
to all since I was eight years old; I love my mother ... but we do not
know each other.’

Looking at the pale face of the twelve-year-old girl, at her big eyes
with rings round them, at her tired listlessness and everlasting
depression, many thought she was one of the predestined victims of
consumption, those victims marked out by the finger of death from
childhood with a special imprint of beauty and premature thoughtfulness.
‘Perhaps,’ she says, ‘I should not have survived this struggle if I had
not been saved by our meeting.’

And I was so slow to understand her and read her heart!

Till 1834 I failed to appreciate the richly gifted nature that was
unfolding beside me, although nine years had passed since the old
princess had presented her to my father in her long woollen dress. It
is easy to explain. She was shy, I was absorbed in my many interests; I
was sorry for the child who sat so solitary and depressed in the window,
but we did not see each other very often. It was only rarely and always
unwillingly that I went to Princess Marya Alexeyevna’s; still more rarely
did she bring her to see us. Besides, my aunt’s visits almost always
left unpleasant impressions. She usually quarrelled with my father over
trifles and, though they had not seen each other for two months, they
said nasty things to each other, hiding them in affectionate phrases,
just as nasty medicines are covered with a coat of sugar. ‘My dear boy,’
the princess would say; ‘My dear girl,’ my father would answer, and the
quarrel would go on as before. We were always glad when the princess
departed. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that at that time I was
completely absorbed by my political dreams and my studies, and lived in
the university and my comrades.

But what had she to live in, besides her melancholy, during those long
dark nine years, surrounded by silly fanatics, haughty relations, tedious
monks, and fat priests’ wives, hypocritically patronised by the ‘lady
companion,’ not allowed to go farther from the house than the gloomy
courtyard overgrown with weeds and the little garden at the back?

From the foregoing lines it may be seen that the princess was not
particularly lavish in her expenditure on the education of her adopted
child. Her moral training she undertook herself; it consisted in external
observances and in the development of a complete system of hypocrisy.
The child had from early morning to be laced in, stiffly erect, with her
hair properly dressed: this might be admissible so far as it was not
injurious to health; but the princess put her soul in stays as well as
her waist, suppressing every open spontaneous feeling; she insisted on
a smile and an air of gaiety when the child was sad, on amiable phrases
when she wanted to cry, on an appearance of interest in everything
indiscriminately—in fact, on continual duplicity.

At first the poor girl was taught nothing on the pretext that learning
early was useless; later on, that is _three or four years later_, wearied
by the observations made by the Senator and even by outsiders, the
princess made up her mind to arrange for her to be taught, keeping the
strictest economy in view. For this purpose she took advantage of an
old governess who considered herself under obligations to the princess
and sometimes stood in need of her assistance. In this way the French
language was brought down to the lowest price; on the other hand, it was
taught _à bâtons rompus_.

But the Russian language, too, was equally cheapened; to teach it and all
other subjects, the princess engaged the son of a priest’s widow, to whom
she had been a benefactress—of course, at no special expense to herself;
through her good offices with the Metropolitan the widow’s two sons had
been made priests in the cathedral. The tutor was their elder brother,
the deacon of a poor parish, burdened with a large family. He was in the
lowest depths of poverty, was glad of any payment, and dared not haggle
over terms with his brothers’ benefactress.

Nothing could have been more pitiful, more insufficient than such an
education, and yet all went well, it all brought forth marvellous fruits,
so little is needed for development if only there is something to develop.

The poor deacon, a tall, thin, bald man, was one of those enthusiasts
whom neither years nor misfortunes can cure of their dreams; on the
contrary, their troubles tend to keep them in a state of mystic
contemplation. His faith, which approached fanaticism, was sincere
and not without a shade of poetry. Between these two, the father of a
hungry family and the forlorn child fed on the bread of charity, a good
understanding sprang up at once.

The deacon was received in the princess’s household as a poor man,
defenceless, and at the same time mild-tempered, usually is received,
with barely a nod, or barely a condescending word. Even the ‘lady
companion’ thought it necessary to show her disdain; while he scarcely
noticed either them or their manners, taught his subjects with love, was
touched by his pupil’s readiness of understanding, and could move her
to tears. This the old princess could not understand; she scolded the
child for being a cry-baby and was greatly displeased, declaring that the
deacon was upsetting her nerves. ‘This is really too much,’ she said,
‘it’s unchildlike!’

Meanwhile the old man’s words were opening before the young creature
another world, attractive in a very different way from that in which
religion itself was turned into an affair of diet, reduced to keeping the
fasts, and going to church at night, in which everything was limited,
artificial, and conventional, and cramped the soul with its narrowness.
The deacon put the Gospel into his pupil’s hands—and it was long before
she let it go again. The Gospel was the first book she read, and she
read it over and over again, with her one friend Sasha, her old nurse’s
niece, now a young maid of the princess’s.

Later on I knew Sasha very well. Where and how she had managed to develop
her intelligence I never could understand, as she spent her childhood
between the coachman’s quarters and the kitchen, and never left the
maids’ room, but she was extraordinarily developed. She was one of those
innocent victims who perish unnoticed in the servants’ quarters, and
more often than we suppose, crushed by the conditions of serfdom. They
perish not only without compensation, without commiseration, without an
hour of brightness, without a joyful memory, but without knowing, without
themselves suspecting, what is perishing in them and how much is dying
with them. Their mistress says with vexation: ‘The wretched girl was just
beginning to be trained to her work when she took to her bed and died.’
... The seventy-year-old housekeeper grumbles: ‘What are servants coming
to nowadays? They are worse than any young lady,’ and goes to the funeral
dinner. The mother weeps and weeps and begins to drink—and that is the
end.

And we pass hurriedly by, not seeing the terrible dramas enacted at
our feet, thinking we have more important things to fill our time, and
feeling that we have done our part with a few roubles and a kindly word.
And then all at once astounded, we hear the heart-rending moan with which
the crushed spirit reveals itself for all time, and, as though awakening
from sleep, we ask ourselves whence came that spirit, that strength.

Princess Marya Alexeyevna killed her maid, unintentionally and
unconsciously, of course; she worried her to death over trifles, broke
her heart, oppressed her whole life, wore her out with humiliations, with
harshness and insensibility. For several years she forbade her marriage,
and only allowed it when she could see consumption in her suffering face.

Poor Sasha, poor victim of the loathsome, accursed Russian life
defiled by serfdom, by death you escaped to freedom! And yet you were
incomparably happier than others in the gloomy bondage of the princess’s
house: you met a friend, and the affection of her whom you loved so
immeasurably was with you to the grave. You cost her many tears; not long
before her own death she still thought of you, and blessed your memory as
the one bright image of her childhood!

The two young girls (Sasha was a little the elder) used to get up early
in the mornings when all the household was still asleep, read the Gospel
and pray, going out into the courtyard under the open sky. They prayed
for the princess and her lady-companion, besought God to soften their
hearts; they invented ordeals for themselves, ate no meat for weeks
together, dreamed of a nunnery and of the life beyond the grave.

Such mysticism is in keeping with adolescence, with the age in which
everything is still a secret, still a religious mystery, when the
awakening thought is not yet shining clearly through the mists of early
morning, and the mist is not yet dissipated by experience nor passion.

At quiet and gentle moments, I loved in after years to hear of these
childish prayers, with which one full life began and one unhappy
existence ended. The image of the forlorn child outraged by coarse
patronage, and of the slave girl outraged by her hopeless bondage,
praying for their oppressors in the neglected courtyard, filled the heart
with tenderness, and breathed a rare peace upon the spirit.

The pure and gracious being, whom no one of those near her in the
princess’s senseless household appreciated, won, besides the devotion of
the deacon and Sasha, a warm response and homage from all the servants.
These simple people saw in her more than a kind and gracious young lady,
they divined in her something higher for which they felt reverence, they
had faith in her. The girls of the princess’s household, when they were
going to their wedding, would beg her to pin some ribbon with her own
hands. One young maidservant—I remember her name was Yelena—was suddenly
taken very ill; it turned out to be acute pleurisy, there was no hope
of saving her, the priest was sent for. The frightened girl kept asking
her mother if she were dying; the mother, sobbing, told her that God
would soon summon her. Then the sick girl besought her mother with bitter
tears to fetch her young lady that she might come herself to bless her
with the holy ikon for the other world. When she came the sick girl took
her hand, laid it on her forehead, and repeated: ‘Pray for me, pray for
me!’ The young girl, herself in tears, began praying in a low voice,
and the sick girl died as she prayed. All in the room knelt round,
crossing themselves; Natalie closed the dead girl’s eyes, kissed the cold
forehead, and went away.[2]

Only cold and narrow natures know nothing of this romantic period;
they are as much to be pitied as those frail and feeble beings in whom
mysticism outlives youth and remains for ever. In our age this does not
happen with realistic natures; but how could the secular influences of
the nineteenth century penetrate into the princess’s house, every crevice
was so well padded?

A crack was found, nevertheless.

My Kortcheva cousin used sometimes to come on a visit to the princess.
She was fond of the ‘little cousin,’ as one is fond of children,
especially if they are unhappy, but she did not understand her. With
amazement, almost with horror, she discovered later on her exceptional
nature, and, impulsive in everything, at once determined to make up for
her neglect. She begged from me Hugo, Balzac, or anything new I might
have. ‘The little cousin,’ she said to me, ‘is a genius, we ought to do
what we can for her!’

The ‘big cousin’—and I cannot help smiling at this name for her, for she
was a tiny creature—at once communicated to her protégée every stray
thought in her own mind, Schiller’s ideas and the ideas of Rousseau,
revolutionary ideas picked up from me and the dreams of a lovesick girl
picked up from herself. Then she secretly lent her French novels, verses,
poems; they were for the most part books that had appeared since 1830.
With all their defects, they stimulated thought, and stirred and fired
youthful hearts. In the novels and stories, the poems and songs of that
period, whether the author intended it or not, there was always a strong
vein of social feeling: everywhere social sores were revealed and the
moan of the hungry, innocent slaves of labour could be heard; even by
that date their murmur and complaint was no longer feared as a crime.

I need hardly say that my cousin lent the books without any
discrimination, without any explanations, and I imagine that there was no
harm in that; there are natures which never need help, support, guidance
from others, who always walk most safely where there is no fence.

Another person who carried on the secular influence of my Kortcheva
cousin was soon added to the list. The princess at last made up her mind
to take a governess, and to avoid expense engaged a young Russian girl
who had only just left boarding-school.

Russian governesses do not cost much, at any rate they did not in the
’thirties, yet for all their defects they were better than the majority
of French girls from Switzerland, of retired courtesans and actresses
who catch at teaching in despair as their last resource for earning
their bread, a resource needing neither talent nor youth, nothing in
fact but the ability to pronounce ‘Hrrrra’ and the manners _d’une
dame de comptoir_, which is often taken in the provinces for ‘good’
manners. Russian governesses come from boarding-schools, or educational
establishments, and so have had some sort of regular education, and are
free from the petty-bourgeois tone which the foreign women bring in with
them.

The French governesses of to-day must be distinguished from those who
used to come to Russia before 1812. In those days France was less
bourgeois and the women who came to Russia belonged to quite a different
social stratum. To some extent they were the daughters of _émigrés_ and
of ruined noblemen, or widows of officers, often their deserted wives.
Napoleon used to marry off his warriors in the way that our landowners
used to marry their serfs, without much regard for love or inclination.
He wanted, by these marriages, to unite his new military aristocracy
with the old nobility; he wanted to knock his Skalozubs[3] into shape by
means of their wives. Accustomed to blind obedience, they married without
protest, but soon abandoned their wives, finding them too stiff for the
festivities of the barracks and the bivouac. The poor women made their
way to England, to Austria, to Russia. The old Frenchwoman who used to
stay with the princess belonged to this class of old-fashioned governess.
She spoke with a smile in choice language and never made use of a single
strong expression. She was entirely made up of good manners and never
forgot herself for a minute. I am convinced that even at night in her
bed she was more preoccupied with the proper way of sleeping than with
sleeping.

The young governess was an intelligent, bright, energetic girl with a
good share of boarding-school enthusiasm and an innate feeling for what
is fine. Active and ardent, she brought more life and movement into the
existence of her pupil and friend.

There had been a tone of mourning, of melancholy in the sad and
depressing friendship with the consumptive Sasha. Her company, together
with the deacon’s teachings and the absence of every kind of diversion,
was drawing the young girl away from the world, from men. This third
person, young, full of life and gaiety, and at the same time sympathetic
with everything dreamy and romantic, came in the nick of time: she drew
her back to earth, to the basis of truth and reality.

At first the pupil to some extent adopted her Amelia’s external manners;
a smile was more often to be seen on her face, and her conversation
grew livelier; but within a year the natures of the two girls defined
their mutual attitude. The careless, charming Amelia gave way before the
stronger nature and was completely dominated by her pupil, saw with her
eyes, thought her thoughts, lived in her smile and in her affection.

Before I had finished my studies at the university, I took to going more
frequently to the princess’s house. The young girl seemed pleased when I
came, and sometimes her cheeks glowed and her talk grew more animated,
but she quickly withdrew into her usual dreamy stillness, recalling
the cold beauty of sculpture or Schiller’s ‘Mädchen aus der Fremde’ who
checked all approach.

It was not unsociability nor coldness, but an active inner life; not
understood by others, she did not as yet even understand herself, and
had rather a dim presentiment than a knowledge of what was in herself.
In her lovely features there was still something incomplete, not fully
expressed, they lacked a spark, a touch of the sculptor’s chisel which
would decide whether she was destined to pine and fade away in a barren
desert, knowing neither herself nor life, or to reflect the glow of
passion, to be enfolded by it, and to live, perhaps to suffer—certainly,
indeed, to suffer, but to live abundantly.

I first saw the token of life coming out on her half-childish face on the
eve of our long separation.

Well I remember her eyes with quite a different light in them, and all
her features with their significance transformed, as though penetrated by
a new thought, a new fire ... as though the secret had been guessed and
the inner mist dissipated. This was when I was in prison. A dozen times
we said good-bye, and still we could not bear to part. At last my mother,
who had come with Natalie[4] to the Krutitsky Barracks, resolutely got
up to go. The young girl shuddered, turned pale, squeezed my hand with
unnatural force, and repeated, turning away to hide her tears, ‘Alexandr,
don’t forget your sister.’

The gendarme saw them out and set to walking to and fro. I flung myself
on my bed and long gazed at the door behind which that bright apparition
had vanished. ‘No, your brother will not forget you,’ I thought.

Next day I was taken to Perm, but before I speak of our separation I will
tell of something else that prevented me, before my prison days, from
understanding Natalie better and growing more intimate with her. I was in
love!

Yes, I was in love, and the memory of that pure youthful love is as dear
to me as the memory of a spring day spent by the sea among flowers and
singing. It was a dream, full of much that was lovely, that vanished as
dreams usually do vanish!

I have mentioned already that there were very few women in our circle,
especially of the sort with whom I could have been on intimate terms:
my affection for my Kortcheva cousin, at first ardent, gradually became
quieter in tone. After her marriage we saw each other less often, and
then she went away. A vague yearning for a warmer, tenderer feeling than
the affection of my men friends hovered about my heart. Everything was
ready, all that was lacking was ‘she.’ In one of the families of our
acquaintance there was a young girl with whom I quickly made friends. It
was a strange chance that brought us together. She was betrothed, when
all at once some dissension arose, her fiancé abandoned her and went off
to the other end of Russia. She was in despair, overcome with distress
and mortification. With deep and sincere sympathy I saw how she was
being consumed by grief. Without daring to hint at the cause, I tried to
comfort her and distract her mind, brought her novels, read them aloud to
her, told her long stories, and sometimes neglected to prepare for my
lectures at the university in order to stay longer with the distressed
girl.

Gradually her tears fell less frequently, from time to time a smile
glimmered through them; her despair passed into a languid melancholy;
soon she began to feel alarmed for her past, she struggled with herself
and defended it against the present, from a _point d’honneur_ of the
heart, as a soldier defends the flag, though he knows that the battle
is lost. I saw these last clouds faintly lingering on the horizon and,
myself carried away, with a beating heart, softly, softly drew the flag
out of her hands, and by the time she had given it up I was in love. We
believed in our love. She wrote verses to me, I wrote whole essays to
her in prose, and then we dreamed together of the future, of exile, of
prisons. She was ready for anything. The external side of life never took
a very clear shape in our imaginations; dedicated to the conflict with a
monstrous power, we felt success almost incredible. ‘Be my Gaetana,’ I
said to her after reading Saintine’s[5] ‘The Mutilated Poet,’ and I used
to fancy how she would follow me to the Siberian mines.

‘The Mutilated Poet’ was the poet who wrote a lampoon upon Sixtus V. and
gave himself up when the Pope promised not to inflict the death penalty.
Sixtus V. ordered his tongue and hands to be cut off. The figure of the
luckless victim, choked by the mass of ideas which swarmed in his brain
and found no outlet, could not but attract us in those days. The martyr’s
sad and exhausted eyes found peace when they rested with gratitude and
some remnant of happiness on the girl who had loved him in old days and
did not abandon him in misfortune. Her name was Gaetana.

This first experience of love was soon over, but it was perfectly
sincere. Perhaps, indeed, it was right for this love to pass, or it would
have lost its finest, most fragrant quality, its innocent freshness, its
nineteen-year-old charm. Lilies of the valley do not flower in winter.

And can it be, my Gaetana, that you do not recall our meeting with the
same serene smile, can it be that there is any bitterness mixed with your
memory of me after twenty-two years? That would be very grievous to me.
And where are you, and how have you spent your life?

I have lived my life and now am going slowly downhill, broken, and
morally ‘mutilated.’ I seek no Gaetana, I go over the memories of the
past and meet your image joyfully.... Do you remember the window in the
corner facing the little side street into which I had to turn, and how
you always came to it to watch me pass, and how disappointed I was if you
did not come to it, or moved away before I had time to turn?

But I do not want to meet you in reality; in my imagination you have
remained with your youthful face, your _blond cendré_ curls: remain as
you were. And you, too, if you think of me, will remember a slender lad
with sparkling eyes and fiery words, and may you think of him like that
and never know that the eyes have lost their lustre, that I have grown
heavy, that my brow is furrowed, that long ago my face lost the radiant,
eager look of old days which Ogaryov used to call ‘the look of hope.’
And, indeed, hope too is gone.

We ought to be to each other as we were then ... neither Achilles nor
Diana grow old.... I do not want to meet you as Larin met Princess
Alina:[6]

    ‘Do you remember Grandison?
    Cousin, how is Grandison?—
    Oh, Grandison! In Moscow living,
    On Christmas Eve he left his card,
    A son of his was married lately.’

The last glow of dying love lighted up for a moment the prison vault,
warmed the heart with its old dreams, and then each took our separate
paths. She went away to the Ukraine while I was going into exile. Since
then I have had no tidings of her.




Chapter 21

SEPARATION


    ‘_Ah, people, wicked people,_
    _You separated their...._’

So my first letter to Natalie ended, and it is note-worthy that,
frightened by the word ‘hearts,’ I did not write it. And I signed the
letter ‘your brother.’

How dear ‘my sister’ was then to me and how continually in my thoughts is
clear from the fact that I wrote to her from Nizhni, and from Perm on the
very day after my arrival there. The word ‘sister’ expressed all that was
recognised in our affection; I liked it immensely and I like it now, used
not as the limit of the feelings but, on the contrary, as the mingling of
them all; in it are united affection, love, the tie of kinship, a common
devotion, the surroundings of childhood, and habitual association. I had
called no one by that name before, and it was so precious to me that even
in later years I often used it to Natalie.

Before I fully understood our relations, and perhaps just because I did
not understand them fully, a temptation awaited me which has not left so
bright a memory as my episode with Gaetana; a temptation that humiliated
me and cost me much regret and inner distress.

Having very little experience of life, and being flung into a world
completely strange to me, after nine months of prison, I lived at first
carelessly without taking stock of what I saw; the new country, the new
surroundings made me rather dizzy. My social position was transformed. In
Perm and in Vyatka I was regarded very differently from in Moscow; there
I had been a young man living in my father’s house, here in this stagnant
waste I was independent, and was accepted as a government official,
although I was not exactly one. It was not hard for me to perceive that
without much effort I might play the part of a man of the world in the
drawing-rooms beyond the Volga and the Kama, and be a lion in Vyatka
society.

In Perm, before I had time to look about me, the landlady to whom I
had gone to take lodgings asked me whether I wanted a kitchen garden
and whether I was keeping a cow! It was a question by which I could,
with horror, judge the depth of my descent from the academic heights
of student life. But at Vyatka I made acquaintance with all the world,
especially with the younger people of the merchant class, which is much
better educated in these remote provinces than in those nearer the
centre, though they are no less given to drink and debauchery. Distracted
from my usual pursuits by office work, I led a restlessly idle life;
owing to my peculiar impressionability, or perhaps mobility, of character
and absence of experience, adventures of all sorts might well be expected.

From a coquettish passion _de l’approbativité_ I tried to please right
and left indiscriminately, forced my sympathies, made friends over a
dozen words, became far more intimate than I need, recognised my mistake
a month or two later, said nothing from delicacy, and dragged a weary
chain of false relations until it was broken by an absurd quarrel
in which I was blamed for capricious impatience, ingratitude, and
inconstancy.

At first I did not live alone in Vyatka. A strange and comic figure,
which from time to time appears at all the turning points of my life, at
all its important events, the person who drowns to make me acquainted
with Ogaryov, and waves a handkerchief from Russia when I cross the
frontier at Taurogen—K. I. Sonnenberg—was living with me in Vyatka; I
forgot to mention this when I described my exile.

This was how it happened: at the moment when I was being sent to Perm,
Sonnenberg was preparing to go to the Fair at Irbit. My father, who
always liked to complicate everything simple, suggested to Sonnenberg
that he should go to Perm and there _furnish my house_, in return
undertaking to pay his travelling expenses.

At Perm Sonnenberg zealously set to work, that is, to the purchase of
unnecessary articles, all sorts of crockery, saucepans, bowls, glass,
and provisions. He went himself to Obva to procure a Vyatka horse _ex
ipso fonte_. When everything was complete I was transferred to Vyatka. We
sold, half-price, the goods he had purchased and left Perm. Sonnenberg,
conscientiously carrying out my father’s wishes, thought it his duty
to go to Vyatka too to furnish my house. My father was so well pleased
with his devotion and self-sacrifice that he offered him a salary of a
hundred roubles a month so long as he would stay with me. This was more
profitable and more secure than Irbit—and he was in no hurry to leave me.

In Vyatka he bought not one but three horses, one of which belonged to
himself, though it too was bought at my father’s expense. These horses
raised us considerably in the esteem of Vyatka society. Karl Ivanovitch,
as I have mentioned already, was, in spite of his fifty years and the
rather glaring defects of his features, a great flirt, and entertained
the agreeable conviction that every girl and woman who came near
him risked the fate of the moth flying round a lighted candle. Karl
Ivanovitch had no intention of wasting the effect produced by the horses,
but tried to turn them to advantage on the erotic side. Moreover, all our
circumstances were favourable to his designs; we had a verandah looking
out into a courtyard beyond which there was a garden. From ten o’clock
in the morning Sonnenberg, arrayed in Kazan morocco leather boots, a
gold embroidered _tibiteyka_, and a Caucasian _beshmyet_, with an immense
amber mouthpiece between his lips, would sit on watch, pretending to be
reading. The _tibiteyka_ and the amber mouthpiece were all aimed at three
young ladies who lived in the next house. The young ladies for their
part were interested in the new arrivals and gazed with curiosity at the
oriental-looking doll smoking on the verandah. Karl Ivanovitch knew when
and how they secretly lifted their blind, thought that things were going
swimmingly—and tenderly blew a light coil of smoke in the direction of
the objects of his devotion.

Soon the garden gave us the opportunity of making our neighbours’
acquaintance. Our landlord had three houses, and the garden was shared in
common by them. In one of the houses we were living, together with the
landlord and his stepmother, a fat, flabby widow who looked after him so
masterfully and with such jealousy that it was only on the sly that he
ventured to speak to the ladies of the garden. In the second house lived
the young ladies and their parents, and the third house stood empty.
Within a week Karl Ivanovitch was quite at home with the ladies of our
garden. He would spend several hours a day swinging the young girls in
the swing and running to fetch their capes and sunshades, in fact he was
_aux petits soins_. The young ladies were more free in their behaviour
with him than with anybody else, because he was more beyond suspicion
than Caesar’s wife: a mere glance at him was enough to check the faintest
breath of scandal.

In the evening I too used to walk into the garden, from that herd
instinct which makes people do what others are doing, apart from
any inclination. To the garden came, besides the lodgers, their
acquaintances; the chief subject of talk and interest was flirtation and
watching one another. Karl Ivanovitch devoted himself to sentimental
espionage with the vigilance of a Vidok,[7] and always knew who walked
oftenest with whom, and who looked significantly at whom. I was a
terrible bone of contention for all the secret police of our garden; the
ladies and the men wondered at my reserve, and for all their efforts
could not discover on whom I was dancing attendance, and who particularly
attracted me; and indeed it was not easy to do so, for I was not dancing
attendance on any one and I did not find any of the young ladies
particularly attractive. In the end they were vexed and offended by this,
they began to consider me proud and sarcastic, and the young ladies’
friendliness grew perceptibly cooler—though every one of them tried her
most killing glances upon me when we were alone.

While things were like this, one morning Karl Ivanovitch informed me
that the landlady’s cook had opened the shutters of the third house and
was cleaning the windows. The house had been taken by a family who had
arrived in the town.

The garden was entirely absorbed in details concerning the new arrivals.
The unknown lady, who was either tired from the journey or had not yet
had time to unpack, as though to spite us, refused to show herself
outside. Every one tried to see her at a window or in the porch, some
succeeded, while others watched for days together in vain; those who
saw her reported her pale and languid, interesting, in short, and
good-looking. The young ladies said that she looked melancholy and ill. A
young clerk in the governor’s office, a sprightly and quite intelligent
fellow, was the only one who knew the strangers. He had once served
in the same provincial town with them, and every one besieged him with
questions.

The sprightly clerk, pleased at knowing what other people did not
know, held forth endlessly upon the charms of their new neighbour. He
praised her to the skies, declared that you could see she was a lady
from Petersburg or Moscow. ‘She is intelligent,’ he repeated, ‘charming,
cultured, but she won’t look at fellows like us. Ah, upon my soul,’ he
added, suddenly turning to me, ‘there’s a happy thought; you must keep up
the honour of Vyatka society and get up a flirtation with her.... Why,
you are from Moscow, you know, and in exile; no doubt you write verses.
She’s a heaven-sent find for you.’

‘What nonsense you do talk,’ I said, laughing, but I flushed crimson: I
longed to see her.

A few days later I met her in the garden and found that she really was a
very charming blonde. The gentleman who had talked about her introduced
me. I was agitated and was as little able to hide it as my companion his
smile.

The shyness due to vanity passed and I got to know her; she was very
unhappy and, deceiving herself by assumed composure, was pining away and
languishing in a sort of indolence of the heart.

Madame R—— was one of those secretly passionate natures only to be met
among women of a fair complexion. The ardour of their hearts is masked
by the mildness and gentleness of their features; they turn pale with
emotion, and their eyes do not flash but rather grow dim when feeling
brims over. Her languid eyes looked exhausted with a vague craving, her
yearning bosom heaved irregularly. There was something restless and
electric in her whole being. Often when walking in the garden she would
suddenly turn pale and, inwardly troubled or agitated, would answer
absent-mindedly and hurry into the house. It was just at those moments
that I liked to look at her.

I soon saw what was passing within her. She did not love her husband and
could not love him; she was twenty-five, he was over fifty, yet that
disparity she might have got over, but the difference of education, of
interests, of temperament, was too great.

Her husband scarcely ever came out of his room; he was a dry, harsh, old
man, an official with pretensions to being a landowner, irritable like
all invalids and like most people who have lost their fortune. She was
sixteen when she was married to him and then he had some property, but
afterwards he had lost everything at cards and was forced to go into the
service for a living. Two years before he was transferred to Vyatka he
began to fall into ill-health, a sore on his leg developed into disease
of the bone. The old man became surly and ill-humoured, was afraid of his
illness, and looked with helpless suspicion and uneasiness at his wife.
She waited upon him with mournful self-sacrifice, but she did this only
as her duty. Her children could not give all that her yearning heart
craved.

One evening, speaking of one thing and another, I said that I should very
much like to send my cousin my portrait, but that I could not find a man
in Vyatka who could hold a pencil.

‘Let me try,’ said the lady. ‘I used to draw rather successful portraits
in pencil.’

‘I shall be delighted. When?’

‘To-morrow before dinner, if you like.’

‘Of course. I will come to-morrow at one o’clock.’

All this was in her husband’s presence; he said not a word.

Next morning I got a note from Madame R——. It was the first I had ever
received from her. She very courteously and circumspectly informed me
that her husband was not pleased at her having offered to draw my
portrait, begged me not to judge harshly of the whims of an invalid, said
that he must not be worried, and, in conclusion, offered to make the
sketch some other day, saying nothing about it to her husband, that he
might not be annoyed by it.

I warmly, perhaps excessively warmly, thanked her. I did not accept her
offer to draw the portrait in secret, but nevertheless these two notes
made us much more intimate. Her attitude to her husband, upon which I
could never have touched, was openly expressed; a secret understanding, a
league against him, was unconsciously formed between us.

In the evening I went to see them—not a word was said about the portrait.
If her husband had been cleverer he must have guessed what had happened;
but he was not clever. I thanked her with my eyes, she answered with a
smile.

Soon they moved into another part of the town. The first time I went to
see them I found her alone in a barely furnished drawing-room; she was
sitting at the piano, her eyes were tear-stained. I begged her to go on;
but the music halted, she played false notes, her hands trembled, the
colour left her face. ‘How stifling it is!’ she said, getting up quickly
from the piano.

In silence I took her hand, a weak, feverish hand; her head, like a
flower grown too heavy, as though passively obeying some external force,
sank on my breast, she pressed her forehead against me and instantly fled.

Next day I received a rather frightened note from her, trying to throw
a sort of mist over what had passed; she wrote of the terribly nervous
condition in which she had been when I came in, of scarcely remembering
what had happened. She apologised for her behaviour—but the thin veil of
her words could not conceal the passion that glowed through them.

I went to see them; that day her husband was a little better, though he
had not risen from his bed since they had been in their new quarters.
I was worked up by excitement, played the fool, fired off witty jokes,
talked all sorts of nonsense, made the invalid almost die with laughter,
and of course all that was to cover her embarrassment and my own.
Moreover, I felt that the laughter was intoxicating her and drawing her
on.

       *       *       *       *       *

This orgy of love lasted for a month; then my heart was as it were tired,
exhausted; I began to have moments of depression, I studiously concealed
them, tried not to believe in them, wondered what was passing within
me—while still love was cooling.

I began to feel constrained by the presence of the old man. It was
awkward and hateful for me in his company. Not that I felt myself in the
wrong as regards the man who had the civil and ecclesiastical rights of
property in a woman who could not love him and whom he was incapable
of loving, but my double part struck me as humiliating; hypocrisy and
duplicity are the vices most foreign to my nature. While growing passion
was in the ascendant I thought of nothing, but as soon as it was somewhat
cooler I began to have doubts.

One morning Matvey came into my bedroom with the news that old R—— ‘had
passed away.’ I was overcome by a strange feeling at this news, I turned
on the other side and was in no hurry to dress. I did not want to see
the dead man. Vitberg came in, quite ready to go out. ‘What!’ he said,
‘you’re still in bed! Haven’t you heard what’s happened? I expect poor
Madame R—— is all alone, let us go and see, make haste and dress.’ I
dressed—and we went.

We found Madame R—— in a swoon or in a sort of nervous lethargy. There
was no pretence about it: her husband’s death had recalled her helpless
position; she was left alone with her children in a strange town,
without money, without friends or relations. Besides, she had on previous
occasions fallen into this cataleptic condition, which was brought on by
some violent shock and lasted several hours. Pale as death, with her face
cold and her eyes closed, she lay, from time to time giving a gasp, and
breathless in the intervals.

Not one woman came to help her, to show her sympathy, to look after the
children or the house. Vitberg remained with her, the prophetic clerk and
I undertook to see after things.

The old man, looking black and sunken, lay in his uniform on the
drawing-room table, frowning as though he were angry with me. We laid
him in the coffin, and two days later lowered him into the grave. After
the funeral we went back to the dead man’s house; the children in their
black frocks with crape weepers huddled in the corner, more amazed and
frightened than grieved: they whispered together and walked on tiptoe.
Madame R—— sat with her head leaning on her hands, as though pondering,
and did not say a single word.

In that drawing-room, on that sofa I had waited for her, listened to the
sick man moaning and the drunken servant swearing. Now everything was so
black.... In the midst of funereal surroundings and the smell of incense,
I was haunted by vague and gloomy recollections of words and minutes of
which I still could not think without tenderness.

Her grief gradually subsided and she looked more resolutely at her
position; then, little by little, other thoughts began to light up her
careworn and despondent face. Her eyes rested upon me with a sort of
agitated inquiry, as though she were waiting for something ... a question
... an answer....

I said nothing—and she, frightened, alarmed, began to feel doubts.

Then I saw that her husband had in reality been an excuse for me in
my own eyes—love had burnt itself out in me. It was not that I had no
feeling for her, far from it, but the feeling was not what she wanted.
I was now occupied by a different order of ideas, and that outburst of
passion seemed to have possessed me simply to make another feeling clear
to myself. Only one thing I can say in my defence—I was perfectly sincere
in my infatuation.

While I had lost my head and did not know what to do, while with cowardly
weakness I was waiting for the chances of time and circumstance, time and
circumstance complicated my position still further.

Tyufyaev, seeing the helpless position of a young and beautiful widow
left without any support in a remote town in which she was a stranger,
like the true ‘father of the province,’ showed her the tenderest
solicitude. At first we all thought that he felt real sympathy for her.
But soon Madame R—— observed with horror that his attentions were by no
means so simple. Two or three dissolute governors before him had kept
Vyatka ladies as mistresses, and Tyufyaev, following their example, lost
no time but at once began making declarations of love to her. Madame
R—— of course responded with cold disdain and mockery to his elderly
blandishments. Tyufyaev would not recognise himself rebuffed, but
persisted in his insolent attentions. Seeing, however, that he was making
little progress, he gave her to understand that her children’s future lay
in his hands, that without his assistance she could not place them in
schools at government expense, and that he on his side would not exert
himself in her favour if she did not adopt a less chilly attitude to him.
The insulted woman sprang up like a wild beast wounded. ‘Kindly leave my
house and don’t dare to set foot in it again,’ she said, pointing to the
door.

‘Ough, what a temper you have got!’ said Tyufyaev, trying to turn things
off with a jest.

‘Pyotr, Pyotr,’ she shouted in the entry, and the terrified Tyufyaev,
fearing a public scandal, abashed and humiliated, fled to his carriage,
gasping with fury.

In the evening Madame R—— told Vitberg and me all that had happened.
Vitberg at once realised that the Lovelace put to flight and insulted
would not leave the poor woman in peace; Tyufyaev’s character was pretty
well known to us all. Vitberg resolved at all costs to save her.

Persecutions soon followed. The petition with regard to the children was
presented in such a way that refusal was inevitable. The landlord and
the shopkeepers demanded payment with remarkable insistence. God knows
what might not be expected; the man who had done Petrovsky to death in a
madhouse was not to be trifled with.

Though burdened with an immense family and weighed down by poverty,
Vitberg did not hesitate for one minute, but invited Madame R—— to move
with her children into his house two or three days after his wife’s
arrival in Vyatka. In his house Madame R—— was safe, so great was the
moral power of this exile. His inflexible will, his noble appearance,
his fearless words, his scornful smile were dreaded even by the Vyatka
Shemyaka.[8]

I lived in a wing apart in the same house and dined at Vitberg’s table,
and so here we were under the same roof, just when we ought to have been
seas apart.

In this close proximity she soon saw that there was no bringing back the
past.

Why had she met me, at that time so unstable? She might have been
happy, she deserved to be happy. The sorrowful past was over, a new
life of love and harmony was so possible for her! Poor woman! Was it my
fault that this storm-cloud of love which had swooped down upon me so
irresistibly, so ardently, intoxicated me, drew me on, and then melted
away?

I lived in a state of anxious perturbation. Perplexed, foreseeing
trouble, and dissatisfied with myself, again I turned to dissipation and
sought distraction in noise, was vexed at finding it and vexed at not
finding it, and awaited a few lines from Natalie as for a breath of pure
air in the midst of sultry heat. The gentle image of the child on the
verge of womanhood rose brighter and brighter above all this ferment of
passion. My outburst of passion for Madame R—— made my own heart clear to
me and revealed its secret.

More and more absorbed by my feeling for my far-away cousin, I had not
clearly analysed the sentiment that bound me to her. I was used to the
feeling and did not watch closely to see whether it had changed or not.

My letters became more and more troubled; on the one hand I felt deeply
not only the wrong I had done Madame R——, but the fresh wrong I did her
in the lying of which I was guilty by my silence. It seemed to me that I
had fallen, that I was unworthy of any other love ... while my love was
growing and growing.

The name of _sister_ began to fret me, affection now was not enough for
me, that gentle feeling seemed cold. Her love was apparent in every line
of her letters, but that did not satisfy me. I wanted not only love
but the very word itself, and I wrote: ‘I am going to put a strange
question to you. Do you believe that the feeling you have for me is
only affection? Do you believe that the feeling I have for you is only
affection? I don’t believe it.’

‘You seem somewhat troubled,’ she answered. ‘I knew your letter
frightened you much more than it frightened me. Set your mind at rest,
dear, it has changed absolutely nothing in me, it could not make me love
you more, or less.’

But the word had been uttered: ‘The mist has vanished,’ she writes, ‘all
is clear and bright again.’

With unclouded joy she gave herself up to the feeling that had been
given its name; her letters are one youthful song of love rising from a
childish whisper to lyrical heights.

‘Perhaps at this moment,’ she writes, ‘you are sitting in your study, not
writing, not reading, but pensively smoking a cigar, and your eyes are
fixed on the vague distance and you have no answer for the greeting of
any one who comes in. Where are your thoughts? What are you seeing? Do
not answer, let them come to me....’

‘Let us be childish, let us fix an hour for both of us to be in the open
air, an hour in which we can both be sure that nothing separates us but
distance. At eight o’clock in the evening you, too, are surely free? Or
else I go out as just now upon the steps—and come back at once thinking
that you are indoors.’

‘Looking at your letters, at your portrait, thinking of my letters, of
my bracelet, I wished I could skip a century and see what will be their
fate. The things which have been for us holy relics, which have healed
us, body and soul, with which we have talked and which have to some
extent replaced us to each other in absence; all these weapons with which
we have defended ourselves from others, from the blows of fate, from
ourselves, what will they be when we are gone, will their virtue, their
soul remain in them, will they awaken, will they warm some other heart,
will they tell the story of us, of our sufferings, of our love, will they
win one tear? How sad I feel when I imagine that your portrait will one
day hang unknown in some one’s study, or a child perhaps will break the
glass and efface the features.’

My letters were not like this[9]; in the midst of full, enthusiastic love
there is a note of bitter vexation with myself and repentance; the dumb
reproaches of Madame R—— were gnawing at my heart and troubling the clear
radiance of my feeling; I seemed to myself a liar, and yet I had not been
lying.

How could I acknowledge the position? How was I to tell Madame R—— in
January that I had made a mistake in August when I spoke of my love? How
could she believe in the truth of my story—a new love would have been
easier to understand, treachery would have been simpler. How the far-away
image of the absent could enter into conflict with the present, how
another love could have crossed that mountain barrier and become stronger
and more recognised—that I did not understand myself, but I felt that it
was all true.

Moreover, Madame R—— herself with the elusive agility of a lizard slipped
away from any serious explanation; she had an inkling of danger, was lost
in conjecture, and at the same time was avoiding the truth. It was as
though she had a foreboding that my words would reveal terrible facts,
after knowing which all would be over, and she cut short all talk at the
point where it was becoming dangerous.

At first she was looking about her; for a few days she thought she had
found her rival in a charming, lively young German girl whom I liked as a
child, with whom I was at ease just because it had never entered her head
to flirt with me, nor mine to flirt with her. A week later she perceived
that Paulina was not at all dangerous. But I cannot go further without
saying a word about the latter.

In the government dispensary at Vyatka there was a German chemist, and
there was nothing strange about that, but what is strange is that his
assistant was Russian and was called Bolman. With this latter I became
acquainted; he was married to the daughter of a Vyatka government clerk,
a lady who had the longest, thickest, and most beautiful hair I have ever
seen. The dispenser himself, Ferdinand Rulkovius, was at first absent,
and Bolman and I used to drink together various ‘fizzing drinks’ and
artistic cordials compounded from the pharmacy. The dispenser was away
in Reval, there he made the acquaintance of a young girl and offered her
his hand; the girl, who hardly knew him, married him rashly, as a girl
generally does, and a German girl in particular; she had no notion even
into what wilds he was taking her. But when after the wedding she had to
set off, she was overcome with terror and despair. To comfort his bride,
the dispenser invited a young girl of seventeen, a distant relation of
his wife, to go with them to Vyatka. She, even more rashly, with no idea
of what was meant by Vyatka, consented. Neither of the German girls
spoke a word of Russian, and in Vyatka there were not four men who spoke
German. Even the teacher of that language in the high school did not know
it, a fact which surprised me so much that I actually ventured to ask him
how he managed to teach it.

‘With the grammar,’ he answered, ‘and with dialogues.’

He further explained that he was really a teacher of mathematics, but
that, as there was no post vacant, he was meanwhile teaching German,
and that he received, however, only half the salary.[10] The Germans
were dying of ennui, and seeing a man who, if he could not speak German
well, could at least do so intelligently, were highly delighted, regaled
me with coffee and some sort of ‘_Kalteschale_,’ told me all their
secrets, their hopes and their wishes, and within two days called me
their friend and still more hospitably treated me to sweet cakes and
pastries flavoured with spices. Both were fairly well educated, that is,
knew Schiller by heart, played the piano, and sang German songs. There
the likeness between them ended. The dispenser’s wife was a tall, fair,
lymphatic woman, very good-looking but sleepy and listless; she was
extremely good-natured and, indeed, with her physique it would have been
hard to be anything else. Being convinced once for all that her husband
was her husband, she loved him quietly and steadily, looked after the
kitchen and the linen, read novels in her leisure moments, and in due
time successfully bore the chemist a daughter with white eyebrows and
eyelashes and a scrofulous constitution.

Her friend, a short, dark brunette, vigorously healthy, with big black
eyes and an independent air, was a beauty of the sturdy peasant type; a
great deal of energy was apparent in her words and movements, and when
at times the dispenser, a dull, close-fisted fellow, made somewhat
discourteous observations to his wife, while she listened with a smile
on her lips and a tear on her eyelash, Paulina would flush crimson and
give the offending husband such a look that he would instantly subside,
pretend to be very busy, and go off to his laboratory to pound and mix
all sorts of nasty things for the preservation of the health of the
Vyatka officials.

I liked the simple-hearted girl who knew how to stand up for herself,
and I do not know how it happened, but it was to her I first talked of
my love and translated some of Natalie’s letters. Only one who has lived
for long years with people who are completely alien know how precious
are these confidences of the heart. I rarely talk of my feelings, but
there are moments, even now, when the longing to express myself becomes
insufferable, and at that time I was four-and-twenty, and I had only just
realised my love. I could bear separation, I could have borne silence
too, but, meeting with another child on the threshold of womanhood, in
whom everything was so unaffectedly simple, I could not refrain from
giving away my secret. And how grateful she was for my confidence, and
how much good she did me!

Vitberg’s always serious conversation sometimes wearied me; fretted by
my difficult relations with Madame R——, I could not be at my ease with
her. Often in the evening I used to go off to Paulina, read foolish
stories aloud to her, listen to her ringing laugh and to her singing,
especially for my benefit, ‘Das Mädchen aus der Fremde’—by which she and
I understood another ‘maiden from a strange land,’ and the clouds were
dissipated, there was an unfeigned gaiety, an untroubled serenity in my
heart, and I would go home in peace when the dispenser, after stirring
his last mixture and preparing his last ointment, began boring me with
absurd political inquiries—not, however, before I had drunk a ‘draught’
of his mixing and eaten the herring salad mixed by the little white hands
_der Frau Apothekerin_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Madame R—— was wretched, while with pitiful weakness I waited for time to
bring some chance solution and prolonged the half-deception. A thousand
times I longed to go to Madame R——, to throw myself at her feet, to
tell her everything, to face her wrath, her contempt ... but it was not
indignation that I feared—I should have been glad of it—I feared her
tears. One must have endured many evil experiences to be able to bear a
woman’s tears, to be able to feel doubts while they trickle still warm
over the flushed cheek. Besides, her tears would have been sincere.

A good deal of time passed like this. Rumours began to reach me that
my exile might soon come to an end. The day no longer seemed so remote
on which I should fling myself into a chaise and dash off to Moscow,
familiar faces hovered before my imagination and among them, foremost of
them, the cherished features; but scarcely did I abandon myself to these
dreams when the pale, mournful figure of Madame R—— would rise up on the
other side with tear-stained eyes, full of pain and reproach, and my joy
was troubled: I felt sorry, terribly sorry for her.

I could no longer remain in a false position, and plucking up all
my courage I made up my mind to get out of it. I wrote her a full
confession. Warmly, openly, I told her the whole truth. Next day she said
she was ill and did not leave her room. All the sufferings of a criminal,
the fears that he will be unmasked, I passed through on that day. She had
another attack of her nervous stupor—I dared not visit her.

I wanted my repentance to be complete. I shut myself up with Vitberg in
his study and told him the whole story. At first he was astonished, then
he listened to me not as a judge but as a friend, did not worry me with
questions, did not preach to me with stale morality, but devoted himself
to helping me find means for softening the blow—he alone could do that.
His affection was very warm for those of whom he was fond. I had been
afraid of his rigorous morals, but his affection for me and for Madame
R—— completely outweighed that. Yes, in his hands I could leave the
unhappy woman to whose hard lot I had given the finishing blow, in him
she found strong moral support and authority. She respected him like a
father.

In the morning Matvey gave me a note. I had scarcely slept all night.
With a trembling hand I broke the seal. She wrote gently, in a noble and
deeply mournful spirit; the flowers of my eloquence had not concealed
the snake beneath them, in her words of resignation could be heard the
stifled moan of a wounded heart, the cry of pain, repressed by a supreme
effort. She blessed me on my way to my new life, wished me happiness,
called Natalie a sister, and held out a pleading hand to us for
forgetfulness of the past and friendship for the future—as though she had
been to blame!

Sobbing, I read her letter over and over again. _Qual cuor tradisti!_

Later on I met her. She gave me her hand affectionately, but we felt
awkward; each of us had left something unsaid, each of us tried to avoid
touching on something.

A year ago I heard of her death.

When I left Vyatka I was for a long time worried by the thought of
Madame R——. As I regained my composure I set to work to write a story of
which she was the heroine. I described a young nobleman of the period of
Catherine who has abandoned the woman who loves him and married another.
She pines away and dies. The news of her death is a heavy blow to him, he
becomes gloomy and pensive, and at last goes out of his mind. His wife,
an ideal of gentleness and self-sacrifice, after trying everything, leads
him in one of his quieter moments to the Dyevitchy Convent and kneels
down with him at the unhappy woman’s grave, begging her forgiveness and
her intervention. From the windows of the convent the words of a prayer
reach them, soft feminine voices sing of forgiveness—and the young man
recovers. The story was a failure. At the time when I wrote it Madame
R—— had no thought of coming to Moscow, and the only man who guessed
that there was anything between us was the ‘ubiquitous German,’ K. I.
Sonnenberg. After my mother’s death in 1851, we had no news from him. In
1860 a tourist, describing his acquaintance with Karl Ivanovitch, now a
man of eighty, showed me a letter from him. In a postscript the old man
told him of the death of Madame R—— and said that my brother had had her
buried in the Novo Dyevitchy Convent!

I need hardly say that neither of them knew anything about my story.




Chapter 22

IN MOSCOW WHILE I WAS AWAY


My peaceful life in Vladimir was soon troubled by news from Moscow which
reached me now from all sides and deeply distressed me. To make this
intelligible I must go back to 1834.

The day after I was arrested in 1834 was the nameday of my aunt, the
princess, and so when Natalie had parted from me in the graveyard she
had said: ‘Until to-morrow’; she was expecting me, several members of
the family had arrived, when suddenly my cousin made his appearance and
told them the full details of my arrest. This news, utterly unexpected,
gave her a shock; she got up to go into the other room, and after taking
two steps fell unconscious on the floor. The princess saw it all and
understood it all; she determined to oppose this love from the beginning
by every means in her power.

What for?

I do not know: she had of late, that is after I had finished my studies,
been very well disposed to me; but my arrest and rumours of our
free-thinking attitude, of our giving up the Orthodox Church and entering
the Saint Simon ‘sect,’ infuriated her; from that time forward she never
spoke of me except as ‘that unhappy son of brother Ivan’s.’ The Senator
had to use all his authority to induce her to allow Natalie to go to the
Krutitsky Barracks to say good-bye to me.

Fortunately I was exiled and the princess had plenty of time before her.

‘And where is this Perm or Vyatka? He’ll be sure to break his neck there,
or have it broken for him; and in any case he’ll forget her there.’

But as though to spite the princess, I had an excellent memory. Natalie’s
correspondence with me, for a long time concealed from the old lady, was
at last discovered, and she sternly forbade the maids and menservants to
receive letters for the young girl, or to take letters to the post.

‘So I daresay some fine morning that unhappy son of my brother’s will
open the door and walk in; it’s no use wasting time thinking about it,
and putting things off—we’ll make a match for her and save her from the
political criminal who has no religion or principles.’

The princess, sighing, would talk of the poor, forlorn girl, saying
that she had scarcely anything, that it would not do for her to pick
and choose, that she would like to see her settled in her own lifetime.
She had, as a fact, with the help of her dependents, settled, after a
fashion, the fate of one distant cousin who had no dowry by marrying her
off to an attorney of some sort. A nice, good-natured, and well-educated
girl, she married to satisfy her mother; two years later she died, but
the attorney was still living, and from gratitude was still looking
after her Excellency’s affairs. In this case, however, the bride was
not portionless, the princess was prepared to treat her like her own
daughter, to give her a dowry of a hundred thousand roubles and to leave
her something in her will besides. On such terms suitors are always to
be found, not only in Moscow but everywhere else, especially when there
is the title of princess as well as a ‘lady companion’ and numerous ‘old
women’ in attendance.

The whispering, the negotiations, rumours, and maidservants brought
Princess Marya Alexeyevna’s intention to the ears of the unhappy victim
of so much solicitude. She told the ‘lady companion’ that she would not
accept any offer of marriage. Then followed an insulting and ruthless
persecution without one trace of delicacy, a petty persecution pursuing
her every minute and catching her at every step, at every word.

‘Imagine bad weather, terrible cold, wind, rain, an overcast, as it were,
expressionless sky, a very horrid little room which looks as though a
corpse had just been carried out of it, and these _children_, who have no
aim, no pleasure even, making a noise, shouting, spoiling and defiling
everything near them; and it would be bad enough if one had simply to
look at them, but when one is forced to be in their company ...’ she
writes in one letter from the country where the princess had gone for the
summer; and she goes on: ‘there are three old women sitting here with us,
and they are all three describing how their late husbands were paralysed
and how they used to look after them; and it is chilly enough without
that.’

Now systematic persecution was added to these surroundings, and it was
practised not only by the princess but also by the wretched old women,
who were perpetually worrying Natalie, persuading her to be married and
abusing me; as a rule, she said nothing in her letters of the continual
annoyances she had to endure, but sometimes bitterness, humiliation and
boredom were too much for her. ‘I don’t know,’ she writes, ‘whether they
can invent anything more to oppress me. Can they possibly have wit enough
for that? Do you know that I am actually forbidden to go into another
room, even to move to another seat in the same room? It is a long while
since I have played the piano; lights were brought and I went into the
drawing-room, thinking they might be merciful, but no, they brought
me back and set me knitting; perhaps, at least I might sit at another
table—I can’t endure being beside them—might I do even that? No, I must
sit just here beside the priest’s wife, listen, look, and talk, while
they speak of nothing but Filaret or criticise you. For a moment I felt
vexed, I flushed crimson, then all at once my heart was weighed down by a
feeling of bitter sadness, not because I had to be their slave, no ... I
felt horribly sorry for them.’

Matchmaking negotiations were formally beginning.

‘A lady has been here who is fond of me, and whom I am not for that
reason fond of.... She is doing her very utmost to settle things for me,
and she made me so angry that I sang after her—

    “I had rather be dressed in my winding-sheet
    Than the wedding veil without my sweet.”’

A few days later, 26th October 1837, she writes: ‘What I have been
through to-day, my dear, you can’t imagine. They dressed me up and
dragged me off to Madame S——, who has been extremely gracious to me ever
since I was a child; Colonel Z—— goes there every Tuesday to play cards.
Imagine my position: on the one side the old ladies at the card-table, on
the other all sorts of disgusting figures, and he.... The conversation,
the company—everything was so alien to me, so strange and horrid, so
lifeless and vulgar, I was more like a statue than a living creature.
Everything that was going on seemed like an oppressive nightmare. I kept
asking like a child to go home, they would not heed me. The attention of
the host and of _the visitor_ overwhelmed me; he got as far as writing
half my monogram in chalk. Oh dear, I am not strong enough and I can look
for support to no one of those who might be a help; I am all alone on the
edge of a precipice, and a whole crowd of them are doing everything they
can to push me over; sometimes I am weary, my strength fails me and you
are not near and I cannot see you in the distance; but the mere thought
of you—and my soul is stirred and ready to do battle again in the armour
of love.’

Meanwhile every one liked the Colonel: the Senator was friendly to
him, and my father gave it as his opinion that ‘a better match could
not be expected and should not be desired.’ ‘Even his Excellency D.
P. (Golohvastov) is pleased with him,’ wrote Natalie. The princess
said nothing directly to Natalie, but restricted her freedom even more
severely and hurried things on. Natalie tried to play the part of a
complete imbecile in his presence, hoping to repel him, but not at all;
he went on coming more and more frequently.

‘Yesterday,’ she writes, ‘Amelia was here and this is what she said: “If
I heard that you were dead I should cross myself with joy and thank God.”
She is right in a great deal but not altogether; her soul living only in
sorrow could fully grasp the sufferings of my spirit, but the bliss with
which love fills it she could scarcely understand.’

But the princess was not losing heart. ‘Wishing to have a clear
conscience, the princess invited a priest who is a friend of Z—— and
asked him whether it would not be a sin to marry me against my will. The
priest said it would be actually a godly work to make so good a provision
for an orphan. I am sending for my own priest,’ Natalie adds, ‘and shall
tell him the whole story.’

‘_October 30th._—My clothes are here, my attire for to-morrow, and the
ikon, the rings; all sorts of arrangements and preparations have been
made, and not a word to me. The Nasakins and others have been invited.
They are preparing a surprise for me and I am preparing a surprise for
them.

‘_Evening._—Now a family council is going on. Lyov Alexeyevitch (the
Senator) is here. You urge me to be strong—there is no need, my dear.
I am equal to extricating myself from the awful, loathsome scenes into
which they are dragging me on the chain. Your image is bright above me,
there is no need to fear for me, and my very distress and sadness are so
sacred and have taken so firm a hold on my soul that tearing them away
would hurt even more, the wounds would re-open.’

However, though they did their best to mask and cover up the position,
the Colonel could not avoid seeing the positive aversion of his proposed
bride; he began to be less frequent in his visits, declared himself ill,
and even hinted at some addition to the dowry; this greatly incensed the
princess, but she got over even that humiliation and was ready to give
her an estate near Moscow as well. This concession he had apparently not
anticipated, for after it he disappeared altogether.

Two months passed quietly. All at once the news came that I had been
transferred to Vladimir. Then the princess made her last desperate
effort to marry off her protégée. One of her acquaintances had a son,
an officer, who had just returned from the Caucasus; he was young,
cultivated, and a very decent fellow. The princess condescended so far
as herself to suggest to his sister that she should ‘sound’ her brother
and see whether he cared for the match. He yielded to his sister’s
representations. The young girl did not care to play the same disgusting
and tedious part a second time, so, seeing that the position was taking
a serious turn, she wrote to the young man a letter, told him directly,
openly, and simply that she loved another man, trusted herself to his
honour and begged him not to add to her sufferings.

The officer with great delicacy drew back. The princess was amazed
and affronted and made up her mind to find out what had happened. The
officer’s sister, to whom Natalie had spoken herself, and who had
promised her brother to say nothing to the princess, told the whole story
to the ‘lady companion’; the latter of course at once reported it to her
mistress.

The princess almost choked with indignation. Not knowing what to do,
she ordered the young girl to go upstairs to her room and not to show
herself; not content with that, she ordered her door to be locked and
put two maids on guard; then she wrote notes to her two brothers and one
of her nephews and asked them to come and give her advice, saying that
‘she was so distressed and upset that she could not think what to do in
the misfortune that had befallen her.’ My father refused, saying that he
had plenty of worries of his own, that there was no need to attach such
importance to what had happened, and that he was a poor judge in affairs
of the heart. The Senator and D. P. Golohvastov appeared next evening in
answer to her summons. They talked for a long time without reaching any
conclusion and at last asked to see the prisoner. The young girl came
in, but she was no longer the shy, silent, forlorn girl they had known.
Unflinching firmness and stubborn determination were apparent in the calm
and proud expression of her face; this was not a child but a woman who
had come to defend her love—my love.

The sight of the prisoner on her trial confounded her judges. They were
awkward; at last Dmitry Pavlovitch, _l’orateur de la famille_, expatiated
at length on the cause of their coming together, the distress of the
princess, her heartfelt desire to settle her protégée’s future, and the
strange opposition on the part of her for whose benefit it was all being
done. The Senator with a nod and a movement of his finger expressed his
assent to his nephew’s words. The princess said nothing but sat with her
head turned away, sniffing salts.

The prisoner on her trial heard all they had to say and asked with
straightforward simplicity what they required of her.

‘We have no thought of requiring anything from you,’ observed the nephew.
‘We are here at Aunt’s desire to give you sincere advice. A match
excellent in all respects is offered to you.’

‘I cannot accept it.’

‘What is your reason for that?’

‘You know it.’

The orator of the family coloured a little, took a pinch of snuff, and
screwing up his eyes went on: ‘There is a great deal to which objection
might be urged. I would call your attention to the very small ground for
your hopes. It is so long since you have seen our unfortunate Alexandr;
he is so young and impetuous—are you certain of him?’

‘Yes, and whatever his intentions may be, I cannot change mine.’

The nephew had exhausted his eloquence; he got up saying: ‘God grant
that you may not regret it! I feel very anxious about your future.’ The
Senator scowled; the luckless girl now appealed to him. ‘You have always
shown me sympathy,’ she said to him. ‘I implore you, save me, do what
you like but take me out of this life. I have done no harm to any one, I
ask for nothing, I am not trying to do anything, I am only refusing to
deceive a man and ruin myself by marrying him. What I have to endure on
account of it you cannot imagine; it pains me to have to say this in the
presence of the princess, but to put up with the slights, the insulting
words, the hints of her friends is too much for me. I cannot, I ought not
to allow it, for insulting me is insulting....’ Her nerves gave way, the
tears gushed from her eyes; the Senator leapt up and walked about the
room in agitation.

Meanwhile the ‘lady companion,’ boiling over with fury, could not
restrain herself and said, addressing the princess: ‘So that’s our nice,
modest girl, there’s gratitude for you.’

‘Of whom is she speaking?’ shouted the Senator. ‘How is it, sister, you
allow that woman, devil knows what she is, to speak like that of your
brother’s daughter in your presence? And if it comes to that, why is this
drab here at all? Did you invite her to the family council too? Is she a
relation or what?’

‘My dear,’ answered the panic-stricken princess, ‘you know what she is to
me and how she looks after me.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very nice, let her give you your medicine and what
you like; that’s not what I am talking about. I ask you, _sœur_, why
is she here when family affairs are being discussed, and how dare she
put her word in? One might suppose it was all her doing, and then you
complain—Hey, my carriage!’

The ‘lady companion’ flushed, and ran out of the room in tears.

‘Why do you spoil her like this?’ the Senator went on, carried away; ‘she
fancies she is sitting in the tavern at Zvenigorod; how is it you aren’t
disgusted by it?’

‘Leave off, my dear, please,’ the poor princess groaned, ‘my nerves are
so upset—oh! You can go upstairs and stay there,’ she added, addressing
her niece.

‘It’s time to be done with all this Bastille business. It’s all nonsense
and leads to nothing,’ observed the Senator and took his hat.

Before driving away, he went upstairs; Natalie, overcome by all that
had passed, was sitting in an armchair with her face hidden, weeping
bitterly. The old man patted her on the shoulder and said:

‘Calm yourself, calm yourself, it will all come right. You must just try
not to make sister angry with you; she is an invalid, you must humour
her; after all, she only wishes for your good, you know; but, there, you
shan’t be married against your will, I’ll answer for that.’

‘Better a nunnery, a boarding-school, to go to Tambov to my brother, or
to Petersburg, than to endure this life any longer,’ she answered.

‘Come, come! try and soothe my sister, and as for that fool of a woman
I’ll teach her not to be rude.’

The Senator, as he crossed the drawing-room, met the ‘lady companion’:
‘I’ll ask you not to forget yourself,’ he shouted at her, holding up a
menacing finger; she went sobbing into the bedroom where the princess lay
on the bed while four maids rubbed her hands and feet, moistened her
temples with vinegar, and poured Hoffman’s drops on lumps of sugar.

So ended the family council.

It is clear that the girl’s position was hardly likely to be improved
by what had happened; the ‘lady companion’ was more on her guard, but,
cherishing now a personal hatred for Natalie, and desirous of avenging
the affront to herself, she poisoned her existence by petty indirect
means. I need hardly say that the princess acquiesced in this ignoble
persecution of a defenceless girl.

This had to be ended. I made up my mind to come forward, and wrote a
long, calm, and sincere letter to my father. I told him of my love and,
foreseeing his reply, added that I did not want to hurry him, that I
should give him time to see whether it was a passing feeling or not, and
that all that I begged of him was that the Senator and he would enter
into the poor girl’s position and would remember that they had the same
rights over her as the princess herself.

My father answered that he could not endure meddling in other people’s
affairs, that what the princess did in her own house was not his
business; he advised me to abandon foolish ideas ‘induced by the idleness
and ennui of exile,’ and added that I had much better prepare myself for
travel in foreign lands. We had often talked in past years of a tour
abroad, he knew how passionately I wished for it, but found endless
difficulties and always ended by saying: ‘You must first close my eyes,
then you’ll be free to go to the ends of the earth.’ In exile I had lost
all hope of going abroad, I knew how hard it would be to get permission,
and, besides, it would have seemed a lack of delicacy to insist on a
voluntary separation after the involuntary one. I remembered the tears
quivering on his old eyelids when I was setting off to Perm ... and now
here was my father taking the initiative and suggesting I should go!

I had been open, I had written sparing the old man, asking so little—and
he had answered with irony and strategy.

‘He doesn’t want to do anything for me,’ I said to myself, ‘like Guizot
he advocates _la non-intervention_. Very well then, I’ll act myself, and
now good-bye to concessions.’ I had not once before thought about the
ordering of the future; I believed, I knew that it was mine, that it was
ours, and I left the details to chance; the consciousness of love was
enough for us, our desires did not go beyond a momentary interview. My
father’s letter forced me to take the future into my own hands. It was
useless to wait—_cosa fata capo ha!_ My father was not very sentimental,
while as for the princess—

        ‘Let her weep,
    Her tears mean nought!’

Just at that time my brother and Ketscher came to stay in Vladimir.
Ketscher and I spent whole nights together, talking, recalling the past,
laughing through our tears, and laughing till we cried. He was the first
of our set whom I had seen since we left Moscow. From him I heard the
chronicles of our circle, what changes had taken place in it, and what
questions were absorbing it, what fresh people had arrived, where those
who had left Moscow were, and so on. When we had discussed everything
I told him of my plans. After considering how I ought to act, Ketscher
concluded with a proposition the absurdity of which I only appreciated
afterwards. Desirous of trying every peaceful method, he offered to go to
my father and to talk to him seriously. I agreed.

Ketscher, of course, was better fitted for any good deed, and, in fact,
for any evil deed, than for diplomatic negotiations, particularly with
my father. He had in a marked degree all the characteristics that were
calculated to ruin any chance of success. His very appearance was enough
to make any conservative depressed and alarmed. A tall figure, with hair
strangely dishevelled and arranged on no fixed principle, with a harsh
countenance reminiscent of a number of the members of the Convention of
1793, and especially of Marat, with the same big mouth, the same hard,
disdainful lines about the lips, and the same expression of mournful and
exasperated gloom; to this must be added spectacles, a wide-brimmed hat,
extreme irritability, a loud voice, lack of all habit of self-control,
and the power of arching his eyebrows higher and higher as he grew more
indignant. Ketscher was like Laravigny in George Sand’s excellent novel,
_Horace_, with an admixture of something of the Pathfinder and Robinson
Crusoe, as well as an element purely Muscovite. His open, generous
temperament had set him from childhood in direct conflict with the world
surrounding him; he did not conceal his antagonism and was accustomed to
it. A few years older than we, he was continually scolding us and was
dissatisfied with every one. He used to quarrel and bring accusations
against us and make up for it all by the simple good-nature of a child.
His words were rough, but his feelings were tender and we forgave him
much.

Imagine him, this last of the Mohicans with the face of a Marat, this
‘friend of the people,’ setting off to advise my father! Many times
afterwards I made Ketscher describe their interview; my imagination was
unequal to picturing all the oddity of this diplomatic intervention.
It took place so unexpectedly that for a moment my old father lost his
bearings and began explaining the weighty reasons which led him to
oppose my marriage; then, recovering himself, he changed his tone and
asked Ketscher on what grounds he had come to discuss a matter which
was none of his business. The conversation took a more bitter tone.
The diplomatist, seeing that his position was not improving, tried to
frighten the old man about my health, but it was too late, and the
interview ended, as might have been expected, in a series of malignant
sarcasms from my father and rude rejoinders from Ketscher.

He wrote to me: ‘Expect nothing from the old man.’ That was all I wanted.
But what was I to do? How was I to begin? While I was thinking over a
dozen different plans a day and unable to decide between them, my brother
was preparing to return to Moscow.

That was on the first of March 1838.




Chapter 23[12]

THE THIRD OF MARCH AND THE NINTH OF MAY 1838


In the morning I wrote letters; when I had finished we sat down to
dinner. I could not eat, we said nothing, I felt unbearably oppressed—it
was between four and five, at seven the horses were to come round. At
the same time next day he would be in Moscow while I—and every minute my
pulse beat faster.

‘I say,’ I said at last to my brother, looking at my plate, ‘will you
take me with you to Moscow?’

He put down his fork and looked at me uncertain whether he had heard me
aright.

‘Take me through the town gate as your servant, I want nothing more, do
you agree?’

‘Yes if you like, only, you know, afterwards you’ll....’

It was too late, his ‘if you like’ was already in my blood, in my brain.
The idea that had only flashed upon me a minute before had now taken deep
root.

‘What is there to discuss, anything may happen—and so you’ll take me?’

‘Of course—I don’t mind—only....’

I jumped up from the table.

‘Are you going?’ asked Matvey, anxious to put in a word.

‘I am,’ I answered in such a tone that he said no more. ‘I’ll be back the
day after to-morrow, if any one comes tell them I have a headache and am
asleep, in the evening light the candles, and now get me my linen and my
bag.’

The bells were tinkling in the yard.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, and so good luck to us.’

By dinner-time next day the bells ceased tinkling, we were at Ketscher’s
door. I bade them call him out. A week before, when he had left me in
Vladimir, there had been no idea of my coming, and hence he was so
surprised on seeing me that at first he did not say a word and then went
off into a peal of laughter: but soon looked anxious and led me indoors.
When we were in his room he first carefully locked the door and then
asked me: ‘What has happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I couldn’t stay in Vladimir, I want to see Natalie—that’s all, and you
must arrange it, and this very minute, because I must be back at home by
to-morrow.’

Ketscher looked into my face and raised his eyebrows.

‘What folly, the devil knows what to call it, to come like this with no
need and nothing prepared! Have you written, have you fixed a time?’

‘I have written nothing.’

‘Upon my word, my boy, but what are we to do with you? It’s beyond
anything, it’s raving madness!’

‘That’s just the point, that you must think what to do without losing a
minute.’

‘You’re a fool,’ said Ketscher with conviction, raising his eyebrows
higher than ever. ‘I should be glad, very glad indeed, if it were a
failure, it would be a lesson to you.’

‘And rather a long lesson if I am caught. Listen: as soon as it is dark
we’ll go to the princess’s house, you shall call some one out into the
road, one of the servants, I’ll tell you which—and then we’ll see what to
do. What do you say to that?’

‘Well, there’s no help for it, we’ll go, we’ll go; but I should like
you not to succeed in seeing her! Why on earth didn’t you write
yesterday?’—and Ketscher, pulling his broad-brimmed hat over his brows
with an air of dignity, threw on a black cloak lined with red.

‘Oh, you hateful grumbler!’ I said to him as we went out, and Ketscher,
laughing heartily, repeated: ‘But really it’s enough to make a hen laugh,
to come like this without sending a word; it’s beyond anything.’

I could not stay at Ketscher’s—he lived terribly far away, and his mother
had visitors that day. He took me to an officer of hussars whom he
knew to be an honourable man, and who, having never been mixed up with
political affairs, was not under police supervision. The officer, a man
with long moustaches, was sitting at dinner when we went in; Ketscher
told him what we had come about. The officer in reply poured me out
a glass of red wine and thanked us for the confidence we put in him;
then he took me into his bedroom, which was adorned with saddles and
saddle-cloths so that one might have supposed that he slept on horseback.

‘Here is a room for you,’ he said; ‘no one will disturb you here.’ Then
he called his orderly, a hussar, and told him not to let any one go into
that room on any pretext. I found myself again under the guardianship
of a soldier, with this difference, that at the Krutitsky Barracks the
gendarme had been keeping me from all the world, while here the hussar
was keeping all the world from me.

When it was quite dark, Ketscher and I set off. My heart beat violently
when I saw again the familiar streets and houses which I had not seen for
nearly four year.... Kuznetsky Bridge, Tversky Boulevard ... and here was
Ogaryov’s house; they had clapped an immense heraldic crest on it and it
looked different. In the lower storey, where we spent such happy youthful
days, a tailor was living.... Here was Povarsky Street—I held my breath:
in the corner window of the little room there was a candle burning, that
was her room, she was writing to me, she was thinking of me, the candle
twinkled so gaily, it seemed twinkling _to me_.

While we were considering how best to call some one out into the street,
one of the princess’s young footmen ran out towards us.

‘Arkady,’ I said as he reached us. He did not recognise me. ‘How is
this,’ I said, ‘don’t you know your own people?’

‘Oh, is it you?’ he cried.

I put my finger on my lips and said: ‘If you would like to do me a
friendly service, deliver this little note at once, as quickly as you
can, through Sasha or Kostinka, do you understand? We will wait for the
answer round the corner, and don’t breathe a word to any one of having
seen me in Moscow.’

‘Don’t be uneasy, we’ll do it all instantly,’ answered Arkady, and he
skipped back into the house.

We walked up and down the side-street for about half an hour before
a little, thin, old woman came out, flustered and looking about her;
this was that same brisk servant girl who in 1812 had begged the French
soldiers for ‘_manger_’ for me; we had called her Kostinka ever since I
was a child. The old woman took my face in both hands and showered kisses
upon it.

‘So you’ve flown to see us,’ she said. ‘Ah, you headstrong boy, when will
you learn sense, you foolish darling?—and you’ve given our young lady
such a fright that she almost fainted.’

‘And have you a note for me?’

‘Yes, yes, he is impatient,’ and she gave me a scrap of paper.

A few words had been scribbled in pencil with a trembling hand: ‘My God,
can it be true—you, here! To-morrow between five and six in the morning I
will expect you. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it! surely it must
be a dream!’

The hussar again put me into his orderly’s keeping. At half-past five
next morning I stood leaning against a lamp-post, waiting for Ketscher,
who had gone in at the side-gate of the princess’s house. I will not
attempt to describe what was passing in me while I waited at the
lamp-post; such moments remain one’s own secret because there are no
words for them.

Ketscher beckoned to me. I went in at the little gate, a boy who had
grown up since I left showed me in with a friendly smile, and here I
was in the hall which at one time I used to enter yawning, though now I
was ready to fall on my knees and kiss every plank on the floor. Arkady
led me into the drawing-room and went out. I sank exhausted on the
sofa, my heart throbbed so violently that it hurt me, and besides I was
frightened. I linger over my story for the sake of spending longer over
these memories, though I see that my words give a poor idea of them.

She came in all in white, dazzlingly lovely; three years of separation
and the struggles she had been through had given the finishing touches to
her features and her expression.

‘This is you,’ she said in her soft, gentle voice.

We sat down on the sofa and remained silent.

The expression of joy in her eyes almost approached suffering. I suppose
when the feeling of happiness reaches its highest point it is mingled
with an expression of pain, for she said to me: ‘How exhausted you look!’

I held her hand, she leaned her head on the other, and there was no need
for us to talk ... a few brief phrases, two or three reminiscences, words
from our letters, some idle remarks about Arkady, about the hussar, about
Kostinka, that was all.

Then the old woman came in, saying that it was time for me to go, and I
got up without protesting, and she did not try to keep me ... our hearts
were so full, all thoughts of more or less, of shorter or longer, all
vanished before the fullness of the present....

When we had passed the town gate, Ketscher asked: ‘Well, have you settled
anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you talked to her?’

‘Not a word about that.’

‘Does she consent?’

‘I didn’t ask, of course she consents.’

‘Well, upon my soul, you behave like a child, or a lunatic,’ observed
Ketscher, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders with
indignation.

‘I’ll write to her and then to you, and now, good-bye. Now drive ahead
full speed!’

It was thawing, the spongy snow was black in places, the endless white
plain lay on both sides, little villages flashed by with their smoke,
then the moon rose and shed a different light on everything; I was alone
with the driver and kept looking out, yet all the while was there with
her, and the road and the moon and the fields were somehow mixed up with
the princess’s drawing-room. And, strange to say, I remembered every word
uttered by the nurse, by Arkady, even by the maid who had led me out to
the gate, but what I had said to her and what she had said to me I could
not remember!

Two months were spent in making arrangements. I had to borrow money,
and to get her baptismal certificate; it appeared that the princess had
taken it. One of my friends—swearing, bribing, treating policemen and
clerks—succeeded by all sorts of false statements in getting another from
the Consistory.

When everything was ready, we, that is Matvey and I, set off.

At dawn on the eighth of May we were at the last posting-station before
Moscow. The drivers had gone to get horses. The air was heavy, there were
drops of rain, and it seemed as though a storm were coming on; I remained
in the covered chaise and hurried on the driver. Some one spoke near me
in a strange, high, sing-song voice. I turned round and saw a pale, thin
girl of about sixteen, in rags and with her hair hanging about her; she
was begging. I gave her some small silver coin, she laughed seeing it,
but instead of going away clambered on to the box of the chaise, turned
towards me and began muttering half-coherent sentences, looking straight
into my face; her eyes were clouded and pitiful, wisps of hair fell over
her face. Her sickly face, her unintelligible mutterings, together with
the light of early morning, aroused a sort of nervous uneasiness in me.

‘She’s crazy, you know, that is, she is simple,’ observed the driver.
‘And where are you poking yourself? I’ll give you a lash with the whip
and then you’ll know! Upon my soul, I will, you shameless hussy!’

‘Why are you scolding, what have I done to you—here your master’s given
me a silver bit, and what harm have I done you?’

‘Well, he’s given it to you, and so be off to your devils in the forest.’

‘Take me with you,’ added the girl, looking piteously at me, ‘do, really,
take me....’

‘To put you in a show in Moscow as a freak, some sea monster,’ observed
the driver. ‘Come, get down, we’re just off.’

The girl made no attempt to move, but kept looking pitifully at me. I
begged the driver not to hurt her, he lifted her gently under his arm and
set her on the ground. She burst out crying and I was ready to cry with
her.

Why had this creature crossed my path just on that day, just as I was
driving into Moscow? I thought of Kozlov’s ‘Mad Girl,’ and she, too, had
been met near Moscow.

We drove off, the air was full of electricity, unpleasantly heavy and
warm. A dark blue storm-cloud with grey streamers reaching to the earth
was slowly trailing over the fields, and all at once a zig-zag of
lightning ran slanting through it, there was a clap of thunder and the
rain came down in torrents. We were nearly seven miles from the Rogozhsky
Gate and after reaching Moscow had an hour’s drive to the Dyevitchy
field. We reached A——’s, where Ketscher was to wait for me, literally
without a dry thread on us.

Ketscher was not there. He was at the bedside of a dying woman, E. D.
Levashev. This woman was one of those marvellous products of Russian life
which reconcile one to it, one of those types whose whole existence is an
heroic feat, unseen by any but a small circle of friends. How many tears
she had wiped away, how much comfort she had brought to more than one
broken heart, of how many young lives she had been the support, and how
much she had suffered herself! ‘She spent herself in love,’ Tchaadayev,
one of her closest friends, who dedicated his celebrated letter about
Russia to her, said to me.

Ketscher could not leave her; he wrote that he would come about nine
o’clock. I was alarmed by this news. A man absorbed by a great passion
is a dreadful egoist; in Ketscher’s absence I could see nothing but
an obstacle in my path.... When it struck nine, when the bells began
ringing for evening service and then another quarter of an hour passed,
I was overcome by feverish anxiety and cowardly despair.... Half-past
nine—no, he would not come, the sick woman was probably worse, what was I
to do? I could not remain in Moscow, one incautious word from the maid or
the old nurse in the princess’s house would give everything away. To go
back was possible, but I felt I had not the strength to go back.

At a quarter to ten Ketscher appeared in a straw hat with the drowsy
face of a man who has not slept all night. I rushed up to him and as I
embraced him showered reproaches upon him. Ketscher, frowning, looked
at me and asked: ‘Why, isn’t half an hour enough to get from A——’s to
Povarsky Street? I might have been gossiping with you here for an hour,
and I daresay it would have been very nice, but I could not bring myself
to leave a dying friend sooner than I need for the sake of that. She
sends you her greetings,’ he added, ‘she blessed me with her dying hand,
hoping for the success of our enterprise, and gave me a warm shawl in
case of need.’ The dying woman’s greetings were particularly precious to
me. The warm shawl was very useful in the night, and I had no time to
thank her nor to press her hand ... soon afterwards she died.

Ketscher and A—— set off. Ketscher was to drive out of the town with
Natalie, while A—— was to come back and tell me whether everything had
gone off successfully and what I was to do. I was left waiting with his
charming and delightful wife; she had herself only lately been married,
and, being an ardent, passionate nature, she took the warmest interest
in our enterprise. She tried with feigned gaiety to assure me that
everything was going splendidly, though she was herself so fretted by
anxiety that her face was continually changing. We sat together in the
window and conversation did not flow easily; we were like children shut
up in an empty room as a punishment. Two hours passed in this way.

There is nothing in the world more shattering, more unendurable than
inactivity and suspense at such moments. Friends make a great mistake in
taking the whole burden off the shoulders of the principal _patient_.
They ought to invent duties for him if there are none, to overwhelm him
with physical exertions, to distract his mind with work and arrangements.

At last A—— came in, we rushed to meet him.

‘Everything is going gloriously, I saw them gallop off,’ he shouted to us
from the yard. ‘You go at once out at the Rogozhsky Gate, there by the
little bridge you will see the horses not far from Perov’s restaurant.
Good luck to you! And change your cab half-way, so that your second
cabman may not know where you have come from.’

I flew like an arrow from the bow.... And here was the little bridge
not far from Perov’s; there was no one there, and on the other side of
the bridge, too, there was no one. I drove as far as the Izmailovsky
Menagerie, there was no one. I dismissed the cabman and went forward on
foot. Walking backwards and forwards, at last I saw on another road a
carriage of some sort. A handsome young coachman was standing by it. ‘Has
a tall gentleman in a straw hat driven by here,’ I asked him, ‘and not
alone, with a young lady?’

‘I have seen no one,’ the coachman answered reluctantly.

‘With whom did you come here?’

‘With gentlefolks.’

‘What is their name?’

‘What is that to you?’

‘What a fellow you are really, if it was nothing to do with me, I should
not be asking you.’

The coachman gave me a searching look and smiled—apparently my appearance
disposed him more favourably to me.

‘If you have business with them then you ought to know their names
yourself.’

‘You are a regular flint; well, I want a gentleman named Ketscher.’

The coachman smiled again, and pointing towards the graveyard said:
‘There, do you see something black in the distance? That’s himself, and
the young lady is with him; she did not bring her hat, so Mr. Ketscher
gave her his, luckily it was a straw one.’

Again this time we met in a graveyard!

With a faint cry she flung herself on my neck.

‘And it’s for ever!’ she cried.

‘For ever,’ I repeated. Ketscher was touched, tears gleamed in his eyes,
he took our hands and in a trembling voice said, ‘Friends, be happy!’ We
embraced him. This was our real wedding!

For over an hour we waited in the private dining-room of Perov’s
restaurant, and still the carriage and Matvey did not come! Ketscher
frowned. The possibility of trouble never entered our heads, we were so
happy there, the three of us, and as much at home as though we had always
been together. There was a wood in front of the windows, from the storey
below came strains of music and a gypsy chorus; the weather was lovely
after the storm.

I was not, like Ketscher, afraid of the police being put on our track
by the princess; I knew that she stood too much on her dignity to let a
policeman be mixed up in our family affairs. Besides, she never took any
step without consulting the Senator, nor the Senator without consulting
my father; my father would never consent to the police stopping me in
Moscow or near Moscow, which would mean my being sent to Bobruisk or to
Siberia for disobedience to the will of the Most High. The only possible
danger was from the secret police, but it had all been done so quickly
that it was hard for them to know it. Besides, if they had got an inkling
of anything, it would never occur to any one that a man who had secretly
returned from exile and was eloping with his bride would be quietly
sitting in Perov’s restaurant where people were coming in and out from
morning to night.

At last Matvey appeared with the carriage.

‘One more glass,’ commanded Ketscher.

And we set off.

And then we were alone, that is, the two of us, flying along the Vladimir
road.

At Bunkovo while they were changing horses we went into the inn. The old
hostess came to ask us whether we would like anything; and, looking at us
good-naturedly, said: ‘How young and pretty your good lady is, and the
two of you, God bless you, make a pretty pair.’ We blushed up to our ears
and did not dare to look at each other, but asked for tea to cover our
confusion. Between five and six next day we reached Vladimir. There was
no time to be lost; leaving Natalie with the family of an old official, I
rushed off to find whether everything was ready. But who was there to get
things ready in Vladimir?

There are good-natured people everywhere. A Siberian regiment of
Uhlans was stationed at Vladimir at the time; I was only very slightly
acquainted with the officers, but, meeting one of them rather often in
the public library, I took to bowing to him; he was very polite and
charming. A month later he admitted that he knew me and my story in 1834
and told me that he was himself a student of the Moscow University. When
I was leaving Vladimir and looking about for some one in whose hands
to leave various arrangements, I thought of this officer, and told him
openly what I wanted. Genuinely touched by my confidence, he pressed my
hand, promised to do everything, and kept his word.

He was awaiting me in full dress uniform, with white facings, with his
casque uncovered, with a cartridge-case across his shoulder, and all
sorts of cords and trimmings. He told me that the bishop had given
the priest permission to marry us, but had bidden him first show the
baptismal certificate. I gave the officer the baptismal certificate,
while I went off to another young man who had also been a Moscow student.
He was serving his two provincial years in accordance with the new
regulation, in the governor’s office, and was almost dying of boredom.

‘Would you like to act as best man?’

‘Whose best man?’

‘Mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yes, yes, mine.’

‘Delighted. When?’

‘At once.’

He thought that I was joking, but when I briefly told him how it was, he
skipped with delight. To be best man at a clandestine wedding, to have
to make arrangements, possibly to get into trouble, and all that in a
little town absolutely without any diversions! He promised at once to get
a carriage and four horses and ran to his chest of drawers to see whether
he had a clean white waistcoat.

As I drove away from him, I met my Uhlan with a priest sitting on his
knee. Imagine a smart, gaily attired officer in a little droshky with a
stout priest, adorned with a huge, flowing beard, and arrayed in a silk
cassock, which kept catching in all the Uhlan’s useless accoutrements.
This sight might have attracted attention not only in the street that led
from the Golden Gate of Vladimir, but in the Paris boulevards, or even in
Regent Street. But the Uhlan did not think of that, and, indeed, I only
thought of it afterwards. The priest had been going from house to house
holding services, as it was St. Nicholas’ Day, and my cavalry officer had
captured him by force and requisitioned him. We drove off to the bishop’s.

To explain the position I must describe how the bishop came to be
involved in it. The day before I went away the priest who had agreed to
marry us suddenly announced that he would not do so without the bishop’s
sanction, that he had heard something and was afraid to do it. In spite
of all my eloquence, as well as the Uhlan’s, the priest was obstinate and
stuck to his point. The Uhlan suggested the priest of his regiment. The
latter, a priest with a cropped head and shaven skin, wearing a long,
full-skirted coat and trousers tucked into his high boots, and placidly
smoking a soldier’s pipe, though affected by certain details of our
proposition, yet refused to perform the ceremony, declaring, in a mixture
of Polish and White Russian, that he was strictly forbidden to marry
‘civilians.’

‘And we are still more strictly forbidden to be witnesses and best men at
such marriages without permission,’ observed the officer.

‘That’s a different matter, as God’s above us, it’s a different matter.’

‘God helps those who help themselves,’ I said to the Uhlan. ‘I’ll go
straight to the bishop. And by the way, why don’t you ask permission?’

‘That won’t do. The Colonel would tell his wife and she’d gossip about it
all over the place. Besides, he’d very likely refuse it.’

Bishop Parfeny of Vladimir was a clever, austere, rough old man; managing
and self-willed, he might equally well have been a governor or a general,
and, indeed, I think he would have been more in his right place as a
general than as a monk; but it had turned out otherwise, and he ruled
his diocese as he would have ruled a division in the Caucasus. I noticed
in him far more of the qualities of an administrator than of one dead to
the things of this life. He was, however, rather harsh than ill-natured;
like all business-like men, he grasped questions quickly and clearly and
was furious when people talked nonsense to him or did not understand him.
It is far easier to come to an understanding with men of that sort than
with soft but weak or irresolute persons. In accordance with the custom
of all provincial towns, on arriving in Vladimir I went once after mass
to call on the bishop. He received me graciously, gave me his blessing,
and regaled me with sturgeon; then invited me to come some evening and
talk to him, saying that his eyes were failing and he could not read
in the evening. I went two or three times; he talked about literature,
knew all the new Russian books and read the magazines, and so we got on
splendidly together. Nevertheless, it was with some alarm that I knocked
at his episcopal door.

It was a hot day. His Reverence the bishop received me in the garden. He
was sitting under a big, shady lime tree, and had taken off his monk’s
cap and let his grey locks flow in freedom. A bald, impressive-looking
head-priest was standing before him, bareheaded, and right in the sun,
reading some document aloud; his face was crimson and big drops of
perspiration stood out on his forehead, he screwed up his eyes at the
dazzling whiteness of the paper with the sunlight upon it, yet he did not
dare to move nor did the bishop tell him to step out of the sun.

‘Sit down,’ he said after blessing me, ‘we are just finishing, these are
our little Consistory affairs. Read,’ he added to the head-priest, and
the latter, after mopping his face with a dark blue handkerchief and
coughing aside, set to reading again.

‘What news have you to tell me?’ Parfeny asked me, handing the pen to the
head-priest, who seized this excellent opportunity to kiss his hand.

I told him of the priest’s refusal.

‘Have you the necessary papers?’ I showed him the governor’s permission.

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

Parfeny smiled: ‘And on the lady’s side?’

‘There is a baptismal certificate; it will be brought on the day of the
wedding.’

‘When is the wedding?’

‘In two days.’

‘Have you found a house?’

‘Not yet.’

‘There you see,’ Parfeny said to me, putting his finger on his lips and
pulling his mouth towards his cheek, one of his favourite tricks; ‘you’re
an intelligent and well-read man, but you won’t catch an old sparrow by
putting salt on its tail. There is something shady about it, so, since
you have come to me, you had much better tell me all about it truthfully.
Then I’ll tell you straightforwardly what can be done and what can’t, and
in any case my advice will do you no harm.’

My case seemed to me so clear and so just that I told him the whole
story, without, of course, going into unnecessary details. The old man
listened attentively and often looked into my face. It appeared he was an
old acquaintance of the princess’s, and therefore could to some extent
judge for himself of the truth of my account.

‘I understand, I understand,’ he said when I had finished. ‘Well, let me
write a letter to the princess on my own account.’

‘I assure you that no effort at peace will lead to anything, her
ill-humour and exasperation have gone too far. I have told your Reverence
all about it, as you desired, now I will add that if you refuse to help
me I shall be forced to do secretly, stealthily, by bribes, what I am
doing now quietly, but straightforwardly and openly. I can assure you of
one thing, neither prison nor a fresh term of exile will stop me.’

‘You see,’ said Parfeny, getting up and stretching, ‘what a headstrong
fellow you are. Perm has not been enough for you, you are not broken
in yet. Am I saying that I forbid it? Get married if you like, there
is nothing unlawful about it; but it would have been better peacefully
with the consent of the family. Send me your priest, I’ll persuade him
somehow; only remember one thing, without the proper certificate on the
bride’s side don’t you attempt it. So it’s a case of “Neither prison nor
exile”—upon my word, what are people coming to! Well, the Lord be with
you! Good luck to you, only you’ll get me into trouble with the princess.’

And so in addition to the Uhlan officer his Reverence Parfeny, bishop of
Vladimir and Suzdal, came into our conspiracy.

When as a preliminary measure I had asked the governor’s permission, I
had not spoken of my marriage as though it were clandestine; silence
about that was the surest means of avoiding talk about it, and nothing
could be more natural than the arrival of my future bride in Vladimir,
since I had not the right to leave it. It was also natural that under the
circumstances we should wish the wedding to be as quiet as possible.

When we arrived with the priest at the bishop’s on the ninth of May,
his servitor told us that he had gone to his country house and would
not be back until night. It was already between seven and eight in the
evening, weddings cannot be celebrated after ten, and the next day was
Saturday. What was to be done? The priest was scared. We went in to see
the head-monk, the bishop’s chaplain; he was drinking tea with rum in it
and was in the most affable frame of mind. I told him our difficulty,
he poured me out a cup of tea and insisted on my adding rum to it; then
he took out immense silver spectacles, read the baptismal certificate,
turned it over, looked at the other side where there was nothing written,
folded it up, and giving it back to the priest said: ‘It’s all perfectly
regular.’

The priest still hesitated. I told the chaplain that if I were not
married to-day it would be terribly upsetting for me.

‘Why put it off?’ he said. ‘I will tell his Reverence; marry them, Father
Ioann, marry them—in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
Amen.’

There was nothing for the priest to say, he drove off to write out our
names while I galloped off for Natalie.

When we were driving out at the Golden Gate alone together, the sun,
which had till then been hidden by the clouds, shed a dazzling light upon
us with its last bright, red glow, and so triumphantly and joyously that
we both said in one breath: ‘That’s to see us off!’ I remember her smile
at the words and the pressure of her hand.

The little church of the sledge-drivers’ quarter was empty, there were
neither choristers nor lighted candelabra. Five or six common soldiers
of the Uhlan regiment came in as they were passing, and went out again.
The old deacon chanted in a soft, faint voice, Matvey looked at us with
tears of joy, our young ‘best men’ stood behind us with the heavy crowns
with which all the drivers of Vladimir were crowned. The deacon with a
shaky hand passed us the silver bowl of union ... it grew dark in the
church, only a few candles glowed here and there; all this was, or seemed
to us, extremely picturesque just from its simplicity. The bishop drove
by, and seeing the church doors open stopped and sent to inquire what
was happening. The priest, turning a little pale, went out himself to
him, and returning a minute later with a cheerful face, said to us: ‘His
Reverence sends you his episcopal blessing and bade me tell you he is
praying for you.’

By the time we were driving home the news of our clandestine marriage was
all over the town; ladies were waiting on the balconies and the windows
were open. I let down the carriage windows and was a little vexed that
the darkness prevented me from showing my ‘fair bride.’

At home we drank two bottles of wine with Matvey and the ‘best men,’ the
latter stayed twenty minutes with us, and then we were left alone, and
again, as at Perov’s, that seemed so natural that we were not in the
least surprised at it, though for months afterwards we could not get over
the wonder of it.

We had three rooms, we sat at a little table in the drawing-room, and
forgetting the fatigue of the last few days we talked half the night.

To have a crowd of outsiders at the wedding festivities has always seemed
to me something coarse, unseemly, almost cynical; why this premature
lifting of the veil from love, this initiation of indifferent casual
spectators into the privacy of the family? How all these hackneyed
greetings, commonplace vulgarities, stupid allusions, must wound the
poor girl who is thrust into the public eye in the part of bride ... not
one delicate feeling is spared, the luxury of the bridal chamber, the
charm of the night attire displayed, not only for the visitors but for
every idle gazer. And afterwards the first days of the new life that is
beginning, in which every minute is precious, which ought to be spent far
away in solitude, are, as though in mockery, passed in endless dinners
and exhausting balls, amidst a crowd.

Next morning we found two rose-bushes and an immense nosegay awaiting us
in the dining-room. Dear, kind Yulia Fyodorovna (the governor’s wife),
who took a warm interest in our romance, had sent them. I embraced
and kissed her footman and then we went off to see her. As the bride’s
trousseau consisted of two dresses, the one in which she had travelled
and the other one in which she had been married, she put on the wedding
dress.

From Yulia Fyodorovna’s we drove to the bishop’s; the old man himself led
us into the garden, with his own hands cut us a nosegay of flowers, told
Natalie how I had tried to frighten him with the prospect of my own ruin,
and in conclusion advised her to study housekeeping. ‘Do you know how to
salt cucumbers?’ he asked Natalie.

‘I do,’ she answered, laughing.

‘Oh, I don’t feel sure of it. And you know, it is essential!’

In the evening I wrote a letter to my father. I begged him not to be
angry at the accomplished fact, and, ‘since God had united us,’ to
forgive me and add his blessing. My father as a rule wrote me a few
lines once a week; he did not write one day earlier or later in reply,
and even began his letter exactly as usual: ‘I received your letter of
the 10th of May, at half-past five the day before yesterday, and from it
learned, not without regret, that God had united you with Natasha. I do
not repine against the will of God in anything, but submit blindly to the
trials which He lays upon me. But since the money is mine and you have
not thought it necessary to regard my wishes, I must inform you that I
shall not add one kopeck to your present allowance of one thousand silver
roubles a year.’

How spontaneously we laughed at this distinction between the spiritual
and temporal power.

And yet how we needed something more! The money I had borrowed was all
spent. We had nothing, absolutely nothing, no clothes, no linen, no
crockery. We sat shut up in a little flat because we had nothing to
go out in. Matvey with a view to economy made a desperate effort to
transform himself into a cook, but except beefsteaks and collops he could
cook nothing, and so for the most part confined himself to ready-cooked
provisions, ham, salt fish, milk, eggs, cheese, and extremely hard cakes
flavoured with mint and not in their first youth. Dinner was an endless
source of amusement to us; sometimes we had milk first by way of soup,
and sometimes last by way of dessert. Over this Spartan fare we used to
recall, smiling, the long process of the sacred ritual of dinner at the
princess’s and at my father’s, where half a dozen flunkeys ran about
the room with bowls and dishes, cloaking under the magnificent _mise en
scène_ the really very unattractive fare.

So we struggled along in poverty for a year. ‘The Chemist’ sent us ten
thousand paper roubles; more than six thousand of this went to pay our
debts, and what remained was a great help. At last even my father was
tired of attacking us like a fortress by hunger, and without adding to my
allowance he began sending us presents of money, though I never dropped a
hint about money after his famous _distinguo_!

I began looking for another lodging. A big, deserted manor-house with a
garden was to let. It belonged to the widow of a prince who had ruined
himself at cards, and it was being let very cheaply because it was far
away and inconvenient, and, above all, because the princess bargained
to keep part of it, in no way separated from the rest, for her son, a
spoilt fellow of thirty, and for the servants. No one would agree to
this partial possession; I at once accepted it, for I was fascinated by
the loftiness of the rooms, the size of the windows, and the big, shady
garden. But this very loftiness and spaciousness made a very amusing
contrast with our complete lack of movable belongings and articles of the
first necessity. The princess’s housekeeper, a good-natured old woman,
who was greatly attracted by Matvey, provided us at her own risk, first
with a table-cloth, then with cups, then with sheets, then with knives
and forks.

What bright and untroubled days we spent in the little three-roomed flat
at the Golden Gate and in the princess’s immense house!... There was
a big, scarcely furnished drawing-room, in it we were sometimes taken
by such childishness that we raced about it, jumped over the chairs,
lighted candles in all the candelabra ensconced on the wall, and after
illuminating the room _a giorno_, recited poetry. Matvey and our maid, a
young Greek girl, took part in everything and ‘played the fool’ as much
as we did. Discipline was ‘not maintained’ in our household.

And for all this childishness our life was full of a deep earnestness.
Cast away in the quiet, peaceful little town, we were completely devoted
to each other. From time to time came news of some one of our friends,
a few words of warm sympathy, and then again we were alone, absolutely
alone. But in this solitude our hearts were not closed by our happiness;
on the contrary, they were more open to every interest than ever before;
we led a full and many-sided life, we thought and read, gave ourselves
up to every pursuit and again concentrated on our love; we compared our
thoughts and dreams, and saw with amazement how endless was our sympathy,
how in all the subtlest turns and twists of feeling and thought, taste
and antipathy, all was kinship and harmony. The only difference was that
Natalie brought into our union a gentle, mild, gracious element, the
characteristics of a young girl with all the poesy of a loving woman,
while I brought lively activity, my _semper in motu_, infinite love, and,
moreover, a medley of earnest ideas, laughter, ‘dangerous’ thoughts and
Utopian projects.

My desires had reached a standstill, I was satisfied, I lived in the
present, I expected nothing from the morrow, I carelessly trusted that
it would take nothing from me. Personal life could give nothing more, it
had reached the limit; any change could but diminish it, on one side or
another.

In the spring Ogaryov came from his exile for a few days. He was then
in the very height of his powers; he was soon to pass through painful
experiences; at moments he seemed to feel that trouble was near, but he
could still turn round and look upon the lifted hand of destiny as a
dream. I myself thought then that the storm-clouds would be dissipated;
carelessness is characteristic of everything young and not devoid of
strength, and in it is expressed a trust in life and oneself. The feeling
of complete mastery over one’s fate lulls us asleep ... while dark clouds
and black-hearted people draw us without a word to the edge of the
precipice.

And well it is that man either does not suspect, or can shut his eyes
and forget. Where there is apprehension there can never be complete
happiness; complete happiness is serene as the sea in the calm of summer.
Apprehension gives its peculiar, feverish, morbid thrill which fascinates
like the thrill of suspense at cards, but how far away it is from the
feeling of harmonious infinite peace. And so, whether it be a dream or
not, I deeply prize that trust in life, before life itself has refuted it
and has awakened one.... The Chinese die for the coarse illusion of it
given by opium.

So I ended this chapter in 1853 and so I end it now.




Chapter 24

THE THIRTEENTH OF JUNE 1839


One long, winter evening towards the end of 1838 we were sitting, as
always, alone, reading and then not reading, talking and then being
silent, and in silence continuing the talk. There was a hard frost
outside, and even in the room it was not at all warm. Natasha did not
feel well and was lying on the sofa, covered with a cloak. I was sitting
on the floor near her; my reading did not get on, she was inattentive,
thinking of something else and absorbed, and her face kept changing.

‘Alexandr,’ she said, ‘I have a secret, come nearer and I will tell you
in your ear, but guess it yourself.’

I did guess, but insisted on her telling me. I longed to hear this news
from her: she told me, we looked at each other in excitement and with
tears in our eyes.

How rich is the human heart in the capacity for happiness, for joy, if
only people know how to give themselves up to it without being distracted
by trifle. As a rule the present is spoilt by external worries, empty
cares, irritable fussiness, all the rubbish which is brought upon us in
the midday of life by the vanity of vanities, and the stupid ordering of
our everyday life. We waste our best minutes, we let them slip through
our fingers as though we had an endless store of them. We are usually
thinking of to-morrow, of next year, when we ought with both hands to be
clasping the brimming cup which life itself, unbidden, with her customary
lavishness, holds out to us, and to drink and drink of it until the cup
passes into other hands. Nature does not care to waste time offering it
and pressing us.

One would have thought nothing could have been added to our happiness,
and yet the news of the coming child opened new vistas of feeling, new
raptures, hopes and apprehensions of which we had before known nothing.

Love, a little scared and agitated, grows more tender, is more anxious
in its solicitude, from the egoism of two it becomes not a mere egoism
of three but the sacrifice of two for a third; family life begins with
the child. A new element is entering into life, a mysterious person is
knocking at its portals, a guest who is yet is not, but whose coming is
essential, who is eagerly awaited. What will he be? No one knows, but
whatever he may be like, he is a happy stranger, with what love he is met
on the threshold of life!

And then there is the agonising anxiety: would he be born alive or
not? There are so many unhappy possibilities. The doctor smiles at the
questions: ‘He knows nothing or will not say,’ one thinks; everything is
still hidden from outsiders; there is no one to ask, besides one is shy.

And then the child gives signs of life. I know no loftier and more
religious feeling than that which fills the heart at feeling the first
movements of the future being, struggling and stretching its immature
muscles, that first touch with which the father blesses the newcomer and
yields a place for him in his life.

‘My wife,’ a French bourgeois said to me once, ‘my wife’—and seeing that
there were neither ladies nor children present, added in an undertone—‘is
pregnant.’

Indeed, the muddle of all our moral conceptions is such that pregnancy
is looked upon as something improper. Though childbirth should claim
unconditional respect for the mother, whoever she may be, the facts are
kept secret not from a feeling of respect or spiritual delicacy, but
from a regard for propriety. All that is the depravity of idealism,
the corruption of monasticism, the accursed immolation of the flesh;
it all comes from that unhappy dualism which draws us like Magdeburg
hemispheres in opposite directions. Jeanne Deroin,[13] in spite of her
socialism, hints in her _Almanach des Femmes_ that in time children will
be born differently. How differently?—As the angels are born.—Well, that
makes it clear.

Honour and glory to our teacher, the old realist Goethe. He had the
courage to set the woman with child beside the innocent maidens of
romanticism, and did not fear to mould in his mighty verse the changing
forms of the future mother, comparing them with the supple limbs of the
future woman.

Truly the woman who bears with the memory of past transports the whole
cross of love, all its burden, sacrificing beauty and time, suffering,
feeding from her own bosom, is one of the most beautiful and touching
figures.

In the Roman elegies, in the Weaver, in Gretchen and her despairing
prayer, Goethe has expressed all the solemn beauty with which nature
surrounds the ripening fruit and all the thorns with which society crowns
that vessel of the future life.

Poor mothers, who hide as though it were shame the traces of love, how
brutally and mercilessly the world persecutes them, and persecutes them
at the very time when the woman needs peace and kindness, savagely
poisoning for her those priceless moments in which life droops fainting
under the weight of happiness.

Gradually the secret is with horror discovered: the luckless mother at
first tries to persuade herself that it is fancy, but soon doubt is
impossible; with despair and tears she follows every movement of her
babe, she would like to check the secret workings of its life, to turn
it back, she hopes for some misfortune as a mercy, as pardon—while
inexorable nature goes its way; she is young and healthy!

To force a mother to desire the death of her own child, and sometimes
even more, to drive her to be its murderess and then to punish her, or
to cover her with shame if the mother’s heart is too strong for her—how
intelligently and morally is society organised!

And who has weighed, who has considered what passes in her heart while
the mother crosses the terrible path from love to fear, from fear
to despair, to crime, to madness, for infanticide is physiological
abnormality. She too has had, of course, moments of forgetfulness, in
which she has passionately loved her coming little one, only the more
because his existence was a secret between them; there have been times
when she has dreamed of his little feet, of his milky smile, has kissed
him in his sleep, has found in him a likeness to one who has been so dear
to her....

‘But do they feel it? Of course there are unhappy victims ... but ... the
others, but the average?’

It would be hard, one fancies, to sink lower than those bats that flit
about at night in the fog and slush of the London streets, those victims
of ignorance, poverty, and want, with whom society guards its respectable
women from the excesses of their admirers’ sensuality ... in them, of
course, it would be hardest of all to assume traces of maternal feeling,
would it not?

Allow me to tell you of a little incident that occurred to me. Three
years ago I met a young and beautiful girl. She belonged to the higher
ranks of prostitution, that is, did not democratically walk the streets,
but lived in bourgeois style, kept by a merchant. It was at a public
ball; the friend who was with me knew her and invited her to drink a
bottle of wine with us in the gallery, she, of course, accepted the
invitation. She was a merry, careless creature, and probably like Laura
in Pushkin’s _Don Juan_ was never worried by the fact that far away in
Paris it was cold while she heard the watchman in Madrid cry ‘The sun
is shining.’ ... After swallowing the last glass she rushed back to the
ponderous whirl of the English dances and I lost sight of her.

This winter, one wet evening I crossed the street to stand under the
Arcade in Pall Mall to escape the streaming rain; a poorly dressed woman,
shivering with cold, was standing under the lamp-post in the archway,
probably on the watch for her prey. Her features struck me as familiar,
she glanced at me, turned away and tried to shrink out of sight, but I
had time to recognise her. ‘What has happened to you?’ I asked her with
sympathy. Her sunken cheeks were suffused with bright crimson, whether
from shame or consumption I do not know, but it did not seem like rouge;
those two years and a half had made her look ten years older.

‘I was ill for a long time and was very unfortunate,’ with a look of
great distress she glanced towards her shabby clothes.

‘But where is your friend?’

‘He was killed in the Crimea.’

‘Why, but he was a merchant, wasn’t he?’

She was confused, and instead of answering, said: ‘I am very ill even
now, and besides I have no work at all. Why, have I changed so much?’ she
asked, looking at me suddenly in embarrassment.

‘Very much: in those days you were like a little girl, and now I
shouldn’t mind betting that you have children of your own.’

She flushed crimson, and with a sort of terror asked: ‘How did you know
that?’

‘Well, you see, I do know. Now tell me, what really has been happening to
you?’

‘Nothing, only you are right, I have got a little boy ... if only you
knew,’ and at those words her face brightened, ‘what a splendid, handsome
little fellow he is, even the neighbours all admire him. But that man
married a rich girl and went away to the Continent. The baby was born
afterwards. He is to blame for my position. At first I had money and
used to buy him everything in the biggest shops, but now things have got
worse and worse and I have taken everything to “my uncle.” I have been
advised to put baby out in the country, it certainly would be better for
him, but I can’t; I look at him, I just look at him and feel, no, we had
better die together; I tried to find a situation, but they won’t take
me with the baby. I went back to mother’s, she was all right, she’s got
a kind heart, she forgave me, she is fond of the boy and makes a lot of
him; but for five months now she has been bedridden—what with the doctor
to pay and the medicine and then, as you know yourself, coal and bread
and everything so dear this year, there was nothing but starvation before
us there. So I——,’ she paused, ‘of course, it would be better to throw
myself in the Thames than ... but there’s baby and I’m sorry for him,
whom should I leave him to, and you know he’s such a darling!’

I gave her something and in addition took out a shilling and said: ‘And
spend that on something for your baby.’ She took the coin joyfully,
held it in her hand, and all at once, giving it back to me, added with
a mournful smile: ‘Since you are so kind, buy him something yourself
in some shop here, a toy or something, for no one has ever given him a
present, poor little darling, since he was born.’

I looked with emotion at this _lost_ woman and pressed her hand
affectionately.

The zealous champions of ladies with camellias and pearls would do better
to leave velvet furniture and rococo boudoirs alone and look at the
wretched, starved, and shivering prostitution close at hand, the fatal
prostitution which forces its victims down the road to ruin and gives no
chance for rallying nor repentance. Scavengers more often find precious
stones in the gutter than amongst the tinsel of tawdry finery.

That reminded me of that clever translator of _Faust_, poor Gérard de
Nerval, who shot himself last year. He had not been home for five or six
days. It was discovered at last that he was spending his time in the
lowest dens near the town gates, as Paul Niquet used to do, that there
he had made friends with thieves, with low creatures of all sorts, was
treating them to drink, playing cards with them, and sometimes sleeping
under their protection. His old friends tried to persuade him to come
away and to put him to shame. Nerval, defending himself good-naturedly,
once said to them: ‘Let me tell you, my friends, you are fearfully
conventional. I assure you that the society of these people is no worse
than that of any others I have been among.’ He had been suspected of
madness; after that saying I imagine the suspicion passed into conviction!

The fatal day was approaching and everything became more and more
dreadful. I looked at the doctor and the mysterious face of the midwife
with slavish reverence. Neither Natasha nor I nor our young maid knew
anything about it; luckily, at my father’s request, an elderly lady, an
intelligent, practical, and capable woman called Praskovya Andreyevna,
came from Moscow to stay with us. Seeing our helplessness she took the
reins of management entirely into her own hands and I obeyed her like a
nigger.

One night I felt a hand touch me, I opened my eyes. Praskovya Andreyevna
was standing before me in a nightcap and dressing-gown with a candle
in her hand; she told me to send for the doctor and the midwife. I was
petrified as though the news were something quite unexpected. I felt as
though I should have liked to take a dose of opium, turn over on the
other side and sleep through the danger ... but there was no help for it.
I dressed with trembling hands and rushed to wake Matvey.

A dozen times I ran out from the bedroom into the hall to listen for a
carriage in the distance. Everything was still but for the faint, faint
rustle of the breeze of morning in the warm June air of the garden;
the birds were beginning to sing, the crimson dawn threw a light flush
over the leaves, and again I hurried back to the bedroom, pestered kind
Praskovya Andreyevna with stupid questions, squeezed Natasha’s hands
convulsively, did not know what to do, trembled and was in a fever ...
but at last the chaise rattled on the bridge—thank God, it was in time!

At eleven o’clock in the morning I started as from a violent electric
shock when the loud scream of a new-born baby reached my ear. ‘A boy,’
Praskovya Andreyevna called to me as she went towards the cradle; I would
have taken the baby from the pillow, but I could not, my hands trembled
so violently. The thought of danger (which often indeed is only beginning
at this stage) that had weighed upon me vanished at once, a wild joy
took possession of my heart as though all the bells were pealing for a
festival of festivals! Natasha smiled at me, smiled at the baby, wept
and laughed, and only her broken breathing, her weary eyes, and deathly
pallor reminded me of the struggle, the agony that she had just passed
through.

Then I left the room, I could bear no more. I went into my study and
flung myself on the sofa, at the end of my strength, and lay for half an
hour without definite thought, without definite feeling, in a sort of
anguish of bliss.

That face of exhausted ecstasy, that joy flitting on the brink of death
upon the mother’s countenance, I recognised again in Vandyke’s Madonna
in the Corsini Gallery at Rome. The baby has just been born, they are
holding it up to the mother; exhausted, with not a drop of blood in her
face, faint and weary, she smiles, while her tired eyes rest on the baby
with a look of infinite love.

It must be admitted that the Virgin Mother is quite out of keeping with
the celibate religion of Christianity. With her, life, love, gentleness
cannot but break into the everlasting funeral, the dread day of judgment,
and the other horrors of Church theology.

That is why Protestantism has rejected the Virgin Mother _only_ from its
barn-like chapels, from its factories of God’s word. She really does
interfere with Christian propriety, she cannot escape from her earthly
nature, she warms the cold church, and in spite of everything remains
a woman, a mother. She makes up for the supernatural conception by the
natural birth, and snatches a blessing on her labour from the lips of
monastic worshippers who curse everything bodily.

Michael Angelo and Raphael grasped that in their painting.

In ‘The Day of Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel, in that massacre of St.
Bartholomew in the other world, we see the Son of God going to preside
over the executions; He has already lifted His hand.... He will give the
signal, and tortures, agonies will follow, the last trump will sound, the
universal _auto-da-fé_ will begin crackling; but—the Mother, trembling
and suffering for all, presses up to Him in horror, and is imploring Him
on behalf of the sinners; looking at her He will perhaps be softened and
forget His cruel ‘Woman, what hast thou to do with me?’ and will not give
the signal.

The Sistine Madonna is Mignon after the child’s birth, she is frightened
at her incredible fate, helpless....

    ‘Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, gethan?’

Her inner peace is shattered, she has been told that her son is the Son
of God, that she is the Mother of God; she looks with a sort of nervous
ecstasy, with mesmeric clairvoyance she seems to be saying: ‘Take Him, He
is not mine.’ But at the same time she presses Him to herself as though,
if she could, she would fly with Him far away and would simply fondle
and feed at her bosom not the Saviour of the world but her own babe. And
all this is because she is a human mother and has no kinship with Isis
and Rhea and all the other gods of the female sex.

That is why it has been so easy for her to conquer the cold Aphrodite,
that Ninon L’Enclos of Olympus, whose children no one troubles about.
Mary with her babe in her arms, with her eyes always gently looking down
upon Him, surrounded by the halo of womanliness and the holiness of
motherhood, is nearer to our hearts than the golden-haired Aphrodite.

To my thinking Pius IX. and his Conclave were very consistent in
proclaiming the unnatural or, in their language, immaculate conception of
the Virgin. Mary, born naturally like you and me, would naturally stand
up for men and sympathise with us: in her the living reconciliation of
flesh and spirit would steal into religion. If even she was not humanly
born, there is nothing in common between her and us, she will not feel
for us, and the flesh is once more damned—and the Church more essential
than ever for salvation.

It is a pity that the Pope is a thousand years too late. That, it
seems, is Pius IX.’s fate. _Troppo tardi, Santo Padre, siete sempre e
sempre—troppo tardi!_

       *       *       *       *       *

When I wrote this part of my Memoirs I had not our old letters. I got
them in 1856. After reading them over I had to correct two or three
passages, not more. My memory had not betrayed me. I should have liked to
add a few of Natalie’s letters, and at the same time I am restrained by a
sort of dread and cannot decide the question whether I ought to lay bare
our life any further, and whether those lines so dear to me might not
meet with a cold smile.

Among Natalie’s papers I found my own notes to her, written partly
before prison and partly from the Krutitsky Barracks.... Some of them
I append to this part. Perhaps they will not seem superfluous to those
who are fond of tracing the sources of men’s destinies, perhaps such
will read them with that nervous interest with which we look through the
microscope at the development of the living organism.


I[14]

                                                _August 15th, 1832._

    DEAR NATALYA ALEXANDROVNA,—To-day is your birthday; I should
    very much have liked to wish you many happy returns in person,
    but there really is no possibility. I am sorry I have not been
    to see you for so long, but circumstances have quite prevented
    me from disposing of my time as I should have liked. I hope
    that you will forgive me, and wish you the full development of
    all your talents and all the treasures of happiness which fate
    bestows on the pure in heart.—Your devoted

                                                               A. H.


II

                                            _July 5th or 6th, 1833._

    You are wrong, Natalya Alexandrovna. You are quite wrong in
    thinking that I should confine myself to one letter—here is
    another for you. It is extremely pleasant to write to persons
    with whom one is in sympathy, there are so few of them, so few
    that one wouldn’t use a quire of paper on them in a year.

    I am a graduate, that is true, but they did not give me the
    gold medal. I have a silver medal—_one of three_!

                                                               A. H.

    _P.S._—To-day there was the prize-giving, but I didn’t go for I
    don’t care to be second.


III

                                       (_At the beginning of 1834._)

    Natalie! we are expecting you impatiently. M—— hopes that in
    spite of E—— I——’s threats yesterday Amelia Mihailovna will be
    sure to come too, and so, till we meet,—Wholly yours,

                                                               A. H.


IV

                                                KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
                                              _December 10th, 1834_.

    I have just written a letter to the colonel in which I have
    asked for a permit for you, there is no answer yet. It will be
    harder for you to arrange it, but I rely on Mother. You were
    in luck in regard to me, you were the last of my friends whom
    I saw before my arrest [we parted confidently hoping to see
    each other soon at nine o’clock, but at two I was already in
    the police-station], and you will be the first to see me again.
    Knowing you, I know that that will give you pleasure, let me
    assure you that it will me too. To me you are a sister.

    There is not much for me to say about myself. I have settled
    down and grown used to being a prisoner. The most dreadful
    thing for me is the separation from Ogaryov, he is essential
    to me. I have not seen him once—that is, not properly—though
    on one occasion I was sitting alone in a little lobby (at the
    committee), my examination was over; from my window the lighted
    porch could be seen; a chaise was brought round, I rushed
    instinctively to the window, opened the little pane and saw an
    adjutant get in together with Ogaryov. The chaise drove off
    and he had no chance to see me. Can we be fated to perish by
    a mute, inglorious death, of which no one will hear? Why then
    has nature given us spirits craving for activity, for glory?
    Can that be a mockery? But no, faith, strong and living, glows
    here in my heart, there is a providence watching over us! I am
    reading with delight _The Lives of the Saints_; there you have
    examples of self-sacrifice, there you have men!

    I have just received the answer, it is not cheering—they refuse
    the permit.

    Good-bye, remember and love your brother.


V

                                              _December 31st, 1834._

    I will never take upon myself the responsibility which you
    lay upon me, never! You have a great deal that is _your own_,
    why then do you give yourself up to my will like this? I want
    you to make _of yourself whatever you can make of yourself_;
    for my part I undertake to assist that development, to remove
    obstacles.

    As for your position, it is not so bad for your development as
    you imagine. You have a great advantage over many; as soon as
    you began to understand yourself, you found yourself alone,
    alone in the whole world. Others have known a father’s love and
    a mother’s tenderness—you have not had them. No one has cared
    to look after you, you have been left to yourself. What can be
    better for development? Thank your fates that no one did look
    after you, they would have instilled something alien to you,
    they would have warped your childish soul—now it is too late.


VI

                                                KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
                                                 _February 1835_.

    I am told you have an idea of going into a nunnery; don’t
    expect me to smile at the idea, I understand it, but it needs
    to be very, very thoroughly weighed. Can it be that the
    thought of love has never stirred your bosom? A nunnery means
    despair, there are no nunneries now for prayer. Can you doubt
    that you will one day meet a man who will love you, whom you
    will love? How joyfully I shall press his hand and yours. He
    will be happy. If that _he_ does not appear—then go into a
    nunnery, that is a million times better than a vulgar marriage.

    I understand _le ton d’exaltation_ of your letters—_you are in
    love!_ If you write to me that you are seriously in love I’ll
    say nothing—a brother’s authority stops at that. But I must
    have you say those words. Do you know what ordinary men are?
    They may of course make some people happy—but can they make you
    happy, Natasha? You think too little of yourself! Better into a
    nunnery than into the common herd. Remember one thing, that I
    say this because I am your brother, _because I am proud of you
    and for you_.

    I have received another letter from Ogaryov; here is an extract
    from it: ‘L’autre jour donc je repassais dans ma mémoire toute
    ma vie. Un bonheur qui ne m’a jamais trahi, c’est ton amitié.
    De toutes mes passions, une seule qui est restée intacte c’est
    mon amitié pour toi, car mon amitié est une passion.’

    In conclusion, one word more. What is so strange about it if he
    does love you? What would he be if he did not love you, seeing
    a shade of attention on your side? But I beseech you don’t tell
    him of your love—not for a long time.

    Farewell.—Your brother,

                                                           ALEXANDR.


VII

    What marvels happen in the world, Natalie! Before I got your
    last letter I had answered all your questions. I have heard
    that you are ill and melancholy. Take care of yourself, drink
    resolutely the—not so much bitter as—loathsome cup which your
    _benefactors_ fill for you.

And after that on another sheet of paper follows:—

    Natasha, my dear, my sister, for God’s sake don’t lose heart,
    despise these abominable egoists, you make too much allowance
    for them, despise them all—they are wretches! It was an awful
    moment for me when I read your letter to Amelia. My God, what
    a position I am in! What can I do for you? I swear that no
    brother loves his sister more than I do you, but what can I do?

    I received your letter and am pleased with you. Forget him, if
    that is how it is; it was an experiment, and if it had really
    been love it would not have been expressed like that.


VIII

                                              KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
                                                 _April 2nd_.

    My heart is torn to shreds, I have not been so crushed, so
    shattered, all the while I have been in prison as now. It is
    not exile that is the cause of it. What do I care whether it is
    Perm or Moscow, Moscow is no better than Perm. Let me tell you
    all about it.

    On the 31st of March we were summoned to hear our sentence. It
    was a glorious, magnificent day. Twenty fellows were gathered
    together, who were to be immediately scattered, some to the
    cells of the fortresses, others to distant towns, while all of
    them had spent nine months in captivity. They all sat, a noisy,
    merry company, in the big hall. When I went in, Sokolovsky,
    with a beard and a moustache, threw himself on my neck, and
    S—— was there too. Ogaryov was brought in a good while after
    me, and all rushed to greet him; we embraced with tears and a
    smile. Everything rose up in my heart, I lived, I was a youth,
    I pressed every one’s hand, in fact it was one of the happiest
    moments of my life. I had not a gloomy thought. At last the
    sentence[15] was read out.

    All was well, but yesterday—damnation take it!—has shattered me
    in every nerve. Obolensky is being confined in the same place
    with me. When the sentence had been read us, I asked leave of
    Tsinsky for us to see each other and was given permission.
    On returning I went to see him, and meanwhile they had
    forgotten to tell the colonel about the permission. Next day
    that blackguard of an officer S—— reported the matter to the
    colonel, and in that way I got three of the very best officers
    into trouble who had shown me no end of kindness; they were
    all reprimanded and all punished, and now have to be on duty
    for three weeks (and it is Easter!) without being relieved.
    Vassilyev the gendarme has been flogged, and all through me. I
    bit my fingers, cried, raged, and the first thought that came
    into my head was revenge. I told things about the officer which
    may ruin him (he used to go off somewhere with a prisoner), and
    then remembered that he is a poor man and the father of seven
    children; but ought one to spare the sneak? Did he spare others?


IX

                                   _April 10th, 1835. Nine o’clock._

    A few hours before departure I am still writing, and writing to
    you—my last word as I go away shall be for you. Bitter is the
    feeling of separation, and involuntary separation, but such is
    the fate to which I have given myself up, it draws me on and I
    submit. When shall we see each other? Where? All that is dark,
    but bright is the thought of your affection, the exile will
    never forget his charming sister.

    _Perhaps_ ... but I cannot finish, for they have come for
    me—and so farewell for long, but, on my word, not for ever, I
    cannot think that.

    All this is written in the presence of the gendarmes.

Traces of tears can be seen on this note and the word _perhaps_ has been
twice underlined by her. Natalie carried this note about with her for
several months.




PART IV

MOSCOW, PETERSBURG, AND NOVGOROD

(1840-1847)




Chapter 25

DISSONANCE—A NEW CIRCLE—DESPERATE HEGELIANISM—V. BYELINSKY, M. BAKUNIN,
AND OTHERS—A QUARREL WITH BYELINSKY AND RECONCILIATION—ARGUMENT WITH A
LADY AT NOVGOROD—STANKEVITCH’S CIRCLE.


At the beginning of 1840 we left Vladimir and the poor, narrow Klyazma.
With anxiety and an aching heart I left the little town where we were
married. I foresaw that the same simple, deep, spiritual life would not
come again, and that we should have to take in our sails.

Our long, solitary walks out of the town, where, lost among the meadows,
we felt so keenly the spring in nature and the spring in our hearts,
would never come again....

The winter evenings when, sitting side by side, we closed the book and
listened to the crunch of sledge-runners and the jingle of bells that
reminded us of the 3rd of March 1838 and our journey of the 9th of May
would never come again....

They will never come again!

In how many keys and for how many ages men have known and repeated
that ‘the May of life blossoms once and never again,’ and yet the June
of mature age with its hard work, with its stony roads, catches a man
unawares. Youth, all unheeding, floats along in a sort of algebra of
ideas, feelings, and yearnings, is little interested in the concrete,
little touched by it, and then comes love, the unknown quantity found;
all is concentrated on one person, through whom everything passes,
in whom the universal becomes precious, in whom the artistic becomes
beautiful; then, too, the young are untouched by the external, they are
devoted to each other, let the grass grow as it will!

And it does grow, together with the nettles and the thistles, and sooner
or later they begin to sting or prick.

We knew that we could not take Vladimir with us, but still we thought
that our May was not yet over. I even fancied that in going back to
Moscow I was going back to my student days. All the surroundings helped
to maintain the illusion. The same house, the same furniture—here was the
room where Ogaryov and I, shut in together, used to conspire two paces
away from the Senator and my father, and here was my father himself,
grown older and more bent, but just as ready to scold me for coming home
late. ‘Who is lecturing to-morrow? Where is the class? I am going from
the university to Ogaryov’s....’ It was 1833 over again!

Ogaryov was actually there.

He had received permission to go to Moscow a few months before me. Again
his house became a centre where friends, old and new, met. And although
the old unity was no more, every one was in sympathy with him.

Ogaryov, as I have had occasion to observe already, was endowed with a
peculiar magnetism, a feminine quality of attraction. For no apparent
reason others are drawn to such people and cling to them; they warm,
unite, and soothe them, they are like an open table at which every
one sits down, renews his strength, rests, grows calmer and more
stout-hearted, and goes away a friend.

His acquaintances swallowed up a great deal of his time; he suffered at
times from this, but still kept his doors open, and met every one with
his gentle smile. Many people thought it a great weakness. Yes, time
was lost and wasted, but the love, not only of intimate friends, but of
outsiders, of the weak, was won; that is worth as much as reading and
other pursuits.

I never can make out how people like Ogaryov can be accused of idleness.
The standards of the factory and the workhouse do not apply in their
case. I remember that in our student days Vadim and I were once sitting
over a glass of wine when he suddenly became more and more gloomy, and
all at once with tears in his eyes repeated the words of Don Carlos (who
quoted them from Julius Caesar): ‘Twenty-three and nothing done for
eternity!’ This so mortified him that with all his might he brought his
open hand down upon the green wine-glass and cut it badly. All that is
so, but neither Caesar nor Don Carlos and Posa, nor Vadim and I explained
why we must do something for eternity. There is work and it has to be
done, and is it to be done for the sake of the work, or for the sake of
being remembered by mankind?

All that is somewhat obscure: and what is work?

Work, business.[16] ... Officials recognise as such only civil and legal
affairs, the merchant regards nothing but commerce as work, military men
call it their work to strut about like cranes armed from head to toe in
times of peace. To my thinking, to serve as the link, as the centre of
a whole circle of people, is a very great work, especially in a society
both disunited and fettered. No one has reproached me for idleness,
and many people have liked some of the things I have done; but they do
not know how much of all that I have done has been the reflection of
our talks, our arguments, the nights we spent idly strolling about the
streets and fields, or still more idly sitting over a glass of wine.

But soon a chilly air reminding us that spring was over penetrated
even into these surroundings. When the joy of meeting had subsided and
festivities were over, when we had said most of what we had to say, and
had to go on our way again, we perceived that the careless, happy life
which we sought from memories was no longer to be found in our circle,
and especially not in Ogaryov’s house. Friends were noisy, arguments
were lively, sometimes wine flowed, but it was not light-hearted, not as
light-hearted as in old days. Every one had a hidden thought, something
unspoken; there was a feeling of strain: Ogaryov looked melancholy and
Ketscher raised his eyebrows fiercely. An intrusive note made a jangling
discord in our harmony; all the warmth, all the friendliness of Ogaryov
could not drown it.

What I had dreaded a year before had come to pass, and it was even worse
than I had thought.

Ogaryov had lost his father in 1838, and had married not long before
his father’s death. The news of his marriage frightened me, it had all
happened so quickly and unexpectedly. The rumours that had reached me
about his wife were not altogether favourable to her, yet he wrote with
enthusiasm and was happy; I put more faith in him, but still I was uneasy.

At the beginning of 1839 they had come for a few days to Vladimir. It was
our first meeting since the auditor Oransky read us our sentence. We were
in no mood to be critical. I only remember that for the first few minutes
her voice struck me unpleasantly; but that momentary impression passed
in the radiance of our joy. Yes, those were the days of fullness and
bliss, when a man all unsuspecting reaches the highest limit, the utmost
boundary of personal happiness. There was not a shade of gloomy memory,
not the faintest dark foreboding, it was all youth, friendship, love,
exuberant strength, energy, health, and an endless road before us. Even
the mood of mysticism which had not yet passed quite away gave a festive
solemnity to our meeting, like chiming bells, choristers, and burning
incense.

There was a small iron crucifix on a table in my room. ‘On your knees!’
said Ogaryov, ‘and let us give thanks that we are all four here
together.’ We knelt down beside him and embraced, wiping away our tears.

But one of the four scarcely needed to wipe them away. Ogaryov’s wife
looked at the proceedings with some astonishment. I thought at the time
that this was _retenue_, but she told me herself afterwards that this
scene had struck her as affected and childish. Of course it might strike
one so looking on at it as an outsider, but why was she looking on at it
as an outsider? Why was she so sober at that moment of intoxication, so
middle-aged in the midst of our youthfulness?

Ogaryov went back to his estate, while she went to Petersburg to try and
obtain permission for him to return to Moscow.

A month later she passed through Vladimir again, alone. Petersburg and
two or three aristocratic drawing-rooms had turned her head. She longed
for external splendour, she was allured by wealth. Will she get over it,
I wondered. Such opposite tastes may lead to many troubles. But wealth
was something new to her and so were drawing-rooms and Petersburg,
perhaps it was a momentary infatuation; she was intelligent and she loved
Ogaryov—and I hoped.

In Moscow they were more apprehensive that she would not get over it so
easily. An artistic and literary circle rather flattered her vanity,
but her chief efforts were not turned in that direction. She would have
consented to have a place for artists and savants in her aristocratic
drawing-room; she forcibly drew Ogaryov into frivolous society in which
he was bored to death. His more intimate friends began to notice it,
and Ketscher, who had long been scowling over it, angrily proclaimed
his _veto_. Hot-tempered, vain, and unused to control herself, she
wounded a vanity as sensitive as her own. Her angular, rather frigid
manners and sarcasms, uttered in the voice which at our first meeting
had so strangely jarred on me, provoked a violent opposition. After
carrying on a feud for two months with Ketscher who, though he was right
fundamentally, was continually in the wrong formally, and arousing the
hostility of several persons who were, perhaps owing to their material
position, too ready to take offence, she found herself brought face to
face with me.

She was afraid of me. In me she wanted to test herself and to discover
once for all which was to take the upper hand, friendship or love, as
though one or the other must take the upper hand. There was more in this
than the desire to gain the day in a capricious quarrel, there was a
consciousness that I opposed her views more strongly than any of them;
there was envious jealousy and feminine love of power in it too. With
Ketscher she disputed till she shed tears, and every day she quarrelled
with him as angry children quarrel, but without exasperation; she could
not look at me without turning pale and trembling with hatred. She
reproached me for revolting pride, and for destroying her happiness
through conceited claims to Ogaryov’s exclusive friendship. I felt
this was unjust and became cruel and merciless in my turn. She herself
confessed to me five years later that she had had thoughts of poisoning
me—so violent was her hatred. She broke off all acquaintance with Natalie
because of her love for me and the affection all our friends had for her.

Ogaryov suffered. No one spared him, neither she nor I nor the others.
We chose his heart (as he himself expressed it in a letter) ‘for our
field of battle,’ and did not consider that whichever gained the day
he suffered equally. He swore to reconcile us, he tried to soften the
awkwardness of the position and we were reconciled; but wounded vanity
cried aloud and smarting resentment flared into warfare at a word.
Ogaryov saw with horror that everything he prized was falling to pieces,
that his holy things were not sacred to the woman he loved, that she was
a stranger—but he could not cease to love her. We were his own people—but
he saw with grief that even we did not spare him one drop of the cup of
bitterness fate forced upon him. He could not roughly sunder the ties
of _Naturgewalt_ that bound him to her, nor the strong ties of sympathy
that bound him to us; in any case his heart could not but bleed, and,
conscious of that, he tried to keep both her and us—gripped convulsively
her hands and ours—while we savagely strained apart, tearing him to
pieces like executioners!

Man is cruel and only prolonged suffering softens him; the child is cruel
in its ignorance, the young man is cruel in the pride of his purity,
the priest is cruel in the pride of his holiness, and the doctrinaire
in the pride of his learning—we are all merciless, and most of all
merciless when we are in the right. The heart is usually melted and
grows soft after severe wounds, after the wings have been burnt, after
acknowledged downfalls, after the panic which makes a man cold all over
when alone, without witnesses, he begins to suspect what a weak and
worthless creature he is. His heart grows softer; as he wipes away the
sweat of shame and horror, afraid of an eye-witness, he seeks excuses for
_himself_ and finds them for _others_. The part of judge, of executioner,
from that moment excites his loathing.

I was far from that stage in those days!

The feud was carried on intermittently. The exasperated woman, pursued
by our intolerance, got further and further entangled, could not go
forward, struggled, fell—and did not change. Feeling that she could not
be victorious, she burned with vexation and _dépit_, with jealousy
in which there was no love. Her confused ideas, taken disconnectedly
from George Sand’s novels and from our conversations, and never clearly
thought out, carried her from one absurdity to another—to eccentricities,
which she took for originality and independence, to that form of feminine
emancipation in virtue of which women arbitrarily deny all that they
dislike in the existing and accepted order, while they obstinately cling
to all the rest.

The gulf was becoming impassable, but for a long time yet Ogaryov spared
her, for a long time he still tried and hoped to save her. And whenever
for a minute some tender feeling was awakened or poetic chord was touched
in her, he was ready to forget the past for ever and begin a new life of
harmony, peace, and love; but she could not restrain herself, she lost
her balance and every time sank lower. Thread by thread their tie was
painfully broken, till the last thread snapped without a sound—and they
parted for ever.

In all this one question presents itself that is not quite easily
answered. How was it that the strong, sympathetic influence that Ogaryov
exercised on all around him, which drew outsiders into higher spheres,
into general interests, glided over that woman’s heart without leaving
any fruitful trace upon it? And yet he loved her passionately and put
more soul and effort into saving her than into all the rest; and she
herself loved him at first, of that there is no doubt.

I have thought a great deal about this. At first, of course, I put the
blame on one side only, but afterwards I began to understand that this
strange, monstrous fact has an explanation and that there is really no
contradiction in it. To have an influence on a sympathetic circle is far
easier than to have an influence on one woman. To preach from the pulpit,
to sway men’s minds from the platform, to teach from the lecturer’s
desk, is far easier than to educate one child. In the lecture-room, in
the church, in the club, similarity of interests and aspirations takes
the foremost place; men meet there for the sake of them, and all that is
needed is to develop them farther. Ogaryov’s circle consisted of his old
comrades of the university, young artists, literary or scientific men;
they were united by a common religion, a common language, and still more
by a common hatred. Those for whom this religion was not really a living
question gradually dropped off, while others came to fill their places,
and the circle itself, as well as its thinking, was the stronger for the
free play of selection and the community of conviction that bound them
together.

Intimacy with a woman is a purely personal matter, based on some secret
physiological affinity, unaccountable, resting on passion. We are first
intimate, afterwards we become acquainted. Among people whose life is not
marked out for them, not dominated by one idea, equilibrium is easily
established; everything with them happens casually, he yields half and
she half, and if they do not, it does not much matter. On the other hand,
a man devoted to his idea discovers with horror that it is strange to
the creature he has brought so close to him. He sets to work in haste
to awaken her, but as a rule only frightens or muddles her. Torn away
from the traditions from which she has not freed herself, and flung
across a sort of abyss with nothing to fill it, she believes that she is
emancipated—conceitedly, arrogantly rejects the old at random, accepts
the new indiscriminately. There is disorder and chaos in her head and in
her heart ... the reins are flung down, egoism is unbridled ... while we
imagine that we have accomplished something and preach to her as in the
lecture-room.

The gift for education, the gift of patient love, of complete, of
persevering devotion is more rarely met with than any other. No mother’s
passionate love nor dialectical skill can replace it.

Is not this the reason why people torment children and sometimes grown-up
people too—that it is so hard to educate them and so easy to flog them?
When we punish, are we not revenging ourselves for our own incapacity?

Ogaryov saw that even then; that was why all (and I among them)
reproached him for being too gentle.

The circle of young people that gathered round Ogaryov was not our old
circle. Only two of his old friends, besides us, were in it. Tone,
interests, pursuits, all were changed. Stankevitch’s friends took the
lead in it; Bakunin and Byelinsky stood at their head, each with a volume
of Hegel’s philosophy in his hand, an each filled with the youthful
intolerance inseparable from deep and passionate convictions.

German philosophy had been grafted on the Moscow University by M. G.
Pavlov. The Chair of Philosophy had been abolished since 1826. Pavlov
gave us an introduction to philosophy by way of physics and agricultural
science. It would have been hard to learn physics at his lectures,
impossible to learn agricultural science; but they were extremely
profitable. Pavlov stood at the door of the section of Physics and
Mathematics and stopped the student with the question: ‘You want to
acquire knowledge of nature? but what is nature? what is knowledge?’

This was extremely valuable: our young students enter the university
entirely without philosophical preparation; only the divinity students
had any conception of philosophy, and that an utterly distorted one.

By way of answer to these questions, Pavlov expounded the doctrines
of Schelling and of Oken with a conciseness and a clarity such as no
teacher of natural philosophy had shown before. If he did not attain
complete lucidity in anything it was not his fault, but was due to the
cloudiness of Schelling’s philosophy. Pavlov may more justly be blamed
for stopping short at this Mahabharata of philosophy instead of passing
on to the austere initiation into Hegelian logic. But even he went no
farther than the introduction and general outline, or at any rate he led
others no farther. Such a halt at the beginning, such incompleteness,
houses without roofs, foundations without houses, and splendid vestibules
leading to a humble dwelling, are quite in the spirit of the Russian
people. Are we not perhaps satisfied with vestibules because our history
is still knocking at the gate?

What Pavlov did not do was done by one of his pupils—Stankevitch.

Stankevitch, also one of the _idle_ people who accomplish _nothing_, was
the first disciple of Hegel in the Moscow circle. He had made a profound
study of German philosophy, which appealed to his aesthetic sense:
endowed with exceptional abilities, he drew a large circle of friends
into his favourite pursuit. This circle was extremely remarkable, from it
came a regular legion of savants, writers and professors, amongst whom
were Byelinsky, Bakunin and Granovsky.

Before our exile there had been no great sympathy between our circle and
Stankevitch’s. They disliked our almost exclusively political tendency,
while we disliked their almost exclusively theoretical interests. They
considered us _Frondeurs_ and French, we thought them sentimentalists
and German. The first man who was acknowledged both by us and by them,
who held out the hand of friendship to both and by his warm love for
both and his conciliating character removed the last traces of mutual
misunderstanding, was Granovsky; but when I arrived in Moscow he was
still in Berlin, while poor Stankevitch at the age of twenty-seven was
dying on the shore of the Lago di Como.

Sickly in constitution and gentle in character, a poet and a dreamer,
Stankevitch was naturally bound to prefer contemplation and abstract
thought to living and purely practical questions; his artistic idealism
suited him, it was ‘the crown of victory’ on his pale, youthful brow
that bore the imprint of death. The others had too much physical vigour
and too little poetical feeling to remain long absorbed in speculative
thought without passing on into life. Exclusive preoccupation with
theory is utterly opposed to the Russian temperament, and we shall soon
see how the Russian spirit transformed Hegel’s philosophy and how the
vitality of our nature asserted itself in spite of all the tonsures of
the philosophic monks. But at the beginning of 1840 the young people
surrounding Ogaryov had as yet no thought of rebelling against the letter
on behalf of the spirit, against the abstract on behalf of life.

My new acquaintances received me as people do receive exiles and old
champions, people who come out of prison or return out of captivity or
banishment, that is, with respectful indulgence, with a readiness to
receive us into their alliance, though at the same time refusing to yield
a single point and hinting at the fact that they are ‘to-day’ and we are
already ‘yesterday,’ and exacting the unconditional acceptance of Hegel’s
phenomenology and logic, and their interpretation of it, too.

They discussed these subjects incessantly, there was not a paragraph
in the three parts of the _Logic_, in the two of the _Aesthetic_, the
_Encyclopaedia_, and so on, which had not been the subject of furious
battles for several nights together. People who loved each other were
parted for weeks at a time because they disagreed about the definition
of ‘all-embracing spirit,’ or had taken as a personal insult an opinion
on ‘the absolute personality and its existence in itself.’ Every
insignificant treatise published in Berlin or other provincial or
district towns of German philosophy was ordered and read into tatters,
so that the leaves fell out in a few days, if only there were a mention
of Hegel in it. Just as Francœur in Paris wept with delight when he
heard that in Russia he was taken for a great mathematician and that
all the youthful generation made use of the same letters as he did when
they solved equations of various degrees, tears of delight might have
been shed by all those forgotten Werders, Marheinekes, Michelets, Ottos,
Vatkes, Schallers, Rosenkrantzes, and even Arnold Ruge,[17] whom Heine
so wonderfully well dubbed ‘the gate-keeper of the Hegelian philosophy,’
if they had known what pitched battles they were exciting in Moscow, how
they were being read, and how they were being bought.

Pavlov’s great value lay in the extraordinary clarity of his exposition,
a clarity in which none of the depth of German thought was lost; the
young philosophers, on the contrary, adopted a conventional language;
they did not translate philosophical terms into Russian, but transferred
them whole, even, to make things easier, leaving all the Latin words _in
crudo_, giving them orthodox terminations and the endings of the Russian
declensions.

I have the right to say this because, carried away by the current of the
time, I wrote myself exactly in the same way, and was actually surprised
when Perevoshtchekov, the well-known astronomer, described my language as
the ‘twittering of birds.’ No one in those days would have hesitated to
write a phrase like this: ‘The concretion of abstract ideas in the sphere
of plastics presents that phase of the self-seeking spirit in which,
defining itself for itself, it passes from the potentiality of natural
immanence into the harmonious sphere of pictorial consciousness in
beauty.’ It is remarkable that here Russian words, as in the celebrated
dinner of the generals of which Yermolov spoke, sound even more foreign
than Latin ones.

German learning—and it is its chief defect—has become accustomed to an
artificial, heavy, scholastic language, just because it has lived in
academies, that is, in the monasteries of idealism. It is the language of
the priests of learning, a language for the faithful, and no one of the
uninitiated understood it. A key was needed for it, as for a cryptograph
letter. The key is now no mystery; when they understood it, people were
surprised that very sensible and very simple things were said in this
strange jargon. Feuerbach was the first to begin using a more human
language.

The mechanical copying of the German learned jargon was the more
unpardonable as the leading characteristic of our language is the extreme
ease with which everything is expressed in it—abstract ideas, the lyrical
sensations of the heart, ‘life’s mouse-like flitting,’ the cry of
indignation, sparkling mischief, and overwhelming passion.

Another mistake, far graver, went hand in hand with this distortion of
language. Our young philosophers distorted not merely their phrases
but their understanding; their attitude to life, to reality, became
scholastic, bookish; it was that learned conception of simple things at
which Goethe mocks with such genius in the conversation of Mephistopheles
with the student. Everything in reality direct, every simple feeling, was
lifted into abstract categories and came back from them without a drop of
living blood, a pale, algebraic shadow. In all this there was a naïveté
of a sort, because it was all perfectly sincere. The man who went for a
walk in Sokolniky went in order to give himself up to the pantheistic
feeling of his unity with the cosmos; and if on the way he happened upon
a drunken soldier or a peasant woman who got into conversation with him,
the philosopher did not simply talk to them, but defined the essential
substance of the people in its immediate and phenomenal manifestation.
The very tear glistening on the eyelash was strictly referred to its
proper classification, to _Gemüth_ or ‘to the tragic in the heart.’

It was the same thing in art. A knowledge of Goethe, especially of the
second part of _Faust_ (either because it was inferior to the first or
because it was more difficult), was as obligatory as the wearing of
clothes. The philosophy of music took a foremost position. Of course,
no one ever spoke of Rossini; to Mozart they were indulgent, though
they did think him childish and poor. On the other hand, they made
philosophical investigations into every chord of Beethoven and greatly
respected Schubert, not so much, I think, for his superb melodies as for
the fact that he chose philosophical themes for them, such as ‘the divine
omnipotence’ and ‘Atlas.’ French literature, everything French in fact,
and, incidentally, everything political also, shared the interdict laid
on Italian music.

From the above, it is easy to see on what field we were bound to meet
and do battle. So long as we were arguing on the theme that Goethe was
objective but that his objectivity was subjective, while Schiller as a
poet was subjective but that his subjectivity was objective, and _vice
versa_, everything went peaceably. Questions that aroused more passion
were not slow to make their appearance.

While Hegel was Professor in Berlin, partly from old age, but far
more from satisfaction with his position and the respect he enjoyed,
he purposely screwed his philosophy up above the earthly level and
kept himself in an environment from which all contemporary interests
and passions became somewhat indistinct, like buildings and villages
seen from a balloon; he did not like to be entangled in these accursed
practical questions with which it is difficult to deal and which must
receive a positive answer. How revolting this artificial and disingenuous
dualism was in a doctrine which set out from the elimination of dualism
can readily be understood. The real Hegel was the modest Professor at
Jena, the friend of Hoelderlin, who hid his _Phenomenology_ under his
coat when Napoleon entered the town; then his philosophy did not lead
to Indian quietism nor to the justification of the existing forms of
society, nor to Prussian Christianity; then he had not read his lectures
on the Philosophy of Religion, but had written things of genius such
as the article on the executioner and the death penalty, printed in
Rosenkrantz’s biography.

Hegel confined himself to the sphere of abstractions in order to avoid
the necessity of touching upon empirical deductions and practical
applications; the one domain which he, very adroitly, selected for the
practical application of his theories was the calm, untroubled ocean
of aesthetics. He rarely ventured into the light of day, and but for a
minute, wrapped up like an invalid, and even then left behind in the
dialectic maze just those questions most interesting to the modern
man. The extremely feeble intellects (Gantz is the only exception) who
surrounded him accepted the letter for the thing itself and were pleased
by the empty play of dialectics. Probably the old man felt at times
sore and ashamed at the sight of the limited outlook of his excessively
complacent pupils. If the dialectic method is not the development of the
reality itself, the lifting of it, so to speak, into thought, it becomes
a purely external means of driving all sorts of things through a series
of categories, an exercise in logical gymnastics, as it was with the
Greek Sophists and the mediaeval scholastics after Abelard.

The philosophical phrase which did the greatest harm, and in virtue
of which the German conservatives strove to reconcile philosophy with
the political régime of Germany—‘all that is real is rational’—was the
principle of sufficient reason and of the correspondence of logic and
fact expressed in other words. Hegel’s phrase, wrongly understood, became
what the words of the Christian Girondist Paul were at one time: ‘There
is no power but from God.’ But if all powers are from God, and if the
existing social order is justified by reason, the struggle against it,
since it exists, is also justified. These two sentences accepted in their
formal meaning are pure tautology; but whether tautology or not, Hegel’s
phrase led straight to the recognition of the existing authorities, led
to a man’s sitting with folded hands, and that was just what the Berlin
Buddhists wanted. Though such a view is diametrically opposed to the
Russian spirit, our Moscow Hegelians were genuinely misled and accepted
it.

Byelinsky, the most active, impulsive, and dialectically passionate,
fighting nature, was at that time preaching an Indian stillness of
contemplation and theoretical study instead of conflict. He believed in
that theory and did not flinch before any of its consequences, nor was he
held back by considerations of moral propriety nor the opinion of others,
which has such terrors for the weak and those who lack independence. He
was free from timidity for he was strong and sincere; his conscience was
clear.

‘Do you know that from your standpoint,’ I said to him, thinking to
impress him with my revolutionary ultimatum, ‘you can prove that the
monstrous tyranny under which we live is rational and ought to exist?’

‘There is no doubt about it,’ answered Byelinsky, and proceeded to recite
to us Pushkin’s ‘Anniversary of Borodino.’

That was more than I could stand and a desperate battle raged between
us. Our feud reacted upon the others, the circle fell apart into two
groups. Bakunin tried to reconcile, to explain, to persuade, but there
was no real peace. Byelinsky, irritated and dissatisfied, went off to
Petersburg, and from there fired off his last furious shot at us in an
article which he called ‘The Anniversary of Borodino.’

Then I broke off all relations with him. Though Bakunin argued hotly, he
began to reconsider things, his revolutionary tact drove him in another
direction. Byelinsky reproached him for weakness, for concessions, and
went to such exaggerated extremes that he scared his own friends and
followers. The chorus was on Byelinsky’s side, and looked down upon us,
haughtily shrugged their shoulders and considered us behind the times.

In the midst of this feud I saw the necessity _ex ipso fonte bibere_
and began studying Hegel in earnest. I even think that a man who has
not _lived through_ Hegel’s phenomenology and Proudhon’s contradictions
of political economy, who has not passed through that furnace and been
tempered by it, is not complete, not modern.

When I had grown used to Hegel’s language and mastered his method, I
began to perceive that Hegel was much nearer to our standpoint than
to the standpoint of his followers; he was so in his early works, he
was so everywhere where his genius had got out of hand and had dashed
forward forgetting the gates of Brandenburg. The philosophy of Hegel is
the algebra of revolution, it emancipates a man in an extraordinary way
and leaves not a stone standing of the Christian world, of the world of
outlived tradition. But, perhaps with intention, it is badly formulated.
Just as in mathematics—only there with more justification—men do not
go back to the definition of space, movement, force, but continue the
dialectical development of their laws and qualities, so in the formal
understanding of philosophy, after once becoming accustomed to the first
principles, men go on merely drawing deductions. Any one new to the
subject who has not stupefied himself by the method being turned into
a habit is pulled up just by these traditions, by these dogmas which
have been accepted as thoughts. To people who have long been studying
the subject and are consequently not free from preconceptions, it seems
astonishing that others should not understand things that are ‘perfectly
clear.’ How can any one fail to understand such a simple idea as, for
instance, ‘that the soul is immortal and that what perishes is only the
personality,’ a thought so successfully developed by the Michelet of
Berlin; or the still more simple truth that the absolute spirit is a
personality, conscious of itself through the world, and at the same time
having its own self-consciousness?

All these things seemed so easy to our friends, they smiled so
condescendingly at ‘French’ objections, that I was for some time crushed
by them and worked and worked to reach an exact understanding of their
philosophic jargon.

Fortunately scholasticism is as little natural to me as mysticism, and I
stretched its bow until the string snapped and the scales dropped from my
eyes. Strange to say, it was an argument with a lady that brought me to
it.

I had the year before at Novgorod become acquainted with a general. I
made his acquaintance just because no one could have been less like a
general.

There was a painful feeling in his house, there were tears in the air, it
was obvious that death had passed through it. His hair was prematurely
grey and his kindly, mournful smile was, even more than his wrinkles,
expressive of suffering. He was about fifty. The traces of a fate that
had cut off living branches was still more clearly imprinted on the pale,
thin face of his wife. It was too quiet in their house. The general
studied mechanics, while his wife spent her mornings giving French
lessons to some poor children; when they had gone she took up a book,
and the only things that suggested a different, bright, fragrant life
were the flowers, of which there were many, and the playthings in a
cupboard—but no one ever played with them.

They had had three children: two years before I knew them an
exceptionally gifted boy of nine had died; a few months later another
child died of scarlet fever; the mother hastened into the country to save
the last child by change of air and came back a few days later with a
little coffin in the carriage with her.

Their life had lost its meaning, it was ended, and continued without
object, without need. Their existence was maintained by the compassion
of each for the other; the one comfort left them was the deep conviction
that each was essential to enable the other to bear the cross. I have
seen few more harmonious marriages, though, indeed, it was hardly a
marriage, for it was not love that bound them together but a deep
comradeship in misfortune; their fate held them tight and kept them
together with the little cold hands of those three, and the hopeless
emptiness around them and before them.

The bereaved mother was completely given up to mysticism; she found
relief from her misery in the world of mysterious reconciliations,
she was deceived by the flattery that religion pays the human heart.
For her, mysticism was no light thing, it was no mere dream, it meant
having her children again, and she was defending them when she defended
her religion. But, as she had an extremely active intelligence, she
challenged discussion and knew her strength. I have met, both before and
since, many mystics of various kinds, from Vitberg and the followers of
Tovjanski,[18] who acknowledged Napoleon as the military incarnation
of God and took off their caps when they passed the Vendôme Column, to
the now-forgotten ‘Ma-Pa,’[19] who told me himself of his interview with
God which took place on the high-road between Montmorency and Paris.
They were all hysterical people who worked on the nerves, impressed the
fancy, or the heart, mixed up philosophical conceptions with an arbitrary
symbolism, and did not care to come out into the open field of logic.

But it was upon that field L—— D—— took a firm and fearless stand.
Where and how she had succeeded in obtaining such artistic skill in
argument I do not know. Altogether women’s development is a mystery;
there is nothing: just dress and dances, mischievous back-biting and
novel reading, making eyes and shedding tears—and all at once titanic
will, mature thought, colossal intelligence make their appearance. The
young girl carried away by her passions vanishes, and before you stands
Théroigne de Méricourt,[20] the beauty of the tribune, swaying multitudes
of the people, or a Princess Dashkov, sword in hand, on horseback, at
eighteen, in the midst of a turbulent crowd of soldiers.

In L—— D—— everything was complete, she had no doubts, no wavering, no
theoretical weakness; even the Jesuits or the Calvinists can hardly have
been so harmoniously consistent in their doctrine as she.

Deprived of her little ones, she had come, instead of hating death, to
hating life. That is just what is needed for Christianity, that complete
apotheosis of death: the contempt for earth, the contempt of the body has
no other meaning. Hence the attack upon everything living and realistic,
enjoyment, health, gaiety, the free joy of existence. And L—— D—— had
reached the point of disliking both Goethe and Pushkin.

Her attacks on my philosophy were original. She used ironically to
declare that all our dialectical subtleties and elaborate constructions
were just the beating of the drum, the noise with which cowards try to
drown the terrors of their conscience.

‘You will never,’ she used to say, ‘get to a personal god, nor to the
immortality of the soul, by any philosophy, and none of you have the
courage to be atheists and reject the life beyond the grave. You are
too human not to be horrified by those conclusions, so you invent your
logical miracles to throw dust in the eyes and to arrive at what is given
by religion in a simple and childlike way.’

I objected, I argued, but I was inwardly conscious that I had no complete
proofs and that she had a firmer footing on her ground than I on mine.

To complete my discomfiture, the inspector of the Medical Board must
needs turn up to support me; he was good-natured man, but one of the most
ridiculous Germans I have ever met. A devoted worshipper of Oken and
Carus,[21] he argued by means of quotations, had a ready-made answer for
everything, never had doubts about anything, and imagined that he was
completely in accord with me.

The doctor lost his temper, grew furious the more readily as he could
not hold his own by other means, looked upon L—— D——’s views as feminine
caprice, took refuge in Schelling’s lectures on the academic doctrine,
and read extracts from Burdach’s _Physiology_ to prove that there is an
eternal and spiritual element in man, and that some personal _Geist_ is
hidden in nature.

L—— D——, who had long ago passed through these ‘back premises’ of
pantheism, confuted him, and, smiling, glanced from him to me. She was,
of course, more in the right than he, and I was vexed and conscientiously
racking my brains, while the good doctor was laughing triumphantly. These
arguments interested me so much that I set to work upon Hegel with new
zest. The worry of my uncertainty did not last long, the truth flashed
before my eyes and began to grow clearer and clearer; I inclined to my
opponent’s side, but not in the way she wished.

‘You are perfectly right,’ I said to her, ‘and I am ashamed of having
argued against you; of course there is no personal spirit, nor
immortality of the soul, and that is why it has been so hard to prove
that there is. See how simple and natural it all becomes without those
gratuitous assumptions.’

She was troubled by my words but quickly recovered herself and said:
‘I am sorry for you, but perhaps it is for the best, you will not long
remain in that position, it is too empty and depressing, while,’ she
added, smiling, ‘our doctor is incurable, he has no fears, he is in such
a fog that he does not see one step before him.’

Her face was paler than usual, however.

Two or three months later, Ogaryov passed through Novgorod. He brought me
Feuerbach’s _Wesen des Christenthums_; after reading the first pages I
leapt up with joy. Away with the trappings of masquerade, no more muddle
and equivocations! We are free men and not the slaves of Xanthos, there
is no need for us to wrap the truth in myth.

In the heat of my philosophic ardour I began my series of articles on
‘Dilettantism in Science,’ in which, among other things, I paid the
doctor out.

Now let us go back to Byelinsky.

A few months after his departure to Petersburg in 1840 we too arrived
there. I did not go to see him. Ogaryov took my quarrel with Byelinsky
very much to heart; he knew that Byelinsky’s absurd theory was a passing
malady, and, indeed, I knew it too. But Ogaryov was kinder. At last by
his letters he brought about a meeting. Our interview was at first cold,
unpleasant, and strained, but neither Byelinsky nor I was very diplomatic
and in the course of trivial conversation I mentioned the article on ‘The
Anniversary of Borodino.’ Byelinsky jumped up from his seat and, flushing
crimson, said with great simplicity, ‘Well, thank God, we’ve come to it
at last. I am so stupid I did not know how to begin.... You’ve won the
day; three or four months in Petersburg have done more to convince me
than all the arguments. Let us forget that nonsense. It is enough to say
that the other day I was dining at a friend’s and there was an officer
of the Engineers there; my friend asked him if he would like to make my
acquaintance. “Is that the author of the article on ‘The Anniversary of
Borodino’?” the officer asked him in his ear. “Yes.” “No, thank you very
much,” he answered dryly. I heard it all and could not restrain myself. I
pressed the officer’s hand warmly and said to him: “You’re an honourable
man, I respect you....” What more would you have?’

From that moment up to Byelinsky’s death we went hand in hand.
Byelinsky, as was to be expected, fell upon his former theory with all
the stinging vehemence of his language and all his furious energy. The
position of many of his friends was not very much to be envied. _Plus
royalistes que le roi_, with the courage of misfortune they tried
to defend their theories, while not averse to an honourable truce.
All those who had enough sense and vitality went over to Byelinsky’s
side; only the obstinate formalists and pedants were left far behind.
Some of them reached such a point of German suicide through dead
and scholastic learning that they lost all living interest and were
themselves lost, leaving no trace. Others became orthodox Slavophils.
Strange as the combination of Hegel and Stefan Yavorsky[22] may appear,
it is more possible than might be supposed; the Byzantine theology is
just such a superficial casuistry and play with logical formulas as
Hegel’s dialectics, formally understood. Some of the articles in the
_Moskvityanin_ are a magnificent instance of the extremes to which, with
talent, the unnatural union of philosophy and religion can be brought.

Byelinsky by no means abandoned Hegel’s philosophy when he renounced
his one-sided interpretation of it. Quite the contrary, it is from
this point that his living, apt, original combination of philosophical
with revolutionary ideas begins. I regard Byelinsky as one of the most
remarkable figures of the period of Nicholas. After the liberalism
which had somehow survived 1825 in Polevoy, after the gloomy article of
Tchaadayev, Byelinsky appears on the scene with his caustic scepticism,
won by suffering, and his passionate interest in every question. In a
series of critical articles he touches in season and out of season upon
everything, everywhere true to his hatred of authority and often rising
to poetic inspiration. The book he reviewed usually served him as a
starting-point, but he abandoned it half-way and threw himself into some
question. The line ‘That’s what kindred are’ in _Onyegin_ is enough for
him to summon family life before the judgment seat and to pick family
relations to pieces down to the last shred. Who does not remember
his articles on ‘The Tarantass,’[23] on ‘Turgenev’s Parasha,’[24] on
‘Derzhavin,’ on ‘Motchalov,’[25] and ‘Hamlet’? What fidelity there is to
his principles, what fearless consistency, what adroitness in navigating
between the sandbanks of the censorship, what boldness in his attacks on
the aristocracy of literature, on the writers of the first three grades,
on the high officials of literature who are always ready to defeat an
opponent if not by fair means by foul, if not by criticism then by
information to the police. Byelinsky scourged them mercilessly, goading
the petty vanity of the frigid mediocre writers of eclogues, lovers of
culture, benevolence, and sentimentality; he turned into derision their
precious ideas, the poetical dreams fostered by their elderly brains,
their naïveté, hidden under an Anna ribbon.

How they hated him for it!

The Slavophils on their side began their official existence with the war
upon Byelinsky; he drove them by his taunts to the _murmolka_ and the
_zipun_[26]; one need only recall that Byelinsky had formerly written in
_Notes of the Fatherland_, while Kireyevsky called his excellent journal
_The European_; no better proof than these titles could be found to show
that at first the difference was only between shades of opinion and not
between parties.

Byelinsky’s articles were awaited with feverish expectation in Petersburg
and Moscow from the 25th of every month. Half a dozen times the students
would call in at the coffee-houses to ask whether the _Notes of the
Fatherland_ had been received; the heavy volume was snatched from hand to
hand. ‘Is there an article of Byelinsky’s?’ ‘Yes,’ and it was devoured
with feverish interest, with laughter, with argument ... and three or
four cherished convictions and reputations were no more.

Sokobelev, the governor of the Peter-Paul fortress, might well say in
jest to Byelinsky when he met him on the Nevsky Prospect: ‘When are you
coming to us? I have a nice warm little cell all ready that I am keeping
for you.’

I have spoken in another book of Byelinsky’s development and of his
literary activity, here I will only say a few words about himself.

Byelinsky was very shy and quite lost his head in an unfamiliar or very
numerous company; he knew this and did the most absurd things in trying
to conceal it. Ketscher persuaded him to go to visit a lady; as they
approached her house Byelinsky became more and more depressed, kept
asking whether they could not go another day, and talked of having a
headache. Ketscher, who knew him, would accept no excuse. When they
arrived Byelinsky set off running as soon as they got out of the sledge,
but Ketscher caught him by the overcoat and led him to be introduced to
the lady.

He sometimes put in an appearance at Prince Odoevsky’s literary
diplomatic evenings. At these there were crowds of people who had nothing
in common except a certain apprehension of and aversion for each other:
clerks from the Embassies and Saharov[27] the archaeologist, painters
and A. Meiendorf,[28] several councillors of the cultured sort, Ioakinth
Bitchurin[29] from Pekin, people who were half gendarmes and half
literary men, others who were wholly gendarmes and not at all literary
men. A—— K—— was so much in evidence there that generals took him for an
authority. The hostess looked with inner grief upon her husband’s vulgar
tastes, and gave way to them much as Louis-Philippe at the beginning of
his reign indulged the tastes of his electors by inviting to the balls
at the Tuileries whole _rez-de-chaussées_ of brace-makers, grocers,
shopkeepers, shoemakers, and other worthy citizens.

Byelinsky was utterly lost at these evenings, between some Saxon
ambassador who did not understand a word of Russian and some officer of
the secret police who understood even words that were not uttered. He was
usually ailing for two or three days afterwards and cursed the man who
had persuaded him to go.

One Saturday, as it was New Year’s Eve, Odoevsky took it into his head
to mix punch _en petit comité_ when the principal guests had dispersed.
Byelinsky would certainly have gone away, but he was prevented by a
barricade of furniture; he was somehow stuck in a corner and a little
table was set before him with wine and glasses on it; Zhukovsky in the
white trousers of his uniform, with gold braid on them, was sitting
sideways opposite him. Byelinsky bore it in patience a long time, but,
seeing no chance of his lot improving, he began moving the table a
little; the table yielded at first, then lurched over and fell with a
bang on the floor, while the bottle of Bordeaux very deliberately began
to empty itself over Zhukovsky. He jumped up while the red wine began to
trickle down his trousers; there was a great fuss and to-do, one servant
rushed up with a napkin to rub the wine into the other parts of the
trousers, and another picked up the broken wine-glasses ... while this
bustle was going on Byelinsky disappeared and, though it was not long
before his end, ran home on foot.

Dear Byelinsky! how angry and upset he was by such incidents long
afterwards, with what horror he used to recall them, walking up and down
the room and shaking his head without the trace of a smile.

But in that shy man, that frail body, there dwelt a mighty spirit, the
spirit of a gladiator! Yes, he was a powerful fighter! he could not
preach or lecture, what he needed was disputation. If he met with no
objection, if he was not stirred to irritation, he did not speak well,
but when he felt stung, when his cherished convictions were touched upon,
when the muscles of his cheeks began to quiver and his voice broke,
then he was worth seeing; he pounced upon his opponent like a panther,
he tore him to pieces, made him ridiculous, made him a piteous object,
and incidentally developed his own thought, with extraordinary force,
with extraordinary poetry. The discussion would often end in blood which
flowed from the sick man’s throat; pale, gasping, with his eyes fixed
on the man with whom he was speaking, he would lift his handkerchief to
his mouth with shaking hand and stop, deeply mortified, crushed by his
physical weakness. How I loved and how I pitied him at those moments!

Worried by the financial sharks of literature, morally fettered by the
censorship, surrounded in Petersburg by people little sympathetic to
him, and consumed by a disease to which the Baltic climate was fatal,
he became more and more irritable. He shunned outsiders, was savagely
shy, and sometimes spent weeks together in gloomy inactivity. Then the
publishers sent note after note demanding copy, and the enslaved writer,
grinding his teeth, took up his pen and wrote the venomous articles
quivering with indignation, the indictments which so impressed their
readers.

Often, utterly exhausted, he would come to us to rest, and lie on the
floor with our two-year-old child; he would play with him for hours
together. While we were only the three of us things went swimmingly, but
if there came a ring at the bell, a spasmodic grimace passed over his
face and he would look about him uneasily, trying to find his hat; though
with Slav weakness he often remained. Then a word, an observation uttered
not to his liking would lead to the most original scenes and disputes....

Once he went in Passion Week to dine with a literary man and Lenten
dishes were served. ‘Is it long,’ he asked, ‘since you became so devout?’
‘We eat Lenten fare,’ answered the literary gentleman, ‘simply for the
sake of the servants.’ ‘For the sake of the servants,’ said Byelinsky,
and he turned pale. ‘For the sake of the servants,’ he repeated, and
flung down his dinner napkin. ‘Where are your servants? I’ll tell them
that they are deceived, any open vice is more humane than this contempt
for the weak and uneducated, this hypocrisy in support of ignorance. And
do you imagine that you are free people? You are in the same boat with
all the tsars and priests and slaveowners. Good-bye, I don’t eat Lenten
fare for the edification of others, I have no servants!’

Among the Russians who might be classified as inveterate Germans, there
was one graduate of our university who had lately arrived from Berlin;
he was a good-natured man in blue spectacles, stiff and decorous; he had
come to a standstill for ever after upsetting and enfeebling his brains
with philosophy and philology. A doctrinaire and to some extent a pedant,
he was fond of holding forth in edifying style. On one occasion at a
literary evening in the house of the novelist who kept the fasts for the
sake of his servants, this gentleman was preaching some sort of _honnéte
et modéré_ twaddle. Byelinsky was lying on a couch in the corner and as
I passed him he took me by the lapel of my coat and said: ‘Do you hear
the rubbish that monster is talking? My tongue has been itching to answer
him, but my chest hurts and there are a lot of people. Be a father to me,
make a fool of him somehow, squash him, crush him with mockery, you can
do it better—come, comfort me.’

I laughed and told Byelinsky that he was setting me on like a bulldog at
a rat. I scarcely knew the man and had hardly heard what he said.

Towards the end of the evening, the gentleman in blue spectacles, after
abusing Koltsov for having abandoned the national costume, suddenly began
talking of Tchaadayev’s famous letter and concluded his commonplace
remarks, uttered in that didactic tone which of itself provokes derision,
with the following words: ‘Be that as it may, I consider his action
contemptible and revolting: I have no respect for such a man.’

There was in the room only one man closely associated with Tchaadayev,
and that was I. I shall have a great deal to say about Tchaadayev later
on, I always liked and respected him and was liked by him; I thought it
was unseemly to let this absurd remark pass. I asked him dryly whether he
supposed that Tchaadayev had written his letter disingenuously or from
interested motives.

‘Not at all,’ answered the gentleman.

An unpleasant conversation followed; I mentioned that the epithets
‘revolting and contemptible’ were themselves revolting and contemptible
when applied to a man who had boldly expressed his opinion and had
suffered for it. He talked to me of the people making up one whole, of
the unity of the fatherland, of the crime of disturbing that unity, of
sacred things that must not be touched.

All at once Byelinsky cut short my words, he leapt up from his sofa,
came up to me as white as a sheet and, slapping me on the shoulder,
said: ‘Here you have them, they have spoken out—the inquisitors, the
censors—keeping thought in leading-strings ...’ and so he went on and
on. With savage inspiration he spoke, interspersing grave words with
deadly sarcasms: ‘We are strangely sensitive: men are flogged and we
don’t resent it, sent to Siberia and we don’t resent it, but here
Tchaadayev, you see, has picked holes in the national honour, he mustn’t
dare to speak; to talk is impudence, a flunkey must never speak! Why
is it that in more civilised countries where one would expect national
susceptibilities to be more developed than in Kostroma and Kaluga words
are not resented?’

‘In civilised countries,’ replied the gentleman in blue spectacles with
inimitable self-complacency, ‘there are prisons in which they confine the
senseless creatures who insult what the whole people respect ... and a
good thing too.’

Byelinsky seemed to tower above us, he was terrible, great at that
moment. Folding his arms over his sick chest, and looking straight at his
opponent, he answered in a hollow voice: ‘And in still more civilised
countries there is a guillotine for those who think that a good thing.’

Saying this, he sank exhausted in an easy-chair and ceased speaking. At
the word guillotine our host turned pale, the guests were uneasy and a
pause followed. The blue-spectacled gentleman was annihilated, but it is
just at such moments that human vanity gets out of hand. Turgenev advises
that, when one has gone such lengths in argument that one begins to feel
frightened, one should move one’s tongue ten times round the inside of
one’s mouth before uttering a word.

Our opponent, unaware of this homely advice, continued uttering feeble
trivialities, addressing himself rather to the rest of the company than
to Byelinsky. ‘In spite of your intolerance,’ he said at last, ‘I am
certain that you would agree with me....’

‘No,’ answered Byelinsky, ‘whatever you might say I shouldn’t agree with
anything!’

Every one laughed and went in to supper. The gentleman in blue spectacles
picked up his hat and went away.

Suffering and privation soon completely undermined Byelinsky’s sickly
constitution. His face, particularly the muscles about his lips, and the
gloomily fixed look in his eyes testified equally to the intense workings
of his spirit and the rapid dissolution of his body.

I saw him for the last time in Paris in the autumn of 1847; he was in
a very bad way, afraid of speaking aloud, and only at moments his old
energy revived and its ebbing fires glowed brightly. It was at such a
moment that he wrote his letter[30] to Gogol.

The news of the revolution of February found him still alive; he died
taking its glow for the flush of the rising dawn.

       *       *       *       *       *

So this chapter ended in 1854; since that time much has changed. I have
been brought much closer to that period, nearer to the more remote past,
through persons who are here, through the arrival of Ogaryov and two
books, Annenkov’s _Biography of Stankevitch_ and the two first parts of
Byelinsky’s complete works. From the windows suddenly thrown open the
fresh air of the fields, the young breath of spring has been wafted into
the hospital wards....

Stankevitch’s correspondence was unnoticed when it came out. It appeared
at the wrong moment. At the end of 1857 Russia had not yet come to
herself after the funeral of Nicholas, she was expectant and hopeful;
that is the worst mood for receiving reminiscences ... but the book is
not lost. It will remain one of the rare monuments from which any man
who can read can find what was buried without a word in the wretched
graveyard of those days. The dead years, from 1825 to 1855, will soon
be utterly lost; the human tracks, swept away by the police, will
have vanished, and future generations will come to a standstill in
bewilderment before the smooth level waste, seeking the lost channels of
thought which were really never interrupted. The current was apparently
checked, Nicholas tied up the main artery—but the blood flowed along
side-channels. And it is just these capillaries which have left their
trace in the works of Byelinsky and the correspondence of Stankevitch.

Thirty years ago, the Russia of the future existed exclusively among
a few boys, hardly more than children, so insignificant and unnoticed
that there was room for them under the heels of the great boots of the
autocracy—and in them was the heritage of the 14th of December, the
heritage of a purely national Russia, as well as of the learning of all
humanity. This new life struggled on like the grass that tries to grow at
the mouth of the still smouldering crater.

In the very jaws of the monster these children stand out unlike other
children; they grow, develop, and begin to live a different life. Weak,
insignificant, unsupported, on the contrary persecuted by all, they might
easily have perished, leaving no trace, but they survive, or, if they die
on their way, all does not die with them. They are the rudimentary germs,
the embryos of history, barely perceptible, barely existing, like embryos
in general.

Little by little, groups of them are formed. What is more nearly akin to
them gathers round their centres; then the groups repel one another. This
splitting up gives them width and many-sidedness in their development;
after developing to the end, that is to the extreme, the branches unite
again by whatever names they may be called—Stankevitch’s circle, the
Slavophils, or our little circle.

The leading characteristic of them all is a profound feeling of aversion
for official Russia, for their environment, and at the same time the
impulse to get out of it—and in some a vehement desire to get rid of it.

The objection that these circles, unnoticed both from above and from
below, form an exceptional, a casual, a disconnected phenomenon, that the
education of the young people was for the most part exotic, alien, and
that they rather express the translation of French and German ideas into
Russian than anything of their own, seems to us quite groundless.

Possibly at the end of last and the beginning of this century there was
in the aristocracy a sprinkling of Russian foreigners who had sundered
all ties with the national life; but they had neither living interests,
nor circles based on convictions, nor a literature of their own. They
died out without leaving fruit. Victims of the divorce from the people
brought about by Peter the Great, they remained eccentric and whimsical,
they were men not merely superfluous but undeserving of pity. The war
of 1812 put an end to them—the old generation lived on, but none of the
younger developed in that direction. To include among them men of the
stamp of Tchaadayev would be the greatest mistake.

Protest, denunciation, hatred for one’s country if you will has a
completely different significance from indifferent aloofness. Byron,
lashing at English life, fleeing from England as from the plague,
remained a typical Englishman. Heine, trying through exasperation at the
loathsome political state of Germany to turn French, remained a genuine
German. The highest protest against Judaism—Christianity—is filled with
the spirit of Judaism. The separation of the states of North America
from England could lead to war and hatred, but it could not make the
Americans un-English.

As a rule, it is with great difficulty that men abandon their
physiological memories and the mould in which they are cast by heredity;
to do so a man must either be peculiarly passionless and lacking in
individual characteristics or must be absorbed in abstract pursuits. The
impersonality of mathematics, the unhuman objectivity of nature do not
call forth those sides of the soul and do not awaken them; but as soon
as we touch upon questions of life, of art, of morals, in which a man is
not only an observer and investigator, but at the same time himself an
interested party, then we find a physiological limit—which it is very
hard to cross with old blood and brains unless one could erase from them
all traces of the songs of the cradle, of the fields and the hills of
home, of the customs and whole setting of the past.

The poet or the artist in his truest work is always national. Whatever he
does, whatever aim and thought he may have in his work, he consciously
or unconsciously expresses some elements of the national character and
expresses them more deeply and more clearly than the very history of the
people. Even when renouncing everything national, the artist does not
lose the chief characteristics from which it can be recognised to what
people he belongs. Both in the Greek ‘Iphigenia’ and in the Oriental
‘Divan’ Goethe was a German. Poets really are, as the Romans called
them, prophets; only they do not foretell what is not and will be by
chance, but put into words what is unrecognised, what exists in the dim
consciousness of the masses, what is already slumbering in them.

Everything that has existed from time immemorial in the soul of the
Anglo-Saxon peoples is drawn together as in a ring by one personality;
and every fibre, every hint, every attempt, fermenting from generation
to generation, unconscious of itself, has taken form and language.

Probably no one supposes that the England of the Elizabethan times—the
majority of the people anyway—had a clear understanding of Shakespeare;
they have no distinct understanding of him even now—but then they have
no distinct understanding of themselves either. But I do not doubt
that when an Englishman goes to the theatre he understands Shakespeare
instinctively, through sympathy. At the moment when he is listening
to the play, something becomes clearer and more familiar to him. One
would have thought that a people so capable of rapid comprehension as
the French might have understood Shakespeare too. The character of
Hamlet, for instance, is so universally human, especially in the stage
of doubts and hesitation, in the consciousness of some black deeds being
perpetrated about him, some betrayal of what is great for the sake of
something that is mean and trivial, that it is hard to imagine that any
people could fail to understand him, but in spite of every trial and
effort, Hamlet remains alien to the Frenchman.

If the aristocrats of the past century, who systematically despised
everything Russian, remained in reality incredibly more Russian than
the house-serfs remained peasants, it is even more impossible that the
younger generation could have lost their Russian character because they
studied science and philosophy and French and German books. A section
of the Slavs at Moscow reached the point of ultra-Slavism with Hegel in
their hands.

The very circles of which I am speaking came into existence in natural
response to a deep inner need of the Russian life of that period.

We have spoken many times of the stagnation that followed the catastrophe
of 1825. The moral level of society sank, development was interrupted,
everything progressive and energetic was struck out of life. Those who
remained—frightened, weak, distracted—were petty and insignificant;
the worthless creatures of the generation of Alexander occupied the
foremost place; little by little they changed into cringing officials,
lost the savage poetry of revelry and of the audacity of the privileged
class together with every shadow of independent dignity; they served
persistently, they served until they reached high positions, but they
never became great personages. Their day was over.

Under this great world of society, the great world of the people
maintained an indifferent silence; nothing was changed for them—their
plight was bad, but no worse than before, the new blows fell not on their
scourged backs. Their time had not yet come. Between this roof and this
foundation children were the first to raise their heads, perhaps because
they did not suspect how dangerous it was; but, be that as it may, with
these children Russia, stunned and stupefied, began to come to life again.

What impressed them was the complete contradiction of the words they were
taught with the facts of life around them. Their teachers, their books,
their university spoke one language and that language was intelligible
to heart and mind. Their father and mother, their relations, and all
their surroundings spoke another with which neither mind nor heart was
in agreement—but with which the dominant authorities and financial
interests were in accord. This contradiction between education and
ordinary life nowhere reached such proportions as among the nobility of
Russia. The shaggy German student with his round cap covering a seventh
part of his head, with his world-shaking sallies, is far nearer to the
German _Spitzburger_ than is supposed, while the French _collégien_, thin
with vanity and emulation, is already _en herbe l’homme raisonnable qui
exploite sa position_.

The number of educated people amongst us has always been extremely
small; but those who were educated have always received an education, not
perhaps very thorough, but fairly general and humane: it made men of all
with whom it succeeded. But a man was just what was not wanted either
for the hierarchical pyramid or for the successful maintenance of the
landowning régime. The young man had either to dehumanise himself—and
the greater number did so—or to stop short and ask himself: ‘But is it
absolutely essential to go into the service? Is it really a good thing
to be a landowner?’ After that for some, the weaker and more impatient,
there followed the idle existence of a cornet on the retired list, the
sloth of the country, the dressing-gown, eccentricities, cards, wine; for
others a time of trial and inner travail. They could not live in complete
moral disharmony, nor could they be satisfied with a negative attitude of
withdrawal; awakened thought demanded an outlet. The various solutions
of these questions, all equally harassing for the young generation,
determined their distribution into various circles.

Thus, for instance, our little circle was formed in the university and
found Sungurov’s circle there already. His, like ours, was concerned
rather with politics than with learning. Stankevitch’s circle, which came
into existence at the same time, was equally near both and equally remote
from both. He went by another path, his interests were purely theoretical.

Between 1830 and 1840 our convictions were too youthful, too ardent
and passionate, not to be exclusive. We could feel a cold respect for
Stankevitch’s circle, but we could not be intimate with its members. They
traced philosophical systems, were absorbed in self-analysis, and found
peace in a luxurious pantheism from which Christianity was not excluded.
We were dreaming how to get up a new league in Russia on the pattern of
the Decembrists and looked upon knowledge itself as merely a means. The
government did its best to strengthen us in our revolutionary tendencies.

In 1834 all Sungurov’s circle was sent into exile and—vanished.

In 1835 we were exiled. Five years later we came back, hardened by our
experience. The dreams of youth had become the irrevocable determination
of maturity. This was the most brilliant period of Stankevitch’s circle.
Stankevitch himself I did not find in Moscow—he was in Germany; but it
was just at that moment that Byelinsky’s articles were beginning to
attract the attention of every one.

On our return we measured our strength with them. The battle was an
unequal one; basis, weapons, and language—all were different. After
fruitless skirmishes we saw that it was our turn now to undertake serious
study and we too set to work upon Hegel and the German philosophy. When
we had sufficiently assimilated that, it became evident that there was no
ground for dispute between us and Stankevitch’s circle.

The latter was inevitably bound to break up. It had done its work—and had
done it most brilliantly; its influence on the whole of literature and
academic teaching was immense—one need but recall the names of Byelinsky
and Granovsky; Koltsov was formed in it, Botkin, Katkov, and others
belonged to it. But it could not remain an exclusive circle without
passing into German formalism—men who are alive and Russian are not
capable of that.

Besides Stankevitch’s circle, there was another circle, formed during
our exile and in the same relation with them as we; its members were
afterwards called Slavophils. The Slavophils approached from the opposite
side the vital questions which occupied us, and were far more absorbed in
living work and real conflict than Stankevitch’s circle.

It was natural that Stankevitch’s society should split up between them
and us. The Aksakovs and Samarin joined the Slavophils, that is, Homyakov
and the Kireyevskys. Byelinsky and Bakunin joined us. The closest
friend of Stankevitch, the most nearly akin to him in his whole nature,
Granovsky, was one of us from the day he came back from Germany.

If Stankevitch had lived, his circle would still have broken up. He would
himself have gone over to Homyakov or to us.

By 1842 the sifting in accordance with natural affinity had long been
complete, and our camp stood in battle array face to face with the
Slavophils. Of that conflict we will speak in another place.

In conclusion I will add a few words concerning the elements of which
Stankevitch’s circle was composed; that will throw a light on the strange
underground currents which were silently undermining the strong crust of
the Russo-German régime.

Stankevitch was the son of a wealthy landowner of the province of
Voronezh, and was at first brought up in all the ease and freedom of a
landowner’s life in the country; then he was sent to the Ostrogozhsk
school (and that was something quite original). For fine natures a
wealthy and even aristocratic education is very good. Comfort gives
unfettered freedom and space for growth and development of every sort,
it saves the young mind from premature anxiety and apprehension of the
future, and provides complete freedom to pursue the subjects to which it
is drawn.

Stankevitch’s development was broad and harmonious; his artistic,
musical, and at the same time reflective and contemplative nature showed
itself from the very beginning of his university career. Stankevitch’s
special faculty, not only for deeply and warmly understanding, but also
for reconciling, or as the Germans say ‘removing’ contradictions, was
due to his artistic temperament. The craving for harmony, proportion, and
enjoyment makes such people indulgent as to the means; to avoid seeing
the well they cover it over with canvas. The canvas will not stand a
push, but the yawning gulf does not vex the eye. In this way the Germans
reached pantheistic quietism and slumbered tranquilly upon it; but such a
gifted Russian as Stankevitch could not remain ‘tranquil’ for long.

This is evident from the first question which involuntarily troubled
Stankevitch immediately after he left the university.

His university studies were finished, he was left to himself, he was no
longer led by others, _but he did not know what he was to do_. There was
nothing to go on with, there was no one and nothing around that appealed
to a living man. A youth, taking stock of his surroundings and having had
time to look about him after school, found himself in the Russia of those
days in the position of a traveller awakening in the steppe; one might
go where one would—there were traces, there were bones of those who had
perished, there were wild beasts and the empty desert on all sides with
its dull menace of danger, in which it is easy to perish and impossible
to struggle. The one thing which could be pursued was study.

And so Stankevitch persevered in the pursuit of learning. He imagined
that it was his vocation to be an historian, and began studying
Herodotus; it could be foreseen that nothing could come of that pursuit.

He would have liked to be in Petersburg in which there was such a rush of
activity of a sort and to which he was attracted by the theatre and by
nearness to Europe; he would have liked to be an honorary superintendent
of the school at Ostrogozhsk. He determined to be of use in that ‘modest
career’—that was even less successful than Herodotus. He was in reality
drawn to Moscow, to Germany, to his own university circle, to his own
interests. He could not exist without intimate friends (another proof
that there were at hand no interests very near to his heart). The craving
for sympathy was so strong in Stankevitch that he sometimes invented
intellectual sympathy and talents and saw and admired in people qualities
which were completely non-existent in them.[31]

But—and in this lay his personal power—he did not often need to have
recourse to such fictions, at every step he met wonderful people, he
had the faculty of meeting them, and every one to whom he opened his
heart remained his passionate friend for life; and to every such friend
Stankevitch’s influence was either an immense benefit or an alleviation
of his burden.

In Voronezh Stankevitch used sometimes to go to the one local library
for books. There he met a poor young man of humble station, modest and
melancholy. It turned out that he was the son of a cattle-dealer who had
business with Stankevitch’s father over sales. Stankevitch befriended
the young man; the cattle-dealer’s son was a great reader and fond of
talking of books. Stankevitch got to know him well. Shyly and timidly
the youth confessed that he had himself tried his hand at writing verses
and, blushing, ventured to show them. Stankevitch was amazed at the
immense talent not conscious nor confident of itself. From that minute
he did not let him go until all Russia was reading Koltsov’s songs with
enthusiasm. It is quite likely that the poor cattle-dealer, oppressed by
his relations, unwarmed by sympathy or recognition, might have wasted his
songs on the empty steppe beyond the Volga over which he drove his herds,
and Russia would never have heard those exquisite, truly national songs,
if Stankevitch had not crossed his path.

When Bakunin finished his studies at the school of artillery, he received
a commission as an officer in the Guards. It is said that his father was
angry with him and himself asked that he should be transferred into the
regular army. Cast away in some God-forsaken village of White Russia
with his battery, he grew morose and unsociable, left off performing
his duties, and would lie for whole days together on his bed wrapped in
a sheepskin. The commander of his battery was sorry for him; he had,
however, no alternative but to remind him that he must either do his
duties or go on the retired list. Bakunin had no suspicion that he had
a right to take the latter course and at once asked to be relieved of
his commission. On receiving his discharge he came to Moscow, and from
that date (about 1836) life began in earnest for him. He had studied
nothing before, had read nothing, and scarcely knew German. With great
dialectical abilities, with a gift for obstinate, persistent thinking,
he had strayed without map or compass in a world of fantastic projects
and efforts at self-education. Stankevitch perceived his talents and set
him down to philosophy. Bakunin learnt German on Kant and Fichte and then
set to work upon Hegel, whose method and logic he mastered to perfection,
and to whom did he not preach it afterwards? To us and to Byelinsky, to
ladies and to Proudhon.

But Byelinsky drew as much from the same source; Stankevitch’s views on
art, on poetry and its relation to life, grew in Byelinsky’s articles
into that powerful modern criticism, into that new outlook upon the
world and upon life which impressed all thinking Russia and made all
the pedants and doctrinaires draw back from Byelinsky with horror. It
was Stankevitch’s lot to initiate Byelinsky into the mysteries; but the
passionate, merciless, fiercely intolerant talent that carried Byelinsky
beyond all bounds wounded the aesthetically harmonious temperament of
Stankevitch.

And at the same time it was Stankevitch who encouraged the gentle,
loving, dreamy, and at that time melancholy Granovsky. Stankevitch was a
support and an elder brother to him. His letters to Granovsky are full of
charm and beauty—and how Granovsky loved him!

‘I have not yet recovered from the first shock,’ wrote Granovsky soon
after Stankevitch’s death, ‘real grief has not touched me yet; I am
afraid of it in the future. Now I am still unable to believe that my loss
is possible—only at times there is a stab at my heart. He has taken with
him something essential to my life. To no one in the world was I so much
indebted. His influence over us was always unbounded and always fruitful
of good.’

And how many could say that! Perhaps have said it!

In Stankevitch’s circle only he and Botkin[32] were well-to-do and
completely free from financial anxieties. The others made up a very
mixed proletariat. Bakunin’s relations gave him nothing; Byelinsky, the
son of a petty official of Tchembary, expelled from Moscow University
for ‘lack of ability,’ lived on the scanty pay he got for his articles.
Krassov,[33] on taking his degree, went to a situation at a landowner’s
in some province, but life with this patriarchal slaveowner so terrified
him that he came back on foot to Moscow with a wallet on his back, in
the winter, together with some peasants in charge of a train of wagons.
Probably a father or mother of each one of them when giving them their
blessing had said—and who dare reproach them for it—‘Come, mind you work
hard at your studies; and when you have taken your degree you must make
your own way, there is nobody to leave you anything, we’ve nothing to
give you either; you must make a career for yourself and think about us
too.’ On the other hand, Stankevitch had probably been told that he could
take a prominent position in society, that he was called by wealth and
birth to play a great part—while in Botkin’s household every one, from
his old father down to the clerks, urged upon him by word and example the
necessity of making money, of piling up more and more.

What was it touched these men? what inspiration re-created them? They
had no thought, no care for their social position, for their personal
advantage, for their security; their whole life, all their efforts were
bent on the public good regardless of all personal interests; some forgot
their wealth, others their poverty, and went forward, without looking
back, to the solution of theoretical questions. The interests of truth,
the interests of learning, the interests of art, _humanitas_, swallowed
up everything.

And note that the renunciation of this world was not confined to the
time at the university and two or three years of youth. The best men of
Stankevitch’s circle are dead; the others have remained what they were to
this day. Byelinsky, worn out by work and suffering, fell a fighter and a
beggar. Granovsky, delivering his message of learning and humanity, died
as he mounted his platform. Botkin did not, in fact, become a merchant
... not one of them ‘distinguished themselves’ in the government service.

It was just the same in the two other circles, the Slavophils and ours.
Where, in what corner of the Western world of to-day, do you find such
groups of devotees of thought, of zealots of learning, of fanatics of
conviction—whose hair turns grey but whose enthusiasms are for ever young?

Where? Point to them. I boldly throw down the challenge—and I only except
for the moment one country, Italy—and measure the paces for the conflict,
_i.e._, I will not let my opponent escape from statistics into history.

We know how great was the interest in theory and the passion for truth
and religion in the days of such martyrs for science and reason as
Bruno, Galileo, and the rest; we know, too, what the France of the
Encyclopaedists was in the second half of the eighteenth century; but
later? Later _sta viator_!

In the Europe of to-day there is no youth and there are no young men.
The most brilliant representative of the France of the last years of
the Restoration and of the July dynasty, Victor Hugo, has protested
against my saying this. He speaks especially of the young France of the
’twenties, and I am ready to admit that I have been too sweeping[34]—but
beyond that I will not yield one step even to him. I have their own
admissions. Take _Les Mémoires d’un Enfant du Siècle_, and the poems of
Alfred de Musset, recall the France depicted in George Sand’s letters, in
the contemporary drama and novels, and in the cases in the law courts.

But what does all that prove? A very great deal; and in the first place
that the Chinese shoes of German manufacture in which Russia has hobbled
for a hundred and fifty years, though they have caused many painful
corns, have evidently not crippled her bones, since whenever she has
had a chance of stretching her limbs, such fresh young energies have
been apparent. That does not guarantee the future, but it does make it
extremely _possible_.




Chapter 26

WARNINGS—THE PROMOTION OFFICE—A MINISTER’S SECRETARIAT—THE THIRD
SECTION—THE STORY OF A SENTRY—GENERAL DUBBELT—COUNT BENCKENDORF—OLGA
ALEXANDROVNA ZHEREBTSOV—MY SECOND EXILE


Though we were so comfortable in Moscow, we had to move to Petersburg.
My father insisted upon it. Count Strogonov, Minister of Home Affairs,
commanded me to enter his secretariat, and we set off there at the end of
the summer of 1840.

I had, however, been in Petersburg for two or three weeks in December
1839.

It had happened in this way. When I was relieved from police supervision
and received the right to visit the ‘residence and the capital,’ as K.
Aksakov called Petersburg and Moscow respectively, my father definitely
preferred the ‘residence’ on the Neva to the ancient capital. Count
Strogonov, the director of the university, wrote to his brother and I had
to present myself to him. But that was not all. I had been recommended by
the governor of Vladimir for the grade of collegiate assessor; my father
wanted me to receive this grade as soon as possible. In the Promotion
Office the provinces take their turn; this turn comes with the pace of
a tortoise, unless special wires are pulled. They almost always are;
their cost is excessive because a whole province may be taken outside its
regular turn, but a single name must not. Therefore all have to be paid
for, ‘or else some would be getting an advantage for nothing.’ Usually
the officials to be promoted get up a subscription and send a delegate to
represent them; but on this occasion my father took all the expense upon
himself, and in that way several of the titular councillors of Vladimir
were indebted to him for becoming assessors eight months before the
proper time.

When he sent me off to Petersburg to attend to this business, my father
repeated once more, as he said good-bye to me, ‘For God’s sake, be
careful; be on your guard with every one, from the conductor of the
_diligence_ to the acquaintances to whom I am giving you letters. Do not
trust any one. Petersburg nowadays is not what it was in our time. There
is sure to be a spy or two in every company. _Tiens-toi pour averti._’
With this commentary on Petersburg life I got into a diligence of the
earliest pattern, _i.e._ having all the defects gradually eliminated from
later ones, and drove off.

When I reached Petersburg at nine o’clock in the evening, I took a sledge
and drove to St. Isaac’s Square. I wanted that to be the place with which
I was to begin my acquaintance with Petersburg. Everything was covered
with deep snow, only Peter the Great on his horse, gloomy and menacing,
stood out sharply against the grey background and the darkness of the
night.

    ‘And looming black through mists of night
    With stately poise and haughty mien,
    Pointing afar with outstretched hand,
    A warrior on a horse is seen,
    A mighty figure, bold and free.
    The steed is reined. It rears aloft
    And paws the air imperiously,
    So that its lord might further see....’[35]

Why was it the conflict of the 14th of December took place on that
Square? Why was it from that pedestal that the first cry of Russian
freedom rang out? Why did the revolting troops cling round Peter the
First? Was it his reward ... or his punishment? The 14th of December 1825
was the sequel of the work interrupted on the 21st of January 1725.[36]
Nicholas’s guns were turned upon the insurrection and upon the statue
alike; it is a pity that the grapeshot did not shoot down the bronze
Peter....

Returning to my hotel I found one of my cousins awaiting me, and after
talking to him of one thing and another, I touched, without thinking,
upon St. Isaac’s Square and the 14th of December.

‘How is uncle?’ asked my cousin. ‘How did you leave him?’

‘Thank God, just as usual; he sends you his greetings.’

My cousin, without changing his expression in the least, telegraphed
reproach, advice, warning with his eyes alone; the direction of his
eyes made me look round. A man was putting wood into the stove; when he
had lighted it up, himself performing the duty of bellows as he did so,
and making a pool on the floor from the snow that melted off his boots,
he took an oven fork, the length of a Cossack’s lance, and went out.
My cousin at once fell to scolding me for having touched upon such a
‘scabrous’ subject, and in Russian too, before the man. As he went away
he said to me in an undertone: ‘By the way, before I forget it, there is
a barber comes here to the hotel, he sells all sorts of rubbish, combs
and rotten pomatums, please be on your guard with him. I am certain that
he is connected with the police and talks all sorts of nonsense. While I
was staying here I bought some trifles from him just to get rid of him.’

‘To encourage him. Well, and is the laundress in the ranks of the
gendarmes too?’

‘You may laugh, you may laugh, you’ll come to grief before any one;
you’re only just back from exile, and they will put a dozen nurses to
keep watch on you.’

‘Though they say that seven are enough for the child to grow up with one
eye.’

Next day I went to see the official who used in old days to look after my
father’s affairs: he was a Ukrainian, who spoke Russian with an appalling
accent, never listened to what was said to him, and showed his surprise
at everything by shutting his eyes and holding up his fat little paws
in a way that reminded one of a mouse.... He could not restrain himself
either, and seeing that I had taken up my hat, led me aside to the
window, looked about him, and said to me: ‘You mustn’t be angry. Just for
the sake of my old acquaintance with the family of your father and his
late brothers, you must not say much about what has happened to you. Upon
my word, just think yourself, what use is it? Now it has all passed like
smoke. You said something before my cook; she is a Finnish woman. Who can
tell what she is, and I was a little ... more than a little in fact ...
frightened.’

A pleasant town, I thought, as I left the frightened clerk.... The soft
snow was falling in big flakes, the damp, cold wind penetrated to the
very bones, and lifted one’s hat and coat. My driver, who could scarcely
see a step before him, screwing up his eyes and bending his head before
the snow, shouted, ‘’Ware, ’ware!’ I remembered my father’s advice. I
thought of my cousin, of the clerk, and of the travelling sparrow in
George Sand’s fable who asked the half-frozen wolf in Lithuania why he
lived in such a horrid climate. ‘Freedom,’ answered the wolf, ‘makes one
forget the climate.’

The driver was right—beware, beware! and how I longed to make haste and
get away.

My stay was, in fact, brief on my first visit. In three weeks I had
finished all my business, and galloped back to Vladimir for the New Year.

The experience I had gained in Vyatka was extremely useful to me in
the Promotion Office. I knew already that the Promotion Office was
something after the style of old St. Giles’ in London, the den of a
gang of officially recognised thieves, which no inspection, no reform
could change. To clear St. Giles’, they took a pick, pulled down the
houses, and razed them to the ground. That is what should be done with
the Promotion Office. Moreover, it is utterly useless—a sort of parasitic
service, the office of official promotion, a Ministry of grades and
ranks, an archaeological society for the investigation of letters of
nobility, a secretariat of secretariats. It need hardly be said that the
abuses there were bound to be on a higher scale.

My father’s agent brought me a faded old man in a uniform, every button
of which was hanging by a thread; he was anything but clean, and had
already had a drop, though it was early in the day. This was the proof
corrector of the Senate Printing Press; after correcting grammatical
errors, he used to assist various secretaries in other errors behind
the scenes. Within half an hour I had come to terms with him, after
bargaining exactly as though we were discussing the purchase of a horse
or a piece of furniture. He could not, however, give me a positive answer
himself, but ran round to the Senate for instructions, and after getting
them at last, asked for a ‘deposit.’

‘But they will keep their promise?’

‘Oh, excuse me, they are not people like that. It never happens that
after taking a gratuity they do not discharge a debt of honour,’ answered
the proof corrector in a tone of so much offence that I thought it
necessary to soften him with a slight additional gratuity.

‘There used,’ he observed, when I had thus propitiated him, ‘to be
a secretary in the Promotion Office who was a wonderful man. You’ve
maybe heard of him, he used to take bribes recklessly and never got
into trouble. Once a provincial official came to the office to talk
about his business, and as he said good-bye he gave him a grey note
on the sly, under cover of his hat. “But why do you make a secret of
it?” the secretary said to him—“upon my word, as though you were giving
me a love-letter. If it’s a grey one—all the better. Let the other
petitioners see it, it will encourage them when they know that I have
accepted two hundred roubles and settled your business for it.” And
smoothing out the note, he folded it up and put it in his waistcoat
pocket.’

The press corrector was right. The secretary discharged his debt of
honour.

I left Petersburg with a feeling not very far from hatred, and yet there
was no help for it. I had to move to that unattractive town.

I was not long in the service. I got out of my duties in every possible
way, and so I have not a great deal to tell about the service. The
secretariat of the Ministry of Home Affairs had the same relation to the
secretariat of the Vyatka government as boots that have been cleaned
have to those that have not; the leather is the same, the sole is the
same, but the one sort are muddy, while the others are polished. I did
not see clerks drunk in Petersburg. I did not see twenty kopecks taken
for looking up a reference, but yet I somehow fancied that under those
close-fitting dress-coats and carefully combed heads there was such a
nasty, black, envious, petty, and cowardly soul that the head-clerk
of my table in Vyatka seemed to me more of a man than any of them. As
I looked at my new colleagues, I recalled how, on one occasion, after
having a drop too much at the supper at the district surveyors, he played
a dance tune on the guitar, and at last could not resist leaping up with
his guitar and beginning to join in the dance; but these Petersburg
men were never carried away by anything. Their blood never boiled;
wine did not turn their heads. In some dancing class, in company with
German young ladies, they could walk through a French quadrille, pose
as disillusioned, repeat lines from Timofeyev[37] or Kukolnik[38] ...
they were diplomats, aristocrats, and Manfreds. It is only a pity that
Dashkov, the Minister, could not train these Childe Harolds not to stand
at attention and bow even at the theatre, at church, and everywhere.

The Petersburghers laugh at the costumes seen in Moscow; they are
outraged by the caps and Hungarian jackets, the long hair and civilian
moustaches. Moscow certainly is a non-military city, rather careless
and unaccustomed to discipline, but whether that is a good quality or a
defect is a matter of opinion. The harmony of uniformity, the absence
of variety, of what is personal and whimsical, a traditional obligatory
dress and external discipline are all found on the largest scale in the
most inhuman condition in which men live—in barracks. The uniform and a
complete absence of variety are passionately loved by despotism. Nowhere
are fashions followed so respectfully as in Petersburg, and that shows
the immaturity of our culture; our clothes are alien. In Europe people
dress, but we dress up, and so are terrified if a sleeve is too full,
or a collar too narrow. In Paris all that people are afraid of is being
dressed without taste; in London all that they are afraid of is catching
cold; in Italy every one dresses as he likes best. If one were to show
an Englishman the battalions of fops on the Nevsky Prospect, all wearing
exactly similar, tightly buttoned coats, he would take them for a squad
of ‘policemen.’

I had to do violence to my feelings every time I went to the Ministry.
The chief of the secretariat, K. K. von Paul, _Herrnhuter_,[39] and a
virtuous and lymphatic native of the Island of Dago, induced a kind
of pious boredom in all his surroundings. The heads of the sections
ran anxiously about with portfolios and were dissatisfied with the
head-clerks of the tables; the latter wrote and wrote and certainly were
overwhelmed with work, and had the prospect before them of dying at those
tables, or, at any rate, if not particularly fortunate, sitting there
for twenty years. In the Registration Office there was a clerk who had
for thirty-three years been keeping a record of the papers and printed
parcels that went out.

My ‘literary exercises’ were of some benefit to me here too; after
experience of my incapacity for anything else, the head of the section
entrusted me with the composition of a general report on the Ministry
from the various provincial secretariats. The foresight of the government
had led them to propound certain general deductions beforehand, not
leaving them to the chance risks of facts and figures. Thus, for
instance, in the sketch of the proposed report appeared the statement:
‘From the examination of the number and character of crimes’ (neither
their number nor their character was yet known) ‘your Majesty may be
graciously pleased to perceive the progress of national morality, and
the increased zeal of the officials for its improvement.’ Fate and Count
Benckendorf saved me from taking part in this faked report. It happened
in this way.

At nine o’clock one morning, early in December, Matvey told me that the
superintendent of the local police-station wished to see me. I could
not guess what had brought him to me, and bade Matvey show him in. The
superintendent showed me a scrap of paper on which was written that I
was summoned at ten o’clock in the morning to the Third Section of His
Majesty’s Own Secretariat.

‘Very well,’ I answered. ‘That is by Tsyepnoy Bridge, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ he answered. ‘I have a sledge downstairs. I
will go with you.’

It is a bad look-out, I thought, and with a pang at my heart I went into
the bedroom. My wife was sitting with the baby, who had only just begun
to recover after a long illness. ‘What does he want?’ she asked. ‘I don’t
know, some nonsense. I shall have to go with him.... Don’t be anxious.’

My wife looked at me and said nothing; she only turned pale as though a
dark cloud had passed over her, and handed me the child to say good-bye
to it.

I felt at that moment how much heavier every blow is for a man with wife
and children; the blow does not strike him alone, he suffers for all, and
unconsciously blames himself for their sufferings.

The feeling can be conquered, overcome, concealed, but one must recognise
what it costs. I went out of the house in black misery. Very different
was my mood when six years before I had set off with the police-master
Miller to the Pretchistensky police-station.

We drove over the Tsyepnoy Bridge and through the Summer Garden and
turned towards what had been Kotchubey’s house; in the lodge there, the
secular inquisition founded by Nicholas was installed: people who went in
at its back gates, before which we stopped, did not always come out of
them again, or, if they did, it was perhaps to be cast away in Siberia or
perish in the Alexeyevsky ravelin. We crossed all sorts of courtyards and
little squares, and came at last to the office. In spite of the presence
of the commissar, the gendarme did not admit us, but summoned an official
who, after reading the summons, left the police-superintendent in the
corridor and asked me to follow him. He took me to the director’s room.
At a big table near which stood several armchairs a thin, grey-headed old
man, with a sinister face, was sitting in complete solitude. To add to
his dignity, he went on reading a paper to the end, then got up and came
towards me. He had a star on his breast from which I concluded that he
was some sort of commanding officer in the army of spies.

‘Have you seen General Dubbelt?’

‘No.’

He paused. Then, frowning and knitting his brows, without looking me
in the face, he asked me in a sort of threadbare voice (the voice
reminded me of the nervous, hissing notes of Golitsyn junior at the
Moscow commission of inquiry): ‘I think that you have not very long had
permission to visit Petersburg or Moscow?’

‘I received it last year.’

The old man shook his head. ‘And you have made a bad use of the Tsar’s
graciousness. I believe you’ll have to go back again to Vyatka.’

I gazed at him in amazement.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘you’ve chosen a fine way to show your gratitude to
the government that permitted you to return.’

‘I don’t understand in the least,’ I said, lost in conjecture.

‘You don’t understand? That’s just what is bad, too! What connections!
What pursuits! Instead of showing your zeal from the first, effacing
the stains left from your youthful errors, turning your abilities to
service—no, indeed, it’s nothing but politics and criticisms, and all
to the detriment of the government. This is what your talk has brought
you to! How is it you’ve learnt nothing from experience? How do you know
that among those who talk to you there is not always some scoundrel[40]
who asks nothing better than to come _here_ a minute later to give
information.’

‘If you can explain to me what it all means, you will greatly oblige me.
I am racking my brains and cannot understand what your words are leading
up to, or at what they are hinting.’

‘What they are leading to? Hm.... Come, did you hear that a sentry at the
Blue Bridge killed and robbed a man at night?’

‘Yes, I did,’ I answered with great simplicity.

‘And perhaps you repeated it?’

‘I believe I did repeat it.’

‘With comments, I daresay?’

‘Very likely.’

‘With what sort of comments? There you see the disposition to attack the
government. I tell you openly, the one thing that does you credit is your
sincere avowal, it will certainly be taken into consideration by the
Count.’

‘Upon my word’ I said, ‘what is there to avow? All the town was talking
of the story; it was talked of in the secretariat, and in the Ministry
of Home Affairs and in the shops. What is there surprising in my having
spoken about the incident?’

‘The diffusion of false and mischievous rumours is a crime amenable to
the law.’

‘You seem to be charging me with having invented the story.’

‘In the note submitted to the Tsar it is merely stated that you assisted
in the propagation of this mischievous rumour, upon which the decision of
the Most High concerning your return to Vyatka has been taken.’

‘You are simply trying to frighten me,’ I answered. ‘How is it possible
to send a man with a wife and child a thousand miles away for such a
trivial matter, and, what’s more, to condemn and sentence him without
even inquiring whether it is true.’

‘You have admitted it yourself.’

‘But you say the report was submitted and the matter settled before you
spoke to me.’

‘Read for yourself.’ The old man went up to the table, fumbled among a
small heap of papers, coolly pulled out one and handed it to me. I read
it and could not believe my eyes; such complete absence of justice, such
insolent, shameless disregard of the law was amazing, even in Russia.

I did not speak. I fancy that the old man himself felt that it was a very
absurd and extremely silly business, as he did not think it necessary to
defend it further, but after a brief silence asked:

‘I believe you said you were married?’

‘I am married.’

‘It is a pity that we did not know that before. However, if anything can
be done, the Count will do it. I will repeat our conversation to him. _In
any case_ you will be banished from Petersburg.’

He looked at me. I did not speak, but felt that my face was burning.
Everything I could not utter, everything restrained within me could be
seen in my face.

The old man dropped his eyes, paused, and in an apathetic voice, with an
affectation of refined politeness, said to me: ‘I will not venture to
detain you further. I most sincerely hope—however, you will hear later.’

I rushed home. My heart was boiling with a consuming fury—that feeling of
impotence, of having no rights, the position of a caged beast at which a
scornful street boy mocks, knowing that all the tiger’s strength is not
enough to break the bars.

I found my wife in a fever; she was taken ill that day, and, having
another fright in the evening, was a few days later prematurely confined.
The baby only lived a day, and it was three or four years before she
fully recovered her strength.

They say that that tender paterfamilias, Nicholas Pavlovitch, shed tears
when his daughter died.... And what strange passion induces them to
raise a hubbub, gallop full-speed, make such a fuss and do everything
in tearing haste, as though the town were on fire, the throne were
tottering, or the dynasty in danger, and all that without the slightest
necessity! It is the sense of romance of the police, the dramatic efforts
of the detective, the spectacular setting for the display of loyal
zeal.... The janissaries, the swashbucklers, the bloodhounds!

On the evening of the day on which I had been to the Third Section, we
were sitting sorrowfully at a small table—the baby was playing with his
toys on it; we spoke little—and all at once some one pulled the bell so
violently that we could not help starting. Matvey rushed to open the
door, and a second later an officer of gendarmes, clashing his sabre and
jingling his spurs, darted into the room and began in choice language
apologising to my wife. He could not have imagined, he had had no
suspicion, no idea that there was a lady and children in the case. It was
extremely unfortunate.... Gendarmes are the very flower of courtesy; if
it were not for their duty, for the sacred obligations of the service,
they would never make secret reports, or even beat post-boys and drivers
at posting-stations. I know that from the Krutitsky Barracks where the
_désolé_ officer was so deeply distressed at being forced to feel in my
pockets. Paul Louis Courier[41] observed in his day that executioners and
prosecutors are the most courteous of men. ‘My dear executioner,’ writes
the prosecutor, ‘if it is not troubling you too much, you will do me the
greatest service if you will kindly undertake to chop off So-and-so’s
head to-morrow morning.’ And the executioner hastens to answer that he
esteems himself fortunate indeed that he can by so trifling a service do
something agreeable to the prosecutor and remains always his devoted and
obedient servant the executioner, and the other man, the third, remains
devoted without his head!

‘General Dubbelt summons you to his presence.’

‘When?’

‘Upon my word! now, at once, this minute.’

‘Matvey, give me my overcoat.’

I pressed my wife’s hand—her face was flushed, her hand was burning. Why
this hurry at ten o’clock in the evening? Had a plot been discovered? Had
some one run away? Was the precious life of Nicholas in danger? I really
was unfair to that sentry, I thought. There was nothing to be surprised
at in one of the agents of this government murdering two or three
passers-by; the sentries of the second and third degree are no better
than their comrade on the Blue Bridge. And what about the head sentry of
all?

Dubbelt had summoned me in order to tell me that Count Benckendorf
commanded my presence at eight o’clock next morning to inform me of the
decision of the Most High.

Dubbelt was an original person; he was probably more intelligent than
the whole of the Third Section—indeed, of all the three sections of
His Majesty’s Own Secretariat. His sunken face, shaded by long, fair
moustaches, his fatigued expression, particularly the furrows on his
cheeks and on his brow, unmistakably betrayed that his breast had been
the battlefield of many passions before the pale-blue uniform had
dominated, or rather hidden, everything within it. His features had
something wolfish and even foxy about them, _i.e._, they expressed the
subtle shrewdness of beasts of prey; there was at once evasiveness and
conceit in them. He was always courteous.

When I went into his study, he was sitting in a uniform coat, without
epaulettes, and smoking a pipe as he wrote. He rose instantly, and
asking me to sit down facing him, began with the following surprising
sentence:

‘Count Alexandr Christophorovitch has given me this opportunity of making
your acquaintance. I believe you saw Sahtynsky this morning?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I am very sorry that the occasion that has forced me to ask you to see
me is not quite an agreeable one for you. Your imprudence has again
brought his Majesty’s anger upon you.’

‘I will say to you, General, what I said to Mr. Sahtynsky, I cannot
imagine that I am being exiled simply for having repeated a street
rumour, which you, of course, heard before I did, and possibly spoke of
just as I did.’

‘Yes, I heard the rumour, and I spoke of it, and in that we are alike;
but this is where the difference comes in—in repeating the absurd story
I swore that there was nothing in it, while you made the rumour a ground
for attacking the whole police. It is this unfortunate passion _de
dénigrer le gouvernement_—a passion that has developed in all of you
gentlemen from the fatal example of the West. It is not with us as in
France, where the government is at daggers drawn with the parties—there
it is dragged into the mud. Our government is paternal—everything is
done as privately as possible.... We do our very utmost that everything
should go as quietly and smoothly as possible, and here men, who in spite
of painful experience persist in a fruitless opposition, alarm public
opinion by repeating verbally, and in writing, that the soldiers of the
police murder men in the streets. Isn’t that true? You have written about
it, haven’t you?’

‘I attach so little importance to the matter that I don’t think it
necessary to conceal that I have written about it, and I will add to
whom—to my father.’

‘Of course, it is not an important matter, but see what it has brought
upon you. His Majesty at once remembered your name, and that you had
been in Vyatka, and commanded that you should be sent back there, and so
the Count has commissioned me to inform you that you must come to him
to-morrow at eight o’clock and he will announce to you the decision of
the Most High.’

‘And so it is left that I am to go to Vyatka with a sick wife and a sick
child on account of something that you say is not important?...’

‘Why, are you in the service?’ Dubbelt asked me, looking intently at the
buttons of my uniform coat.

‘In the Ministry of Home Affairs.’

‘Have you been there long?’

‘Six months.’

‘And all the time in Petersburg?’

‘All the time.’

‘I had no idea of it.’

‘You see,’ I said, smiling, ‘how discreetly I have behaved.’

Sahtynsky did not know that I was married, Dubbelt did not know that I
was in the service, but both knew what I said in my own room, what I
thought, and what I wrote to my father.... What was really wrong was that
I was just beginning to be friendly with Petersburg literary men, and to
publish articles, and, worse still, had been transferred from Vladimir
to Petersburg by Count Strogonov without the secret police having been
consulted, and when I arrived in Petersburg had not presented myself
either to Dubbelt or to the Third Section, as worthy persons had hinted
that I should do.

‘To be sure,’ Dubbelt interrupted me, ‘all the evidence that has been
collected about you is to your credit. Only yesterday I was speaking to
Zhukovsky and should be thankful to hear my son spoken of as he spoke of
you.’

‘And yet I am to go to Vyatka?’

‘You see it is your misfortune that the secret report has been handed
in already, and that many circumstances had not been taken into
consideration. You will have to go, there is no altering that, but I
imagine that it might be another town instead of Vyatka. I will talk it
over with the Count, he is going to-night to the Palace. We will try and
do all that can be done to make things easier; the Count is a man of
angelic kindness.’

I got up, Dubbelt escorted me to the door of the study. At that point I
could not restrain myself, and stopping, I said to him:

‘I have one small favour to ask of you, General. If you want me, please
do not send constables or gendarmes. They are noisy and alarming,
especially in the evening. Why should my sick wife be more severely
punished than any one on account of the sentry business?’

‘Oh! good heavens, how unpleasant that is,’ replied Dubbelt, ‘how
tactless they all are! You may rest assured that I will not send a
policeman again. And so till to-morrow; don’t forget, eight o’clock at
the Count’s; we shall meet there.’

It was exactly as though we were agreeing to go to Smurov’s to eat
oysters together.

At eight o’clock next morning I was in Benckendorf’s reception room.
I found five or six petitioners waiting there; they stood gloomy and
anxious by the wall, started at every sound, and then timidly drew
themselves in again, and bowed to every adjutant that passed. Among their
number was a woman in deep mourning, with tear-stained eyes. She sat
with a paper rolled up in her hand, and the roll trembled like a leaf.
Three paces from her stood a tall, rather bent old man of seventy, bald
and sallow, in a dark-green overcoat, with a row of medals and crosses
on his breast. From time to time he sighed, shook his head and murmured
something to himself.

Some sort of ‘friend of the family,’ a flunkey, or a clerk on duty, sat
in the window, lolling at his ease. He got up when I went in, and looking
intently at his face I recognised him; that loathsome figure had been
pointed out to me at the theatre as one of the chief street detectives,
and his name, I remember, was Fabre. He asked me:

‘Have you come with a petition to the Count?’

‘I have come at his summons.’

‘Your surname?’

I mentioned it.

‘Ah,’ he said, changing his tone as though he had met an old
acquaintance, ‘won’t you be pleased to sit down? The Count will be here
in a quarter of an hour.’

It was horribly still and _unheimlich_ in the room, the daylight hardly
penetrated through the fog and frozen window-panes, no one said a word.
The adjutants ran quickly to and fro, and the gendarme standing at the
door sometimes jingled his accoutrements as he shifted from foot to foot.
Two more petitioners came in. The clerk on duty ran to ask each what
he had come about. One of the adjutants went up to him and began in a
half-whisper telling him some story, assuming a desperately roguish air
as he did so. No doubt it was something revolting, for they interspersed
their talk at frequent intervals with flunkeyish, noiseless laughter,
during which the worthy clerk, affecting to be quite helpless, and ready
to explode, repeated: ‘Do stop, for God’s sake stop, I can’t bear it.’

Five minutes later Dubbelt came in with his uniform unbuttoned as though
he were off duty, glanced casually at the petitioners, whereupon they all
bowed, and seeing me at the farther end said: ‘_Bonjour, Monsieur Herzen.
Votre affaire va parfaitement bien_ ... very well indeed.’

They would let me stay, perhaps! I was on the point of asking, but before
I had time to utter a word Dubbelt had disappeared. Next there walked
into the room a general, polished up and highly decorated, tightly laced
and stiffly erect, in white breeches, with a scarf across his breast.
I have never seen a finer general. If ever there is an exhibition of
generals in London as there now is a Baby Exhibition at Cincinnati, I
should advise his being sent from Petersburg. The general went up to the
door from which Benckendorf was to enter and became petrified in stiff
immobility; with great interest I scrutinised this sergeant’s ideal. A
lot of soldiers, I expect, he had flogged in his day for falling out of
step! Where do these people come from? He was born for rifle drill and
army discipline! He was attended by the most elegant cornet in the world,
probably his adjutant, a fair-haired youth, with incredibly long legs,
a tiny face like a squirrel’s, and that simple-hearted expression which
often persists in mamma’s darlings who have never studied anything, or,
at any rate, have never succeeded in learning anything. This eglantine in
uniform stood at a respectful distance from the model general.

Dubbelt darted in again, this time looking dignified, with all his
buttons done up. He at once addressed the general, and asked him what
he had come about. The general, with the perfect correctness with which
privates speak when presenting themselves to their superior officers,
reported: ‘Yesterday I received through Prince Alexandr Ivanovitch the
command of the Most High to join the Army at the front at the Caucasus,
and esteemed it my duty to present myself to his Excellency before
leaving.’

Dubbelt listened with religious attention to this speech, and with a
slight bow as a sign of respect went out and returned a minute later.

‘The Count,’ he said to the general, ‘sincerely regrets that he has not
time to receive your Excellency. He thanks you and has commissioned me
to wish you a good journey.’ Whereupon Dubbelt flung wide his arms,
embraced the general, and twice touched his cheeks with his moustaches.

The general retreated at a solemn march, the youth with the face of a
squirrel and the legs of a crane strode after him. This scene made up to
me for a great deal of bitterness that day. The general’s attitude, the
farewell by proxy, and the sly face of _Reinecke Fuchs_ as he kissed the
brainless countenance of his Excellency was all so ludicrous that I could
scarcely contain myself. I fancied that Dubbelt noticed it and began to
respect me from that time.

At last both folds of the double door were flung open and Benckendorf
walked in. There was nothing unpleasant in the appearance of the chief
of the gendarmes; his exterior was rather typical of a nobleman of the
Baltic provinces, and, indeed, of the German aristocracy generally.
His face looked creased and tired, he had the delusively good-natured
expression which is so often found in evasive and apathetic people.

Possibly Benckendorf did not do all the harm he might have done, being
the head of that terrible police, standing outside the law and above the
law, having a right to meddle in everything. I am ready to believe it,
especially when I recall the insipid expression of his face. But he did
no good either, he had not enough will-power, energy, or heart for that.
To be timid of saying a word in defence of the oppressed is as bad as any
crime in the service of a man so cold and merciless as Nicholas.

How many innocent victims passed through Benckendorf’s hands, how many
perished through his lack of attention, through his frivolity, because
he was engrossed in flirtation perhaps—and how many gloomy images and
painful memories may have haunted his mind and tormented him when,
prematurely collapsing and growing senile, he sailed off to seek, in
betrayal of his own religion, the protection of the Catholic Church with
its all-forgiving indulgences....

‘It has reached the knowledge of his Imperial Majesty,’ he said to
me, ‘that you take part in the diffusion of rumours injurious to the
government. His Majesty, seeing how little you have reformed, graciously
commanded that you should be sent back to Vyatka; but at the request of
General Dubbelt, and relying upon information collected about you, I
have reported to his Majesty on the subject of your wife’s illness, and
his Majesty was graciously pleased to alter his decision. His Majesty
forbids you to visit Petersburg and Moscow, and you will be under police
supervision again, but it is left to the Ministry of Home Affairs to fix
the place where you are to reside.’

‘Allow me to tell you frankly that even at this moment I cannot believe
that there is no other cause for my exile. In 1835 I was exiled on
account of a supper-party at which I was not present! Now I am being
punished for a rumour about which the whole town was talking. It is a
strange fate!’

Benckendorf shrugged his shoulders, and turning out the palms of his
hands like a man who has exhausted all the resources of argument, cut
short my speech.

‘I make known to you the Imperial will, and you answer me with
criticisms. What profit will there be from all that you say to me, or
that I say to you? It is a waste of words. Nothing can be changed now.
What will be later partly depends on you, and since you have referred to
your first affair, I particularly recommend you not to let there be a
third. You will certainly not get off so easily a third time.’

Benckendorf gave me a gracious smile and turned towards the petitioners.
He said very little to them; he took their petition, glanced at it, then
handed it to Dubbelt, receiving the petitioners’ observations with the
same graciously condescending smile. These people had been for whole
months thinking about it, and preparing themselves for this interview,
upon which their honour, their fortune, their family depended; what
effort, what labour had been spent by them before they had succeeded in
getting an entrance, how many times they had knocked at the closed door
and been turned away by the gendarme or the porter. And how immense, how
poignant must the necessity have been that brought them to the head of
the secret police; no doubt all legal channels had been exhausted first.
And this man got rid of them with commonplaces, and probably some clerk
drew up some decision to pass the case on to some other department. And
what had he to preoccupy him? What need had he for haste?

When Benckendorf went up to the old man with the medals, the latter
dropped on his knees and articulated: ‘Your Excellency, enter into my
position.’

‘How degrading!’ cried the Count; ‘you are disgracing your medals,’ and
full of righteous indignation he passed by without taking his petition.
The old man slowly got up, his glassy eyes were full of horror and
bewilderment, his lower lip quivered, he muttered something.

How inhuman these people are when the whim takes them to be humane!

Dubbelt went up to the old man and said: ‘Whatever did you do that for?
Come, give me your petition. I’ll look through it.’

Benckendorf had gone off to see the Tsar.

‘What am I to do?’ I asked Dubbelt.

‘Settle on any town you choose with the Minister of Home Affairs; we
will not interfere. We will send the whole case on there to-morrow. I
congratulate you on its having been so satisfactorily settled.’

‘I am very much obliged to you.’

From Benckendorf I went to the Ministry. Our director, as I have
mentioned, belonged to that class of Germans who have something of the
lemur about them, lanky, slow, and long drawn out. Their brains work
slowly, they do not catch the point at once, and pass through a long
process to reach any sort of conclusion. My story unfortunately arrived
before the communication of the Third Section; he had not expected it
at all, and so was completely bewildered, uttered incoherent phrases,
perceived the fact himself, and to set himself right said to me:
‘_Erlauben Sie mir deutsch zu sprechen_.’ Possibly his remarks were
grammatically more correct in the German language, but they were no
clearer and more definite in meaning. I perceived distinctly two feelings
struggling in him: he grasped all the injustice of it, but thought it
his duty as director to justify the action of the government; at the
same time, he did not like to appear a barbarian in my eyes, nor could
he forget the hostility which invariably existed between the Ministry of
Home Affairs and the secret police. So the task of expressing all this
jumble was in itself not easy. He ended by declaring that he could say
nothing until he had seen the Minister, and going off to see him.

Count Strogonov sent for me, inquired into the matter, listened to the
story attentively, and said to me in conclusion: ‘It’s a police trick,
pure and simple—all right, I’ll pay them out for it.’

I actually imagined that he was going straight off to the Tsar to explain
the position to him; but ministers do not go so far.

‘I have received the command of the Most High concerning you,’ he went
on—‘here it is. You see that it is left to me to select the place of your
exile and a post in the service for you. Where would you like to go?’

‘To Tver or to Novgorod,’ I answered.

‘To be sure.... Well, since the choice of a place is left to me, and
it probably does not matter to you to which of those towns I send
you, I will give you the first councillor’s vacancy in the provincial
government. That is the highest position that you can receive in the
regular way of promotion, so order yourself a uniform with an embroidered
collar,’ he added jocosely.

So that was how I scored, though not on my own play.

A week later Strogonov recommended me to the Senate for an appointment as
councillor at Novgorod.

It really is funny to think how many secretaries, assessors, district and
provincial officials had been scheming passionately, persistently, for
years to get that post; bribes had been given, the most solemn promises
had been received, and here, all at once, a Minister, to carry out the
commands of the Most High and at the same time to have a slap at the
secret police, _punished_ me with this promotion and, by way of gilding
the pill, flung this post, the object of ardent desires and ambitious
dreams, at the feet of a man who accepted it with the firm intention of
throwing it up at the first opportunity.

From Strogonov I went to see a lady; I must say a few words about this
acquaintance.

Among the letters of introduction given me by my father when I first
went to Petersburg was one which I had picked up a dozen times, turned
over and thrust back again into the table drawer, putting off my visit
until another day. The letter was addressed to a lady of seventy, of
high rank and great wealth, whose friendship with my father dated from
time immemorial; he had first made her acquaintance when she was at the
Court of Catherine II.; then they had met in Paris, had travelled here
and there together, and at last both had come to rest at home some thirty
years before.

I disliked persons of consequence as a rule, particularly when they
were women, and even more so when they were seventy; but my father had
inquired for the second time whether I had called upon Olga Alexandrovna
Zherebtsov, so at last I resolved to swallow the bitter pill. A footman
led me into a rather gloomy drawing-room, poorly decorated, and looking
as though it were darkened and faded; the furniture, the hangings,
all had lost their colour, and all had evidently been standing for
ages in the same place. I was reminded of the atmosphere of Princess
Meshtchersky’s house; old age, no less than youth, puts its imprint
on all around it. I waited with resignation for the lady to make her
appearance, preparing myself for tedious questions, for deafness, for
a cough, for attacks on the younger generation, and perhaps moral
exhortations.

Five minutes later a tall old woman, with a stern face that bore traces
of great beauty, walked in with a firm step; an unswerving will, a strong
character, and a strong intellect were apparent in her deportment, in
her movements and her gestures. She scanned me from head to foot with
a penetrating gaze, went up to the sofa, with one movement of her arm
pushed back the table, and said to me: ‘Sit in this armchair here, nearer
to me. I am a great friend of your father’s, you know, and I love him.’
She opened the letter, and handed it to me, saying: ‘Please read it to
me; my eyes are bad.’

The letter was written in French and full of all sorts of compliments,
reminiscences, and allusions. She listened, smiling, and when I had
finished said: ‘His mind shows no signs of age, he is just the same as
ever; he was very charming and very caustic. And now, I suppose, he keeps
his room, wears his dressing-gown, and plays the invalid? Two years ago
I was passing through Moscow and then I went to see your father. “I can
hardly see any one,” he said. “I am breaking up,” and then he got into
talk and forgot his ailments. It’s all nonsense, he is not much older
than I am, two or three years at the most, though I doubt if he is that,
and I am a woman, yet I still keep on my legs. Yes, yes, much water has
flowed by since those days your father talks of. Why, only fancy, he and
I were among the leading dancers. The English dances were the fashion in
those days; Ivan Alexeyevitch and I used to dance at the late Empress’s.
Can you imagine your father in a full-skirted light blue French coat,
wearing powder, and me in a hoop and _décolletée_? It was very pleasant
to dance with him, _il était bel homme_, he was finer looking than
you—let me have a good look at you—yes, he really was finer.... Don’t
be angry, at my age I may tell the truth. Besides, I believe you don’t
care about that—of course, you are literary and learned. Ah, my goodness,
by the way, do tell me please what was all that business with you? Your
father wrote to me when you were sent to Vyatka. I did try to speak to
Bludov, but he did not do anything. They won’t say what they exiled you
for. They keep that a _secret d’état_.’

There was so much simplicity and genuineness in her manner that, contrary
to my expectation, I was at ease and unconstrained with her. I answered
between jest and earnest and told her all about our case.

‘He makes war on students,’ she observed; ‘he has nothing in his head but
conspiracies, and, to be sure, they are pleased to oblige him; they think
of nothing but nonsense. They are such wretched little creatures about
him! Where did he get hold of them—no rank and no family. Well, _mon cher
conspirateur_, how old were you then?—sixteen, I expect.’

‘Just one and twenty,’ I answered, laughing genuinely at her utter
contempt for our political activities, both mine and Nicholas’s, ‘but
then I was the eldest.’

‘Four or five students scared _tout le gouvernement_, you see—what a
disgrace!’

After talking in this style for half an hour, I got up to go.

‘Stay a little,’ said Olga Alexandrovna in a still more friendly tone. ‘I
have not finished my catechism; how was it you carried off your bride?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oh, my dear, the world is full of rumour—youth, _des passions_. I talked
to your father at the time. He was still angry with you, but, there,
he is a sensible man, he understood.... Thank God you live happily.
What more does he want? “Well,” he said to me, “the boy came to Moscow
contrary to the Imperial decree. If he had been caught he would have been
sent to the fortress.” “But you see he wasn’t caught,” I said, “so you
ought to be thankful for that, and what is the use of talking nonsense
and imagining what might have been?” “Oh, you were always fearless,” he
told me, “and lived recklessly.” “Well, my dear sir, I am ending my days
no worse than other people,” I answered him—“and what’s the sense of your
leaving the young people without money? That’s beyond anything.” “Well,”
he said, “I’ll send them some. I’ll send them some. Don’t be angry.”
You’ll bring your wife to see me, won’t you?’

I thanked her, and said that I had not brought her with me to Petersburg
yet.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘At Demouthe’s.’

‘And do you dine there?’

‘Sometimes there; sometimes at Dumais.’

‘Why restaurants—it’s expensive, and besides it’s not nice for a married
man. If it won’t bore you to dine with an old woman, come here. I am
really very glad to have made your acquaintance. I must thank your father
for having sent you to me; you are a very interesting young man, and have
a good understanding of things though you are young,—so you and I will
have a talk about one thing and another, for you know I am bored with
these courtiers; they can talk of nothing but the court, and who has
received a decoration; it is all so silly.’

In one volume of Thiers’ _History of the Consulate_ he gives a rather
detailed and rather correct account of the murder of Paul. There are
two references in his story to a woman, the sister of Count Zubov, who
was the last of Catherine’s favourites. The beautiful young widow of a
general (killed, I believe, during the war), a passionate and vigorous
character, spoilt by success, endowed with exceptional intellect and
masculine strength of will, she became the centre round which the
discontented rallied during the savage and senseless reign of Paul. The
conspirators met at her house; she incited them, their relations with the
English Embassy were carried on through her. Paul’s police suspected her
at last, and, warned in time, perhaps by Pahlen himself, she went abroad
before it was too late. The plot was by then matured, and while dancing
at a ball at the court of the Prussian king she received the news that
Paul had been killed. Not concealing her joy, she rapturously announced
the news to every one in the ball-room. This so scandalised the Prussian
king that he ordered her to be banished from Berlin within twenty-four
hours.

She went to England. Brilliant, spoilt by court life, and devoured by
a consuming passion for a great career, she made her appearance as a
lioness of the first magnitude in London, and played an important part in
the reserved and exclusive society of the English aristocracy. The Prince
of Wales, _i.e._, the future King George IV., was her devoted adorer, and
soon more than that.... The years of her life abroad were spent amidst
noisy magnificence, but they passed, and glory after glory faded. With
old age came emptiness, misfortunes, loneliness, and the melancholy life
of memory. Her son was killed at Borodino; her daughter died leaving
her a grandchild, now Countess Orlov. Every August the old woman went
from Petersburg to Mozhaisk to visit her son’s grave. Loneliness and
misfortune had not broken her strong character, but only made it more
austere and angular. Like a tree in winter, she retained the outline of
her branches, the leaves had dropped, and the bare twigs were cold and
stiff as dry bones, but the gigantic stature and bold proportions were
but the more distinctly visible, and the trunk, silvered with hoar-frost,
stood proud and gloomy, and no wind, no storm could bend it.

Her long life, so full of movement, the immense wealth of meetings, of
contrasts in it, had formed her disdainful view of the world, which had
its share of mournful truth. She had her own philosophy, resting upon a
profound contempt for her fellow-creatures, though, owing to her active
disposition, she could not abandon them altogether.

‘You don’t know them yet,’ she would say to me, nodding her head towards
the retreating figures of various stout and thin senators and generals.
‘I have seen enough of them. It is not so easy to take me in as they
imagine; before I was twenty my brother was in the highest favour, and
the Empress was very kind to me, and very fond of me. So then, would
you believe it, old men, beribboned and decorated, who could scarcely
drag one leg after the other, were falling over one another to reach the
vestibule and hand me my pelisse and my warm shoes. The Empress died,
and next day my house was deserted. They ran from me as from the plague,
in the madman’s days, you know, and those the very same persons. I went
my way, I had no need of any one, I crossed the sea. After my return the
Lord visited me with great misfortunes, but I met with sympathy from no
one. There were two or three old friends who did not desert me, though.
Well, then, your reign has come. Orlov, you see, has influence, though
indeed I don’t know how far that is true ... they imagine it is, anyway.
They know that he is my heir and that my granddaughter loves me; so now
they are such friends again—again they are ready to hand me my cloak and
my goloshes! Ugh! I know them, but one is sometimes tired of sitting
alone; my eyes are bad, it is hard to read, besides one does not always
care to, so I let them come, they babble all sorts of nonsense; it amuses
me, and serves to pass an hour or two....’

She was a strange, original relic of another age, surrounded by
degenerate successors that had sprung up on the mean and barren soil of
Petersburg court life. She felt superior to it, and she was right. If she
had shared the Saturnalia of Catherine and the orgies of George IV., she
had also shared the dangers of the conspirators of Paul’s reign.

Her mistake lay not in her contempt for these worthless people, but in
her taking this produce of the court kitchen-garden for the whole of our
generation. In the reign of Catherine, the court and the Guards really
did include all that was cultured in Russia; and this persisted, more or
less, until 1812. Since then Russian society has taken immense strides;
the war led to an awakening, and that awakening to the Fourteenth of
December. Society was divided in two from within: the worst part remained
on the side of the court; executions and savage punishments drove away
some, while the new tone prevailing drove away others. Alexander carried
on the traditions of culture of the reign of Catherine. Under Nicholas
the worldly aristocratic tone was replaced by one of frigid formality
and ferocious despotism on the one hand and boundless servility on
the other—a blend of the abrupt and rude Napoleonic manner with the
callousness of bureaucracy. A new society, the centre of which was in
Moscow, rapidly developed.

There is a wonderful book which one cannot help recalling when one speaks
of Olga Alexandrovna—I mean the _Memoirs of Princess Dashkov_, published
twenty years ago in London. To the book are appended the memoirs of the
two sisters Wilmot who lived with Princess Dashkov between 1805 and 1810.
They were highly cultured Irishwomen, with a great gift of observation. I
should very much like their letters and memoirs to be known in Russia.

When I compare Moscow society before 1812 with that which I left in 1847
my heart throbs with joy. We have made tremendous strides forward. In
those days there was a society of the discontented—that is, of those
who had been left out, dismissed, or laid on the shelf; now there is a
society of independent people. The lions of those days were capricious
oligarchs, such as Count A. G. Orlov and Ostermann, ‘a society of
shadows’ as Miss Wilmot says, a society of political men who had died
fifteen years before in Petersburg, but went on powdering their heads,
putting on their ribbons, and appearing at dinners and festivities in
Moscow, sulking, giving themselves airs of consequence, and having
neither influence nor significance. After 1825 the lions of Moscow were
Pushkin, M. Orlov, Tchaadayev, Yermolov. In the earlier days society had
flocked with cringing servility to the house of Count Orlov, ladies ‘in
other people’s diamonds,’[42] gentlemen who dared not sit down without
permission; the Count’s serfs danced before them in masquerade attire.
Forty years later I saw the same society crowding about the platform of
one of the lecture-rooms of the Moscow University; the daughters of those
ladies in other people’s jewels, the sons of the men who had not dared
to sit down, were, with passionate sympathy, following the profound,
vigorous words of Granovsky, greeting with outbursts of applause
sentences that went straight to the heart from their boldness and
nobility.

It was just the society that gathered from all parts of Moscow and
crowded about the platform on which the young champion of learning
delivered his earnest message and deciphered the future from the past—it
was just this society of the existence of which Madame Zherebtsov had
no suspicion. She was particularly kind and attentive to me because I
was the first example of a world unknown to her; she was surprised at
my language and at my ideas. She welcomed in me the coming of another
Russia, not that Russia whose only light filtered through the frozen
windows of the Winter Palace. Thanks to her for that!

I could fill a whole volume with the anecdotes I heard from Olga
Alexandrovna; with whom had she not been on friendly terms, from Comte
d’Artois[43] and the Comte de Ségur[44] to Canning and Lord Granville,
and she looked at all of them independently, from her own point of view,
and a very original one. I will confine myself to one small incident
which I will try to repeat in her own words.

She lived in the Morskaya. A regiment of soldiers happened one day to
pass along the street with a band. Olga Alexandrovna went to the window
and looking at the soldiers said to me: ‘I have a summer villa not far
from Gatchina. I sometimes go there for a rest in the summer. I ordered
a big lawn to be made there before the house, in the English style, you
know, covered with turf. Last year I went down there; only fancy: at six
o’clock in the morning I hear a dreadful beating of drums. I lie in bed
more dead than alive; it keeps coming closer and closer. I ring the bell,
my Kalmyk girl runs in. “What has happened, my good girl?” I ask; “what
is this noise?” “Oh, that,” says she, “Mihail Pavlovitch[45] is pleased
to be drilling his soldiers.” “Where is that?” “On our lawn.” He liked
our lawn, it was so smooth and green. Only fancy, with a lady living
there, old and ill, he came with the drums at six o’clock in the morning.
Well, I thought, that won’t do. “Call the steward,” I said. The steward
came and I said to him: “Have the cart got out at once, drive into
Petersburg, hire as many White Russians as you can find, and let them
begin digging a pond to-morrow.” Well, I thought, I hope they won’t hold
a Naval Review before my windows. They are all such ill-bred creatures!’

It was natural that I should go straight from Strogonov to Olga
Alexandrovna and tell her all that had happened.

‘Good heavens! What folly; they go from bad to worse,’ she observed
when she heard my story. ‘How can a man with a family be dragged off to
exile for such nonsense? Let me talk to Orlov. I hardly ever ask him to
do anything, they all dislike it; but there, once in a way he may do
something for me. Come and see me in a couple of days, and I’ll tell you
his answer.’

Two days later she sent for me. I found several visitors with her. She
had a white batiste kerchief round her head instead of a cap; this was
usually a sign that she was out of spirits; she screwed up her eyes and
hardly took any notice of the privy councillors and generals who had come
to pay their respects to her.

One of the visitors with a very complacent air took a document out of his
pocket and, handing it to Olga Alexandrovna, said: ‘I have brought you
yesterday’s Imperial letter to Prince Pyotr Mihailovitch. Perhaps you
have not yet read it.’

Whether she had heard him or not I do not know, but she took the paper,
opened it, put on her spectacles and, frowning, read with great effort:
‘Pri—nce Pyo—tr Mi—hailo—vitch!’

‘What’s this you have given me? It’s not for me, is it?’

‘I told you it’s an Imperial letter.’

‘Good heavens, my eyes are bad, I can’t always read the letters addressed
to me, and you make me read other people’s letters.’

‘Allow me, I’ll read it ... I didn’t think.’

‘You needn’t; why trouble yourself for nothing? What have I to do with
their correspondence? I am getting through my last days somehow, and my
head is full of something very different.’

The gentleman smiled as people smile when they have made a blunder, and
put the Imperial letter into his pocket.

Seeing that Olga Alexandrovna was in a bad humour, in a very warlike one,
indeed, the visitors one after another took leave. When we were left
alone she said to me: ‘I asked you to come here to tell you that I have
made a fool of myself in my old age. I gave you a promise, and I have
done nothing; you know the peasants’ proverb: “Don’t step into the water
till you know how deep it is.” I spoke to Orlov about your case yesterday
and you’ve nothing to expect....’

At that moment a footman announced that Countess Orlov had arrived.

‘Well, never mind, one of ourselves. I’ll tell you the rest directly.’

The Countess, a beautiful woman, still in the bloom of her age, went up
to kiss her hand and inquire how she was, to which Olga Alexandrovna
answered that she felt very poorly, then mentioning my name, added,
‘Come, sit down, sit down, my dear. How are the children—quite well?’

‘Quite well.’

‘Well, thank God—excuse me, I am just talking about what happened
yesterday. Well, you see, I told her husband to speak to the Tsar about
you, and ask what they are about with this nonsense. Not a bit of it! He
wouldn’t move hand or foot: “That’s Benckendorf’s affair,” he told me.
“I’ll talk to him if you like, but as for reporting on it to the Tsar,
I can’t, he doesn’t like it—besides, it isn’t done!” “What is there,”
I said, “in talking to Benckendorf? I can do that myself. Besides, he
is in his dotage; he doesn’t know what he is doing; his head is full of
actresses, though I should have thought his flirting days were over; some
wretched little secretary gives him all sorts of secret reports and he
hands them on. What would he do? No!” I said, “you had better not demean
yourself asking favours of Benckendorf, the whole nasty business is his
doing.” “It is the rule with us,” he said to me, and began telling me all
about it.... Well, I saw that he was simply afraid to go to the Tsar....
“Whatever is he—a wild beast, or what, that you are afraid to approach
him, though you see him half a dozen times a day?” I said, and turned
away in disgust; it is no use talking to them. Look,’ she added, pointing
to Orlov’s portrait. ‘What a conquering hero he is there; yet he is
afraid to say a word!’

I could not resist looking at Countess Orlov instead of at the portrait;
her position was not very agreeable. She sat smiling, and sometimes
glanced at me as though to say: ‘Age has its privileges, the old lady is
irritated,’ but meeting my eyes, which did not assent, she pretended not
to notice me. She did not enter into the conversation, and that was very
wise of her. It would not have been easy to suppress Olga Alexandrovna,
the old woman’s cheeks were flushed, she would have given back more than
she got. There was nothing for it but to lie low and wait for the storm
to pass over one’s head.

‘Why, I suppose down there where you’ve been, in that Vologda, the
clerks imagine Count Orlov is a man in favour, that he has power....
That’s all nonsense. I’ll be bound it is his subordinates who spread
that rumour. None of them have any influence, they don’t behave so as to
have influence, and they are not on that footing.... You must forgive me
for meddling in what isn’t my business. Do you know what I advise you?
What do you want to go to Novgorod for? You had better go to Odessa; it
is farther away from them and almost like a foreign town, besides, if
Vorontsov isn’t corrupted, he is a man of a different stamp.’

Olga Alexandrovna’s confidence in Vorontsov, who was at that time in
Petersburg and came to see her every day, was not fully justified. He was
willing to take me with him to Odessa _if_ Benckendorf would give his
consent.

Meanwhile the months passed, the winter was over, no one reminded
me about going away. I was forgotten and I gave up being _sur le
qui-vive_, particularly after the following meeting. Bolgovsky, the
military governor of Vologda, was at that time in Petersburg; being a
very intimate friend of my father, he was rather fond of me, and I was
sometimes at his house. He had taken part in the killing of Paul, as a
young officer in the Semyonovsky Regiment, and was afterwards mixed up in
the obscure and unexplained Speransky affair in 1812. He was at that time
a colonel in the army at the front. He was suddenly arrested, brought to
Petersburg, and then sent to Siberia. Before he had time to reach his
place of exile Alexander pardoned him, and he returned to his regiment.

One day in the spring I went to see him; a general was sitting in a big
easy-chair with his back towards the door so that I could not see his
face, but only one silver epaulette.

‘Let me introduce you,’ said Bolgovsky, and then I recognised Dubbelt.

‘I have long enjoyed the pleasure of Leonty Vassilyevitch’s attention,’ I
said, smiling.

‘When are you going to Novgorod?’ he asked me.

‘I thought I ought to ask you that.’

‘Oh! not at all! I had no idea of reminding you. I simply asked the
question. We have handed you over to Count Strogonov, and we are not
trying to hurry you, as you see. Besides, with such a legitimate reason
as your wife’s illness....’

He really was the politest of men!

At last, at the beginning of June, I received the Senate’s decree,
confirming my appointment as councillor in the Novgorod Provincial
Government. Count Strogonov thought it was time for me to set off, and
about the 1st of July I arrived in the ‘City in the keeping of God and of
Saint Sophia’—Novgorod—and settled on the bank of the Volhov, opposite
the very barrow from which the Voltaireans of the twelfth century threw
the wonder-working statue of Perun[46] into the river.




Chapter 27

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT—I AM UNDER MY OWN SUPERVISION—THE DUHOBORS
AND PAUL—THE PATERNAL RULE OF THE LANDOWNERS—COUNT ARAKTCHEYEV AND THE
MILITARY SETTLEMENTS—A FEROCIOUS INVESTIGATION—RETIREMENT


Before I went away Count Strogonov told me that the military governor
of Novgorod, Elpidifor Antihovitch Zurov was in Petersburg, that he
had spoken to him about my appointment, and advised me to call upon
him. I found him a rather friendly and good-natured general, short,
middle-aged, and of very military appearance. We talked for half an hour,
he graciously escorted me to the door, and there we parted.

When I arrived in Novgorod I went to see him and the change of scene
was amazing. In Petersburg the governor had been a visitor, here he was
at home; he actually seemed to me to be taller in Novgorod. Without
any provocation on my part, he thought fit to inform me that he would
not permit councillors to give their opinions and put their views in
writing, that it delayed business, and that, if anything were not right,
they could talk it over, but that if it came to giving opinions, one or
the other would have to take his discharge. I observed, smiling, that
it was hard to frighten me with that prospect, since the sole object of
my service was to get my discharge from it, and added that while bitter
necessity forced me to serve in Novgorod I should probably have no
occasion for giving my opinion.

This conversation was quite enough for both of us. As I went away I made
up my mind to avoid getting into closer contact with him. So far as I
could observe, the impression I made on the governor was much the same as
that which he made upon me, _i.e._, we disliked each other as much as we
possibly could on so brief and superficial an acquaintance.

When I looked a little into the work of the provincial government I
saw that my position was not only extremely disagreeable but very
risky. Every councillor was responsible for his section and shared
the responsibility for all the rest. To read the papers in all the
sections was absolutely impossible, one had to sign them on trust.
The governor, in accordance with his theory that a councillor should
never give counsel, put his signature, contrary to the law and good
sense, next after that of the councillor in whose section the case was.
This was excellent for me personally; in this signature I found some
guarantee, as he shared the responsibility, and because he often with
a peculiar expression talked of his lofty honesty and Robespierre-like
incorruptibility. As for the signatures of the other councillors they
were very little comfort to me. They were hardened old clerks who by
dozens of years of service had worked their way up to being councillors,
and lived only by the service, that is, by bribes. It is useless to blame
them for that; a councillor, I remember, received twelve thousand paper
roubles a year; a man with a family could not possibly exist in comfort
on that. When they perceived that I was not going to share with them in
dividing the booty, nor going to plunder on my own account, they began to
look upon me as an uninvited guest and dangerous witness. They did not
become very intimate with me, especially when they had discovered that
between the governor and me there existed an affection of a very lukewarm
character. They stood by one another and watched over one another’s
interests, but they did not care what became of me. Moreover, my worthy
colleagues were not afraid of getting into trouble, or of being fined or
of having to refund even large sums of money, because they had nothing.
They could risk it, and the more readily the more important the case
was; whether the deficit was of five hundred roubles or of five hundred
thousand did not matter to them. In case of a deficit, a fraction of
their salary went to the reimbursement of the Treasury, and the repayment
could be spread over two or three hundred years if the official lasted
so long. Usually either the official died or the Tsar did, and then in
the rejoicings at his accession the heir forgave the debts. Manifestoes
remitting such debts were also published on occasions such as a Royal
birth or coming of age; the officials reckoned upon them. In my case, on
the contrary, they would have taken my money and the part of the family
estate which my father had assigned to me.

If I could have relied on my own head-clerks, things would have been
easier. I did a great deal to gain their attachment, treated them
politely and helped them with money, but my efforts only resulted in
their ceasing to obey me—they only stood in awe of the councillors who
treated them as though they were schoolboys—and they took to coming to
the office half-drunk. They were very poor men with no education and with
no expectations. All the imaginative side of their lives was confined to
wretched little taverns and strong drink. So I had to be on my guard in
my own section too.

At first the governor gave me Section Four, in which all business
dealing with contracts and money matters took place. I asked him to make
a change, he would not, saying that he had no right to make a change
without the consent of the other councillor. In the governor’s presence
I asked the councillor in charge of Section Two, he consented and we
exchanged. The new section was less alluring; its work was concerned
with passports, circulars of all sorts, cases of the abuse of power by
landowners, of dissenters, forgers of counterfeit coin, and people under
the supervision of the police.

Anything sillier and more absurd cannot be imagined; I am certain that
three-fourths of the people who read this will not believe it,[47]
and yet it is the bare truth that I, as councillor of the provincial
government, in control of the Second Section, every three months signed
the report of the police-master upon myself as a man under police
supervision. The police-master from politeness made no entry under the
heading ‘behaviour,’ and under that of ‘occupation’ wrote: ‘Engaged in
the government service.’ Such are the prodigies of absurdity that can
be reached by having two or three police departments antagonistic to
each other, official formalities instead of laws, and a field corporal’s
conception of discipline in place of a governing intelligence.

This absurdity reminds me of an incident that occurred at Tobolsk some
years ago. The civil governor was on bad terms with the vice-governor,
a quarrel was carried on on paper, they wrote each other all sorts of
biting and sarcastic things in official form. The vice-governor was a
ponderous pedant, a formalist, a good-natured specimen of the divinity
student; he composed his malignant answers himself with immense labour
and, of course, made this feat the object of his life. It happened that
the governor went away to Petersburg for a time. The vice-governor took
over his duties and in the character of governor received an impudent
document from himself sent the day before; without hesitation he ordered
the secretary to answer it, signed the answer and, receiving it as
vice-governor, set to work again, racking his brains and scribbling
an insulting letter to himself. He regarded this as a proof of his
disinterested honesty.

For six months I was in harness in the provincial government. It was
disagreeable and extremely tedious. Every morning at eleven o’clock I
put on my uniform, buckled on my civilian sword, and went to the office.
At twelve o’clock the military governor arrived; taking no notice of the
councillors, he walked straight to the corner and put down his sabre
there. Then, looking out of the window and straightening his hair, he
went towards his easy-chair and bowed to those present. Scarcely had
the sergeant with fierce, grey moustaches that stood up at right angles
to his lips solemnly opened the door and the clank of the sabre become
audible in the office, when the councillors got up and remained standing
with backs bent until the governor had bowed to them. One of my first
actions, by way of protest, was taking no part in this collective rising
and reverential expectation, but sitting quietly and only bowing when he
bowed to us.

There were no great discussions or heated arguments; it rarely happened
that a councillor asked the governor’s opinion, still more rarely that
the governor put some business question to the councillors. Before
every one lay a heap of papers and every one signed his name, it was a
signature factory.

Remembering Talleyrand’s celebrated injunction, I did not try to
distinguish myself by my zeal and attended to business only so far as was
necessary to escape reprimand or avoid getting into trouble. But there
were two classes of work in my section towards which I considered I had
no right to take so superficial an attitude; these were matters relating
to the dissenters and to the abuse of power by the landowners.

Dissenters are not consistently persecuted in Russia, but something comes
over the Synod, or the Ministry of Home Affairs, all of a sudden, and
they make a raid on some dissenting convent, or some community, plunder
it, and then subside again. The dissenters usually have intelligent
agents in Petersburg who warn them of coming danger; the others at once
collect money, hide their books and their ikons, stand drink to the
orthodox priests, and stand drink to the orthodox police-captain and buy
themselves off; with that, the matter rests for ten years or so.

In the reign of Catherine there were a great many Duhobors[48] in the
Novgorod Province. Their leader, the old head of the posting drivers, in
Zaitsevo, I think it was, enjoyed immense respect.

When Paul was on his way to his coronation at Moscow he ordered the old
man to be summoned before him, probably with the idea of converting him.
The Duhobors, like the Quakers, do not take off their caps, and the
grey-headed old man went up to the Emperor of Gatchina with head covered.
This was more than the Tsar could put up with. A petty and meticulous
readiness to take offence was a particularly striking characteristic of
Paul and is, indeed, of all his sons except Alexander; having a monstrous
power in their hands, they have not even the wild beast’s sense of power
which keeps the big dog from attacking the little one.

‘Before whom are you standing in your cap?’ shouted Paul, puffing and
showing every sign of frenzied rage: ‘do you know me?’

‘I do,’ answered the dissenter calmly, ‘you are Pavel Petrovitch.’

‘Put him in chains: to penal servitude with him! to the mines!’ the
chivalrous Paul exclaimed.

The old man was seized and the Tsar ordered the village to be set fire
to on four sides and the inhabitants to be sent to exile in Siberia. At
the next station some one in attendance on the Tsar threw himself at his
feet and said that he had ventured to delay the carrying out of the will
of the Most High, and was waiting for him to repeat it. Paul was somewhat
more sober and perceived that setting fire to villages and sending men
to the mines without a trial was a queer way of recommending himself to
the people. He commanded the Synod to investigate the peasants’ case and
ordered the old man to be incarcerated for life in the Spasso-Yefimyevsky
Monastery; he thought that the orthodox monks would torment him worse
than penal servitude; but he forgot that our monks are not merely good
orthodox Christians but also men who are very fond of money and vodka;
while the dissenters drink no vodka and are not sparing of their money.

The old man had the reputation of a saint among the Duhobors. They
came from all parts of Russia to do homage to him and paid with gold
for admission to see him. The old man sat in his cell, dressed all in
white, and his friends draped the walls and the ceiling with linen.
After his death they gained permission to bury his body with his kindred
and carried him in triumph upon their shoulders from Vladimir to the
province of Novgorod. Only the Duhobors know where he is buried. They are
persuaded that he had the gift of working miracles in his lifetime and
that his body is untouched by decay.

I heard all this partly from the governor of Vladimir, I. E. Kuruta,
partly from the post-drivers in Novgorod, and partly from a lay-brother
in the Spasso-Yefimyevsky Monastery. Now there are no more political
prisoners in the monastery, though the prison is full of priests and
church servants of all kinds, disobedient sons of whom their parents have
complained, and so on. The archimandrite, a tall, broad-shouldered man in
a fur cap, showed us the prison yard. When he went in, a non-commissioned
officer with a gun went up to him and reported: ‘I have the honour
to report to your Reverence that all is well in the prison and that
the prisoners are so many.’ The archimandrite in answer gave him his
blessing—what a mix-up!

The business relating to the dissenters was of such a nature that it
was best not to raise the subject again. I looked through the documents
referring to them and left them in peace.... On the other hand, those
relating to the abuse of the landowners’ power needed a thorough
overhauling. I did all I could and scored a few victories in that boggy
path; set one young girl free from persecution and put one naval officer
under arrest. These I believe were the only things I can boast of in my
official career.

A certain lady was keeping a servant-girl in her house without any
documentary evidence of ownership; the girl petitioned that her claims
to freedom should be inquired into. My predecessor had very sagaciously
thought fit to leave her until her case was decided in complete bondage
with the lady who claimed her. I had to sign the documents; I turned to
the governor and observed that the girl would not be in a very enviable
position in her mistress’s house after lodging this petition.

‘What’s to be done with her?’

‘Keep her in the police-station.’

‘At whose expense?’

‘At the expense of the lady, if the case is decided against her.’

‘And if it is not?’

Luckily at that moment the provincial prosecutor came in. A prosecutor
from his social position, from his official relations, from the very
buttons on his uniform, is bound to be an enemy of the governor, or at
least to thwart him in everything. I purposely continued the conversation
in his presence. The governor began to get angry and said that the whole
question was not worth wasting a couple of words on. The prosecutor
cared not a straw what became of the girl or how she was treated, but he
immediately took my side and advanced a dozen different points from the
code of laws in support of it. The governor, who in reality cared as
little, said to me, smiling ironically, that it was much the same whether
she went to her mistress or to the prison.

‘Of course she will be better off in prison,’ I observed.

‘It will be more consistent with the intention expressed in the code,’
observed the prosecutor.

‘Let it be as you like,’ the governor said, laughing more than ever.
‘You’ve done a service to your protégée: when she has been in prison for
a few months she will thank you for it.’

I did not continue the argument, my object was to save the girl from
domestic persecution; I remember that two months later she was released
and received her legal freedom.

Among the unsettled questions in my department there was a complicated
correspondence lasting over several years, concerning the acts of
violence of a retired naval officer called Strugovshtchikov and his
various misdeeds in the management of his estate. The question was raised
on the petition of his mother, afterwards the peasants made complaints.
He had come to some arrangement with his mother, and himself charged
the peasants with intending to kill him, without, however, adducing any
serious proofs. Meanwhile it was clear from the evidence of his mother
and his house-serfs that the man was guilty of all sorts of lawless
violence. The business had been sleeping the sleep of the just for more
than a year; it is always possible to drag a case out with inquiries and
unnecessary correspondence and then, recording it settled, to file it on
the archives of the office. A recommendation had to be made to the Senate
that he should be put under restraint, but for this purpose the assent of
the Marshal of Nobility was necessary. As a rule, the Marshal of Nobility
evades giving it, being disinclined to lose a vote. It rested entirely
with me whether the case was pushed forward, but a _coup de grâce_ from
the marshal was essential.

The marshal of the Novgorod Province, a nobleman with a Vladimir medal
who had served in the militia in 1812, tried to show that he was a
well-read man when he met me, by talking in the bookish language of the
period before Karamzin; on one occasion, pointing to a monument which
the nobility of Novgorod had raised _to itself_ in recognition of its
patriotism in 1812, he alluded with feeling to the severe and sacred
character of a marshal’s duties, and the flattering honour of so weighty
a trust.

All that was to the good. The marshal came to the office in connection
with certifying the insanity of some church servitor; after all the
presidents of all the courts had exhausted their whole store of foolish
questions, from which the lunatic might well have concluded that they too
were a little deranged, and had finally certified him as insane, I drew
the marshal aside and described the case to him. The marshal shrugged
his shoulders, assumed an air of horror and indignation, and ended by
referring to the naval officer as an arrant scoundrel ‘who cast a black
shadow on the stainless reputation of the nobility of Novgorod.’

‘You would, of course,’ said I, ‘give us the same answer in writing, if
we appealed to you?’

The marshal, caught unawares, promised to answer conscientiously, adding
that ‘honour and uprightness were the invariable attributes of the
nobility of Russia.’

Though I had some doubts of the invariability of those attributes, I
pushed the case forward and the marshal kept his word. The case was
brought before the Senate, and I well remember the sweet moment when
the decree of the Senate reached my section, appointing trustees to
superintend the naval officer’s estate and putting him under the
supervision of the police. The naval officer was persuaded that the case
had been shelved, and, thunderstruck at the decree, came to Novgorod. He
was at once told how it had happened; the infuriated officer threatened
to fall upon me from behind a corner, to engage ruffians and lie in wait,
but, being unaccustomed to strategy on land, quietly disappeared from
sight in some distant town.

Unfortunately the ‘attributes’ of brutality, debauchery, and violence
with house-serfs and peasants appear to be more ‘invariable’ than those
of ‘honour and uprightness’ among the nobility of Russia. Of course
there is a small group of cultured landowners who are not knocking their
servants about from morning to night, are not thrashing them every day,
but even among them there are ‘Pyenotchkins’[49]; the rest have not yet
advanced beyond the stage of ‘Saltytchiha’[50] and the American planters.

Rummaging about, I found the correspondence of the provincial government
of Pskov concerning a certain Madame Yaryzhkin. She flogged two of
her maids to death, was tried on account of a third, and was almost
completely acquitted by the Criminal Court, who based their verdict among
other things on the fact that the third one did not die. This woman
invented the most surprising punishments, beating with a flat iron, with
gnarled sticks, or with a washing bat.

I do not know what the girl in question had done, but her mistress
surpassed herself. She made the girl kneel down on some boards into which
nails had been driven; in this position she beat her about the back and
the head with a washing bat, and when she was exhausted, called the
coachman to take her place; luckily he was not at hand and she went out
to find him, while the girl, half frantic with pain and covered with
blood, rushed out into the street with nothing on but her smock and ran
to the police-station. The police-inspector took her evidence and the
case went its regular course. The police and the department of justice
were busy over it for a year; finally the court, obviously bribed, very
sagaciously decided to call the lady’s husband and to admonish him
to restrain his wife from such punishments, while, leaving her under
suspicion of having brought about the death of two servants, they forced
her to sign an undertaking not to punish the maids for the future. On
this understanding the unfortunate girl, who had been kept somewhere else
while the case was going on, was handed over to her mistress again.

The girl, in terror of the future, began writing one petition after
another; the matter reached the ears of the Tsar; he ordered it to
be investigated, and sent an official from Petersburg. Probably the
Yaryzhkins’ means were not equal to bribing the Petersburg gendarmes and
officials from the various Ministries, and the case took a different
turn. The lady was exiled to Siberia, her husband was put under
restraint. All the members of the Criminal Court were sent for trial; how
their trial ended I don’t know.

In another place[51] I have told the story of the man flogged to death by
Prince Trubetskoy and of the _Kammerherr_ Bazilevsky who was thrashed by
his own servants. I will add one more story of a lady.

A serf-girl in the family of a colonel of gendarmes at Penza was carrying
a kettle full of boiling water. Her mistress’s child ran against the
servant, who spilt the boiling water, and the child was scalded. The
mistress to suit the punishment to the offence ordered the servant’s
child to be brought and scalded its hand from the samovar....

Pantchulidzev, the governor, hearing of this monstrous incident,
expressed his heartfelt regret that he was in somewhat strained relations
with the colonel of the gendarmes and consequently felt it improper to
take proceedings which might seem to be instigated by personal motives!

And then sensitive hearts wonder at the peasants murdering their
landowners with their whole families, or at the soldiers of the military
settlement of Staraya Russa massacring all the Russian Germans and all
the German Russians.

In the servants’ quarters and in the maids’ rooms, in the villages and
the police-cells, perfect martyrologies of terrible crimes lie buried;
the memory of them haunts the soul and in course of generations matures
into bloody and merciless vengeance _which it is easy to prevent_ now,
but it will hardly be possible to stop when it has begun.

Staraya Russa, the military settlements! Terrible words! Can it be that
history (bought beforehand by Araktcheyev’s bribe[52]) will never pull
away the shroud under which the government has concealed the series of
crimes coldly and systematically perpetrated in establishing the military
settlements. There have been plenty of horrors everywhere, but in that
case they were marked by the peculiar imprint of Petersburg and Gatchina,
of German and Tatar influence. The beating with sticks and scourging with
lashes for the insubordinate went on for months together ... the blood
was never dry on the floors of the rural offices ... every crime that
may be committed by the people against their torturers on that tract of
land is justified beforehand.

The Mongolian side of the Moscow period which distorted the Slav
character of the Russians, the inhumanity of army discipline which
distorted the Petersburg period, are embodied in the full perfection of
their hideousness in Count Araktcheyev. Araktcheyev was undoubtedly one
of the most loathsome figures that rose to the surface of the Russian
government after Peter the Great. That ‘flunkey of a crowned soldier,’ as
Pushkin said of him, was the model of an ideal corporal as seen in the
dreams of the father of Frederick the Second; he was made up of inhuman
devotion, mechanical accuracy, the exactitude of a chronometer, routine
and energy, a complete lack of feeling, as much intelligence as was
necessary to carry out orders, and enough ambition, spite, and envy to
prefer power to money. Such men are a real treasure to Tsars. Only the
petty resentment of Nicholas can explain the fact that he made no use of
Araktcheyev, but only employed his underlings.

Paul discovered Araktcheyev through sympathy. So long as Alexander’s
sense of shame lasted he kept him at some distance; but, carried away by
the family passion for discipline and drill, he entrusted him with the
secretariat of the army. Of the victories of this general of artillery
we have heard little[53]; for the most part he performed civilian duties
in the military service, his battles were fought on the soldiers’ backs,
his enemies were brought him in chains, they were already conquered. In
the latter years of Alexander I. Araktcheyev governed all Russia. He
interfered in everything, he had a blank cheque giving him a right to
everything. As Alexander grew feebler and sank into gloomy melancholy, he
hesitated a little between Prince A. N. Golitsyn and Araktcheyev and in
the end naturally inclined towards the latter.

At the time of Alexander’s Taganrog visit the house-serfs on
Araktcheyev’s estate in Gruzino killed the Count’s mistress; this murder
gave rise to the investigation of which to this day, _i.e._, seventeen
years later, the officials and inhabitants of Novgorod speak with
horror. The mistress of Araktcheyev, an old man of sixty, was one of his
serf-girls; she oppressed the servants, quarrelled and told tales, while
the Count thrashed them according to the stories she brought him. When
their patience was completely exhausted, the cook killed her. The crime
was so cleverly carried out that no clue to the guilty party could be
found.

But a guilty party was essential for the vengeance of the doting old man;
he laid aside the affairs of the Empire and galloped off to Gruzino.
In the midst of tortures and blood, in the midst of groans and dying
shrieks, Araktcheyev, with the blood-stained kerchief which had been
taken from his mistress’s body tied round him, wrote touching letters
to Alexander, and Alexander replied: ‘Come and find rest from your
unhappiness in the bosom of your friend.’ Alexander’s doctor must have
been right when he declared that the Emperor had water on the brain
before his death.

But the guilty parties were not discovered. The Russian has a wonderful
power of holding his tongue.

Then, utterly infuriated, Araktcheyev made his appearance in Novgorod,
where a crowd of victims was brought. With his face yellow and livid,
with frenzied eyes, and still wearing the blood-stained kerchief, he
began a new investigation and the affair began to assume monstrous
proportions. Eighty persons were seized again, people were arrested in
the town on the strength of one word, on the slightest suspicion, for a
remote rumour. Persons passing through the town were seized and flung
into prison. Merchants and clerks were kept waiting for weeks to be
questioned.... The inhabitants hid in their houses and were afraid to go
out into the streets; no one dared to refer to the case.

Kleinmihel, who served under Araktcheyev, took part in this
investigation....

The governor transformed his house into a torture chamber; people were
tortured near his study from morning till night. The police-captain of
Staraya Russa, a man accustomed to horrors, broke down at last, and when
he was ordered to question under the rods a young woman who was several
months gone with child he was not equal to the task. He went in to the
governor (it took place before old Popov, who told me about it) and told
him that the woman could not be flogged, that it was directly contrary
to the law; the governor leapt up from his seat and, mad with fury,
rushed to the police-captain brandishing his fist: ‘I order you to be
arrested at once, I will have you brought to trial, you are a traitor.’
The police-captain was arrested and resigned his commission; I am truly
sorry I do not know his surname, but may his previous sins be forgiven
him for the sake of that minute—I say it in all seriousness—of heroism;
in dealing with these ruffians it was no trifling matter to show human
feeling.

The woman was put to the torture, she knew nothing about the crime ...
but she died.

And Alexander ‘of blessed memory’ died too. Not knowing what was coming,
these monsters made one last effort, and succeeded in finding the guilty
party; he, of course, was condemned to the knout. In the midst of this
judicial triumph came a command from Nicholas putting them all under
arrest and stopping the whole case.

Orders were given that the governor[54] should be tried by the Senate
... even by them he could not be acquitted. Nicholas issued a gracious
manifesto remitting sentences after his coronation. The friends of Pestel
and Muravyov were not included under it, but this scoundrel was. Two or
three years later, he was condemned at Tambov for the abuse of power on
his own property.

At the beginning of the year 1842 I was hopelessly weary of provincial
government and was trying to invent an excuse to get out of it. While I
was hesitating between one means and another, a quite external chance
decided for me.

One cold, winter morning as I reached the office I found a peasant woman
about thirty standing in the vestibule; seeing me in uniform, she fell on
her knees before me and bursting into tears besought my protection. Her
master, Mussin-Pushkin, was sending her with her husband to a settlement,
while their son, a boy of ten, was to remain behind; she implored
permission to take the child with her. While she was telling me this, the
military governor came in; I motioned her towards him and repeated her
petition. The governor explained to her that children of ten or over may
be kept by the landowners. The mother, not understanding the stupid law,
went on entreating him; he was bored, while the woman, sobbing, clutched
at his legs, and, roughly pushing her away, he said: ‘What a fool you
are, don’t I tell you in plain Russian that I can do nothing? Why do you
persist?’ After that he went with a firm and resolute step to the corner,
where he put down his sabre.

And I went too.... I had had enough.... Did not that woman take me for
one of _them_? It was high time to end the farce.

‘Are you unwell?’ asked a councillor called Hlopin, who had been
transferred from Siberia for some shortcoming or other.

‘I am ill,’ I answered, and I got up, made my bows and went out. The same
day I sent in a declaration that I was ill, and never set foot again in
the office of the provincial government. Then I asked for my discharge on
the ground ‘of illness.’ The Senate gave me my discharge accompanying it
with promotion to the grade of Court Councillor; but Benckendorf at the
same time informed the governor that I was forbidden to visit Petersburg
or Moscow and required to live in Novgorod.

When Ogaryov returned from his first tour abroad, he did his utmost in
Petersburg to procure permission for us to return to Moscow. I had little
faith in the success of such a patron and was fearfully bored in the
wretched little town with the great historical name. Meanwhile Ogaryov
managed our business for us. On the 1st of July 1842 the Empress, on the
occasion of some family festivity, besought the Tsar’s permission for me
to live in Moscow in consideration of my wife’s illness and her desire
to return there. Nicholas gave his consent, and three days later my wife
received from Benckendorf a letter in which he informed her that I was
permitted to accompany her to Moscow in consequence of the Tsarina’s
intervention. He concluded the letter with the agreeable announcement
that I should remain under police supervision there also.

I felt no regret at leaving Novgorod and made haste to get away as
soon as possible. Before I left it, however, almost the only agreeable
incident of my sojourn there occurred.

I had no money! I did not want to wait for a remittance from Moscow and
so I commissioned Matvey to try and borrow fifteen hundred roubles for
me. Within an hour Matvey returned with an innkeeper called Gibin, whom
I knew, and at whose hotel I had stayed for a week. Gibin, a stout
merchant with a good-natured expression, handed me a roll of notes with a
bow.

‘What rate of interest do you ask?’ I inquired.

‘Well, you see,’ answered Gibin, ‘I am not a money-lender and I won’t
take interest, but since I heard from Matvey Savelyevitch that you are in
want of money for a month or two, and we are very much pleased with you,
and thank God have the money to spare, I have brought it along.’

I thanked him and asked him if he would like a simple receipt for the
money or an I O U, but to this, too, Gibin answered: ‘That is quite
unnecessary, I trust your word more than a piece of stamped paper.’

‘Upon my word, but I may die you know.’

‘Well then, in my distress at your decease I shouldn’t worry much about
the loss of the money.’

I was touched and pressed his hand warmly instead of giving him a
receipt. Gibin embraced me in the Russian fashion and said: ‘We see it
all of course, we know you were not serving of your own will and didn’t
behave yourself like the others, God forgive them, but stood up for us
and for the ignorant people, so I am glad of a chance to do you a good
turn too.’

As we were driving out of the town late in the evening our driver
pulled up the horses at the inn and Gibin gave me a cake the size of a
cart-wheel as provision for the journey....

That was my ‘medal for good service.’




Chapter 28

GRÜBELEI—MOSCOW AFTER EXILE—POKROVSKOE—THE DEATH OF MATVEY—FATHER IOANN


Our life in Novgorod had not been a happy one. I had gone there not in
a spirit of self-sacrifice and determination, but with my heart full of
annoyance and exasperation. This second exile, with the vulgarity of its
attendant circumstances, irritated more than it distressed me; it was
not enough of a calamity to rouse the spirit, but was merely a worry,
without the interest of novelty or the stimulus of danger. The mere sight
of the provincial government office with its Elpidifor Antihovitch Zurov,
its councillor Hlopin, and its vice-governor Pimen Arapov, was enough to
poison my existence.

I was ill-humoured; Natalie sank into melancholy. Her sensitive nature,
accustomed from childhood to tears and sadness, gave way again to
brooding depression. She dwelt on painful ideas and readily let slip
everything bright and joyful. Life was becoming more complex; there were
more chords in it and with them more anxiety. After Sasha’s illness had
come the shock of the secret police, her premature confinement, and the
loss of the baby. The death of a baby is scarcely felt by the father,
anxiety over the mother makes him almost forget the little creature
that has flitted away almost before it had time to cry and take the
breast. But to the mother the new-born child is something close and
familiar already; for months she has been _feeling_ him; there has been a
physical, chemical, nervous connection between them; moreover, the baby
makes up to the mother for the burden of pregnancy, for the sufferings of
childbirth; without him her agonies are motiveless and resented, without
him the unwanted milk affects the brain.

After Natalie’s death I found among her papers a note which I had quite
forgotten. It consisted of a few lines I had written an hour or two
before Sasha’s birth. It was a prayer, a blessing, a dedication of the
unborn creature to ‘the service of humanity,’ his ‘consecration to the
path of hardship.’

On the other side was written in Natalie’s hand: ‘_January 1,
1841_.—Yesterday Alexandr gave me this; he could not have made me a
better present, those lines at once called up the whole picture of our
three years of unbroken, boundless happiness, resting on love alone. So
we have passed into a new year; whatever awaits us in it, I bow my head
and say for both of us, Thy Will be done! We welcomed the New Year at
home, in solitude, only A. L. Vitberg was with us. Little Alexandr was
missing from our party, he was so sound asleep, neither past nor future
exists for him yet. Sleep, my angel, free from care, I pray for you—and
for you too, my child unborn, whom I love with all a mother’s love. Your
movements, your tremors mean so much to my heart, and may your coming
into the world be glad and blessed!’

But the mother’s hope was not fulfilled: the babe was sentenced by
Nicholas. The deadly hand of the Russian autocrat intervened here
also—and here also destroyed a life!

The baby’s death left its mark upon her soul.

With sadness and rankling resentment we went to Novgorod.

The _truth_ of that period, as it was seen at the time, without the
artificial perspective given by distance, without the cooling effect of
years, and the different light thrown on it by a series of other events
is preserved in a diary of the period. I had meant to keep a diary, had
begun it many times, but had never kept it up. On my birthday in Novgorod
Natalie gave me a white book in which I sometimes wrote down what was in
my heart, or my head.

This book has been preserved. On the first page Natalie wrote: ‘May all
the pages of this book, and of all your life be bright and joyous!’

Three years later she added on the last page: ‘In 1842 I hoped that all
the pages of your diary might be bright and untroubled; three years have
passed since then, and looking back I do not regret that my hope has not
been fulfilled; both joy and suffering are essential for a full life, and
you will find peace in my love, in the love with which my whole being, my
whole life is filled. Peace to the past and a blessing for the future!
March 25th, 1845, Moscow.’

This was what was written on the 4th of April 1842:

‘Oh Lord, what unbearable misery! Is it weakness or have I a right to
feel it? Must I reckon my life finished? Is all my readiness for work,
all my craving for self-expression to be crushed, till my yearnings are
stifled and I am ready for a life of emptiness? It might be possible
to exist with no object but one’s own inner development, but the same
awful depression comes over me in the midst of study. I must express
myself—perhaps from the same necessity as the grasshopper churrs ... and
for years to come I have to drag this weight.’

And as though frightened at my own words, I followed this with Goethe’s
lines:—

    ‘Gut verloren—etwas verloren,
    Ehre verloren—viel verloren,
    Musst Ruhm gewinnen,
    Da werden die Leute sich anders besinnen.
    Mut verloren—alles verloren,
    Da wäre es besser nicht geboren’;

and later:—

    ‘My shoulders are breaking but still they will bear!’

‘Will those who come after us understand, will they appreciate all
the horror, all the tragic side of our existence? And meanwhile our
sufferings are the soil from which their happiness will develop; will
they understand what makes us slothful, makes us seek all sorts of
pleasure, drink and so on? Why do we not lift our hands to great tasks,
why at the moment of rapture do we not forget our despondency? Let them
stop with musing and sadness before the stones under which we slumber: we
have deserved their mournful thoughts!

‘I cannot go on for long in my position, I shall be stifled—and I don’t
care how I get out of it, if only I get out of it. I have written to
Dubbelt (I asked him to try and get leave for me to return to Moscow).
Writing that letter made me ill, _on se sent flétri_. I expect it is what
prostitutes feel when first they begin selling themselves.’[55]

And it was just this vexation, this impatient cry of revolt, this
fretting for free activity, this feeling of fetters on the limbs that
Natalie misunderstood.

Often I found her with tear-stained eyes by Sasha’s cot; she assured me
that it was nothing but nerves, that I had better not notice it, not
question her.... I believed her.

One evening I returned home late; she was in bed when I went in, I was
feeling sick at heart. F—— had asked me to go and see him in order to
tell me that he suspected that one of our common acquaintances was in
relations with the police. That sort of thing usually sends a pang to the
heart, not so much from the possible danger as from the feeling of moral
repulsion.

I walked up and down the room in silence, turning over what I had just
heard, when all at once I fancied that Natalie was weeping; I took her
handkerchief, it was soaked with tears.

‘What is it?’ I asked, alarmed and distressed.

She took my hand and in a voice full of tears said:

‘My dear, I will tell you the truth; perhaps it is self-love, egoism,
madness, but I feel, I see, that I cannot distract your mind, you are
bored,—I understand it, I don’t blame you, but it hurts me, it hurts
me, and I cry. I know that you love me, that you are sorry for me, but
you don’t know what makes you depressed, what gives you that feeling of
emptiness, you feel the poverty of your life—and, indeed, what can I do
for you?’

I was like a man suddenly roused in the middle of the night and told
something terrible before he is quite awake: he is frightened and
trembling, though he doesn’t yet understand what is wrong. I was so
completely at peace, so sure of our deep, perfect love, that I never
spoke about it; it was the great assumption upon which all our life
rested; a serene consciousness, a boundless conviction of it excluding
doubt, even distrust of myself, was the fundamental basis of my
happiness. Peace, tranquillity, the aesthetic side of life, all that—as
before our meeting in the graveyard on the 9th of May 1838, as at the
beginning of our life in Vladimir—rested on her, on her, on her!

My deep distress and my astonishment at first dissipated these clouds,
but in a month or two they began to return. I soothed and comforted
her; she smiled herself at the dark phantoms, and again the sunshine
brightened our corner; but as soon as I had forgotten them they raised
their heads again for no reason whatever, and when they had passed I
began to be afraid of their return.

Such was the state of mind in which in July 1842 we moved to Moscow.

Moscow life, at first too full of distractions, could have no beneficial
nor soothing effect. Far from helping her at that time I gave only too
much cause for her _Grübelei_ to grow deeper and more intense.[56]

       *       *       *       *       *

Natalie became absorbed in melancholy, more and more her faith in me
wavered, her idol was shattered. It was a crisis, the painful transition
from youth to maturity. She could not get over the thoughts that fretted
her heart, she was ill, and grew thin—while terrified and reproaching
myself I stood beside her and saw that I had no longer the boundless
power with which I had once been able to exorcise the spirits of gloom.
It wounded me to see it, and I was immensely sorry for her.

They say that children grow in illness; in this spiritual illness which
brought her to the verge of consumption she made colossal strides in
growth. From the slanting rays and glow of dawn she passed by this
sorrowful path into the clear bright light of midday. Her health was
equal to the strain and that was all that mattered. Without losing one
iota of her womanliness she developed intellectually with extraordinary
boldness and depth. Gently and with a smile of self-sacrifice she left
behind what was lost beyond recall, without sentimental repining, without
a sense of personal grievance, and on the other hand without conceited
satisfaction.

It was not in a book, nor through a book, that she found her freedom,
but through living and clearness of vision. Unimportant incidents,
bitter experiences, which for many would have passed without a trace,
left a deep imprint on her soul and were enough to arouse her mind to
immense activity. A slight hint was sufficient for her to pass from one
deduction to another, till she reached that fearless grasp of the truth
which is a heavy burden even for a man to bear. Mournfully she parted
from her shrine in which had stood so many holy things, bathed in tears
of grief and joy; she left them without blushing as big girls blush at
the sight of their doll of yesterday. She did not turn away from them,
she let them go with anguish, knowing that she would be the poorer, the
more defenceless for the loss, that the soft light of the glimmering ikon
lamp would be followed by the grey dawn, that she must make friends with
harsh, callous forces, deaf to the murmur of prayer, deaf to the hopes of
immortality. She gently put them from her bosom like a dead child, and
gently laid them in the grave, respecting in them her past life, their
poetry and the comfort they had given at some moments. Even later she
disliked touching them coldly, just as we avoid wantonly stepping on a
grave.

With this intense mental activity, with this shattering and rebuilding of
all her convictions, she naturally needed rest and solitude.

We went away to my father’s estate near Moscow.

And as soon as we found ourselves alone surrounded by trees and fields,
we breathed freely and looked clearly at life again. We stayed in the
country until late autumn. From time to time we had visitors from Moscow.
Ketscher stayed a month with us, all our friends arrived for the 26th of
August, Natalie’s nameday; then again peace and stillness and the woods
and the fields—and no one but ourselves.

Pokrovskoe, standing solitary, surrounded by immense forest estates, was
of quite a different and much more serious character than Vassilyevskoe,
lying so sunnily with its villages on the bank of the Moskva. This
difference was even noticeable in the peasants. The Pokrovskoe peasants,
hemmed in by woods, were less like people living within reach of Moscow
than those of Vassilyevskoe, although as a fact they were fifteen miles
nearer the city. They were quieter, more unsophisticated, and hung
together very closely. My father moved a wealthy family of peasants from
Vassilyevskoe to Pokrovskoe, but the peasants of the latter place never
considered the family as belonging to their village, but always called
them ‘the settlers.’

With Pokrovskoe, too, I had been closely connected throughout my
childhood; I used to stay there when I was too young to remember, and
from the year 1821 we used to spend a few days there almost every summer
on our way to and from Vassilyevskoe. There lived old Kashentsov,
paralysed and in disgrace since 1813, who dreamed of seeing his master,
the Senator, in all his finery and regalia; there lived—and later in the
cholera of 1831 died—the venerable grey-headed corpulent village elder,
Vassily Yakovlyev, whom I remembered at all his stages with his beard
first dark brown and afterwards quite grey; there lived my foster-brother
Nikifor, who prided himself on the fact that he had for my benefit been
robbed of the milk of his mother, who died later on in a madhouse....

The little village of some twenty or twenty-five homesteads stood at some
distance from our rather large house. On one side lay a semicircular
meadow that had been cleared and fenced in, on the other there was a view
of the river, dammed up for the sake of a mill which they had intended to
build fifteen years before, and of an ancient wooden church all on the
slant, which my uncle the Senator and my father, who owned the estate in
common, had also been intending to repair for the last fifteen years.

The house which had been built by the Senator was a very good one; there
were lofty rooms, big windows, and on both sides porches that were like
verandahs. It was built of choice thick logs, not covered with anything
either outside or in, but with the crevices stuffed up with tow and moss.
The walls smelt of resin, which oozed out here and there like drops of
amber. Before the house there was a small field and beyond that began
a dark forest of large trees, through which ran a track to Zvenigorod;
in the other direction a side-path ran like a thin, dusty ribbon by the
village and was lost in the rye, coming out through the Maikovsky factory
and going on to the Mozhaisk road. There was the forest stillness and
the forest sound, the incessant buzzing of flies, bees, and insects,
... and the fragrance ... that fragrance of grass and forest, made up
of the scents of plants, of leaves, but not of flowers ... which I have
so eagerly sought in Italy and in England, both in spring and in hot
summer, but scarcely ever found. Sometimes one gets a whiff of it in the
hay-field, or when the sirocco is blowing, or before a storm ... and it
brings back the little place before the house, on which, to the great
distress of the village elder and the house-serfs, I would not have the
grass clipped close; on the grass a boy of three, rolling in the clover
and the dandelions among the grasshoppers and ladybirds, and we ourselves
and youth and friendship!

The sun has set, it is still very warm, we don’t want to go home, we
still sit on the grass. Ketscher sorts out the mushrooms and scolds me
for no reason. Can that be the tinkle of a bell? Is it something for
us? Perhaps—it is Saturday. ‘It must be the police-captain going off
somewhere,’ says Ketscher, suspecting that it is not. The troika rattles
through the village, rumbles over the bridge, disappears behind a knoll,
and the only road is towards us. While we run to meet it, it drives up
to the house; Shtchepkin has already rolled off it like an avalanche,
smiling, kissing his hand, and roaring with laughter, while Byelinsky,
cursing the distance from Pokrovskoe and the way that Russian carts and
Russian roads are made, is still alighting and stretching himself, and
already Ketscher is scolding them: ‘What devil has brought you at eight
o’clock in the evening, couldn’t you have come sooner, it is all that
perverse Byelinsky, he can’t get up early, what were you thinking about?’

‘Why, he is more of a savage than ever,’ says Byelinsky, ‘and what a head
of hair he has grown! You would do for the moving forest in _Macbeth_,
Ketscher. Wait a bit, don’t exhaust all your abuse, there are villains
coming later still.’

Another troika is already turning into the yard, Granovsky and Yevgeny
Korsh.

‘Have you come to stay long?’

‘Two days.’

‘Splendid!’ and Ketscher himself is so pleased that he greets them almost
as Tarass Bulba greeted his sons.

Yes, that was one of the happy periods of our life. Of past storms
nothing remained but a trace of vanishing cloud; at home among our
friends there was perfect harmony.

But a senseless fatality very nearly spoilt it all.

One evening Matvey, showing Sasha something on the dam where we too were
standing, slipped and fell into the water on the shallow side. Sasha
was terrified, he rushed up to him as he got out, held him tight in his
little arms and repeated tearfully: ‘Don’t go there, you’ll be drowned!’
No one imagined that the child’s embrace was the last Matvey would
receive and that Sasha’s words were indeed a terrible prophecy.

Drenched and covered with mud, Matvey went to bed and we never saw him
again.

At seven o’clock next morning I was standing on the verandah when I
heard voices growing louder and louder, confused screams, and then
peasants came into sight running at full speed. ‘What has happened?’ ‘Oh,
something dreadful,’ they answered, ‘your man is drowning ... they pulled
one out in time but they can’t get the other.’ I rushed to the river, the
village elder was there with his boots off and his breeches tucked up;
two peasants were throwing a net from a canoe. Five minutes later they
shouted: ‘We have got him, we have got him!’ and dragged Matvey’s dead
body to the bank. The young man, so blooming, handsome, and rosy-cheeked,
lay with wide-open eyes in which there was no trace of life, and already
the lower part of his face was beginning to swell. The village elder laid
the body on the bank, sternly bade the peasants not to touch it, threw a
coat over it, set a man to watch it, and sent for the rural police....

When I returned home I met Natalie; she knew already what had happened
and ran to me sobbing.

We were sorry, very sorry to lose Matvey. He had played so intimate a
part in our little family, he was so closely bound up with all the chief
events of its last five years, and he loved us so truly that we could not
easily get over his loss.

‘Perhaps,’ I wrote at the time, ‘death may have been a blessing for him,
life had terrible blows in store for him and he had no way of avoiding
them. But it is dreadful to witness such a way of escape from the future.
He had developed under my influence, but in too great a hurry; his
development was a worry to him through its one-sidedness.’

The melancholy side of Matvey’s life lay precisely in the gulf which the
haphazard character of his education had brought with it, and in his
incapacity for filling it up, his lack of strength of will for overcoming
it. In him generous feelings and a tender heart were stronger than
intellect or character. Rapidly, like a woman, he assimilated a great
deal, especially of our outlook on life; but he was incapable of going
humbly back to the first elements, to the ABC, and filling in the blanks
and empty places by study. He did not like his calling and, indeed, he
could not like it. Social inequality is nowhere apparent in so degrading
and humiliating a form as in the relations between master and servant.
Rothschild in the street is far more on an equality with the beggar who
stands with a broom and sweeps away the mud before him than with his
valet in silk stockings and white gloves.

The complaints made of servants, which we hear every day, are quite
as just as the servants’ complaints against their masters, and that
not because either class has grown worse than it was, but because they
are growing more and more conscious of their mutual relation. It is
oppressive to the servant and corrupting to the master.

We are so accustomed to our aristocratic attitude to servants that we do
not notice it at all. How many good-natured and sensitive young ladies
there are in the world, ready to weep over a frozen puppy and to give
their last farthing to a beggar, who will yet drive through severe frost
to a fancy dress ball for the benefit of the destitute in Syria, or a
concert given for burnt-out villagers in Abyssinia, and will ask their
mother to stay for one more quadrille without a thought of the little
postillion boy on horseback with the blood freezing in his veins in the
night frost.

The attitude of masters to their servants is loathsome. The workman at
any rate knows what his job is; he does something; he can do it more
quickly and then be free, besides he can dream of becoming his own
master. The servant can never finish his work, he is like a squirrel in
a wheel; life makes dirt, it makes dirt incessantly, and the servant is
incessantly cleaning up after it. He is obliged to take upon himself all
the petty discomforts of life, all its dirty and tedious aspects. He is
put into a livery to show he is not his own man but some one else’s. He
waits upon a man who is twice as strong and healthy as himself, he must
step into the mud that the other may go dry-shod, he must be cold that
the other may be warm.

Rothschild does not make the starving Irishman look on at his feasts of
Lucullus, he does not send him to pour out Clos-de-Vougeot for twenty
persons, with the unspoken understanding that if he pours out a glass for
himself he will be turned away as a thief. The Irish peasant is luckier
too than the indoor slave because he does not know what soft beds and
fragrant wines are like.

Matvey was fifteen when he came to me from Sonnenberg, with him I lived
in exile and with him in Vladimir; he was our servant at the time when
we were without money. He looked after Sasha like a nurse, and had a
boundless faith in me and a blind devotion to me, which came from his
understanding that I was not really a master. His relation to me was more
like that which existed in old days between the pupils of the Italian
artists and their _maestri_. I was often vexed with him, but not in the
least as a servant.... I felt worried about his future; oppressed by
his position and unhappy about it, he did nothing to escape from it. At
his age if he had cared to work he might have begun a new life; but to
do so needed persevering hard work, often tiresome and often childish.
His reading was confined to novels and poetry. His understanding and
appreciation of them was sometimes very correct, but serious reading
wearied him. He was slow and inaccurate in reckoning, and his writing was
bad and illegible. How often have I insisted on his working at arithmetic
and handwriting, but never could get him to do it: instead of Russian
grammar, he would at one time take up the French alphabet, at another
German dialogues; of course, that was waste of time and only discouraged
him. I used to scold him vigorously for it; he would be mortified,
sometimes shed tears and say that he was an unlucky man and that it was
too late to study; sometimes he would come to such depths of despair as
to wish for death, would fling up all his pursuits and would spend weeks,
even months in idleness and boredom.

With modest abilities and not too wide an aim, all might yet have been
well. But unhappily in those spiritually sensitive but soft characters
the energy is mostly wasted on rushing ahead in spurts, and there is
no energy left for going forward steadily. From the distance they have
a vision of education and culture on their poetical side, they would
like to grasp them, forgetting their lack of technical equipment, of the
fingering without which no instrument is mastered.

I often asked myself whether his half-education was not a poisoned gift;
what awaited him in the future?

Fate cut the Gordian knot.

Poor Matvey! Even his funeral was surrounded with all the gloomy
oppressiveness and horrible accompaniments which were yet typically
Russian. At midday the police-sergeant arrived together with his clerk
and our village priest, a very old man and a great drunkard. They saw
the body, asked questions and sat down to write the answers. The priest,
who was neither writing nor reading, put on a big pair of silver-rimmed
spectacles and sat in silence sighing, yawning, and making the sign of
the cross over his mouth, then suddenly turned to the village elder and
making a movement as though he had an insufferable pain in his back,
asked him: ‘I say, Savely Gavrilovitch, will there be a little bit of
lunch?’

The village elder, a dignified peasant, promoted to his position by the
Senator and my father, because he was a good carpenter, did not belong to
the village (consequently he knew nothing of what went on in it). He was
very handsome in spite of being sixty. He stroked his beard, which was
combed out like a fan, and as though he had nothing whatever to do with
the matter, answered in a deep bass, looking at me from under his brow:
‘About that we can give no information!’

‘There will,’ I answered, and called a servant.

‘Thanks be to Thee, O Lord! and indeed it is high time; I get up early,
Alexandr Ivanovitch, and I am sick with hunger.’

The police-sergeant laid down his pen and, rubbing his hands, said,
preening himself: ‘I fancy Father Ioann is hungry; a good thing too, if
our host doesn’t mind, we might have a snack.’

The servant brought a cold lunch with sweet vodka, home-made liqueurs,
and sherry.

‘Say a blessing, Father, since you are shepherd; set the example and we
sinners will follow you,’ observed the police-sergeant.

With great haste and with an extremely condensed grace, the priest took
a wine-glass of sweet vodka, put a bit of crumb of bread into his mouth,
munched it, and at the same time drank off another glassful, and then
quietly and persistently set to work on the ham.

The police-sergeant, too—and this is vividly impressed on my memory—was
particularly pleased with the sweet vodka, and after taking a second
glass, he turned to me with the air of a connoisseur and observed: ‘I
expect your _Doppelkümmel_ came from widow Rouget’s?’

I had no idea where the vodka had been bought, and told them to bring
the bottle; the vodka really had come from widow Rouget’s. What practice
a man must have had to be able to tell the name of the maker from the
bouquet of a vodka!

When they had finished, the village elder put a bundle of oats and a
sack of potatoes in the police-sergeant’s cart; the clerk, who had had
a good deal to drink in the kitchen, got on the box, and he and the
police-sergeant drove away. With unsteady footsteps the priest set off
homewards, picking his teeth with a shaving. I was giving orders to the
servants about the funeral when suddenly Father Ioann stopped and began
waving his hands: the village elder ran up to him and then back to me.

‘What has happened?’

‘Oh, the Father bade me ask your honour,’ answered the elder, not
concealing a smile, ‘“Who,” says he, “will arrange a memorial feast for
the dead man?”’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him not to be anxious; there will be pancakes all right, I said.’

Matvey was buried, pancakes and vodka were given to the priest, and it
all left a long, dark shadow behind it. I still had a terrible task
before me—telling his mother.

I cannot part from this worthy priest of the Church of the Veil of Our
Lady in the village of Pokrovskoe without saying a little more about him.

Father Ioann was not a fashionable priest from the seminary; he did not
know the Greek declensions nor the Latin syntax. He was over seventy,
and he had spent half his life as a deacon in a big village belonging
to Elizaveta Alexeyevna Golohvastov, who induced the Metropolitan to
ordain him priest and appoint him to a vacancy in my father’s village.
Though he had tried all his life to accustom himself to taking an immense
quantity of strong drink, he could never get over its effect, and hence
was invariably drunk after midday. He drank to such an extent that often
after a wedding or a christening in neighbouring villages, which formed
part of his parish, the peasants would carry him out dead-drunk, lay him
like a sheaf of corn on his cart, tie the reins to the bar in front and
send him off under the sole supervision of his horse. The nag, who knew
the road well, brought him home without fail. His wife, too, got drunk
every time the Lord sent her the means. But what is more remarkable is
that his daughter at fourteen could toss off a whole teacupful of vodka
without turning a hair.

The peasants despised him and all his family; on one occasion, they even
complained against him to the Senator and to my father, who asked the
Metropolitan to inquire into the matter. The peasants charged him with
being very extortionate in asking for money, with refusing for over three
days to bury a man without payment beforehand, and declining to perform
weddings altogether until he had been paid. The Metropolitan or the
Consistory found the peasants’ complaint a just one and sent Father Ioann
for two or three months to humbler duties. The priest returned from this
correction not only twice as drunken, but a thief as well.

Our servants used to tell us that on the dedication day of the church an
old peasant, drinking with the priest when both were drunk, said: ‘You
are such a disgrace we had to bring it before his Reverence! You wouldn’t
mend your ways so they clipped your wings for you.’ The offended priest
is said to have replied: ‘Well, I pay you out, you rascals, for whether I
marry you or whether I bury you, it is the very worst prayers I say for
you.’

A year later, that is in 1844, we were again spending the summer in
Pokrovskoe. The grey-headed, thin, old priest was still drinking in the
same way, and still as unable to resist the effect of vodka. He got into
the habit of coming after service on Sundays to see me, drinking too much
vodka and sitting for two hours or more. I got sick of this. I told them
to tell him I was not at home, and actually hid in the wood to escape
from him. But even this did not settle him. ‘The master not at home?’ he
said, ‘but the vodka is at home, surely? I’ll be bound he did not take it
with him?’ My servant brought him out into the vestibule a large glass
of sweet vodka, and the priest, after drinking it and having a snack of
caviare, meekly went his way.

At last our acquaintance was broken off completely.

One morning the sacristan, a tall, lanky fellow with his hair done like
a woman’s, arrived to see me, together with his freckled young wife;
they were both in great excitement, both talked at once, both shed tears
simultaneously and wiped them away at the same moment.

The sacristan in a sort of flat falsetto, his wife with a terrible lisp,
vied with each other in telling me that their watch had been stolen a few
days before and also a box in which there were fifty roubles, that the
sacristan’s wife had found the ‘fief’ and that this ‘fief’ was no other
than our worthy pastor and Father in Christ, Ioann.

The proofs were conclusive; the sacristan’s wife had found a piece of
the lid of the stolen box amongst the rubbish swept out of the priest’s
house. They came to beg me to take their part. Although I explained
to them several times over the distribution of authority between the
spiritual and the secular powers, the sacristan still persisted and his
wife still wept; I did not know what to do. I felt sorry for them; they
valued their loss at ninety roubles. After thinking a little I ordered
the cart to be got ready and sent the village elder with a letter to
the police-captain; I asked him for the advice which the sacristan
hoped to get from me. Towards evening the village elder returned, the
police-captain had told him to give me a verbal message: ‘Drop the thing
or the Consistory will intervene and make a bobbery. Tell your master not
to interfere with the long-haired gentry if he does not want his hands
to stink.’ This answer, and the last observation particularly, Savely
Gavrilovitch delivered with great satisfaction.

‘But that the Father stole the box,’ he added, ‘that is as sure as that I
am standing here.’

I regretfully repeated to the sacristan the answer of the secular
authority. The elder, on the contrary, said to him reassuringly: ‘Come,
why are you so down-hearted already? Wait a bit, we’ll be even with him
yet. Are you an old woman or a sacristan?’

And the elder with the help of others did get even with him.

Whether Savely Gavrilovitch was a dissenter or not I do not know for
certain, but the peasants of the family brought from Vassilyevskoe when
my father sold it were all Old Believers. Sober, shrewd, and hard-working
people, they all hated the priest. One of them whom the peasants called
the corn-chandler had his own shop in Neglinny Street in Moscow. The
story of the stolen watch reached him at once; making inquiries, the
corn-chandler discovered that a deacon out of a place, a son-in-law of
the Pokrovskoe priest, had offered to sell or pawn a watch, and that this
watch was at the money-changer’s; the corn-chandler knew the sacristan’s
watch, he went to the money-changer’s and at once saw that it was the
very watch. Not sparing his horses in his delight, he arrived himself in
Pokrovskoe with the news.

Then with the complete proofs in his hand, the sacristan went to the
head-priest of the district. Three days later I heard that the priest had
paid the sacristan a hundred roubles and they were reconciled.

‘How was that?’ I asked the sacristan.

‘The head-priest, as your honour heard, graciously sent for our Herod. He
kept him a long time and what passed I don’t know. Only afterwards he was
pleased to summon me and said to me sternly: “What is this silly quarrel?
For shame, young man, anything may happen in drink. The old man, as you
see, is old, he might be your father. He will give you a hundred roubles
to make it right. Are you satisfied?” “I am satisfied, your Reverence.”
“Well, if you are satisfied, then keep your jaw shut, there is no need
to set the bells ringing, he is over seventy, anyway; if you don’t, mind
I’ll make you smart too.”’

And this drunken thief, unmasked by the corn-chandler, came back to
perform his sacred duties before the same village elder who had so
confidently told me that he had stolen the box; within the choir the same
sacristan in whose pocket the celebrated watch was now for ever and ever
marking the fleeting hours; and—before the very same peasants!

That happened in 1844, about thirty-five miles from Moscow, and I was an
eye-witness of it all!

It would be no wonder if at the summons of Father Ioann the Holy Ghost,
as in Beranger’s ballad, refused to come down.

    ‘Non, dit l’esprit saint, je ne descends pas.’

How was it they did not dismiss him?

A minister of the Church, our sages of Orthodoxy will tell us, can like
Caesar’s wife never be suspected.




Chapter 29

OUR FRIENDS

THE MOSCOW CIRCLE—TABLE TALK—THE WESTERNERS (BOTKIN, RYEDKIN, KRYUKOV,
AND YEVGENY KORSH)—ON THE GRAVE OF A FRIEND


I

With our visit to Pokrovskoe and the quiet summer we spent there begins
the harmonious, mature, and active part of our Moscow life, which lasted
till my father’s death and perhaps until we went abroad.

Our nerves, overstrained in Petersburg and Novgorod, had recovered, our
spiritual storms had subsided. The agonising analysis of ourselves and of
each other, the useless reopening of recent wounds, the incessant going
back to the same painful subjects was over; and our shaken faith in our
own infallibility gave a truer and more earnest character to our lives.
My article _On a Drama_ was the last word of the sickness we had passed
through.

On the external side, the only restriction we suffered from was police
supervision; I cannot say it was very oppressive, but the unpleasant
feeling of a Damocles’ cane wielded by the local police-constable was
very distasteful.

Our new friends received us warmly, far more warmly than two years
before. Foremost among them stood Granovsky, he took the leading place
in those five years. Ogaryov was almost all the time abroad. Granovsky
filled his place for us. To him we are indebted for the happiest moments
of that period. There was a wonderful power of love in his nature. With
many I was more in agreement in opinion, but to him I was nearer—deep
down, somewhere in the soul.

Granovsky and all of us were very busy, all hard at work, one lecturing
in the university, another contributing to reviews and magazines,
another studying Russian history; the first beginnings of all that was
done afterwards date from this period.

By now we were far from being children; in 1842 I was thirty; we knew
only too well where our work was leading us, but we went on. We went
along our chosen path, no longer rashly but deliberately, with the calm,
even step to which experience and family life had trained us. This did
not mean that we had grown old, no, we were still young, and that is
how it was that some coming from the university lecture-room, others
publishing articles or editing newspapers were every day in danger of
being attested, dismissed, exiled.

Such a circle of talented, cultured, many-sided, and pure-hearted people
I have met nowhere since, neither in the highest ranks of the political
nor on the summits of the literary and aristocratic world. Yet I have
travelled a great deal, I have lived everywhere and with all sorts of
people. I have been brought by the revolution into contact with all that
was foremost in culture, and I am honestly bound to say the same thing.

The finished, self-contained personality of the Western European, which
surprises us at first by its specialisation, surprises us later by its
one-sidedness. He is always satisfied with himself, his self-sufficiency
offends us. He never forgets his personal views, his position is
altogether cramped and his morals only appropriate to paltry surroundings.

I do not imagine that men were always like this here; the Western
European is not in a normal condition, _he is moulting_. Unsuccessful
revolutions have turned inwards, none of them have transformed him,
but each has left its trace and confused his ideas, while the natural
historical process has left in the foreground the slimy stratum of
the petty-bourgeois, under which the fossilised aristocratic classes
are buried and the rising masses submerged. Petty-bourgeoisdom is
incompatible with the Russian character—and thank God for it!

Whether it is due to our carelessness, or our lack of moral stability
and of definite work, or our youth in the matter of culture, or the
aristocratic character of our bringing-up, any way we are on the one
hand far more artists in life, and on the other far simpler than Western
Europeans; we have not their specialised knowledge, but on the other hand
we are far more many-sided than they. Persons of culture are not common
amongst us, but their culture is richer, wider in its scope, free from
hedges and barriers. It is quite different in Western Europe.

Talking to the nicest people here[57] you immediately reach
contradictions where there is nothing in common, and it is quite
impossible to convince. In this stubborn obstinacy and instinctive lack
of comprehension you seem to be knocking your head against the limits of
a completed world.

Our theoretical differences, on the contrary, brought more living
interest into our lives, more craving for active exchange of opinions,
kept our minds more vigorous and helped us to progress; we grew in this
friction against each other, and in reality were the stronger for this
co-operation which Proudhon has so superbly described in the sphere of
mechanical labour.

I love to dwell on that time of work in unison, of a full, throbbing
pulse, of harmonious order and manly struggle, on those years in which we
were young for the last time!...

Our little circle met frequently, sometimes at the house of one,
sometimes of another, most often at mine. Together with chat, jests,
supper, and wine, there was the most active, the most rapid exchange of
ideas, of news, and of knowledge; every one handed on what he had read
or learned. Views came out in argument and what had been worked out by
each became the property of all. There was nothing of significance in any
sphere of knowledge, in any literature, or in any art, which did not come
under the notice of some one of us, and was not at once communicated to
all.

It was just this character in our gatherings that dull pedants and
tedious scholars failed to understand. They saw the meat and the bottles,
but they saw nothing else. Feasting goes with fullness of life, ascetic
people are usually dry, egoistic people, we were not monks, we lived on
all sides, and, sitting round the table, gained more in culture and did
no less than those fasting toilers who grub in the backyards of science.

I will not have anything said against you, my friends, nor against that
bright, splendid time; I think of it with more than love, almost with
envy. We were not like the emaciated monks of Zurbaran,[58] we did not
weep over the sins of the world, we only sympathised with its sufferings,
and were ready with a smile for anything, and not depressed with
forebodings of our sacrifices in the future. Ascetics who are for ever
austere have always excited my suspicion; if they are not pretending,
either their mind or their stomach is out of order.

    ‘You’re right, my friend, you’re right....’

Yes, you were right, Botkin—and far more so than Plato—when you sometimes
taught us, not in gardens and porticos (it is too cold in Russia without
a roof on) but round the friendly dinner-table, that a man may find
‘pantheistic enjoyment’ alike in contemplating the dance of the sea-waves
and of Spanish maidens, in listening to the songs of Schubert and in
sniffing the fragrance of turkey stuffed with truffles.

Listening to your sage words, I appreciated for the first time the
democratic spirit of our language which talks of ‘hearing an odour,’
putting smell on a level with sound.

It was not for nothing that you left your lodging in Moroseika and
learned in Paris to respect the culinary art, and from the banks of the
Guadalquivir the religion not only of feet, but of calves, supreme and
sovereign, _soberana pantorrilla_!

Yet Ryedkin was in Spain—but what good did he get from it? He went to
that land of historical lawlessness for the sake of making juridical
commentaries on Puchta[59] and Savigny.[60] Instead of looking at the
fandango and the bolero, he looked at the rising in Barcelona (which
ended exactly in the same way as every _cachucha_—that is in nothing)
and talked so much about it afterwards that the curator Strogonov shook
his head and began looking at Ryedkin’s lame leg and muttering something
about barricades, as though doubtful whether the radical jurist had
really hurt his leg falling out of the diligence on to the pavement in
loyal Dresden.

‘What disrespect for learning! You know I don’t like such jokes,’ says
Ryedkin severely, not in the least vexed.

‘That m—m—m—ay be so,’ observes Korsh, stammering, ‘but why is it you so
identify yourself with learning that one can’t make fun of you without
insulting it?’

‘Come now, there will be no end to it,’ says Ryedkin, and with the
determination of a man who has read the whole of Roteck[61] attacks the
soup, pelted lightly with Kryukov’s jests—elegantly modelled on an
antique pattern.

But the attention of all has already abandoned them; it is bent upon the
sturgeon, which is expounded by Schtchepkin himself, who has studied the
flesh of contemporary fish more thoroughly than Agassiz did the bones of
antediluvian ones. Botkin glances at the sturgeon, screws up his eyes
and gently shakes his head, not from side to side but backwards and
forwards; only Ketscher, indifferent on principle to the splendours of
this world, lights his pipe and speaks of something else. Do not be angry
with these lines of nonsense; I will not go on with them, they dropped
almost unconsciously from my pen when I thought of our Moscow dinners;
for a minute I forgot both the impossibility of repeating jokes and the
fact that these sketches are living only for me, and for few, very few,
survivors. I feel terrified when I think how short a time ago the path
seemed so long, so very long before us all!...

And now those who have gone rise up before my eyes, not with the cloud
of death about them, but young, full of strength. One of them, like
Stankevitch, died far away from home—I mean E. P. Galahov.

How we used to laugh at his stories! It was not merry laughter, though,
but more like that which Gogol sometimes excites. Jests and witticisms
flashed from Kryukov and from Yevgeny Korsh like sparkling wine,
from their exuberance. There was nothing bright in Galahov’s humour,
it was the humour of a man out of harmony with himself and with his
surroundings, thirsting for peace and serenity, but with no great hope of
finding them.

Having been brought up in the aristocratic fashion, Galahov very early
got into the Izmailovsky Regiment and also left it very early, and then
set to work to educate himself in earnest. With a vigorous, but more
impulsive and passionate than dialectic mind, he tried with petulant
impatience to wring out the truth, and the practical truth too,
immediately applicable to life. He did not notice, as the greater number
of Frenchmen do not, that truth can only be reached by method and remains
inseparable from it; truth as a result is but a truism, a commonplace.
Galahov sought not with modest self-abasement what was to be found, but
sought for a truth that was to be comforting, and it is no wonder that
it eluded his capricious pursuit. He was vexed and angry. People of that
type cannot live in negation, in analysis; dissection is hateful to them,
they seek for something ready-made, complete, creative. What could our
age, and in the reign of Nicholas too, give Galahov?

He rushed hither and thither, knocking at every door, even at the
Catholic Church, but his living soul was revolted by the gloomy twilight,
the damp, grave-like, prison atmosphere of her comfortless crypts.
Leaving the old Catholicism of the Jesuits and the new of Buchez,[62] he
was beginning to approach philosophy, but her cold, inhospitable portals
repelled him, and for several years he found rest in Fourierism.

The ready-made organisation, the obligatory regulations and almost
barrack-like discipline of the phalanstery, though the critical may
find little to like in it, has undoubtedly great attractions for those
tired people who beg almost with tears for Truth to take them in her
arms and lull them to sleep. Fourierism offers a definite aim—work, and
work in common. Men are very often ready to give up their own will for
the sake of being rid of hesitation and uncertainty. This occurs over
and over again in the most ordinary daily affairs. ‘Would you like to
go to the theatre to-day, or drive out of town?’ ‘As you like,’ answers
the other; they don’t know what to do and wait with impatience for some
circumstance to decide for them. This was the groundwork upon which
Cabet’s[63] settlement, the communistic convent, the Stauropigalian and
Icarian communities were formed in America. The restless French workmen,
educated by two revolutions and two reactions, began at last to be
exhausted and to be assailed by doubts, frightened by them; they were
glad of something new, renounced their aimless freedom, and submitted in
Icaria to a strict discipline and subordination which was certainly no
less severe than the monastic rule of the Benedictines.

Galahov was too cultured and independent to be completely lost in
Fourierism, but for some years it attracted him. When I met him in Paris
in 1847 the feeling he cherished for the phalanstery was more like the
tenderness we feel for the school at which we have studied, for the house
in which we have spent some peaceful years, than that which believers
have for their church.

In Paris Galahov was even more charming and original than in Moscow. His
aristocratic character, his generous, chivalrous ideas were wounded at
every step; he looked at the petty-bourgeois world surrounding him there
with the disgust with which fastidious people look at something dirty.
Neither the French nor the Germans impressed him, and he rather looked
down on many of the heroes of the day—with extreme simplicity pointing
out their petty triviality, mercenary views, and insolent conceit. In his
disdain for these people he even displayed a national haughtiness, really
quite foreign to him. Speaking, for instance, of a man whom he greatly
disliked, he would by his expression, by his smile and the screwing up
of his eyes, compress into the one word ‘German’ a whole biography, a
whole physiology, a regular series of the petty, coarse, clumsy failings
especially characteristic of the German race.

Like all nervous people Galahov was very variable; he was sometimes
silent and dreamy, but _par saccades_ would talk freely and with heat,
would carry his listeners away by serious subjects on which he had felt
deeply, and sometimes made them roar with laughter at the unexpected
freakishness of phrase or startling aptness of the pictures he sketched
in two or three strokes.

To repeat the things he said is almost impossible. I will recall as
best I can one of his stories, and that in a brief extract. In Paris
conversation somehow turned on the unpleasant feeling with which we cross
our frontier. Galahov began describing how he had travelled for the last
time to his estate; it was a _chef-d’œuvre_.

‘I drive up to the frontier; rain, sleet, a log painted black and white
lying across the road; we wait, they won’t let us through. I look
out: a Cossack with a pike on horseback comes riding down upon us.
“Your passport, please.” I give it to him and say, “I’ll come to the
guard-house with you, brother, it is very wet here.” “You can’t go there,
sir.” “Why so?” “Kindly wait.” I turned towards the Austrian guard-house,
but that was no good either: another Cossack with the face of a Chinaman
seemed to spring out of the earth. “You can’t go there, sir!” What had
happened? “Kindly wait!” And the rain was pouring and pouring.... All
at once a sergeant shouts from the guard-house: “Lift it up!” There is
a clanking of chains and the striped guillotine begins rising; we drive
under it, the chains clank again and the beam descends. There, I thought,
I am caught. In the guard-house a military clerk is copying out my
passport: “Is this yourself?” he asks. I promptly give him a _zwanziger_.
Then the sergeant comes in; he says nothing, but I make haste and give
him a _zwanziger_. “Everything is correct, you can go on to the Customs.”
I get in, drive off ... only I still fancy they are pursuing me. I
look round—a Cossack with a pike—trot, trot, after me.... “What is it,
brother?” “I am escorting your honour to the Customs.” At the Customs a
clerk in spectacles looks through my books. I give him a _thaler_ and
say, “You needn’t trouble, the books are all scientific, medical!” “To be
sure they are: hey! porter, lock up the box again!” Again a _zwanziger_.

‘They let me go at last. I take a _troika_, we drive past endless fields;
suddenly there is a glow in the distance, it grows redder and redder ...
a fire. “Look,” I say to the driver, “how dreadful!” “It is no matter,”
he answers, “it must be a cottage or a barn burning. Come, come, look
alive, get on!” Two hours later the sky is red on the other side; this
time I do not even ask, comforted by the reflection that it is a hut or a
barn on fire.

‘I came to Moscow from the country in Lent. The snow had almost melted,
the sledge-runners grated on the cobbles, the street lamps were dimly
reflected in the dark pools, and the trace-horse flung up the frozen
mud in large clods straight into one’s face. And what is very queer, as
soon as the spring comes and there are four or five fine days, clouds of
dust appear instead of the mud; the police-master coughs, and standing
anxiously on his droshky points with dissatisfaction at it, while the
policemen bustle about and scatter powdered brick by way of laying the
dust!’

Galahov was extremely absent-minded, and in him absent-mindedness was as
charming a defect as stuttering was in Yevgeny Korsh; sometimes he was
a little vexed, but as a rule he laughed himself at the extraordinary
mistakes into which he was continually falling.

Madame H—— once invited him to an evening party. Galahov went with us
to hear ‘Linda di Chamonix’; after the opera he went to Chevalier’s, and
after spending an hour and a half there drove home, changed his clothes,
and went off to Madame H——’s. There was a candle burning in the vestibule
and some baggage was lying about. He went into the dining-room—there was
no one there; he went into the drawing-room, there he found Madame H——’s
husband, who had just come from Penza and was still in his travelling
clothes. He looked with surprise at Galahov, who inquired what sort of
a journey he had had and quietly sat down in an armchair. He said that
the roads were very bad and that he was very tired. ‘And where is Marya
Dimitryevna?’ asked Galahov. ‘She has been asleep for hours.’ ‘Asleep?
Why, is it so late?’ he asked, beginning to suspect the truth. ‘Four
o’clock,’ answered H——. ‘Four o’clock!’ repeated Galahov. ‘Excuse me, I
only wanted to congratulate you on your safe arrival.’

Another time he came to an evening party at the same house; all the men
were in swallow-tails and the ladies in evening dress. Galahov either
had not received an invitation or had forgotten it, anyway he entered
the drawing-room in his overcoat; he sat down, took a candle, lighted
a cigar, and began talking without observing the visitors or their
costumes. Two hours later he asked me: ‘Are you going anywhere?’ ‘No.’
‘But you are in evening dress?’ I burst out laughing. ‘Ough, how absurd!’
muttered Galahov, snatched up his hat and went away.

When my son was five years old, Galahov brought him for the Christmas
tree a wax doll as tall as the child himself. Galahov sat the doll at the
table and awaited the effect of the surprise. When the Christmas tree was
ready and the doors were opened, Sasha, breathless with joy, moved slowly
about, casting fascinated eyes on the tinsel and candles, but suddenly he
stopped—stood stock still, flushed crimson, and with a roar rushed back.
‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter?’ we all asked; bathed in bitter
tears he only repeated: ‘There is a strange boy there, I don’t want him,
I don’t want him.’ He saw in Galahov’s doll a rival, an _alter ego_, and
was deeply mortified at it, but Galahov was even more deeply mortified;
he caught up the unlucky doll, went home, and for a long time disliked
speaking about it.

The last time I met him was in the autumn of 1847 in Nice. The Italian
movement was working up just then: he was carried away by it. In spite
of his ironical attitude he kept romantic hopes and still eagerly ran
after convictions. Our long conversations, our arguments led me to
think of recording them. _From the Other Shore_ begins with one of our
conversations. I read the beginning of it to Galahov; he was then very
ill, visibly wasting away and on the brink of the grave. Not long before
his death he sent me in Paris a long letter full of interest. It is a
pity that I have not got it, I would have published extracts from it.

From his grave I pass to another, fresher and even more dear.


II

ON THE GRAVE OF A FRIEND

    ‘_Generous and pure in spirit with a heart_
    _Tender as a caress.... And friendship with him_
    _Lives in my memory like a fairy tale._’

... In 1840 when I was passing through Moscow I met Granovsky[64] for
the first time. He had only just come back from foreign parts and been
appointed to the Chair of History in the university. He attracted me by
his noble, thoughtful appearance, his melancholy eyes under overhanging
brows, and mournfully good-natured smile; in those days his hair was
long, and he was wearing a dark blue Berlin overcoat of a peculiar cut,
with velvet revers and cloth fastenings. His features, dress, dark
hair—all gave so much grace and elegance to his figure as he stood at the
dividing line between youth and a richly developing manhood, that even a
man not easily enthusiastic could not have remained indifferent to him.
I have always respected beauty, and looked upon it as a talent and a
strength.

I had but a passing glimpse of him then, and carried away with me to
Vladimir a noble image, and a conviction, perhaps founded on it, that
he would one day be my friend. My presentiment did not deceive me. Two
years later, after I had been in Petersburg and, at the end of my second
exile, returned to live in Moscow, a close and deep friendship was formed
between us.

Granovsky was gifted with an amazing tact of the heart. His whole nature
was so remote from the irritability of diffidence, from pretentiousness,
so clear, so candid, that he was extraordinarily easy to get on with.
He did not oppress me with his friendship, and his love was deep and
equally free from jealous exactingness and unconcerned indifference. I
do not remember that Granovsky ever touched roughly or awkwardly upon
those delicate ‘capillary tissues’ that shrink from light and noise and
exist in every man who has really lived. That was why one was not afraid
to speak to him of the things of which it is hard to speak even with
those most near and dear, whom one trusts completely though some scarcely
audible chords in them are not tuned to the same pitch.

In contact with his loving, serene, and indulgent spirit all the angular
discords vanished, the voice of over-sensitive vanity was almost mute.
He was a uniting link for many things and many people among us, and
often brought together in their sympathy with him whole circles mutually
hostile, and friends on the brink of separation. Granovsky and Byelinsky,
completely unlike each other, were among the noblest and most remarkable
figures of our circle.

Towards the end of the oppressive period from which Russia is now
emerging, when everything was crushed to the earth, when only the voice
of official infamy dared make itself heard, when literature had been
brought to a standstill, and instead of humane learning a theory of
slavery was taught, when the censorship shook its head over the parables
of Christ and blotted out Krylov’s _Fables_—in those days, if one saw
Granovsky on the lecture platform one’s spirit was comforted. ‘All is not
lost yet if he still goes on speaking,’ every one thought, and breathed
more freely.

And yet Granovsky was not a fighter like Byelinsky, nor a dialectician
like Bakunin. His strength lay not in keen polemic nor in bold
denunciation, but just in positive moral influence, in the absolute
confidence which he inspired, in the artistic completeness of his nature,
the calm serenity of his spirit, the purity of his character, and in his
constant and profound protest against the existing order in Russia. Not
only his words were effective but also his silence; his thought, denied
free utterance, came out to plainly in his face that it was hard not to
read it, especially in a land in which a narrow despotism has trained
us all to guess and to divine the hidden word. In the gloomy years of
persecution from 1848 down to the death of Nicholas, Granovsky succeeded,
not only in keeping his chair in the university, but also his independent
views—and that because a feminine delicacy, a softness of expression,
and the reconciling power of which we have spoken were harmoniously
combined with chivalrous courage and the complete devotion of passionate
conviction.

Granovsky reminds me of a number of the reflectively calm preachers and
revolutionaries of the reformation—not those fierce, turbulent spirits
who ‘feel their life fully in their wroth’ like Luther, but the serene,
mild reformers who put the crown of glory on their heads as simply as the
crown of thorns. Their gentleness nothing can ruffle, they go forward
with firm step but with no loud tramping of feet; judges fear these men,
they are ill at ease with them; their smile of reconciliation leaves a
sting in their torturer’s conscience.

Such was Coligny himself, such were the best of the Girondists; and
certainly Granovsky in all the harmonious moulding of his soul, in his
romantic bent, in his dislike of extremes, might more readily have
been a Huguenot or a Girondist than an Anabaptist or a follower of the
Montagnards.

Granovsky’s influence on the university, and on the whole of the younger
generation, was immense, and outlived him; he left a long streak of light
behind him. I look with peculiar tenderness at the books dedicated to his
memory by his former students, at the warm, enthusiastic lines about him
in their prefaces and in magazine articles, at the good, youthful desire
to connect their new work with the spirit of that friend, to touch gently
on his grave as they begin, to claim their intellectual pedigree from him.

Granovsky’s development had been different from ours. Educated in Oryol,
he went to the Petersburg University. As he received but little money
from his father he was obliged from a very early age to write ‘to order’
for the papers. He and his friend Yevgeny Korsh, whom he met in his
university days and with whom he maintained the closest friendship up to
his death, used to work for Senkovsky, who needed fresh energies and
inexperienced lads in order to transform their conscientious work into
the effervescing wine of ‘The Library of Good Reading.’

There was no tempestuous period of passion and dissipation in his life.
When he had taken his degree the Institute of Pedagogy sent him to
Germany.

In Berlin Granovsky met Stankevitch, and that was the most important
event of his youth.

Any one who knew them both would understand how immediately Granovsky and
Stankevitch must have rushed at each other. There was in them so much
that was similar, in character, in tendency, in age ... and each bore
within him the fatal seed of premature death. But mere resemblance is not
enough to give men this close intimacy, this enduring sense of kinship.
Only that love is deep and lasting in which each completes the other: for
active love difference is as necessary as resemblance; without it the
feeling is lifeless and passive and passes into a mere habit.

There was a vast difference in the abilities of the two young men and in
the direction of their energies. Stankevitch, from early years trained
by the Hegelian dialectic, had a conspicuous talent for speculative
thought, and if he brought the aesthetic element into his thinking,
he certainly brought philosophy as much into aesthetics. Granovsky,
who had deep sympathy with the intellectual tendencies of the day, had
neither love nor talent for abstract thought. His choice of history as
his chief pursuit showed a clear understanding of his own vocation. He
would never have made either a metaphysician or a remarkable naturalist.
He could never have endured the passionless impartiality of logic, nor
the passionless objectivity of nature; he could not have renounced
everything for the sake of thought, nor have renounced himself for the
sake of observation; the doings of men, on the contrary, interested him
keenly. And, indeed, is not history the same thought and the same nature
expressed in a different form? Granovsky thought in history, learned from
history, and later on made propaganda through history, while Stankevitch
in a natural and poetic way communicated to him, not only the theory of
contemporary learning but also its method.

Pedants who estimate the value of thought by the sweat and labour it has
cost will doubt this.... But, we would ask them, what about Proudhon
and Byelinsky? Had not they a better grasp even of Hegel’s method than
all the scholastics who studied it until they went bald and wrinkled?
And yet neither of them knew German, neither of them had read one of
Hegel’s works, nor one of the dissertations of his followers of the left
or right wing, but had only talked sometimes about his method with his
disciples.... Granovsky’s life in Berlin with Stankevitch was, to judge
from the stories of the one and the letters of the other, one of the
most radiant periods of his existence, in which the exuberance of youth,
of energy, of the first passionate impulses, of fun and irony without
malice, went hand in hand with earnest intellectual work, all warmed and
fostered by a deep, ardent friendship such as is only found in youth.

Two years later they were separated. Granovsky went to Moscow to take
the Chair of History at the university; Stankevitch went to Italy for
his health and died of consumption. The death of Stankevitch was a
great shock to Granovsky. Long afterwards in my presence he received a
medallion of his dead friend; I have rarely seen such quiet, speechless,
overwhelming sorrow.

It happened soon after his marriage. The harmony that surrounded his new
life with peace and calm was overcast with mourning. It was long before
the traces of it passed away—indeed, I do not know whether they ever
passed entirely.

His wife was very young and hardly yet formed; she retained that peculiar
element of youthful awkwardness, even of the apathy which is not
infrequently met with in young girls with flaxen hair, especially if they
are of German descent. These natures, often gifted and strong, cannot
readily come to full consciousness when they awaken. The shock that had
awakened the young girl had been so tender and so free from pain and
conflict, had come so early that she had scarcely noticed it. Her blood
still flowed slowly and serenely.

Granovsky’s love for her was a quiet, gentle affection, rather deep and
tender than passionate. There was something serene and touchingly calm in
the atmosphere of their youthful household. It did the heart good to see
at times beside Granovsky engrossed in his work the tall, willowy figure
of his silent companion, deeply in love and happy. Looking at them, I
used to think of the serene chaste families of the early Protestants who
fearlessly sang forbidden psalms, ready to go hand in hand, calmly and
firmly, to face the inquisitor.

They seemed to me like brother and sister, the more so as they had no
children.

We quickly became friends and saw each other almost every day; we sat
through the nights until dawn talking of one thing and another.... It
is in those wasted hours and through them that people grow together
inseparably and irrevocably.

It is dreadful and painful to me to think that later on Granovsky and
I were for a long time at variance over theoretical convictions. To us
they were not something extraneous but the real foundation of our lives.
But I hasten to add that if time proved that we could think differently,
could fail to understand and could wound each other, time has also proved
with redoubled force later on that we could neither part nor cease to be
friends, that even death could not divide us.

It is true that, much later, a streak of bitterness was added to a
theoretical difference between Granovsky and Ogaryov, who loved each
other ardently and deeply, but we shall see that it too was, though late,
completely effaced.

As for our disputes Granovsky himself put an end to them; he concluded
a letter from Moscow to me in Geneva on August 25th, 1849, with the
following words. With pride and reverence I repeat them: ‘What was best
and strongest in my soul has gone into my affection for you two (that
is Ogaryov and me). There is in it something of passion which set me
weeping in 1846 and blaming myself for being unable to break a tie which
apparently could not last. Almost with despair I discovered that you were
bound fast to my soul with threads which I could not cut without tearing
away the living flesh. This interval has not been profitless to me. I
have come out of it victorious over the _worse side_ of myself. _Of the
romanticism for which you blamed me not a trace is left._ On the other
hand, all that was romantic in my very nature has gone into my personal
attachments. Do you remember my letter about your _Krupov_? It was
written on a night that I well remember. A black shroud dropped off my
soul, your image rose up before me in all its brightness, and I stretched
out my hand to you in Paris as lightly and lovingly as I held it out in
the happy holy minutes of our life in Moscow. It is not your talent only
that had so great an effect on me. That play brought all of you back to
me with a rush. Once you wounded me by saying: “Don’t build anything on
the personal, believe only in the universal,” while I always laid so much
stress on the personal. But for me personal and universal are blended in
you, that is why I love you so warmly and completely.’

Let these lines be remembered when my account of our difference is
read....

At the end of 1843 I published my articles on ‘Dilettantism in Learning.’
Their success was a source of childlike pleasure to Granovsky. He used
to go from house to house with _Notes of the Fatherland_, used to read
them aloud himself with comments, and was seriously vexed if anybody did
not like them. After that it was my lot to see Granovsky’s success, and
a success of a very different order. I am speaking of his first public
lectures on the ‘Mediaeval History of France and England.’

‘Granovsky’s lectures,’ Tchaadayev said to me as we came away from
the third or fourth, out of a lecture-hall packed to overflowing with
ladies and all the aristocratic society of Moscow, ‘are of historical
significance.’ I entirely agreed with him. Granovsky turned the
lecture-hall into a drawing-room, a place for meeting, for social
intercourse of the _beau monde_. To do this he did not deck out history
in lace and gauze, quite the contrary; his language was severe, extremely
grave, full of force, daring, and poetry, which roused his hearers and
had a powerful effect on them. His boldness passed without provoking
interference, not from any compromises he made but from the mildness
of expression which was natural to him, from the absence of sentences
_à la française_, putting big dots on tiny i’s like the moral after a
fable. As he laid the events of history before his audience, grouping
them artistically, he spoke _in them_ so that the thought unuttered, but
perfectly clear, was the more readily assimilated by his hearers that it
seemed to be their own thought.

The end of the first lecture was the scene of a regular ovation, a thing
unheard of in Moscow University. When at the end, deeply moved, he
thanked the audience, every one leapt up in a sort of delirium, ladies
waved their handkerchiefs, others rushed to the platform, pressed his
hands, asked for his portrait. I myself saw young men with flushed cheeks
shouting through their tears: ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ There was no possibility
of getting out. Granovsky, pale as a sheet, stood with his arms folded
and his head a little bent; he wanted to say a few words more but could
not. The applause, the shouting, the fury of approbation was redoubled,
the students ranged themselves on each side of the stairs and left the
general public to make a noise in the lecture-room. Granovsky made
his way, exhausted, to the council-room; a few minutes later he was
seen leaving it, and again there was endless applause; he turned with
a deprecating gesture, and, ready to drop with emotion, went into the
office. There I flung myself on his neck and we wept in silence....

Tears as happy flowed down my cheeks when the hero Ciceruacchio,[65]
in the Coliseum, glorified by the last rays of the setting sun,
dedicated his youthful son to the Roman people, who had risen in armed
insurrection, a few months before they both fell shot without trial by
the armed assassins of the graceless youth[66] who wore the crown!

Yes, those were precious tears; the first, born of my faith in Russia,
the second, of my faith in the Revolution!

Where is that Revolution? Where is Granovsky? Gone together with the boy
with the black curls, and the broad-shouldered _popolano_, and the others
who were so near and dear. Faith in Russia is still left. Surely it will
not be my lot to lose that also?

And why did a blind chance carry off Granovsky, that noble worker, that
deeply suffering spirit, on the very threshold of a new age for Russia,
as yet obscure but different, anyway? Why did not fate let him breathe
that fresh air of which we have a breath and which does not smell so
strongly of the torture-chamber and the barracks?

The news of his death was a terrible blow to me. I was on my way to the
railway station at Richmond when the letter was given me. I read it as I
walked along and literally did not at first understand it. I got into the
railway carriage. I did not want to read the letter again, I was afraid
of it. Strangers with stupid, ugly faces kept coming in and going out,
the engine whistled, I looked at it all and thought: ‘But it is absurd!
What? That man in all the flower of his age, he whose smile, whose glance
is before my eyes now—he no more?...’ I was overcome by a heavy torpor
and I felt horribly cold. In London I met A. Talandier; after greeting
him I said I had a letter with bad news, and as though I had only just
heard it, I could not restrain my tears.

We had had little intercourse in later days, but I needed to know that
there, far away in our native land, that man was living!

Without him Moscow was empty, another tie was snapped!... Shall I alone,
far away from all, ever be able to visit his grave—it has hidden as much
strength, as much of the future, as many thoughts, as much love and life,
as another, not quite unknown to him, which I have visited!

Here I add some lines of mournful reconciliation which are so precious to
me that I have begged them as a gift for our memoirs.

          TO A DEAD FRIEND

    ‘Amid the burial urns and stones
    Upon that gloomy Autumn day,
    Uneven, damp, and freshly strewn
    The new-made grave before me lay.
    The gifts of love, the gifts of grief,
    Placed by thy pupils’ hands were seen:
    Fresh wreaths bestowed with tender care
    Of fragrant flowers and foliage green,
    Above it, stretching, dark and grim,
    Reflecting the Autumnal mood,
    The ancient guardians of the graves,
    The pine-trees, cold, indifferent, stood.
    The river, lapping at the banks
    With trackless waves went, flowing, by,
    Without a pause, without an end,
    On, on,—into eternity.
    ...
    Thy tenderness was lost to me:
    For years our lives were spent apart,
    And the last greeting from thy lips
    I did not hear, to rend my heart.
    Our angry silence kept so long
    Perchance was bitter grief to thee,
    And I was powerless to forget
    Thy deep, unmeant offence to me.
    My error I could not confess,
    We each were sure that we were wronged,
    And when I hastened to thy side,
    To bare my heart before thee, longed,
    That my repentance thou should’st learn
    And grant me pardon in return,
    It was too late....
                        Upon that day
    In gloomy Autumn did I grieve
    Beside thy new-made grave alone,
    And could not make myself believe....
    And shall I see my friend no more?
    And shall thine eyes be closed for aye?
    Thy voice be hushed in sorrow’s hour?
    Shall no word speed me on my way,
    No fond embrace, when I depart?
    And will thy loving heart not learn
    The true devotion of my heart?
    ’Tis over now, for ever gone—
    The fearful truth I cannot flee,
    Some words distracted, vague and wild
    Fall from my lips, unmeaningly,
    My body trembles like a leaf,
    Some words of sad reproach I hear,
    With bitter sobs my breast is rent,
    My heart is numb with grief and fear,
    The blood is freezing in my veins,
    Oh, let me breathe! Oh, give me light!
    What fearful dream oppresses me?
    What frenzied vision haunts my sight?
    ...
    But I survived. Mid work and leisure
    From day to day my life I spend,
    But in my heart the grief still lingers,
    And tears with laughter closely blend.
    One souvenir alone is left me:
    His picture as he lay at rest,
    I gaze upon it: Oh, my brother,
    Thine image lives within my breast!
    And suddenly the thought arrests me:
    ’Tis but a passing dream, this pain,
    He does but sleep, serenely smiling,
    To-morrow he will wake again.
    His noble voice, upraised, will newly
    The sacred gifts to youth impart,
    The spirit free, the faith undaunted,
    To stir the mind and fire the heart.
    But once again, that sad remembrance ...
    The funeral urns, thy new-made bed,
    The flowers and foliage strewn upon it,
    The grim custodians at its head ...
    The river lapping at the banks
    With trackless waves, that passes by,
    Without a pause, without an end,
    On, on—into eternity....’[67]

Granovsky was not persecuted; the lawless cruelty of Nicholas’s agents
halted before his glance of mournful reproach. He died surrounded by the
love of the younger generation, the sympathy of all cultivated Russia,
recognised even by his enemies. Nevertheless I adhere to my expression,
yes, he knew great suffering. Not chains of iron alone wear life away;
in the one letter Tchaadayev wrote to me abroad (July 1851), he speaks of
the way he is perishing, growing feeble and with rapid steps approaching
the end—‘not from the oppression against which men revolt, but from that
which they endure with a touching resignation, and which for that very
reason is even more fatal.’

Before me lie three or four letters which I received from Granovsky in
later years; what a consuming deadly sadness there is in every line!

‘Our position,’ he writes in 1850, ‘grows more insufferable every
day. Every progressive movement in Western Europe is followed by some
repressive measure here. People are being denounced by thousands. They
have twice been getting up a case against me during the last three
months. But what does personal danger matter in comparison with the
universal oppression and suffering? It has been proposed to shut the
universities, but for the present they have confined themselves to the
following measures: they have raised the students’ fees, and diminished
their number by a law according to which no more than three hundred
must be attending a university. In Moscow there are fourteen hundred
university students, so we must expel twelve hundred to have the right
to admit a hundred new ones. The Institute of Nobility is closed; many
institutions are threatened with the same fate, the Lyceum for instance.
Despotism is crying aloud that it cannot make terms with enlightenment.
New programmes have been drawn up for the Cadet Schools. The Jesuits
might envy the military pedagogue who drew up the programme. The priest
is instructed to instil into the cadets that the greatness of Christ
lies pre-eminently in submission to authority. He is depicted as a
model of submission and discipline. The teacher of history is to unmask
the trumpery virtues of the ancient republics and to bring out the
grandeur—not yet grasped by historians—of the Roman Empire, which lacked
but one thing, the hereditary character!...

‘It is enough to drive one mad. It is a blessing for Byelinsky that he
died in time. Many decent people have sunk into despair and look with
blank apathy at what is being done—when will this world fall to pieces?

‘I have made up my mind not to resign, but to wait at my post what the
fates bring me. I can do a little; let them turn me out themselves.

‘... Yesterday the news came of Galahov’s death, and the other day there
was a rumour that you were dead too. When they told me that I almost
burst out laughing. Though after all why shouldn’t you die? It would be
no more stupid than the rest.’

In the autumn of 1853 he writes:

‘My heart aches at the thought of what we were in old days’ (_i.e._, when
I was there) ‘and what we have become now. We drink our wine from old
habit, but there is no gladness in our hearts; only at the thought of you
my spirit renews its youth. My best, most comforting dream now is to see
you once again—and even that is not likely to come true.’

He ends one of his last letters like this: ‘On all sides a low vague
murmur can be heard, but where is there strength? where is there
resistance? It is bitter, brother,—and there is no escape in this life.’

In our North the savage autocracy wears men out quickly. With a pang of
dread I look back—it is like a battlefield, there lie the dead and the
maimed....

Granovsky was not alone, he was one of a group of young professors who
came back from Germany while we were in exile. They did a great deal
for the advancement of the Moscow University. History will not forget
them. Men of conscientious erudition, they were pupils of Hegel, Gantz,
Ritter, and others, just at the period when the dry bones of dialectic
began to be clothed with flesh, when learning ceased to consider itself
antagonistic to life, when Gantz used to come to his lectures not with
an ancient folio in his hand, but with the latest number of a review
from Paris or London. They were trying at that time to solve historical
questions of the day by the dialectic method; it was an impossible task,
but it put the facts in a clearer light.

Our professors brought with them their cherished dreams, their ardent
faith in learning, and in men; they preserved all the fire of youth, and
the lecturer’s chair was for them a sacred lectern from which they were
called to preach the truth. They took their stand in the lecture-room
not as mere professional savants, but as missionaries of the religion of
humanity.

And what has become of that Pleiades of young professors, including the
best of them, Granovsky? Dear Kryukov, brilliant, intelligent, learned,
died at thirty-five. Petcherin, the Hellenistic scholar, struggled and
struggled in the terrible conditions of Russian life, till, unable to
endure it, he went away without aim, without means, ill and shattered, to
foreign lands, wandered homeless and forlorn, became a Jesuit priest and
is burning Protestant Bibles in Ireland. Ryedkin became a secular monk,
serves in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and writes divinely inspired
articles, interspersed with texts. Krylov—but enough. _La toile! La
toile!_




Chapter 30

OUR ‘OPPONENTS’

THE SLAVOPHILS AND PANSLAVISM—HOMYAKOV—THE KIREYEVSKYS—K. S. AKSAKOV—P.
Y. TCHAADAYEV

    ‘_Yes, we were their opponents, but very strange ones. We had
    the same love, but not the same way of loving—and like Janus or
    the two-headed eagle we looked in opposite directions, though
    the heart that beat within us was but one._’—‘_The Bell_,’ p.
    90. (_On the death of K. S. Aksakov._)


I

Beside our circle were our opponents, _nos amis les ennemis_, or more
correctly, _les ennemis nos amis_—the Moscow Slavophils.

The conflict between us ended long ago and we have held out our
hands to each other; but in the early ’forties we could not but be
antagonistic—without being so we could not have been true to our
principles. We might not have quarrelled with them over their childish
homage to the childhood of our history; but accepting their orthodoxy
as meant in earnest, seeing their ecclesiastical intolerance on both
sides—in relation to learning and in relation to sectarianism—we were
bound to take up a hostile attitude to them. We saw in their doctrines
fresh oil for anointing the Tsar, new chains laid upon thought, new
subordination of conscience to the slavish Byzantine Church.

The Slavophils are to blame for our having so long failed to understand
the Russian people and its history; their ikon-painter’s ideals and
incense smoke hindered us from seeing the realities of the people’s
existence and the foundations of village life.

The orthodoxy of the Slavophils, their historical patriotism and
over-sensitive, exaggerated feeling of nationality were called forth by
the extremes on the other side. The importance of their outlook, what
was true and essential in it, lay not in orthodoxy, and not in exclusive
nationalism, but in those elements of Russian life which they unearthed
from under the manure of civilisation.

The ides of nationality is in itself a conservative idea—the demarcation
of one’s rights, the opposition of self to another; it includes both the
Judaic conception of superiority of race, and the aristocratic claim to
purity of blood, and right to ascendancy. Nationalism as a standard, as
a war-cry, is only surrounded with the halo of revolution when a people
is fighting for its independence, when it is throwing off a foreign yoke.
That is why national feeling with all its exaggerations is full of poetry
in Italy and in Poland, while it is vulgar in Germany.

For us to display our nationalism would be even more absurd than it is
for the Germans; even those who abuse us do not doubt it; they hate us
from fear, but they do not refuse to recognise us, as Metternich did
Italy. We have had to set up our nationalism against the Germanised
government and its renegades. This domestic struggle could not be raised
to the epic level. The appearance of Slavophilism as a school, and as a
special doctrine, was quite in place; but if the Slavophils had found no
other standard than the banner of the church, no other ideal than the
_Domostroy_,[68] and the very Russian but cumbrously tedious life before
Peter the Great, they would have passed away as an eccentric party of
changelings and cranks belonging to another age. The strength and future
of the Slavophils lay elsewhere. Their treasure may have been hidden in
church vessels of old-fashioned workmanship, but its value lay not in
its form, though at first they did not separate what was precious from
what was external.

To their own historical traditions were added the traditions of all the
Slav peoples. Our Slavophils took sympathy with the western Panslavists
for identity of cause and policy, forgetting that their exclusive
nationalism was at the same time the cry of a people oppressed by a
foreign yoke. Western Panslavism on its first appearance was taken by
the Austrian government itself for a conservative movement. It developed
at the melancholy epoch of the Congress of Vienna. It was a period of
restorations and resurrections of all sorts, a period when every kind
of Lazarus, fresh and decayed, rose up from the dead. Together with
Teutschthum,[69] which looked for the renaissance of the _happy days_ of
Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufens, Czech Panslavism made its appearance.
The governments were pleased with this movement and at first encouraged
the development of international hatreds; the masses rallied again round
the idea of racial kinship, the bond of which was drawn tighter, and
were again turned aside from general demands for the improvement of
their lot. Frontiers became more impassable, ties and sympathies between
peoples were broken. It need hardly be said that only among apathetic and
feeble peoples was nationalism allowed to develop, and only so long as it
confined itself to archaeological and linguistic disputes. In Milan and
in Poland where nationalism was not confined to grammar, a tight rein was
kept upon it.

The Czech Panslavism provoked Slavonic sympathies in Russia.

Slavism, or Russianism, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as a
wounded national feeling, as an obscure tradition and a true instinct, as
antagonism to an exclusively foreign influence, has existed ever since
Peter the Great cut off the first Russian beard.

There has never been any interval in the resistance to the Petersburg
forcible imposition of culture; it reappears in the form of the mutinous
Stryeltsi, punished, quartered, hanged on the walls of the Kremlin and
there shot by Menshikov and other favourites of the Tsar, in the form of
the Tsarevitch Alexis poisoned in the dungeon of the Petersburg fortress,
as the party of the Dolgorukys in the reign of Peter II., as the hatred
for the Germans in the time of Biron, as Pugatchov in the time of
Catherine II., as Catherine herself, the Orthodox German in the reign of
the Russian Holsteiner Peter III., as Elizabeth who ascended the throne
through the support of the Slavophils of those days (the people in Moscow
expected all the Germans to be massacred at her coronation.)

All the dissenters are Slavophils.

All the clergy, both white and black, are Slavophils of another sort.

The soldiers who demanded the removal of Barclay de Tolly[70] on account
of his German name were the precursors of Homyakov and his friends. The
war of 1812 greatly developed the national consciousness and love for
the Fatherland. But there was nothing of the Old Believers’ Slavonic
character in the patriotism of 1812 which we see in Karamzin and Pushkin,
and in the Emperor Alexander himself. Practically it was the expression
of that instinct of strength which all powerful nations feel when they
are attacked by others; afterwards it was the triumphant feeling of
victory, the proud sense of successful resistance. But it was weak
on the theoretical side; to show their love of Russian history the
patriots adapted it to European manners; they translated Greek and Roman
patriotism from French into Russian and did not go beyond the line ‘_Pour
un cœur bien né que la patrie est chère!_’ Shishkov[71] was raving even
then, it is true, about the restoration of archaic forms of language, but
his influence was limited. As for the real speech of the people, the only
person who showed a knowledge of it was the Frenchified Count Rostoptchin
in his proclamations and manifestoes.

As the war was forgotten, this patriotism subsided and finally
degenerated on the one hand into the mean cynical flattery of the
_Northern Bee_, on the other into the vulgar patriotism of Zagoskin’s
calling Shuya Manchester, and Shebuev[72] Raphael, and boasting of the
bayonets and the spears from the ices of Torneo to the mountains of the
Crimea.

In the reign of Nicholas patriotism became something associated with
the knout, with the police, especially in Petersburg, where the savage
government ended, in harmony with the cosmopolitan character of the town,
by the invention of a national hymn after Sebastian Bach[73] and in
Prokopy Lyapunov[74]—after Schiller![75]

To cut himself off from Europe, from enlightenment, from the revolution
of which he had been terrified since the Fourteenth of December, Nicholas
on his side raised the banner of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism,
remodelled after the fashion of the Prussian standard and supported by
anything that came to hand—the barbaric romances of Zagoskin, barbaric
ikon-painting, barbaric architecture, by Uvarov, by the persecution
of the Uniats[76] and by ‘The Hand of the Most High saved the
Fatherland.’[77]

The existence of the Petersburg Slavophilism of Nicholas was very
unfortunate for the Moscow Slavophils. Nicholas was simply flying to
nationalism and orthodoxy to escape from revolutionary ideas. The
Slavophils had nothing in common with him but words. Their extremes and
absurdities were disinterestedly absurd, and had no connection with the
secret police, or the Committee of Security, which of course did not
prevent their absurdities from being excessively absurd.

Thus, for instance, there was staying in Moscow towards the end of the
’thirties the Panslavist Gaj who afterwards played an ambiguous part as
a Croatian agitator and was at the same time closely connected with the
Ban of Croatia, Jellachich.[78] Moscow people as a rule put implicit
trust in a foreigner; Gaj was more than a foreigner, more than one of
themselves; he was both at once. He had no difficulty in touching the
hearts of our Slavophils with the fate of their suffering and orthodox
brothers in Dalmatia and Croatia; an immense subscription was raised in a
few days, and moreover Gaj was given a banquet in honour of all Serbian
and Ruthenian sympathies. At the banquet one of the mildest (both in
voice and pursuits) of the Slavophils, a man of the _reddest_ orthodoxy,
probably a little elevated by the toasts to the Montenegrin Bishop and
to all sorts of great Bosnians, Czechs and Slovaks, improvised a poem in
which the following not quite Christian expression occurred:

    ‘I will feast on the blood of the Magyar and German.’

All who were not a little deranged heard this phrase with horror.
Fortunately the witty statistician Androssov rescued the bloodthirsty
poet; he jumped up from his chair, clutched a dessert knife, and said:
‘Excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll leave you for a moment: it occurs to me that
my landlord Dietz, an old piano-tuner, is a German. I’ll just run and cut
his throat and be back directly.’

A roar of laughter drowned the indignation.

It was while I was in exile and living in Petersburg and Novgorod that
the Moscow Slavophils formed themselves into this party so bloodthirsty
in its toasts.

Their passionate and polemical character was particularly marked after
the appearance of Byelinsky’s critical articles; though even before that
they had to close their ranks and take a definite stand on the appearance
of Tchaadayev’s letter and the commotion it caused.

That letter was in a sense the last word, the dividing point. It was a
shot that rang out in the dark night; whether it was something perishing
that proclaimed its end, whether it was a signal or a cry for help,
whether it heralded the dawn or foretold that it would never be—anyway,
it forced all to awake.

What, one may wonder, is the significance of two or three pages published
in a monthly review? And yet such is the strength of utterance, such is
the power of the spoken word in a land of silence, unaccustomed to free
speech, that Tchaadayev’s letter shook all thinking Russia. And well it
might. There had been nothing written since _Woe from Wit_ which made so
powerful an impression. Between that play and the letter there had been
ten years of silence, the Fourteenth of December, the gallows, penal
servitude, Nicholas. It was the first break in the national development
since the period of Peter the Great. The empty place left by the strong
men who had been exiled to Siberia was not filled up. Thought languished,
men’s minds were working, but nothing was reached. To speak was
dangerous, and indeed there was nothing to say; all at once a mournful
figure quietly rose and asked for a hearing in order calmly to utter his
_lasciate ogni speranza_.

In the summer of 1836 I was calmly sitting at my writing table in Vyatka
when the postman brought me the latest number of the _Telescope_. One
must have lived in exile and in the wilds to appreciate a new book. I
abandoned everything, of course, and set to work to cut the _Telescope_.
I saw ‘Philosophical Letters Written to a Lady,’ unsigned. In a footnote
it was stated that these letters had been written by a Russian in French,
that is, that it was a translation. This rather put me against them, and
I proceeded to read the criticisms and other matter.

At last the turn came for the letters; from the second or third page
I was struck by the mournfully earnest tone. Every word breathed of
prolonged suffering, by now grown calm, but still bitter. It was written
as only men write who have been thinking for years, who have thought
much and learned much from life and not from theory.... I read further,
the letter grew and developed, it turned into a gloomy denunciation of
Russia, the protest of one who for all he has endured longs to utter some
part of what is accumulated in his heart.

Twice I stopped to take breath and collect my thoughts and feelings, and
then again I read on and on. And this was published in Russian by an
unknown author.... I was afraid I had gone out of my mind. Then I read
the letter to Vitberg, then to S——, a young teacher in the Vyatka High
School, then read it again to myself.

It is very likely that exactly the same thing was happening in all sorts
of provincial and distant towns, in Moscow and Petersburg and in country
gentlemen’s houses. I learned the author’s name a few months later.

Long cut off from the people, part of Russia had been suffering in
silence under the most stupid and prosaic yoke, which gave them nothing
in return. Every one felt the oppression of it, every one had something
weighing on his heart, and yet all were silent; at last a man had come
who in his own way told them what it was. He spoke only of pain, there
was no ray of light in his words, nor indeed in his view. Tchaadayev’s
letter was a merciless cry of reproach and bitterness against Russia; it
deserved the indictment; had it shown pity or mercy to the author or any
one else? Of course such an utterance was bound to call forth opposition,
or Tchaadayev would have been perfectly right in saying that Russia’s
past was empty, its present insufferable, and that there was no future
for it at all, that it was a blank sheet, a terrible lesson given to the
nations of the plight to which a people can be brought by isolation and
slavery. This was both penitence and accusation; to know beforehand the
path of reconciliation is not the task of penitence, nor the task of
protest—or consciousness of guilt becomes a jest, and expiation insincere.

But it did not pass unnoticed; for a minute all, even the drowsy and the
crushed, were roused, alarmed by this menacing voice. All were astounded,
most were offended, a dozen men loudly and warmly applauded its author.
Talk in the drawing-rooms anticipated government measures, provoked them.
The Russian patriot of German origin Vigel (well known from Pushkin’s
unflattering epigram) set them going.

The review was at once prohibited; Boldyrev, the censor, an old man,
and the Rector of the Moscow University, was dismissed; Nadyezhdin the
editor was sent to Ust-Sysolsk; Nicholas ordered Tchaadayev himself to
be declared insane, and made to sign an undertaking to write nothing.
Every Saturday he was visited by the doctor and the police-master; they
interviewed him and made a report, that is, gave out over his signature
fifty-two false statements in accordance with the command of the Most
High—an intelligent and moral proceeding. It was they of course who were
punished. Tchaadayev looked with profound contempt on these tricks of the
truly insane caprice of power. Neither the doctor nor the police-master
ever hinted what they had come for.

I had seen Tchaadayev once before my exile. It was on the very day of
Ogaryov’s arrest. I have mentioned already that on that day there was a
dinner party at M. F. Orlov’s. All the visitors were gathered together
when a man, bowing coldly, walked into the room. His original appearance,
handsome with a striking air of independence, was bound to attract every
one’s attention. Orlov took me by the hand and introduced me, it was
Tchaadayev. I remember little of that first meeting, I had no thoughts
to spare for him; he was as always, cold, grave, clever, and malicious.
After dinner Madame Rayevsky, Orlov’s mother-in-law, said to me: ‘How is
it you are so melancholy? Oh you young people! I don’t know what has come
over you!’ ‘Then you do think,’ said Tchaadayev, ‘that there still are
young people?’—that is all that has remained in my memory.

On my return to Moscow I made friends with him and from that time until I
went away we were on the best of terms.

Tchaadayev’s melancholy and original figure stood out sharply like a
mournful reproach against the faded and dreary background of Moscow ‘high
life.’ I liked looking at him among the tawdry aristocracy, flighty
Senators, grey-headed rascals, and venerable nonentities. However dense
the crowd, the eye found him at once. The years did not mar his graceful
figure; he was very scrupulous in his dress, his pale delicate face was
completely motionless when he was silent, as though made of wax or of
marble,—‘a head like a bare skull,’—his grey-blue eyes were melancholy
and at the same time there was something kindly in them, though his thin
lips smiled ironically. For ten years he stood with folded arms, by some
column, by some tree on the boulevard, in drawing-rooms and theatres, at
the club and, an embodied veto, a living protest, gazed at the vortex of
faces senselessly twisting and turning about him. He became whimsical
and eccentric, held himself aloof from society, yet could not leave it
altogether, then uttered his message, quietly concealing it, just as
in his features he concealed passion under a layer of ice. Then he was
silent again, again showed himself whimsical, dissatisfied, irritated;
again he was an oppressive influence in Moscow society, and again he
could not leave it. Old and young alike were awkward and ill at ease with
him; they, God knows why, were abashed by his immobile face, his direct
glance, his gloomy mockery, his malignant condescension. What compelled
them to invite him ... still more to visit him? It is a very difficult
question.

Tchaadayev was not wealthy, particularly in later years; he was not of
high rank—a retired captain with the iron Kulm cross on his breast. It is
true, as Pushkin writes, that he would

    ‘In Rome have been a Brutus,
    In Athens Pericles,
    But here, under the yolk of Tsars,
    Was only Captain of Hussars.’

Acquaintance with him could only compromise a man in the eyes of the
police. To what did he owe his influence? Why did the ‘swells’ of the
English Club, and the patricians of the Tversky Boulevard flock on
Mondays to his modest little study in Old Basmanny Street? Why did
fashionable ladies peep into the cell of the morose thinker? Why did
generals who knew nothing about civilian affairs feel obliged to call
upon the old man, to pretend awkwardly to be people of culture, and
brag afterwards, distorting some phrase of Tchaadayev’s, uttered at
their expense? Why did I meet at Tchaadayev’s the savage Tolstoy, ‘the
American,’ and the savage Adjutant-General Shipov who destroyed culture
in Poland?

Tchaadayev not only made no compromise with them, but worried them and
made them feel very clearly the difference between him and them.[79] Of
course these people went to see him and invited him to their gatherings
from vanity, but that is not what matters; what is important is the
involuntary recognition that thought had become a power, that it had
its honoured place in direct opposition to the authority of the Most
High. In so far as the authority of the ‘insane captain’ Tchaadayev was
recognised, the ‘insane’ power of Nicholas was diminished.

Tchaadayev had his eccentricities, his weaknesses, he was embittered and
spoilt. I know no society less indulgent, or more exclusive than that of
Moscow; it is just that which gives it a provincial flavour and reminds
one that its culture is of recent growth. How could a solitary man of
fifty who had been deprived of almost all his friends, who had lost
his property, who lived a great deal in thought, and had suffered many
mortifications, fail to have his whims and habits?

Tchaadayev had been Vassiltchikov’s adjutant at the time of the
celebrated Semyonovsky affair. The Tsar was at the time, if I remember
right, at Verona or Aachen for a Congress. Vassiltchikov sent Tchaadayev
to him with a report and he was somehow or other an hour behind time, and
arrived later than a courier sent by the Austrian ambassador Lebzeltern.
The Tsar, annoyed at the news, and at that time completely influenced
towards reaction by Metternich, who was delighted at the news of the
Semyonovsky affair, received Tchaadayev very harshly, reprimanded him,
lost his temper, and then recovering himself, directed that he should be
offered the post of an Imperial adjutant; Tchaadayev declined the honour
and asked only one favour—his discharge. Of course this was not liked,
but he received his discharge.

Tchaadayev was in no haste to return to Russia; on relinquishing his gold
lace uniform he devoted himself to study. Alexander died—the Fourteenth
of December came—Tchaadayev’s absence saved him from almost certain
persecution[80]—about 1830 he returned.

In Germany Tchaadayev made friends with Schelling; the acquaintance
probably did a great deal to turn him towards mysticism. In his case it
developed into revolutionary Catholicism to which he remained faithful
all his life. In his letter he attributes half the calamities of Russia
to the Greek Church, to its severance from the all-embracing unity of the
West.

Strange as such a view is to us, we must not forget that Catholicism
has great power of attraction. Lacordaire preached Catholic Socialism
while remaining a Dominican monk; he was supported by Chevé,[81]
while remaining a contributor to the _Voix du Peuple_. In reality
neo-Catholicism is not worse than rhetorical deism, that rationalised
theology of the cultured bourgeois which is neither religion nor science,
but atheism surrounded by the institutions of religion.

If Ronge[82] and the followers of Buchez were still possible after
1848, after Feuerbach and Proudhon and Pius IX. and Lamennais; if one
of the most energetic parties in the movement set a mystic formula on
its banner; if to this day there are men like Mickiewicz,[83] like
Krasinski,[84] who continue Messianists, there is no cause for wonder
in Tchaadayev’s bringing a similar doctrine from the Europe of the
’twenties. We have a little forgotten what it was like: one has but to
recall the affair of Volabella, the Letters of Lady Morgan,[85] the
memoirs of Andryane,[86] of Byron, and of Leopardi, to realise that it
was one of the most oppressive periods in history. The revolution had
turned out a failure, crude monarchy boasted cynically of its power,
while crafty monarchy chastely hid itself behind the parties; at most
and at rare intervals one heard the songs of the Greeks fighting for
their liberty or a vigorous speech from Canning or Royer-Collard.[87]

In Protestant Germany a Catholic party was being formed at that time.
Schlegel[88] and Leo[89] changed their faith at that time, old Jahn[90]
and others were raving of a popular and democratic Catholicism.
People took refuge from the present in the Middle Ages, in mysticism,
read Eckartshausen, studied magnetism and the miracles of Prince
Hohenlohe[91]; Hugo, the enemy of Catholicism, did as much to assist its
revival as did Lamennais at that period, when he was horrified at the
soulless indifference of his time.

On the Russian such Catholicism was bound to have an even stronger
effect. It formally contained all that was lacking in Russian life, left
to itself, oppressed only by the material power, and seeking a way out
by instinct alone. The stern discipline and proud independence of the
Western Church, its finished definiteness, its practical applications,
its unassailable confidence and supposed removal of all contradictions
by its higher unity, its eternal _fata Morgana_, its _urbi et orbi_, its
contempt for the temporal power, might easily dominate an ardent mind
which only began its education after reaching maturity.

When Tchaadayev returned to Russia he found there a different society
and a different tone. Young as I was, I remember how conspicuously
aristocratic society deteriorated and became baser and more servile
with the accession of Nicholas. The brilliance and recklessness of the
officers of the Guards, the aristocratic independence of the reign of
Alexander, had all vanished from 1826 onwards. There were germs of a new
life springing up, young creatures, not yet conscious of themselves,
still wearing a lay-down collar _à l’enfant_, at boarding schools, or in
Lyceums. There were young literary men beginning to try their strength
and their pen, but all that was still hidden, and not in the world in
which Tchaadayev lived.

His friends were in penal servitude; at first he was the only one left in
Moscow, then he was joined by Pushkin, and later on by Orlov too. Often
after the death of both these friends Tchaadayev used to show two small
patches on the wall above the sofa-back where they used to lay their
heads!

It is infinitely sad to set side by side Pushkin’s two epistles to
Tchaadayev, separated not only by their life but by a whole epoch, the
life of a generation, racing hopefully forward and coarsely flung back
again. Pushkin as a youth writes to his friend:

    ‘Comrade, have faith. That dawn will break
    Of deep intoxicating joy;
    Russia will spring from out her sleep
    And on the fragments of a fallen tyranny
    Our names will be recorded,’[92]

but the dawn did not rise; instead Nicholas rose to the throne, and
Pushkin writes:

    ‘Tchaadayev, dost thou call to mind
    How in the past, by youthful ardour prompted,
    I dreamt to add that fatal name
    Unto the rest of those that lie in ruins?
    ... But now within my heart by tempests chastened
    Silence and lassitude prevail, unchallenged,
    And with a glow of tender inspiration
    Upon the stone by friendship sanctified
    I write our names....’[93]

Nothing in the world could be more opposed to the Slavophils than the
hopeless pessimism which was Tchaadayev’s vengeance on Russian life, the
deliberate curse wrung out of him by suffering, with which he summed up
his melancholy existence through a whole period of Russian history. He
could not but awaken intense opposition in them; with bitterness and
weary malice he insulted all that was precious to them, from Moscow
downwards.

‘In Moscow,’ Tchaadayev used to say, ‘every foreigner is taken to look at
the great cannon and the great bell—the cannon which can never be fired
and the bell which fell down before it was rung. It is a strange town in
which the objects of interest are distinguished by their absurdity; or
perhaps that great bell without a tongue is a hieroglyph symbolic of that
immense dumb land, inhabited by a race calling themselves Slavs[94] as
though surprised at the possession of human speech.’[95]

Tchaadayev and the Slavophils alike stood facing the unsolved Sphinx of
Russian life, the Sphinx sleeping under the overcoat of the soldier and
the watchful eye of the Tsar; they alike were asking: ‘What will come of
it? To live like this is impossible: the oppressiveness and absurdity of
the present position is obvious and unendurable—where is the way out?’

‘There is none,’ answered the man of the Petersburg period of exclusively
Western civilisation, who, in Alexander’s reign, had believed in the
European future of Russia. He mournfully pointed out to what the efforts
of a whole age had led. Culture had only given new methods of oppression,
the church had become a mere shadow under which the police lay hidden;
the people bore all, endured all, the government crushed all, oppressed
all. ‘The history of other nations is the story of their emancipation.
Russian history is the development of serfdom and autocracy.’ Peter
the Great’s upheaval had made us into the worst that men can be made
into—enlightened slaves. We had suffered enough, in this oppressive,
troubled moral state, misunderstood by the people, struck down by the
government—it was time to find rest, time to find peace for the soul,
to find support in something ... this almost meant ‘time to die,’ and
Tchaadayev thought to find in the Catholic Church the peace promised to
all who are weary and heavy-laden.

From the point of view of Western civilisation in the form in which it
found expression at the time of the restoration, from the point of view
of the Russia of the Petersburg period, this attitude was completely
justified.

The Slavophils solved the question in a different way.

Their solution implied a true recognition of the living soul in the
people; their instinct was more penetrating than their reasoning. They
saw that the existing condition of Russia, however oppressive, was
not a moral disease. And while Tchaadayev had a faint glimmer of the
possibility of saving individuals but not the people, the Slavophils
had a clear perception of the ruin of individuals in the grip of the
existing order and faith in the salvation of the people.

‘The way out is with us,’ said the Slavophils, ‘the way out lies in
renouncing the Petersburg period, in going back to the people from whom
we have been cut off by foreign education and foreign government; let us
return to the old ways!’

But history does not turn back; life is rich in materials, it has no
need to remake old clothes. All renaissances, all restorations have been
masqueraders. We have seen two; the Legitimists did not go back to the
days of Louis XIV. nor the Republicans to the 8th of Thermidor. What has
once happened is stronger than anything written; no axe can hew it away.

Moreover, we have nothing to which to go back. The political life of
Russia before Peter the Great was grotesque, poor, savage, yet it was to
this that the Slavophils wanted to return, though they did not admit the
fact; how else are we to explain all their antiquarian revivals, their
worship of the manners and customs of old days, and their attempts to
return, not to the existing (and excellent) dress of the peasants but to
the old-fashioned and clumsy costumes?

In all Russia no one wears the _murmolka_ but the Slavophils. K. S.
Aksakov wore a dress so national that the peasants in the street took him
for a Persian, as Tchaadayev used to tell as a joke.

They took the going back to the people in a very crude sense too, as the
majority of Western democrats did also, accepting the people as something
complete and finished. They imagined that to share the superstitions
of the people meant being at one with them, that it was a great act of
humility to sacrifice one’s reason instead of developing reason in the
people. This led to an affectation of devoutness, the observance of rites
which are touching when there is a naïve faith in them and insulting
where an ulterior motive can be discerned. The best proof of the lack
of reality in the Slavophils’ return to the people lies in the fact that
they did not arouse the slightest sympathy in the people. Neither the
Byzantine Church nor the Granovitaya Palata[96] will do anything more for
the future development of the Slav world. To go back to the village, to
the workmen’s guild, to the meeting of the mir, to the Cossack system is
a different matter; but we must return to them not in order to strengthen
them in immovable Asiatic crystallisations but to develop and set free
the elements on which they were founded, to purify them from all that
is extraneous and distorting, from the rank growths with which they are
overgrown—that, of course, is what we are called to do. But we must make
no mistake, all this lies outside the sphere of the State: the Moscow
period is of as little use here as the Petersburg, indeed it was at no
time better. The Novgorod[97] bell which used to call the citizens to
their ancient mote was merely melted into a cannon by Peter, but had
been taken down from the belfry by Ivan III.; serfdom was only confirmed
by the census under Peter but was introduced by Boris Godunov; in the
_Ulozhenie_[98] there is no mention of sworn witnesses, and the knout,
the rods, and the lash made their appearance long before the day of
_Spitzruten_ and _Fuchteln_.

The mistake of the Slavophils lies in their imagining that Russia once
had an individual culture, obscured by various events and finally by
the Petersburg period. Russia never had this culture, never could have
had it. That which is only now reaching our consciousness, that of which
we are beginning to have a presentiment, a glimmer in our thoughts, that
which existed unconsciously in the peasants’ hut and in the open country,
is only now beginning to grow in the fields of history, enriched by the
blood, the tears, the sweat of twenty generations.

The foundations of our life are not memories, they are the living
elements, existing not in chronicles but in the actual present; but
they have merely survived under the hard historical process of building
up a single state and under the yoke of the state they have only been
preserved not developed. I doubt, indeed, whether the inner strength for
their development would have been found without the Petersburg period,
without the period of European culture.

The primitive foundations of our life are insufficient. In India there
has existed for ages and exists to this day a village commune very like
our own and founded on a division of fields; yet the people of India have
not gone very far, even with it.

Only the mighty thought of the West to which all its long history has
led up is able to fertilise the seeds slumbering in the patriarchal
mode of life of the Slavs. The workmen’s guild and the village commune,
the sharing of profits and the division of fields, the mir meeting
and the union of villages into self-governing _volosts_, are all the
corner-stones on which the temple of our future, freely communal
existence will be built. But these corner-stones are only stones ... and
without the thought of the West our future cathedral will not rise above
its foundations.

This is what happens with everything truly _social_, it inevitably draws
the nations into mutual interdependence.... Holding themselves aloof,
cutting themselves off, some remain at the barbaric stage of the commune,
others get no further than the abstract idea of communism, which, like
the Christian soul, hovers over the decaying body.

The receptive character of the Slavs, their femininity, their lack of
initiative, and their great capacity for assimilation and adaptation,
make them pre-eminently a people that stands in need of the other
peoples; they are not fully self-sufficing. Left to themselves the
Slavs readily ‘lull themselves to sleep with their own songs’ as a
Byzantine chronicler observed. Awakened by others they go to the furthest
consequences; there is no people which could more deeply and completely
absorb the thoughts of other peoples while remaining true to itself. The
persistent misunderstanding which exists to-day, as it has for a thousand
years, between the Germanic and the French peoples does not exist between
them and the Slavs. The craving to give itself up and be carried away is
innate in their sympathetic, readily assimilative, receptive nature.

To be formed into a princedom, Russia needed the Varangians[99]; to be
formed into a kingdom, the Mongols.

Contact with Europe developed the kingdom of Muscovy into the colossal
empire ruled from Petersburg.

‘But for all their receptiveness, have not the Slavs shown everywhere
a complete incapacity for developing a modern European political order
without continually falling into the most absolute despotism, or hopeless
disorganisation?’

This incapacity and this incompleteness are great _talents_ in our eyes.

All Europe has now reached the inevitability of despotism in order to
preserve the existing political order against the pressure of social
ideas striving to create a new order, towards which Western Europe, for
all its terror and resistance, is being carried with incredible force.

There was a time when the half-free West looked proudly at Russia crushed
under the throne of the Tsars, and cultivated Russia, sighing, gazed at
the happiness of its elder brothers. That time has passed. The equality
of slavery prevails.

We are present now at an amazing spectacle; even those lands in which
free institutions have survived are striving for despotism. Humanity
has seen nothing like it since the days of Constantine when free Romans
sought to become slaves to escape civic burdens.

Despotism or socialism—there is no other alternative. Meanwhile, Europe
has shown a surprising incapacity for social revolution.

We believe that Russia is not so incapable of it, and in this we are at
one with the Slavophils. On this our faith in its future is founded, it
is the faith which I have been preaching since the end of 1848.

Europe has chosen despotism, has preferred Imperialism. Despotism
means military discipline, Empires mean war, the Emperor is the
commander-in-chief. Every one is under arms, there will be war, but where
is the real enemy? At home—down below in the depths—and yonder beyond the
Niemen.

The war now beginning[100] may have intervals of truce but will not end
before the beginning of the general revolution which will shuffle all
the cards and begin a new game. It is impossible that the two great
historical powers, the two veteran champions of all West European
history, representatives of two worlds, two traditions, two principles—of
state and of personal freedom—should not crush the third, which, dumb,
nameless, and bannerless, comes forward so opportunely with the rope of
slavery on its neck and rudely knocks at the doors of Europe and the
doors of history, with an insolent claim to Constantinople, with one foot
on Germany and the other on the Pacific Ocean.

Whether these three will try their strength and crush each other in
the trying; whether Russia breaks up into pieces or Europe, enfeebled,
sinks into Byzantine decay; whether they are reconciled and go hand
in hand forward into a new life or slaughter each other endlessly—one
thing we have discovered for certain and it will not be rooted out of
the consciousness of the coming generations; that is: that the _free and
rational development of Russian national existence is at one with the
ideas of Western Socialism_.


II

On my return from Novgorod to Moscow I found both parties at the barrier.
The Slavophils were in full fighting formation, with their light cavalry
under the leadership of Homyakov and extremely heavy infantry under that
of Shevyryov[101] and Pogodin, with their sharpshooters, chasseurs,
ultra-Jacobins who renounced everything later than the Kieff period, and
moderate Girondists who renounced nothing but the Petersburg period;
they had their chairs in the university and their monthly review, which
was always two months late in appearing but still did appear. The main
body was reinforced by orthodox Hegelians, Byzantine theologians, mystic
poets, a great number of women, and so on.

Our warfare greatly interested the literary drawing-rooms of Moscow,
which was at that time just entering the period of enthusiasm over
intellectual subjects when, political questions being impossible,
literary ones become the problems of life. The appearance of a remarkable
book, for instance, _Dead Souls_, was an event. Criticisms favourable
and unfavourable were read and commented upon with the attention with
which parliamentary debates used to be followed in England or France. The
suppression of all other spheres of human activity threw the cultured
section of society into the world of books, and only in it was heard in
muffled undertones the protest against the yoke of Nicholas, the protest
which we heard more loudly and openly the day after his death.

In the person of Granovsky Moscow society welcomed Western thought
breaking its way to freedom, the idea of intellectual independence and
struggle for it. In the persons of the Slavophils it protested against
the outrage done to its feelings of nationalism by the Biron-like
arrogance of the Petersburg government.

Here I must make a digression.

I knew two circles in Moscow, the two opposite poles of its social life,
and can only speak of them. At first I was lost in the society of old
people, officers of the Guards of the time of Catherine, comrades of
my father, and other old gentlemen who had found a quiet haven in that
almshouse, the Senate, comrades of his brother. Afterwards I knew only
the young literary and social Moscow and I speak only of it. I knew
nothing and cared to know nothing of what lived or vegetated between the
veterans of the pen and the sword who were awaiting their funerals in
order of rank, and their sons and grandsons who sought no rank and cared
only for books and ideas. That world that stood between them, the real
Russia of Nicholas, was colourless and vulgar, without the originality of
the times of Catherine, without the dash and daring of the men of 1812,
without our strivings and interests. It was a pitiful, crushed generation
in which a few martyrs struggled, were suffocated, and perished. When I
speak of the Moscow drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, I speak of those
in which Pushkin once reigned supreme; in which up to our own day the
Decembrists set the tone; in which Griboyedov laughed; in which M. F.
Orlov and A. P. Yermolov met a friendly welcome because they were under
the ban; in which Homyakov argued from nine in the evening until four
o’clock in the morning; in which K. S. Aksakov[102] with a _murmolka_
in his hand fiercely defended Moscow though no one had attacked it, and
never took a glass of champagne in his hand without secretly repeating
a prayer and a toast which every one knew; in which Ryedkin logically
deduced a personal God _ad majorem gloriam Hegelii_; in which Granovsky
appeared with his firm and gentle speech; in which every one remembered
Bakunin and Stankevitch; in which Tchaadayev with his delicate wax-like
face, scrupulously dressed, enraged the nonplussed aristocrats and
orthodox Slavophils by biting sarcasms, always cast in original form
and carefully iced; in which A. I. Turgenev,[103] young in spite of
his age, gossiped charmingly about all the celebrities of Europe, from
Chateaubriand and Récamier to Schelling and Rahel Varnhagen; in which
Botkin and Kryukov _pantheistically_ enjoyed M. S. Shtchepkin’s stories;
and into which Byelinsky sometimes fell like Congreve’s rocket, setting
fire to everything he touched.

Life in Moscow is more like life in the country than in the town, the
only difference is that the houses are nearer each other. Everything in
it is not on the same pattern, but specimens of different ages, cultures,
social strata, of the length and breadth of Russia, live after their own
fashion. In it the Larins[104] and the Famussovs calmly live out their
days; and not only they but Vladimir Lensky and our eccentric Tchatsky,
and indeed there are even too many Onyegins. With little to do they all
live without haste, without special anxieties, without pulling up their
sleeves. The easy-going ways of the Russian country gentleman are, we
must own, dear to our hearts; there is a breadth about them which we do
not find in the petty-bourgeois life of the West. The servile dependence
on the rich and powerful, of which Miss Wilmot speaks in the _Memoirs
of Princess Dashkhov_, and which I myself remember, did not exist in
the circles of which I am speaking. The rank and file of this society
was composed of landowners not in the service, or serving not on their
own account but to pacify their relations, of young literary men and
professors. This society had the freedom and fluidity of relations and
habits that had not been reduced to a rigid tradition, a freedom which
is not found in the old European life, and at the same time it retained
the traditions of Western politeness instilled into us by education
and now vanishing in the West; this courtesy, blended with the Slav
_laisser aller_, and at times with riotous merriment, made up the special
Russian character of Moscow society, to its great regret, because it was
desperately anxious to be Parisian and probably still is so.

We still only know of Europe as it was in the past; we are still haunted
by the days when Voltaire reigned supreme over the Parisian salons and
people were invited to hear Diderot arguing, as to partake of a sturgeon;
when the arrival of David Hume in Paris was an epoch and all the
countesses and viscountesses hung about him and flirted with him till
another spoilt darling, Grimm, sulked and thought it quite out of place.
We still think of the soirées of Baron d’Holbach[105] and the first
performance of _Figaro_, when all the aristocracy of Paris stood in a
queue for whole days, and fashionable ladies missed their dinner and ate
dry buns to get a seat and see the revolutionary play, which was to be
performed a month later at Versailles with the Count de Provence, _i.e._,
the future Louis XVIII., in the part of Figaro and Marie Antoinette in
the part of Suzanne!

_Tempi passati_ ... past are not only the salons of the eighteenth
century, those marvellous salons in which under powder and lace
aristocrats dandled and fed on aristocratic milk the young lion from whom
sprang a titanic revolution. There are not even such salons as those, for
instance, of Madame de Staël or Récamier, in which all the celebrities of
aristocracy, literature, and politics gathered. Literature is feared, and
indeed there is none, while the parties have drifted so far apart that
people of different shades of opinion cannot meet with civility under the
same roof.

One of the last attempts at a salon, in the old sense of the word, failed
and flickered out together with its hostess. Delphine Gay[106] exhausted
all her talents and brilliant intelligence in the attempt to preserve a
decorous peace between guests who suspected and hated each other. Can
there be any pleasure in a strained, uneasy state of truce, in which the
host as soon as he is alone throws himself exhausted on the sofa and
thanks heaven that the evening has passed off without unpleasantness?

Indeed, Western Europe (and particularly France) has no thought to
spare for literary gossip, for _bon ton_ and elegant manners. Covering
the terrible gulf with the bee-embroidered Imperial mantle, bourgeois
generals, bourgeois bankers, bourgeois ministers are carousing,
piling up millions, losing millions, while they await the Nemesis of
liquidation.... They need not light _causerie_ but heavy orgies and
colourless wealth, in which, as in the first Empire, art is driven out by
gold, the lady by the _lorette_, the literary man by the stock-exchange
gambler.

This dissolution of society was not confined to Paris. George Sand was
the living centre of all her neighbourhood at Nohant. Acquaintances of
all sorts visited her with no great ceremony whenever they liked, and
spent the evening extremely elegantly. There would be music, reading, and
dramatic improvisations, and above all there was George Sand herself.
From the year 1852 the tone began to change, the good-natured neighbours
no longer came to rest and laugh, but with malice in their eyes, brimming
over with spite, attacked one another openly and secretly; some displayed
their new livery, while others dreaded being denounced to the government;
the lack of restraint which had made jest and gaiety light and charming
had vanished. The continual effort to appease, to soften and to part the
combatants, so harassed and wearied George Sand that she made up her mind
to give up her evenings at Nohant and reduced her circle to two or three
old friends....

They say that Moscow—young Moscow—has grown old, has not survived
Nicholas, that even the university has become petty, and that the
landowning temper has come out in too strong relief in face of the
question of emancipation; that its English club has become less
English than ever, that in it Sobakevitches[107] are clamouring
against emancipation and Nozdryovs noisily maintaining the natural and
inalienable rights of the nobility. Perhaps!... But the Moscow of the
’forties was not like that, and it was that Moscow that took active sides
for and against the _murmolka_; girls and ladies read very boring essays,
listened to very long arguments, and argued themselves in defence of K.
S. Aksakov or Granovsky, only regretting that Aksakov was too Slavophil
and Granovsky not sufficiently patriotic.

The arguments were renewed at every literary and non-literary evening
at which we met, and that was two or three times a week. On Monday we
assembled at Tchaadayev’s, on Tuesday at Sverbeyev’s, on Sundays at
Madame A. P. Yelagin’s.... Besides those who took part in the arguments,
besides the people who had opinions, men and even women would come to
these evenings and sit until two o’clock in the morning to see which of
the matadors would dispatch the other, and how he would be dispatched
himself; they came as in old days people used to go to prize fights, and
to the amphitheatre behind the Rogozhsky Gate.

The champion who impressed all on the side of orthodoxy and Slavophilism
was Alexey Stepanovitch Homyakov, ‘Gorgias the immemorial questioner of
the world,’ to use the expression of the half-crazy Moroshkin. Gifted
with a powerful and mobile intelligence, a good memory, and power of
rapid reflection, rich in resources and indiscriminate in the use of
them, he spent his whole life in heated and inexhaustible argument. An
unwearying and unresting fighter, he dealt blows and thrusts, attacked
and pursued, pelted with witticisms and quotations, terrified and drove
into a maze from which there was no escape without prayer—in short, if he
attacked a conviction the conviction was lost, if he attacked a man’s
logic his logic was gone.

Homyakov really was a dangerous opponent; a hardened old duellist
of dialectics, he took advantage of the slightest inadvertence, the
slightest concession. An extraordinarily gifted man, with formidable
stores of erudition at his disposal, he was like the mediaeval knights
who guarded the Madonna and slept fully armed. At any hour of the day or
the night he was ready for the most intricate argument, and to secure
the triumph of his Slavophil views turned everything in the world to
use, from the casuistry of Byzantine theologians to the subtleties of a
tricky lawyer. His refutations, often only apparent, always dazzled and
confounded his opponent.

Homyakov was very well aware of his strength, and played with it; he
pelted people with words, intimidated them by his learning, mocked
everything, made a man laugh at his own theories and convictions, leaving
him in doubt whether he really had anything left which was sacred. In
masterly fashion he caught those who had halted half-way and roasted
them on the dialectical grid-iron, terrified the timid, reduced the
dilettante to despair, and, with all that, laughed, _as it seemed_,
simply and candidly. I say ‘as it seemed,’ because there was in his
somewhat Oriental features a look as of something concealed and a sort of
simple-hearted Asiatic cunning together with the Russian canniness. As a
rule he rather confused his opponent than convinced him.

His philosophical contentions rested on rejecting the possibility of
attaining truth by reason; he attributed to reason a formal faculty
only, the faculty of developing rudiments received in other ways and
relatively complete (_i.e._, imparted by revelation or accepted through
faith). If reason is left to itself, then, wandering in empty space, and
building category after category, it may throw light on its own laws,
but will never reach the conception of the spirit, nor the conception
of immortality—and so on. On this basis Homyakov confuted people who
halted between religion and science. However they struggled in the
fetters of the Hegelian method, whatever deductions they made, Homyakov
went with them step by step and in the end blew down the house of cards
built of logical formulas or gave them a kick and sent them falling into
‘materialism’ which they shamefacedly renounced, or into ‘atheism’ of
which they were simply afraid. Homyakov triumphed!

As I had several times been present while he was arguing, I noticed
this device, and the first time that it was my lot to try my strength
with him I myself drew him to these deductions. Homyakov screwed up his
slanting eyes, shook his pitch-black curls, and smiled in anticipation.
‘Do you know,’ he said suddenly, as though surprised by a new idea,
‘it is not merely impossible by reason alone to arrive at a rational
spirit developing nature, but by reason alone you can reach no other
interpretation of nature than that of a simple, uninterrupted ferment
which has no aim and may either go on or come to a stop? And if that is
so, you cannot even prove that history will not be cut short to-morrow,
will not perish together with the human race, together with the planet.’

‘I didn’t say,’ I answered, ‘that I undertook to prove it. I know very
well that it is impossible.’

‘What?’ said Homyakov, somewhat surprised, ‘you can accept these terrible
results of the theory of immanence pushed to this ferocious extreme and
nothing in your soul is revolted?’

‘I can, because the deductions of reason are independent of whether I
desire them or not.’

‘Well, you at any rate are consistent. But what violence a man must do to
his soul to resign himself to these gloomy deductions of your science,
and to accustom himself to them.’

‘Prove that your non-science is more true, and I will accept it as
frankly and fearlessly, whatever it may lead me to, even to the Iversky
Madonna.’

‘For that you must have faith.’

‘But, Alexey Stepanovitch, you know the saying: “If you haven’t got a
thing, it’s not your fault.”’

Many people thought—indeed I sometimes did myself—that Homyakov argued
from an artistic pleasure in argument, that he had no deep convictions;
and his manner, his everlasting laugh, and the superficiality of his
critics were responsible for that idea. I don’t think that any one of the
Slavophils did more to gain acceptance for their theories than Homyakov.
His whole life—and he was a very wealthy man and not in the service—was
devoted to propaganda. Whether he laughed or wept was a question of his
nerves, of the cast of his mind, of the way he had been formed by his
environment and had reflected it; it had nothing to do with depth of
conviction.

Perhaps in continual preoccupation with the trivial activity of
discussion and the busy idleness of polemic Homyakov stifled the feeling
of emptiness which, on the other hand, stifled everything joyous in his
comrades and nearest friends, the Kireyevskys.

That these people were crushed and crippled by the age of Nicholas was
unmistakable. In the heat of argument one might sometimes forget it—to do
so now would be weak and pitiful.

The two Kireyevsky brothers stand like melancholy shades at the dividing
line of the national renaissance; not recognised by the living, not
sharing their interests, they never dropped the shroud.

The prematurely aged face of Ivan Kireyevsky bore unmistakable traces of
the suffering and conflict which had been followed by the gloomy calm of
the sea rippling above a foundered ship. His life was a failure. He threw
himself with ardour—in 1833, if I remember right—into a monthly review,
_The European_. The two numbers that appeared were excellent, but on the
publication of the second _The European_ was prohibited. He inserted an
article upon Novikov[108] in the _Dennitsa_. The _Dennitsa_ was seized
and the censor, Glinka, was put under arrest. Kireyevsky, who had lost a
great deal of his fortune over _The European_, retired despondently into
the wilderness of Moscow life: there was nothing for him to do there; he
could not endure it, and went away to the country, burying in his heart
profound unhappiness and a painful yearning for activity. This man, too,
firm and true as steel, was consumed by the rust of that terrible period.
Ten years later he went back to Moscow from his seclusion, a mystic and a
believer in the church.

His position in Moscow was a hard one. He found no complete intimacy or
sympathy either in his friends or in us. Between him and us stood the
barrier of the church. A worshipper of liberty and of the great age of
the French Revolution, he could not share the disdain of the new ‘Old
Believers’ for everything European. He once said with intense sadness to
Granovsky: ‘In heart I am closer to you, but I do not share many of your
convictions; I am nearer in belief to our party, but just as far from
them on the other side.’ And he really was fading out of life, lonely in
his own family.[109] Beside him stood his brother and friend, Pyotr. Both
the brothers took part in conversations sadly, as though their tears were
not yet dried, as though misfortune had visited them the day before. I
looked at Ivan Kireyevsky as at a widow, as at a mother who had lost her
son; life had cheated him, all was emptiness in the future and the only
consolation:

          ‘Wait a little,
    Thou too shalt rest!’[110]

One was sorry to disturb his mysticism. I used to feel the same scruple
in the old days with Vitberg. The mysticism of both was aesthetic; it
was as though the truth had not disappeared altogether behind it, but
was hidden in fantastic outlines and monastic cassocks. One only feels a
ruthless desire to shake a man out of his theories when his madness takes
a polemical form or when he is so near one that any dissonance rends the
heart and gives one no peace.

And what argument could one use to a man who said things like this: ‘I
once stood at a shrine and gazed at a wonder-working ikon of the Mother
of God, thinking of the childlike faith of the people praying before
it; some women and infirm old men knelt, crossing themselves and bowing
down to the earth. With ardent hope I gazed at the holy features, and
little by little the secret of their marvellous power began to grow clear
to me. Yes, this was not simply a painted board ... for whole ages it
had absorbed these streams of passionate aspiration, the prayers of the
afflicted and unhappy; it must have been filled with power which emanates
from it, is reflected from it, upon the believing. It had become a living
organism, a meeting-place between the Creator and men. Thinking of this,
I looked once more at the old men, at the women and children prostrate
in the dust, and at the holy ikon—then I myself saw the features of the
Mother of God suffused with life, she looked with love and mercy at
these simple folk ... and I sank on my knees and meekly prayed to her.’

Pyotr Kireyevsky was even more incorrigible and went to even greater
lengths in orthodox Slavophilism; his was perhaps a less gifted nature,
but he was single-minded and strictly consistent. He did not, like his
brother Ivan or the Slavophil Hegelians, try to reconcile religion with
science, and the Western civilisation with nationalism; on the contrary
he rejected all compromises. Firmly and independently he stood his
ground, neither seeking arguments nor avoiding them. He had nothing to
fear: he was so entirely devoted to his idea and so bound up with it in
sorrowful sympathy for the Russia of his day that his position was easy.
It was as impossible to agree with him as with his brother; but it was
easier to understand him, as it is easier to understand every ruthless
extreme. He had discerned (and this I only realised long afterwards) some
part of the bitter, crushing truths concerning the social condition of
Western Europe which we only came to see after the upheavals of 1848. He
perceived them with melancholy clear-sightedness, divined them through
hatred and resentment for the evil wrought by Peter the Great in the
name of Western civilisation. That is why Pyotr Kireyevsky had not, as
his brother had, together with his orthodoxy and Slavophilism, yearnings
towards some humane and religious philosophy in which his lack of faith
in the present would be resolved. No, his austere nationalism involved
complete, final estrangement from all that was Western.

It was their common misfortune that they had been born either too early
or too late; the Fourteenth of December found us children, but them young
men. That made a great difference. At that time we were at our lessons,
knowing nothing at all of what was really being done in the practical
world. We were full of theoretical dreams, we were Gracchi and Rienzi
in the nursery; afterwards confined to a small circle we spent our
academic years together; as we passed out of the gates of the university
we entered the gates of prison. Prison and exile in youth, in the grey
and stifling days of persecution, are extremely beneficial; they are a
hardening process; only feeble organisms are subdued by prison, those in
whom resistance was the passing impulse of youth and not a talent, not
a spiritual necessity. To be the object of open persecution strengthens
the desire for resistance, increased danger trains to endurance and
moulds conduct. All this provides an interest, a distraction, and excites
irritation and anger; with the prisoner or the exile moments of fury are
more frequent than the exhausting hours of listless, impotent despair of
men in freedom but helpless in vulgar and oppressive surroundings.

When we came back from exile a new spirit was already stirring in the
university, in literature, in society itself. Those were the days of
Gogol and Lermontov, of Byelinsky’s articles, the lectures of Granovsky
and the young professors.

It was very different with our predecessors; they were coming of age when
the bell tolled for the execution of Pestel and pealed for the coronation
of Nicholas; they were too young to take part in the conspiracy of
December the Fourteenth, and not young enough to be at school after it.
They were faced with the ten years which ended in Tchaadayev’s gloomy
letter. Of course they could not grow old in those ten years, but
they were crushed and stifled, surrounded by a society with no living
interests, paltry, cowardly, cringing. And those were the first ten
years of manhood! Inevitably a man was driven, like Onyegin, to envy
the paralysis of the Tula assessor, to go to Persia like Lermontov’s
Petchorin, to become a Catholic like the real Petchorin, or to throw
himself into desperate orthodoxy or violent Slavophilism, if he had no
desire to get drunk, to flog peasants, or to play cards.

When first Homyakov was conscious of this emptiness he went for a tour
in Europe, during the dull and sluggish reign of Charles X.; after
finishing in Paris his forgotten tragedy, _Yermak_, and talking to
various Czechs and Dalmatians on the way home, he returned. Everything
was dull! Fortunately the Turkish war broke out; he, quite superfluously,
quite aimlessly, joined a regiment and went to Turkey. The war ended, and
another forgotten tragedy, _Dmitri the Pretender_, was finished. Dullness
again!

In this boredom, in this depression, in the midst of terrible environment
and terrible emptiness a new thought flashed upon him: it was greeted
with derision as soon as it was uttered; that only made Homyakov fly the
more furiously to defend it, and made it enter the more deeply into the
very flesh and blood of the Kireyevskys.

The seed was scattered; their energies all went into the sowing and the
guarding of the young crops. Men were needed of another generation,
not warped and distorted, by whom their thought could be accepted and
inherited, not come to by suffering and sickness as they themselves had
reached it. Young men responded to their summons, men of Stankevitch’s
circle joined them, and among them were such powerful personalities as K.
Aksakov and Yury Samarin.

Konstantin Aksakov did not laugh like Homyakov and was not engrossed in
hopeless grieving like the Kireyevskys. He threw himself with energy into
the work, as a youth on the threshold of manhood. There was no uncertain
testing of his ground, no melancholy sense of being a voice crying in the
wilderness, no gloomy sighing, no faint hope about him, but a fanatical
faith, intolerant, narrow, one-sided, that faith which paves the way to
victory. Aksakov was one-sided like every fighter; a calmly balanced
eclecticism is no equipment for battle. He was surrounded by hostile
elements, powerful elements, that had great advantages over him, he had
to fight his way through a succession of all sorts of enemies, and to
hoist his flag. How could he be tolerant!

His whole life was an uncompromising protest against the Russia
of officialdom, against the Petersburg period, in the name of the
unrecognised, oppressed Russian people. His dialectical powers were
inferior to those of Homyakov, and he was not a poet and thinker like
Ivan Kireyevsky, but he was ready to go out into the market-place for
his faith; he would have gone to the stake, and when that is felt behind
a man’s words they become terribly convincing. Early in the ’forties he
was preaching the village commune, the mir, and the workmen’s guild. He
taught Haxthausen[111] to understand them, and, consistent to the point
of childishness, was the first to put his trousers inside his high boots,
and to wear a shirt with a collar fastened at the side. ‘Moscow is the
capital of the Russian people,’ he used to say, ‘while Petersburg is
only the residence of the Emperor.’ ‘And observe,’ I answered, ‘to what
lengths the distinction goes—in Moscow they invariably put you in the
lock-up, while in Petersburg they take you to the _Hauptwacht_.’

To the end of his days Aksakov remained an everlastingly enthusiastic and
boundlessly generous youth; he carried away and was carried away, but was
always perfectly single-hearted. In 1844 when our differences had reached
such a point that neither the Slavophils nor we cared to go on meeting, I
was walking along the street when I saw K. Aksakov in a sledge. I bowed
to him in a friendly way. He was on the point of driving by, but he
suddenly stopped the coachman, got out of his sledge, and came towards
me. ‘It hurts me too much,’ he said, ‘to pass you and not say good-bye.
You understand that after all that has happened between your friends and
mine I am not coming to see you; I am sorry, very sorry, but there is no
help for it.’ He went rapidly towards his sledge, but suddenly turned
round. I was standing still; I was sad; he rushed up to me, threw his
arms round me and kissed me warmly. I had tears in my eyes. How I loved
him at that moment of strife!

The quarrel in question was the result of the discussions of which I have
spoken.

Granovsky and I still managed to get on with them somehow, without giving
up our principles; we did not make a personal question of our difference
of opinion. Byelinsky, passionate in his intolerance, went further and
bitterly reproached us. ‘I am a Jew by nature,’ he wrote to me from
Petersburg, ‘and cannot eat at the same table with the Philistines....
Granovsky wants to know whether I have read his article in the
_Moskvityanin_. No, and I am not going to read it; tell him I am not fond
of meeting my friends in improper places, and I don’t make appointments
with them there.’

On the other hand, the Slavophils were ruthless in their treatment of
him. The _Moskvityanin_, irritated by Byelinsky, by the success of the
_Notes of the Fatherland_ and of Granovsky’s lectures, used any weapon
that came to hand in self-defence, and spared Byelinsky least of all,
speaking of him in so many words as a dangerous man who thirsted for
destruction and rejoiced at the sight of the conflagration.

The _Moskvityanin_, however, was pre-eminently the organ of the
university doctrinaire section of the Slavophils. This section might
be described not merely as the university, but to some extent as the
government party. That such a party should find expression was a great
novelty in Russian literature. Among us servility either keeps quiet,
takes bribes, and can barely read or write, or, disdainful of prose,
strikes chords on the lyre of loyalty and patriotism.

Bulgarin and Gretch[112] are in no way typical, no one was deceived by
them, no one mistook the cockade of their livery for the badge of any
shade of opinion.

Pogodin and Shevyryov, the editors of the _Moskvityanin_, were on the
contrary conscientiously servile: Pogodin from hatred of the aristocracy,
Shevyryov I do not know why, possibly influenced by the example of his
ancestor, who, in the midst of the tortures and agonies of the reign of
Ivan the Terrible, sang psalms and almost prayed for the ferocious old
man’s days to be prolonged.

There are periods at which thinkers are on the side of authority, but
that is only when authority is progressive, as in the days of Peter the
Great, is defending the country as in 1812, or is healing its wounds and
letting it rest as in the reign of Henry IV. of France and perhaps of
Alexander ii. But to select the most arid and narrow epoch of Russian
autocracy and, leaning upon the Little Father the Tsar, take up arms
against the individual misdeeds of the aristocracy, which is developed
and supported by the power of that same Tsar, is absurd and harmful.

I shall be told that under the aegis of devotion to the Imperial power
the truth can be spoken more boldly. Why then did they not speak it?

Pogodin was a useful professor who appeared, with energy that was new and
a Guerin that was not, on the débris of Russian history, which had been
whittled away and turned to smoke and ashes by Katchenovsky.[113] But as
a writer he was of little importance in spite of the fact that he wrote
everything, even _Götz von Berlichingen_, in Russian. His unswept and
unpolished style, coarse manner of throwing out gnawed and ragged remarks
and undigested thoughts, inspired me in old days, and I wrote a parody
of him, a little fragment of _Vedrin’s Notes of Travel_. Strogonov (the
Director of Moscow University), after reading it, said: ‘Pogodin will
certainly imagine that he wrote it himself.’

It is doubtful whether Shevyryov did anything at all as a professor. As
for his literary articles, I do not remember a single original idea or
a single independent opinion in anything he wrote. His style was quite
the opposite of Pogodin’s, being windy, spongy, rather like too limp a
blancmange in which the almond flavouring has been forgotten, although
under his treacle a vast amount of jaundiced, conceited irritability
was masked. As one reads Pogodin one feels as though he were swearing
and looking round to see whether there are ladies in the room. Reading
Shevyryov one slumbers and keeps dreaming of something quite different.

Speaking of the style of these Siamese twins of Moscow journalism
inevitably reminds one of George Foster the celebrated companion of
Captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands and of Robespierre in the Convention
of the one and indivisible Republic. Being professor of botany in Vilna
and listening to Polish so rich in consonants, he remembered his friends
in Otaheite who spoke almost entirely in vowel sounds and observed: ‘If
those two languages were mixed what a smooth and sonorous tongue it would
make!’

However, badly as they wrote, the co-editors of the _Moskvityanin_ began
attacking not only Byelinsky but also Granovsky for his lectures, and
always with the same unhappy lack of tact which set all decent people
against them. They accused Granovsky of partiality for Western culture,
for a certain ‘order of ideas’ for which Nicholas from ‘an idea of order’
clapped men in fetters and sent them to Nertchinsk.

Granovsky took up their challenge, and his bold and noble reply put them
to shame. He asked his accusers publicly from the lecturer’s platform why
he ought to hate Western Europe, and if he did hate Western culture what
inducement would he have to lecture on its history.

‘I am accused,’ said Granovsky, ‘of using history merely as a means of
expressing my own views. That is partly true; I have convictions and I
bring them forward in my lectures. If I had none I should not appear
before you in public simply in order, more or less interestingly, to
describe a succession of events.’

Granovsky’s answers were so simple and manly, and his lectures so
attractive, that the Slavophil doctrinaires subsided, while the young
people applauded no less than we. At the end of the course an effort was
even made at reconciliation. We gave Granovsky a dinner after his final
lecture. The Slavophils wanted to join us in it, and Yury Samarin was
chosen by them (as I was by our side) as steward.

The banquet was a success; at the end of it, after many toasts, not only
unanimous but drunk with zest, we embraced the Slavophils and kissed
them in the Russian style. Ivan Kireyevsky only begged me one thing,
that I would alter the spelling of my name, and by changing the _e_ into
a Slavonic vowel make it more Russian to the ear. But Shevyryov did not
even insist on that, on the contrary as he embraced me he repeated in
his soprano: ‘He is a good man even with an _e_, he is a Russian even
with an _e_.’ On both sides the reconciliation was genuine and without
reservations, which, of course, did not prevent us from disagreeing more
than ever a week later.

Reconciliations as a rule are only possible when they are unnecessary,
_i.e._ when personal exasperation is over, or when opinions have
approximated and when people see themselves that they have nothing to
quarrel about. Otherwise every reconciliation involves weakening on
both sides, they both fade, that is, lose their distinctive colouring.
The efforts of our peace conference very soon turned out to be
impracticable, and the conflict raged with fresh exasperation. On our
side it was impossible to rope in Byelinsky; he sent us threatening
letters from Petersburg, excommunicated and anathematised us, and wrote
more angrily than ever in the _Notes of the Fatherland_. At last he
pointed a triumphant finger at the ‘dodges’ of Slavophilism and repeated
reproachfully, ‘there you have them,’ while we hung our heads in
contrition. Byelinsky was right!

A poet,[114] at one time a favourite, who became a Slavophil through
family connections and a sanctimonious bigot through illness, tried
with his dying hand to have a lash at us; but unluckily the police whip
was again the means chosen for the purpose. In a play entitled _Our
Opponents_, he called Tchaadayev a renegade from orthodoxy, Granovsky a
false teacher corrupting the young, me a footman wearing the gorgeous
livery of Western culture, and all three of us traitors to our country.
Of course, he did not mention our names; those were put in by the readers
who enthusiastically carried this spy’s report in verse from drawing-room
to drawing-room. K. Aksakov indignantly answered him also in verse,
branding with emphatic disapproval his spiteful attacks, and saying that
their real opponents were the Slavophils who played the gendarmes in the
name of Christ.

This incident added much bitterness to our relations. The poet’s name,
the name of the man who recited the poem, the circle in which he lived,
the circle which was enthusiastic over it—all helped to increase the
irritation caused by it.

Our dissensions very nearly led to a terrible calamity, to the ruin of
the two purest and best representatives of the two parties. All the
efforts of their friends were needed to patch up the quarrel between
Granovsky and Pyotr Kireyevsky which very nearly came to a duel.

In the midst of these circumstances Shevyryov, who could never resign
himself to the colossal success of Granovsky’s lectures, had the happy
thought of trying to beat him in his own field, and announced a course
of public lectures. He lectured on Dante, on Nationalism in Art, on
Orthodoxy and Culture, and so on; his audience was numerous, but it
remained cold. He displayed boldness at times and this was very much
appreciated, but the general effect was negligible. One lecture has
remained in my memory, the one in which he talked of Michelet’s _Le
Peuple_ and George Sand’s story _La Mare au Diable_, because in it he
touched vividly on a living and contemporary interest. It was difficult
to arouse sympathy when talking of the charms of the ecclesiastical
writers of the Eastern Church and lauding the Greco-Russian Church. Only
Fyodor Glinka[115] and his wife Yevdokia, who wrote of ‘the milk of the
Holy Virgin,’ usually sat side by side in the front row, modestly casting
down their eyes when Shevyryov was immoderate in his praises of the
Orthodox Church.

Shevyryov spoilt his lectures, just as he spoilt his articles, by sallies
against ideas, books, and persons, whom one could hardly have defended
without being clapped in prison.

Meanwhile, ‘in spite of all the devices invented to make a success’ of
the _Moskvityanin_, it was definitely a failure. To make a polemical
journal living one must have the instinct of modernity, one must have
that delicate sensitiveness of the nerves which is at once stimulated
by all that stimulates society. The editors of the _Moskvityanin_ were
entirely destitute of this intuitive vision and, however they turned
and twisted poor Nestor and poor Dante, they were at last themselves
convinced that in our depraved age you could have no success, either
with the roughly chopped phrases of Pogodin or the sing-song suavity
of Shevyryov’s eloquence. After much consideration they determined to
offer the editorship to Ivan Kireyevsky. The choice of Kireyevsky was a
particularly happy one, not only because of his intelligence and talents,
but also on the financial side. There is no one in the world with whom I
should so much like to transact business as with Kireyevsky.

To give an idea of his commercial philosophy I will relate the following
anecdote. He had a stud-farm from which horses were brought to Moscow,
valued, and sold. On one occasion a young officer came to buy a horse
to which he had taken a great fancy; the coachman, seeing this, put up
the price. After some bargaining the officer agreed to his terms and
went to Kireyevsky. The latter after receiving the money looked in the
list and observed to the officer that the horse was priced at eight
hundred roubles, not at a thousand, and that the coachman must have made
a mistake. This so dumbfoundered the officer that he asked permission
to look at the horse again, and after examining it refused to buy it,
saying: ‘It must be a nice sort of horse, if the owner is ashamed to take
the price agreed on for it....’ Where could one find a better editor?

He set to work zealously, wasted a great deal of time and moved to
Moscow on account of it, but for all his talent he could do nothing with
the magazine. The _Moskvityanin_ did not respond to any living widely
diffused demand, and therefore could not have any circulation except in
its own coterie. Its failure must have been a great disappointment to
Kireyevsky.

The _Moskvityanin_ did not recover after its second breakdown, and the
Slavophils themselves perceived that they could not make much headway on
that boat. They began to think of another magazine.

This time it was not they who came off victorious. Public opinion
clamorously decided in our favour. In the dark night when the
_Moskvityanin_ was sinking and the _Lighthouse_ was no longer lighting it
up from Petersburg, Byelinsky, who had fed the _Notes of the Fatherland_
with his own blood, set their illegitimate offspring on its feet and
gave them both such a shove that they were able for some years to keep
on their way with no staff but proof-correctors, printers, and the
publicans and sinners of literature. Byelinsky’s name was enough to make
the fortune of two shops and to concentrate all that was best in Russian
literature in the publications in which he took part, while Kireyevsky’s
talent and Homyakov’s contributions could bring neither circulation nor
readers to the _Moskvityanin_.

Such was the field of battle when I left it and went away from Russia.
Both sides expressed themselves fully once more,[116] and all the
questions have been thrown into a new light by the great events of 1848.

Nicholas is dead; a new life has drawn the Slavophils and us beyond the
limits of our feud. We have stretched out our hands to them, but where
are they? Gone! And K. Aksakov is gone, and those ‘opponents’ who were
dearer to us than many of our own side are no more.

It was a hard life that burnt men away like a candle set in the wind of
autumn.

They were all living when I wrote this chapter the first time. This time
let it end with the following lines spoken on the death of Aksakov:

‘The Kireyevskys, Homyakov, and Aksakov have done their work; whether
their lives were short or long, they could, as they closed their eyes,
say to themselves with full conviction that they had done what they meant
to do, and, though they could not stop the express troika which Peter the
Great had sent flying on its way and in which Biron sat urging the driver
with blows to drive over cornfields and crush the people, they did bring
public opinion to a halt and made all earnest people reconsider their
position.

‘With them a new era of Russian thought begins and, when we say that, it
seems impossible to suspect us of partiality.

‘Yes, we were their opponents, but very strange ones. We had the same
love, but not the same way of loving.

‘Both they and we had been from earliest years possessed by one
unaccountable, physiological, passionate feeling, which they took as
memory and we as prophecy—a feeling of boundless, absorbing love for the
Russian people, Russian manner of life, Russian mode of thought. And like
Janus, or the two-headed eagle, we looked in different directions while
one heart throbbed within us.

‘They laid all their love, all their tenderness at the feet of their
oppressed mother. In us, brought up away from home, the tie was weaker.
We had been in the charge of a French governess, and only learned later
on that not she was our mother but a downtrodden peasant woman, and we
ourselves divined it from the likeness in our features and because her
songs were dearer to us than the vaudevilles. We loved her dearly, but
her life was too narrow. We were stifled in her narrow dwelling with
everywhere tarnished faces behind the silver setting, where she lived
terrified by priests and church servitors, and bullied by soldiers and
clerks. Even her everlasting wailing for her lost happiness rent our
hearts, we knew she had no bright memories, we knew something else too,
that her happiness lay in the future, that the new life was stirring
under her heart, our younger brother, to whom without the mess of pottage
we would yield our heritage. And meanwhile:

    “Mutter, Mutter, lass mich gehen
    Shweifen auf die wilden Höhen!”

‘Such were our family dissensions fifteen years ago. Much water has
flowed away since then, and we have met the _mountain spirit_ that has
checked our flight, while they have stumbled out of a world of relics
on to living Russian problems. It would be strange for us to adjust
accounts, we have no monopoly of understanding; time, history, and
experience have brought us nearer, not because we have drawn them to us,
nor they us to them, but because both they and we are nearer to a true
outlook now than we were then, when we attacked each other unsparingly
in magazine articles, though even then I do not remember that we ever
doubted the warmth of their love for Russia, nor they ours.

‘This faith in one another, this common love gives us, too, the right to
do homage at their tombs and to throw our handful of earth upon their
dead, in the sacred hope that on their graves and ours, young Russia may
blossom into light and power.’




Chapter 31

MY FATHER’S DEATH—MY HERITAGE—THE PARTITION—TWO NEPHEWS


From the end of the year 1845, my father’s strength grew steadily less;
he changed unmistakably after the loss of the Senator, whose death was
completely in keeping with his whole life, taking place casually and
almost in his carriage. In 1839 he spent one evening as usual with my
father; he had come from some School of Agriculture, brought with him a
model of some agricultural machine, the use of which I imagine could have
very little interest for him, and at eleven o’clock in the evening he
went home.

It was his habit to take a very light repast and to drink a glass of red
wine on reaching home; that evening he declined to take anything and
told my old friend Calot that he was rather tired and would go to bed.
Calot helped him undress, put a candle by his bedside and went out; he
had scarcely reached his room and taken off his coat when the Senator
rang the bell; Calot ran, the old man was lying dead on the floor by the
bed. This was a great shock to my father and very much alarmed him. His
solitude was even more complete, his own turn was terribly near, his
three elder brothers were in their graves; he was gloomier, and though,
as his habit was, he concealed his feelings and maintained his frigid
pose, yet his muscles failed him; I say muscles intentionally, for his
brain and his nerves remained unchanged to the very end.

In April 1845, the old man’s face looked as though he were near his
death, his eyes had lost their lustre; he was by now so thin that
sometimes, showing me his hands, he would say:

‘The skeleton is quite ready, you have only to take off the skin.’

His voice was weaker, he spoke more slowly; but his mind, his memory,
and his will were the same as ever, there was the same irony, the same
continual dissatisfaction with every one.

‘Do you remember,’ one of his old friends asked ten days before his
death, ‘who was our _chargé d’affaires_ in Turin after the war? You used
to know him abroad.’

‘Syeverin,’ answered the old man after thinking a few seconds.

On the 3rd of May I found him in bed, his cheeks were flushed with fever,
which had scarcely ever happened to him before; he was restless and said
that he could not get up; then he ordered leeches to be applied and, as
he lay in bed, continued his biting remarks during that operation.

‘So you are here,’ he said, as though I had only just come in; ‘you had
much better go off somewhere and amuse yourself, my dear fellow, it is a
very melancholy spectacle to watch a man’s dissolution, _cela donne des
pensées noires_, but first give the lad ten kopecks for vodka.’

I fumbled in my pocket and found nothing less than a twenty-five-kopeck
piece and would have given it, but the sick man saw it and said: ‘How
tiresome you are, I said ten kopecks.’

‘I haven’t got it.’

‘Give me my purse out of the bureau,’ and after a long search he found a
ten-kopeck piece.

Golohvastov, my father’s nephew, came in; the old man did not speak. In
order to say something, Golohvastov observed that he had just come from
the governor-general’s; at that word my father put his finger to his
black velvet skull-cap, like a soldier saluting. I had studied all his
gestures so thoroughly that I knew at once what was wrong; Golohvastov
ought to have said: ‘From Shtcherbatov’s.’

‘Only fancy, how strange,’ the latter went on, ‘it turns out that he has
gallstones.’

‘Why is it strange that the governor-general should have gallstones?’ the
invalid asked slowly.

‘Well, _mon oncle_, he is over seventy, and it is the first time he has
suffered in that way.’

‘Well, but here am I, though I am not governor-general, still it is just
as strange; I am seventy-six and it is the first time I am dying.’

He was fully aware of his position and that gave his irony a _macabre_
character, which made one smile while petrified with horror. His valet,
who always reported on small domestic matters to him in the evenings,
told him that the bridle was in a very bad condition and that they would
have to buy a new one.

‘What a queer fellow you are,’ my father answered; ‘a man is passing away
and you talk to him about a bridle. Wait a day or two till you have put
me on the drawing-room table, then tell him (pointing to me), he’ll bid
you buy a saddle and reins as well, though they are not wanted.’

On the 5th of May his temperature was higher, his features were more
sunken and began to look black, the old man was visibly wasting away from
the burning fever. He spoke little but with perfect collectedness. In
the morning he asked for coffee and for broth, and frequently drank some
sort of tisane. In the dusk, he called me to him and said: ‘It is over,’
passing his hand over the quilt like a sword or a scythe as he spoke. I
pressed his hand to my lips, it was burning. He tried to say something,
was beginning ... and, without having said anything, ended: ‘But there,
you know.’ And he turned to G—— I—— who was standing on the other side of
the bed: ‘Very bad,’ he said to him and rested his weary eyes upon him.

G—— I——, an extremely honest man who at that time was managing my
father’s business affairs and was more trusted by him than any one, bent
down to him and said: ‘All the measures you have tried hitherto have been
useless, allow me to advise you to resort to another remedy.’

‘What remedy?’ asked the sick man.

‘Won’t you send for the priest?’

‘Oh,’ said my father, turning to me, ‘I thought G—— I—— really had some
remedy to advise.’

Soon afterwards he fell into a sleep which lasted till next morning; I
suppose it must have been a state of unconsciousness. His illness made
fearful progress during the night; the end was near, at nine o’clock I
sent a horse messenger for Golohvastov.

At half-past ten my father asked to be dressed. He could not stand up
nor hold anything securely in his hand, but he noticed at once that the
silver buckle with which his trousers were fastened was missing and asked
for it. When he was dressed he moved, supported by us, into his study.
There was a big Voltairian armchair and a hard, narrow couch in the
room; he bade us lay him down on the latter and at once uttered a few
unintelligible and incoherent words, but five minutes later opened his
eyes, and meeting Golohvastov’s gaze asked him: ‘Why have you come so
early?’

‘I happened to be close by, uncle,’ answered Golohvastov, ‘so I looked in
to ask how you are.’

The old man smiled as though he would say, ‘You don’t take me in, my dear
fellow!’ Then he asked for his snuff-box. I handed it him and opened
it, but, though he made great efforts, he could not control his fingers
sufficiently to take a pinch; this seemed to strike him, he looked
gloomily around him, and again his brain seemed clouded, he uttered a few
inarticulate words, then asked: ‘What do you call those pipes that are
smoked through water?’

‘Hookahs,’ observed Golohvastov.

‘Yes, yes ... my hookah’—and that was all.

Meanwhile Golohvastov outside the door was getting the priest ready with
the sacrament. He asked the sick man in a loud voice whether he would
receive him; my father opened his eyes and nodded. K—— opened the door
and the priest walked in ... my father was unconscious again, but a few
words intoned by the priest and still more the smell of the incense
aroused him, and he crossed himself; the priest went up to him; we moved
away.

After the ceremony my father saw Dr. Levental zealously writing a
prescription.

‘What are you writing?’ he asked.

‘A prescription for you.’

‘What prescription, musk or something? You ought to be ashamed, you had
better prescribe opium to help me off peacefully.... Lift me up, I want
to sit in the armchair ...’ he added, turning to us. Those were almost
the last coherent words he uttered. We lifted up the dying man and sat
him in the chair. ‘Push me up to the table.’ We did so. He looked feebly
at all. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, indicating M—— K——. I mentioned his name.

He wanted to rest his head on his hand, but his arm gave way and fell
as though lifeless on the table; I put mine in its place. Twice he
bent a weary sick glance on me as though asking for help, a more and
more peaceful and serene expression came into his face ... there was a
sigh—another sigh, and the head that was so heavy on my arm began to grow
stiff.... Everything in the room preserved for some minutes a deathly
silence.

This was on the 6th of May 1846, about three o’clock in the afternoon.

He was buried in the Dyevitchy Monastery with great pomp and ceremony;
two families of peasants who had been set free by him came from
Pokrovskoe to bear the coffin. We followed them, with torches,
choristers, priests, archimandrites, bishops ... and the heart-rending
‘With thy Saints give rest,’ and then the grave and the heavy falling of
the earth on the coffin lid, and with that was ended the long life of the
old man who had so obstinately and powerfully maintained his authority
over his household, who had so weighed on all who surrounded him; and now
all at once his authority had vanished, his power was removed, he was
gone, utterly gone!

Earth was scattered on the grave, the priests and monks were taken off to
dinner. I did not join them, but went home. The carriages drove away, the
beggars pressed round the monastery gates, the peasants stood in a group,
wiping the sweat from their faces; I knew them all well, said good-bye to
them, thanked them and drove away.

Before my father’s death we had almost entirely moved out of the little
house into the big one in which he was living; and so it was natural that
in the bustle of the first few days I had not had time to look round.
But what I saw now on returning from the funeral sent a strange pang to
my heart; in the courtyard and in the porch I was met by the servants,
men and women, begging my favour and protection (why, I will explain at
once). There was a smell of incense in the drawing-room. I went into the
room in which my father’s bed used to stand, it had been carried out; the
door, which had for so many years been approached with cautious steps,
not only by the servants but even by myself, was wide open, and the maid
was setting a small table in the corner. Every one turned to me for
orders. My new position was detestable, revolting to me—this house and
everything in it belonged to me because some one was dead, and that some
one was my father. It seemed to me that in this coarse taking possession
there was something unclean, as though I were robbing the dead man.

There is something profoundly immoral in inheritance; it distorts
the legitimate grief at the loss of one near to us by entering into
possession of his belongings. Fortunately we avoided other revolting
consequences—the savage recriminations and hideous quarrelling of those
who share the booty. The division of all the property was complete in
a couple of hours, during which no one raised his voice or uttered a
single cold word, and after which all present separated with increased
respect for one another. This fact, the chief credit for which is due to
Golohvastov, deserves a few words of explanation.

During the lifetime of the Senator, he and my father made wills
bequeathing the ancestral estate to each other, on condition that the
survivor would leave it to their nephew Golohvastov. Part of his own
estate my father sold and assigned the sum he received from it to us.
Afterwards he gave me a little estate in the province of Kostroma, doing
so because Olga Alexandra Zherebtsov insisted upon it. The government
sequestered this estate contrary to the law before any inquiry was
made of me whether I intended to return. My father sold, after the
Senator’s death, the latter’s Tver estate. So long as my father’s own
estates covered what he sold of the property belonging to his brother,
Golohvastov said nothing. But when the idea occurred to the old man to
give me the estate in the Moscow province on condition that I should, in
accordance with his instructions, pay a sum of money for it, partly to
my brother and partly to other persons, then Golohvastov observed that
this was inconsistent with the wishes of the Senator who had intended the
estate to pass to him. The old man, who could not endure the slightest
opposition, especially in plans which he had long cherished and therefore
considered beyond all criticism, heaped sarcasms upon his nephew.
Golohvastov refused to have anything to do with his affairs, above all
to act as his executor. The misunderstanding was at first so acute that
they broke off all relations.

This was a serious blow to my father. There were few people in the world
that he really liked and Golohvastov was one of them. He had grown up
before his eyes, the whole family was proud of him. My father put great
trust in him, and always held him up to me as a model, and now, all of
a sudden, ‘Mitya, sister Lizaveta’s son,’ was on bad terms with him,
was refusing to carry out his arrangements, was putting his veto on his
plans, and already he could see behind him the ironical eyes of ‘the
Chemist,’ as with a smile he rubbed his nose with fingers burnt with acid.

As his habit was, my father showed not the faintest sign of his
mortification; he avoided talking about Golohvastov, but became
perceptibly more morose and uneasy and talked more often of ‘this awful
age in which all ties of relationship have grown lax, and age no longer
meets with the respect with which it was surrounded in happier days,’ I
suppose when Catherine II. was the representative of all the domestic
virtues!

At the beginning of the quarrel I was at Sokolovo and scarcely heard of
it, but the day after my return to Moscow Golohvastov called upon me
early in the morning. Being an extremely pedantic and formal person,
he told me all about it at very great length and in fine and correct
language, adding that he had made haste to come to me expressly to warn
me what was wrong before I should hear anything of the quarrel.

‘I may well be called Alexander,’ I said jocosely, ‘I will cut the
Gordian knot for you at once. Whatever happens, you must be reconciled,
and, to remove all subject of dispute, I tell you plainly and directly
that I refuse to accept Pokrovskoe; and the forest there alone will be
enough to cover the loss of the Tver estate.’

Golohvastov was a little embarrassed and therefore proceeded to prove to
me even more circumstantially all that I had thoroughly grasped from his
first few words. We parted on the best of terms.

One evening a few days later my father began of his own accord speaking
of Golohvastov. As his way was, when he was displeased with any one, he
did not leave him a leg to stand on. The ideal which he had held up to
me since I was ten years old, the model son, the exemplary brother, the
best of nephews, and the man who dressed so well that the knot of his
cravat was never too large or too small, appeared now, as though in some
photographic negative, with all the hollow places prominent and all the
white spots black.

The change to simple abuse would have been too abrupt and conspicuous
without all sorts of fine shades, transitions, and connections. My father
was too clever to be so inconsequent.

‘Oh, tell me, by the way, I keep forgetting to ask you, have you seen
Dmitry Pavlovitch’ (he had always called him ‘Mitya’) ‘since you came
back?’

‘Yes, once.’

‘Well, how is his Excellency?’

‘Oh, he is quite well.’

‘It’s quite right that you should see him; one ought to stick to such
people. I like him and have always liked him and, indeed, he deserves to
be liked. Of course he, too, has many absurd failings.... But God alone
is without sin. Making his career so rapidly has turned his head....
Well, he is young for the Anna ribbon; besides he has such duties; he as
curator goes to scold the schoolboys and so he has got into the way of
talking to people as though they were inferiors ... he lectures and the
pupils stand at attention and listen to him ... he imagines that he can
talk in that tone to every one. I don’t know whether you have noticed
it, but his voice even is different. I remember under the late Empress,
Prince Prozorovsky used to give commands to his orderlies in just that
harsh voice. Ridiculous as it seems, he came here to give me a lecture. I
listened to him and thought, “What if my sister Lizaveta could have seen
it!” I gave her away to Pavel Ivanovitch on their wedding day, and here
was her son shouting: “Well, uncle, if that is how it is, you had better
apply to Alexey Alexandrovitch, but I beg you to excuse me.” I have one
foot in the grave, as you know, and no end of worries and infirmities; I
am a long-suffering Job, in fact. And he shouts at me and gets crimson in
the face.... _Quel siècle!_ I know that he is accustomed to _décastères_.
Why, he never goes anywhere, but likes to sit at home giving orders to
his elders and stable-boys, and then those wretched little clerks with
“your Excellency this,” and “your Excellency that!” Why, it has turned
his brain....’

In short, just as by slightly changing the features in the portrait
of Louis Philippe you can finally get from a fine-looking old man
to a rotten pear, so the model Mitya passed point by point into a
Cartouche[117] or a Shemyaka.

When the last touches had been put in, I told him all my conversation
with Golohvastov. The old man listened attentively, scowled, and then,
after deliberately, carefully, methodically taking pinches of snuff, said
to me:

‘Pray don’t imagine, my dear fellow, that you are troubling me by
refusing Pokrovskoe.... I am not bowing down and begging any one to
take my estate, and I am not going to beg you to. There are plenty who
would be glad of it. Every one thwarts my plans; I am sick of it; I will
give everything to a hospital—the patients will be glad to have it. As
though Mitya were not enough, here are you teaching me what to do with my
property, and it is only the other day that Vera was washing you in a
tub. No, I am tired of it, it is time I was out of the way; I had better
go to the hospital myself.’

So the conversation ended.

At eleven o’clock next morning my father sent his valet for me. This
happened very rarely; as a rule, I went in to see him before dinner or,
if I were not dining with him, went round to tea.

I found the old man at his writing-table with his spectacles on and some
papers in front of him.

‘Come here and, if you can spare me an hour, help me to put some of these
papers in order. I know you are busy, you are for ever writing your
articles, you are a literary man.... I saw your article in the _Post
of the Fatherland_, I couldn’t make anything of it. It is full of such
learned expressions. I don’t know what literature is coming to.... In old
days Derzhavin and Dmitriev used to write, but nowadays it is you ...
and our cousin Ogaryov. Though, after all, it is better to stay at home
and write nonsense than to be always driving about, going to Yar’s and
drinking champagne.’

I listened and could not imagine what this _captatio benevolentiae_ was
leading up to.

‘Sit down here, read this document and tell me your opinion.’

It was his will and a few codicils added to it. From his point of view
this was the greatest mark of confidence he could have shown me.

A strange psychological fact. From what I read and from what he said I
drew two conclusions: first, that he was longing to be reconciled to
Golohvastov, and secondly, that he greatly appreciated my refusing to
take the estate; and, indeed, from that time, that is, from October 1845
up to the time of his death, he not only put confidence in me in every
case, but sometimes asked my advice and on two occasions even acted upon
it.

Yet what would a man have thought who had overheard our conversation
the day before? I have not altered one word of my father’s answer about
Pokrovskoe, I remember it well.

The will in itself was clear and simple; he left all his real property to
Golohvastov, all his personal belongings, money, and houses to my mother,
my brother, and me, to be divided equally among us. On the other hand,
the codicils, written on all sorts of scraps of paper and undated, were
far from being simple. The responsibility he laid upon us, and especially
upon Golohvastov, was extremely unpleasant. These codicils contradicted
each other and had that character of indefiniteness which commonly leads
to ugly quarrels and recriminations.

For instance, the following words occurred in one: ‘I set free all the
house-serfs who have served me well and zealously and I charge you to
give them rewards and money according to their deserts.’

In one the old brick house was left to G—— I——. In another the house
was disposed of differently, and money was left to G—— I——, but it was
nowhere stated that this money was to be instead of the house. In one
codicil my father left a certain sum of ten thousand silver roubles to a
cousin, while in another he left this cousin’s sister a small estate on
condition that she paid her brother out of it this ten thousand roubles.

I must observe that I had heard beforehand from him of half of these
arrangements, and not I alone. The old man had, for instance, spoken
several times before me of leaving the house to G—— I——, and had even
advised him to move into it.

I suggested to my father that he should invite Golohvastov and commission
him and G—— I—— to put all these notes together into one codicil.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Mitya might be of use, but then he is very busy.
You know these political gentlemen.... What does he care about his dying
uncle? He is always inspecting seminaries.’

‘He’ll be sure to come,’ I observed, ‘it’s a matter of so much
consequence for him.’

‘I am always glad to see him. Only my head is not always strong enough
to talk business. Mitya, _il est très verbeux_—talks my head off, and my
thoughts will be in a whirl directly; you had better take him all these
papers and let him first make his comments on the margin.’

Two or three days later Golohvastov came himself; being extremely
methodical, he was more alarmed by the confused state of the will than
I was, and being a classical scholar he expressed his feelings thus:
‘_Mais, mon cher, c’est le testament d’Alexandre le Grand_.’

My father, as he always did in such circumstances, affected to be twice
as ill as usual, aimed indirect shafts of sarcasm at Golohvastov, then
embraced him, touched his cheek with his own, and the family Campo
Formio[118] was concluded.

So far as we could, we persuaded the old man to revise his supplementary
notes and to turn them into a single codicil. He meant to write this
himself, and in six months had not finished it.

After the division of the property, the question naturally arose who
were to receive their freedom and who not. As for the money gratuities,
I had persuaded my father to fix a definite sum; after long discussions
he had fixed three thousand silver roubles. Golohvastov told the servants
that, not knowing which of them had served in the house and how they had
served, he left the selection to me. I began by putting on the list all
who were serving in the house. But when news of my list spread abroad,
a perfect stream of serfs of past generations burst upon me from all
parts—old men with grey unshaven chins and bald heads, clad in rags,
with that tremulous shaking of the head and hands which is the fruit of
twenty or thirty years of drunkenness; wrinkled old women wearing caps
and huge flounces; and children to whom I had stood godfather by proxy
though I had no conception of their existence. Some of these people
I had never seen at all, others I remembered faintly as in a dream;
finally some turned up who had, I knew for a fact, never served in our
house, but had always lived away with a passport, and others who had
once lived not in our house but in the Senator’s, or had spent all their
days in the country. If these hobbling old men and old women, shrunken
and blackened with age, had wanted freedom for themselves, they would
have been no great loss; but on the contrary they were quite ready to
end their days in the service of Dmitry Pavlovitch, but each of them had
sons, daughters, grandchildren. I pondered and pondered, and in the end
put down all their names. Golohvastov was perfectly aware that half of
these strangers had never been in our service, but, seeing my list, he
gave orders that deeds of freedom should be drawn up for all of them;
as we signed them, he passed his finger through his hair and said to
me, smiling: ‘I fancy we have set free several serfs belonging to other
people.’

Golohvastov too was an original person in his own way, like all my
father’s family.

My father’s younger sister had been married to Pavel Ivanovitch
Golohvastov, an old, old-fashioned, and very wealthy Russian gentleman
of ancient lineage. There are glimpses of Golohvastovs here and there in
Russian history from the days of Ivan the Terrible; their names are met
with in the days of the False Dmitri and in the Time of Trouble. Avraamy
Palitsyn[119] brought upon himself first the anger of Dmitry Pavlovitch
and afterwards a very long critical article through having incautiously
referred to one of the latter’s ancestors in his account of the Siege of
the Troitse-Sergievsky Monastery.

Pavel Ivanovitch was a morose and niggardly but extremely honest and
business-like man. I have described already how he hindered my father
from getting out of Moscow in 1812 and how he died afterwards in the
country from a stroke.

He left two sons and a daughter. They lived with their mother in the
very same big house on the Tversky Boulevard the fire in which had so
astonished their old father. The rather strict, niggardly, and oppressive
tone characteristic of the old father survived him.

An elaborate, solemn dullness and affectation of courteousness and
benevolence always reigned in their house, together with a sense of their
own dignity which, _à la longue_, was excessively boring. The spacious
and well-kept rooms were too empty and silent. The daughter would sit in
silence at her work; the mother, who preserved traces of great beauty and
was still a youngish woman, forty-five or thereabouts, was in failing
health and usually lay on the sofa; both spoke in a drawling, rather
sing-song tone, as Moscow ladies generally did in those days. Dmitry
Pavlovitch at eighteen was like a man of forty. The younger brother was
livelier, but then he scarcely ever put in an appearance....

And all that has passed away ... while I still remember Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s mother making a solemn presentation to him of a horse and
droshky for his exclusive use. Their former tutor, Marshal, an excellent
man, who served me as the model for Joseph in _Who is to Blame?_ used to
give me lessons after Bouchôt left us.

However one may try to evade or disguise them, however cleverly one may
settle these agitating questions of life and death and destiny, there is
still no escaping them with their funeral crosses and with that smile on
the grinning jaws of the dead face that seems so inappropriate!

Though indeed, on second thoughts, one sees that there is nothing for it
but to smile. Take the fate of those two brothers, for instance—thinking
about them leads one to strange reflections!

The difference between my father and the Senator pales before the sharp
contrast between the Golohvastovs, though they grew up in the same room,
had the same tutor, the same teachers, the same surroundings.

The elder brother had fair hair with a British shade of red in it, light
grey eyes which he was fond of screwing up and which were suggestive of
the steely imperturbability of his soul. With advancing years his figure
became more and more expressive of a feeling of complete respect for
himself and of a comfortable digestion in a spiritual sense. By that time
he had begun not merely to screw up his eyes, but also his nostrils,
which were of a peculiar, rather attractive cut. As he talked, he used to
pass the third finger of his left hand through the hair on his temples,
which was always curled and carefully arranged, while he kept his lips
perpetually curved in a benevolent smile; the latter trick he inherited
from his mother and from Lampi’s[120] portrait of Catherine II. His
regular features together with his graceful and rather tall figure, his
carefully rounded movements, and his neckerchief, the knot of which ‘was
never too big nor too small,’ gave him the somewhat majestic comeliness
of the man who gives the bride away at a wedding, of an honourable
witness, of a man who has to distribute prizes to the best schoolboys,
or at the very least of a man who has come to congratulate, to wish one a
happy Christmas or New Year. But for the daily round, for workaday life,
he was too elegant.

His whole life was a series of rewards for success and morality. He fully
deserved them. Marshal, whose hair had been turned white by his younger
brother, could not find words strong enough for Dmitry Pavlovitch’s
merits and had absolute confidence in the impeccability of his French
syntax. He did in fact speak French with that inapproachable correctness
with which Frenchmen never speak the language (probably because the sense
of the immense importance of knowing the French grammar is not so highly
developed in them). At fourteen he not only took part in the management
of the estate, but translated the whole of Heraskov’s _Rossiad_ into
French prose by way of an exercise in style. Most likely his old father
in the other world was more delighted at hearing of this than the ‘Swan
on the waters of the Meander.’ But Golohvastov did not merely speak
French and German correctly and know Latin well, he knew Russian and
spoke it well and correctly.

Just as Marshal considered him his best pupil, so his mother considered
him her best son, his uncles thought him their best nephew, and Prince
Dmitry Vladimirovitch Golitsyn, whose department he entered, esteemed
him the best of his subordinates. And what is still more important, all
this really was true. Yet, strange to say ... one felt the absence of
something in him. He was an intelligent, competent man, he had read and
remembered a great deal—what more, one may say, could one ask?

I have since more than once met these characters, these ‘level’ minds,
these brains so clearly comprehending—in a certain sphere and to a
certain depth. They are so intelligent in their judgments, never
deviating from their data; they are still more intelligent in their
conduct, never stepping aside from the beaten track; they are the true
contemporaries of their age, of their circle. Everything they say is
true, but they might say something different; everything they do is good,
but they might do something else. They are usually moral, but the evil
spirit whispers in one’s ear: ‘But are they capable of being immoral?’
The Germans would call such people ‘reasonable’; you find them among the
Whigs in England, of whom the genius and highest representative now is
Macaulay and in old days was Sir Walter Scott, among the followers of
the practical philosophy of the ‘hermit _de la Chausseé d’Antin_’[121]
and of the philosophical disquisitions of Weiss.[122] Everything in
these gentlemen is correct, decorous, distinguished, in place; they very
properly love virtue and avoid vice; everything about them has the charm
of a grey summer day—free from rain and sun; but something is lacking, a
trifle, a nothing, as with the daughters of Tsar Nikita ... but

    ‘That was just what was missing,’

and without it all the rest is no use.

Golohvastov’s younger brother was born a cripple; this circumstance
alone deprived him of the possibility of attaining the antique pose
and Versailles deportment of his elder brother. Moreover he had black
hair and big black eyes which he never screwed up. This vigorous and
handsome exterior was all there was; within, rather unbalanced passions
and confused ideas strayed at random. My father, who thought nothing of
him, would say when he was particularly displeased with him: ‘_Quel jeu
intéressant de la nature_ to see on Nikolasha’s shoulders’—and the old
man shrugged his own—‘the head of the Shah of Persia!’

While his elder brother could never find a minute’s leisure and was
continually doing something, Nikolay Pavlovitch did absolutely nothing
all his life. In his youth he did not study; at twenty-three he was
married, and in a very amusing fashion. He eloped with himself. Having
fallen in love with a poor girl of no rank, who was like an extremely
charming Greuze head or elegant Sèvres china doll, he asked permission
to marry her, and at that I am not surprised. His mother, who was
filled with aristocratic prejudices and imagined that no one less
than a Rumyantsov or an Orlov would be a fitting bride for one of her
sons—and even such a bride would have had to bring a whole population
of the province of Voronezh or Ryazan as a dowry—of course refused her
consent. But in spite of his brother’s persuasions and his uncles’
and aunts’ admonitions, the young girl’s bright eyes gained the upper
hand. Our Werther, seeing that he could not alter the decision of his
relations, one night let down from his bedroom-window a box, some linen,
and his valet Alexandr, then let himself down, leaving his door locked
on the inner side. By the time the door was opened at the dinner hour
next day he was already married. His mother was so distressed at the
secret marriage that she took to her bed and died, laying her life as a
sacrifice on the altar of etiquette and decorum.

A deaf and grumbling old lady with a little moustache, the widow of an
officer who had been in command of the fortress of Orsk in the time of
the plague and of Pugatchov, lived in their house. She often used to tell
me afterwards about the terrific incident of the elopement, and every
time added: ‘My good sir, ever since he was a little boy I have seen that
Nikolay Pavlovitch would never come to any good and would never be a
comfort to Elizaveta Alexeyevna. He was twelve years old, you know, when
he came running to me—I shall never forget it—laughing till the tears
came into his eyes, and saying, “Nadyeshda Ivanovna, Nadyeshda Ivanovna,
make haste, look out of the window and see what has happened to our cow!”
I ran to the window and fairly groaned. Why, only fancy, sir, the dogs, I
suppose it was, had torn her tail off, anyway the poor darling was left
without a tail.... It was a Tyrolese cow.... I couldn’t help saying, “So
this is how you laugh at your mamma’s cow, and your own property! Well,
you will come to no good!” And I gave up all hope of him from that day.’

The prediction so strangely based upon a cow’s tail not being in its
proper place was quickly fulfilled. The brothers divided the property and
the younger one proceeded to waste his in riotous living.

Every one knows the series of sketches in which Hogarth represents side
by side the lives of the industrious man and the idler. The industrious
man yawns in church while the idler is playing knuckle-bones; the
industrious man reads an edifying book in the family circle while the
idler is drinking gin, and so on. Except for the difference in social
position, the parallel was true of the two brothers. One of Hogarth’s
heroes begins by stealing and ends on the gallows, while the other spends
his whole life in dullness and lectures his friends to death. Thieving
was a _hors-d’œuvre_, it was not the thief’s fault that his mother did
not leave him two thousand souls in the Kaluga province and half a
million of money, as Elizaveta Alexeyevna did her son. He would hardly in
that case have put himself to so much trouble and effort, for thieving
is far from a recreation, it is a very unpleasant and extremely risky
pursuit.

On dividing the property, both brothers set zealously to work, one to
improve his estate, the other to ruin his; I do not know whether Dmitry
Pavlovitch added a hundred roubles to his fortune by his unflagging
efforts, but within ten years Nikolay Pavlovitch had debts of more than a
million.

Soon after his mother’s death Dmitry Pavlovitch, after establishing
his sister, that is, marrying her off, went to Paris and London to see
Europe; while Nikolay Pavlovitch set about showing himself to Moscow:
balls, dinners, entertainments followed one another; his house was packed
from morning to night with gourmands fond of a good dinner, connoisseurs
of good wine, young people fond of dancing, interesting Frenchmen,
officers of the Guards—wine flowed, bands played, and he even sometimes
fêted local divinities of the first magnitude, such as Prince D. V.
Golitsyn and Prince Yussupov.

Meanwhile Dmitry Pavlovitch, still unmarried, after duly inspecting
Europe and learning English, returned, furnished with plans of Devonshire
farms and Cornwall stud-stables and accompanied by an English groom and
two immense thoroughbred Newfoundland dogs of incredible stupidity with
long hair and shaggy paws. Sowing and winnowing machines, extraordinary
ploughs, and models of all sorts of agricultural devices were brought by
sea.

While Dmitry Pavlovitch was studiously introducing the four-field system
of husbandry, which does not suit our soil, and sowing our orthodox
meadows with clover, while he was giving English training to colts of
Russian parentage and studying Thiers, Nikolay Pavlovitch—and this I
consider the worst and silliest part of his conduct—managed to get
tired of his wife and, as though he thought balls and dinner-parties
not a sufficiently rapid means for reaching ruin, took as a mistress a
stage-dancer who was certainly not worthy to tie his wife’s stay-lace.
From that moment everything went like wildfire; an inventory was made of
the estate, his wife pined and grieved over the fate of her children and
herself, caught a cold and died after a few days’ illness—the family was
ruined.

Seeing this, Dmitry Pavlovitch took vigorous measures to prevent his
estate, too, going to his brother’s creditors—he made up his mind to get
married. He carefully selected a sensible and careful wife, his marriage
was not the fruit of unbridled passion; from dynastic considerations he
desired direct heirs in order to secure the property of his ancestors.

His brother’s marriage bitterly chagrined Nikolay Pavlovitch. He had not
expected such a surprise from him; they were destined, it seemed, to
astonish each other by their matrimonial alliances. To console himself he
was wilder than ever in his debauchery. Slow as such processes are with
us, at last the day came when his estate was to be sold by auction. I
do not imagine that Dmitry Pavlovitch would have been greatly concerned
over his brother’s fate, but here again dynastic considerations came in
and led him, with the assistance of his uncles, to attempt to save his
brother. They began buying up all sorts of bills, paying forty kopecks
in the rouble, that is practically threw a large sum of money into the
fire, and only saw afterwards that it was quite useless, for the bills
were so many. One episode in this story has remained in my memory. At
the division of the family property Nikolay Pavlovitch had received his
mother’s diamonds, and these too he had in the end pawned. To see the
diamonds that had once decked the majestic form of Elizaveta Alexeyevna
sold to some merchant’s wife was more than Dmitry Pavlovitch could
stand; he represented to his brother all the iniquity of his conduct;
the latter wept and swore that he was penitent; Dmitry Pavlovitch gave
him an I O U and sent him to the pawnbroker’s to redeem the diamonds.
Nikolay Pavlovitch asked his permission to bring the diamonds to him that
he might keep them in safety as the sole heritage of his daughters. He
did redeem the diamonds and was taking them to his brother, but probably
changed his mind on the way; for instead of taking them to his brother,
he went to another pawnbroker and pawned them again. The reader must
imagine the amazement of the Senator, the annoyance of Dmitry Pavlovitch,
and my father’s abundant reflections on the subject to understand how
heartily I laughed over this extremely comic incident.

When all his resources were completely exhausted, when the estate
was sold and the house was for sale, the servants scattered in all
directions, and the diamonds not redeemed a second time, when Nikolay
Pavlovitch had actually given orders for his garden to be cut down for
firewood to heat his stove, the same kindly fate that had spoiled him
all his life came to his help again. He drove over to his cousin’s
summer villa and there went out for a walk, stopped in the middle of a
conversation, put his hand to his head, fell down and died.

In those latter years the _diligent_[123] Dmitry Pavlovitch had left his
plough like Cincinnatus and was administering the republic of learning
in Moscow. This is how it came to pass. The Emperor Nicholas, assuming
that Major-General Pissarev had cropped the students’ hair sufficiently
and trained them to button up their uniforms, wished to replace the
military rule of the university by civilian control. On the road between
Moscow and Petersburg he appointed Prince Sergiey Mihailovitch Golitsyn
director of the university—on what grounds it would be difficult to say,
probably he could not have explained even to himself why he did it.
Possibly he appointed him in order to prove that the post of director
was altogether superfluous. Golitsyn, whom the Tsar had taken with him,
half-dead already at being driven at break-neck speed, was so terrified
at his new appointment that he tried to refuse it. But in these cases it
was impossible to argue with Nicholas; his obstinacy was like the morbid
persistence of pregnant women when they have a craving for something.

When Vrontchenko was made Minister of Finance he flung himself at the
Tsar’s feet protesting his incapacity for the position. Nicholas made him
the profound answer: ‘That’s all nonsense; I never governed an empire
before, but here you see I have learned and you will learn too.’ And
Vrontchenko willy-nilly remained Minister to the great delight of all the
‘protected females’[124] of Myestchansky Street, who illuminated their
windows, saying, ‘Our Vassily Fyodorovitch has become a Minister!’

After galloping another hundred versts Golitsyn, still more crushed,
determined to enter upon negotiations and announced that he would only
accept the post if he should have a trustworthy colleague who could help
him to shepherd the university flock. Fifty versts farther on the Tsar
told him to find a colleague for himself; so they reached Petersburg
without disaster.

After taking a month’s rest to recover from the journey, Golitsyn drove
slowly to Moscow and set to work to find a colleague. He had an assistant
in the university, Count A. Panin, the most exalted of mortals next to
his own brother and the drum-major of the Preobrazhensky Regiment; but he
was really too exalted for the little old gentleman to select him. After
looking about him in Moscow, Golitsyn’s eye fell upon Dmitry Pavlovitch.
From his own point of view he could have made no better choice. Dmitry
Pavlovitch had all the qualities which those in power seek in a man of
our day without the defects for which they persecute him—education, good
family, wealth, knowledge of scientific agriculture, and a complete
absence, not merely of ‘unsound ideas’ but any sort of incident in his
life. Golohvastov had had no single love intrigue, had never fought
a duel, had never played a game of cards in his life, and had never
once been drunk, while on the other hand he frequently went to mass on
Sundays—and not to mass just anywhere, but to mass in Prince Golitsyn’s
private chapel. To this distinction must be added a masterly knowledge of
the French language, polished manners, and only one passion, a perfectly
innocent one—a passion for horses. No sooner had Golitsyn thought of him
than Nicholas raced headlong to Moscow again. There Golitsyn caught him
before he sped on to Tula and presented to him Dmitry Pavlovitch. The
latter left the Tsar’s presence assistant director.

From that day Dmitry Pavlovitch began to grow perceptibly fatter, his
deportment was still more expressive of dignity. He took to speaking
through his nose more than ever and began to wear a more ample
dress-coat, with no star as yet but with an unmistakable anticipation of
one.

Until his university appointment we were as intimate as the difference of
our years permitted (he was sixteen years older than I). At this point
I almost quarrelled with him, at least for ten years we looked on each
other with chilly hostility.

There was no private reason for this. His behaviour to me was always
full of delicacy, equally free from unnecessary intimacy and mortifying
aloofness. This deserves to be noted, since my father in his efforts to
bring us together did everything that was calculated to make us dislike
each other.

He was continually impressing upon me that the Senator and Dmitry
Pavlovitch were my _natural protectors_, that I ought to _cling_ to them,
that I ought to appreciate the kindness they showed me as relations. To
this he would add that of course all their attentions were really for
his sake and not for mine. As regards the old Senator, to whom I was
almost as much used as to my father, with the difference that I was not
afraid of him as of my father, these words had no effect upon me, but
they did tend to make me avoid Golohvastov, and that they did not succeed
in doing so was thanks to the tact with which Golohvastov always behaved.

My father used to say these things to me not in moments of vexation but
when he was in his very best humour, and he said them because in the days
of Catherine patronage was the regular thing; subordinates dared not
resent familiarity from a superior, and every one in the world openly
sought patrons and protectors.

When Dmitry Pavlovitch received his university appointment I thought,
like Golitsyn, that it would be a very good thing for the university;
it turned out quite the other way. If Golohvastov had become a governor
or a chief prosecutor it may be presumed that he would have been better
than many governors or many chief prosecutors. The post in the university
was not at all the right one for him; his frigid formalism, his pedantry
led him into making petty regulations and treating the students like
schoolboys; there had not been so much interference in the life of the
lecture-room and so much discontent even under Pissarev. And what made it
worse was that Golohvastov was on the moral side what Panin and Pissarev
had been only in regard to hair and buttons.

Till then, in spite of all his Toryism of the Russian provincial stamp,
there had always been something cultured and liberal about him—a love
for legality, an indignant resentment of arbitrary tyranny and official
plundering. When he received his university post he ranged himself _ex
officio_ on the side of every oppressive measure; he considered this
inevitable in his position. My time as a student was the period of the
greatest political enthusiasm; could I remain on good terms with so
zealous a servant of Nicholas?

His pedantry and the everlasting ceremonial solemnity, the _mise en
scène_ of himself, sometimes brought him into the most amusing situations
from which, everlastingly occupied with keeping up his dignity and
invariably self-satisfied, he could never extricate himself adroitly.

As president of the Moscow censorship committee he was, of course, an
oppressive burden upon it and was the cause of books and articles being
sent for censorship to Petersburg. There was an old fellow in Moscow
called Myasnov, a great amateur of horseflesh, who had compiled some sort
of genealogy of pedigree horses, and anxious to gain time asked leave
to send to the censor the proofs instead of the manuscript, in which
he wanted probably to make corrections. Golohvastov made difficulties,
delivered a long speech in which he very verbosely expounded the
arguments for and against granting permission, and ended by saying that
he might, however, sanction the proofs being sent for censorship if the
author would guarantee that there was nothing in his book opposed to the
government, religion, or morality.

Myasnov, a choleric and irritable old man, got up and said with a grave
face: ‘Since the responsibility rests upon me, I think it is essential to
explain that there is of course not one word opposed to the government
in my book, nor opposed to morality, but as regards religion I am not so
certain.’

‘You don’t say so?’ said Golohvastov, surprised.

‘Well, you see, there is a text in the Book of Moral Precepts that says:
“They that swear over earthen pots, they that plait their hair and that
go to the coursing of steeds shall be accursed”; and since I say a very
great deal in my book about the coursing of steeds, I really don’t know——’

‘That can be no obstacle,’ observed Golohvastov.

‘I humbly thank you for setting my mind at rest,’ said the sarcastic old
man, bowing himself out.

When I came back from my second exile Golohvastov’s position in the
university was not the same. The post that had been filled by Prince
_Sergiey_ Mihailovitch Golitsyn was by then held by Count _Sergeyey_
Grigoryevitch Strogonov. Strogonov’s ideas, though confused and not
clear, were still incomparably more cultured. He wanted to raise the
significance of the university in the eyes of the Tsar, he defended its
rights, protected the students from police raids, and was liberal so
far as it was possible to be liberal while wearing the epaulettes of
an adjutant-general on his shoulders and being the humble possessor of
the Strogonov estates. In such cases one must not forget _la difficulté
vaincue_.

‘What a terrible story that is of Gogol’s, _The Overcoat_,’ Strogonov
said once to Yevgeny Korsh. ‘That ghost on the bridge, you know, simply
pulls the greatcoat off the shoulders of nearly every one of us. Put
yourself in my place and then look at that story.’

‘That’s v—very d—difficult for me,’ answered Yevgeny Korsh. ‘I am not
used to looking at things from the point of view of a man who has thirty
thousand souls.’

Indeed, with two such blind spots in the eye as the estates and the
adjutant-general’s epaulettes it is hard to look clearly at the light
of day, and Count Strogonov did sometimes step over the traces and
behave like a regular adjutant-general, that is, with stupid coarseness,
particularly when his liver was out of order; but he could not keep up
the deportment of a general, and in that again the good side of his
nature was apparent. To explain what I mean I will quote an example.

On one occasion a student from among those educated at government expense
who had finished his studies very successfully and had afterwards
received a post as a senior master in a provincial high school, hearing
that there was a vacancy in one of the Moscow high schools for a junior
master in his subject, came to beg the Count to transfer him. The young
man’s object was to continue his studies, for which he had not the means
in the provincial town; but unluckily Strogonov came out of his room as
yellow as a church candle.

‘What right have you to this post?’ he asked.

‘I ask for the post, Count, because there is a vacancy.’

‘Yes, and there is another vacancy,’ the Count interrupted, ‘that of the
Russian ambassador to Constantinople. Wouldn’t you like that?’

‘I did not know that it was in your Excellency’s gift,’ answered the
young man. ‘I will accept the post of ambassador with genuine gratitude.’

The Count looked more jaundiced than ever but asked him civilly into his
study.

My personal relations with him were very curious; our very first
interview was not without the peculiar flavour typically Russian.

One evening in Vladimir I was sitting at home; all at once the German
teacher at the high school, a doctor of the Jena University called
Delitch, called upon me, wearing his uniform. He informed me that the
director of the university, Count Strogonov, had arrived from Petersburg
that morning, and had sent him to invite me to call upon him at ten
o’clock next day.

‘It’s impossible; I don’t know him at all and you must have made a
mistake.’

‘That is not possible. _Der Herr Graf geruhten aufs freundlichste sich
bei mir zu beurkunden über ihre Lage hier._ You will go?’

Being a Russian, I went on arguing with Delitch, convinced myself still
more thoroughly that it was quite unnecessary to go, and went next
morning.

Alfieri, not being a Russian, acted differently when the French marshal
who had taken Florence, and to whom he was a stranger, invited him. He
wrote to him that if this was simply a private invitation he was very
much obliged for it but begged to be excused, as he never visited persons
with whom he was unacquainted; but if it were a command, then knowing the
military position of the town he _se constituera prisonnier_ at eight
o’clock in the evening without fail.

Strogonov invited me as a curiosity connected in the past with the
university, as a reprobate graduate. He simply wanted to see me, and,
moreover, such is the weakness of the heart of man even under the finery
of a general, to boast to me of his reforms in the university.

He gave me a very good reception. He paid me a lot of compliments and
quickly reached the point desired: ‘It is a pity you can’t be in Moscow,
you would not recognise the university now; from the buildings and
the lecture-rooms to the professors and the curriculum, everything is
changed,’ and so on, and so on.

To show that I was listening attentively and that I was not a vulgar fool
I very modestly observed that I supposed the curriculum was so changed
because many new professors had returned from foreign parts.

‘No doubt,’ answered the Count, ‘but besides that, there is the spirit of
the administration, the unity, you know, the moral unity....’

To give him his due, however, he did more good to the university with
his ‘moral unity’ than Zemlyanika[125] to his hospital by ‘honesty and
discipline.’ The university was very much indebted to him, but still one
cannot but smile at the thought that he boasted of it to a man who was
under police supervision for political offences. It is just as absurd
that a man exiled for political offences should have gone with no sort of
necessity at the summons of an adjutant-general. Oh, Russia!... It is no
wonder that foreigners can make nothing of us!

I saw him for the second time in Petersburg, just at the moment when I
was being exiled to Novgorod. Sergeyey Grigoryevitch was staying with
his brother, the Minister of Home Affairs. I went into the drawing-room
just as he was going out. He was in white breeches and in all his court
finery, with a ribbon across his shoulder; he was going to the palace.
Seeing me, he stopped and drawing me aside began questioning me about my
case. His brother and he were revolted at the iniquity of my exile.

This was at the time of my wife’s illness, a few days after the birth of
a baby who died. I suppose great indignation or irritability was apparent
in my eyes and my words, for he suddenly began persuading me to bear my
trials with Christian meekness.

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘it falls to the lot of every man to bear a cross.’

‘A good many sometimes indeed,’ I thought, looking at the crosses of all
sorts and sizes that covered his breast, and I could not help smiling.

He divined my thought and flushed crimson.

‘I daresay you think,’ said he, ‘that it is very well for me to preach.
Believe me that _tout est compensé_.’

Besides preaching to me he joined Zhukovsky in actively exerting himself
on my behalf, but the jaws of the bulldog that had me in its grip would
not readily loose their hold.

When I settled in Moscow in 1842 I visited Strogonov from time to time.
He was well disposed to me but was sometimes sulky. I very much liked
these ebbs and flows in him. When he was in a liberal frame of mind
he used to talk of books and magazines, extol the university, and was
continually comparing its present state with the pitiful condition in
which it had been in my day. When he was in a conservative mood he
reproached me for not being in the service and for having no religion,
abused my articles, saying that I was corrupting the students, abused the
young professors and declared that they were more and more set on forcing
him to be false to his oath or to close their lecture-rooms.

‘I know what an outcry that would excite; you will be the first to call
me a vandal.’

I bowed my head in assent and added: ‘You will never do that, and so I
can thank you most sincerely for your good opinion of me.’

‘I certainly shall,’ muttered Strogonov, pulling his moustaches and
turning yellower. ‘You will see.’

We all knew that he would never do anything of the sort and so could let
him threaten it periodically, especially when we remembered his enormous
estates, his rank, and his liver.

Once he was so carried away in talking to me that, abusing everything
revolutionary, he told me how on the Fourteenth of December Trubetskoy
left the square, ran distracted to his father’s house and, not knowing
what to do, went to the windows and began drumming on the panes; and so
spent some time. ‘A Frenchwoman who was governess in their family could
not refrain from saying to him aloud, “For shame! Is this your place
when the blood of your friends is flowing in the square? Is this how
you understand your duty?” He snatched up his hat and went—where do you
think?—to hide in the Austrian embassy.’

‘Of course he ought to have gone to the police and given information,’ I
said.

‘What!’ cried Strogonov amazed, and he almost drew back in horror.

‘Why, do you think like the Frenchwoman,’ I said, ‘that it was his duty
to go to the square and shoot at Nicholas?’

‘You see,’ observed Strogonov, shrugging his shoulders and looking
instinctively towards the door, ‘what an unfortunate turn of mind you
have.... I am only saying that with these people ... when there are no
true moral principles based on faith, when they leave the straight path
... everything is in a tangle. You will see all that as you get older.’

That age I have not yet reached, but this lack of readiness in Strogonov
at which Tchaadayev used often to mock maliciously is to my mind greatly
to his credit.

They say that during the time when the spirit of our Saul of the Neva was
completely darkened, after the February revolution, Strogonov too was
carried away. He is said to have insisted in the new censorship committee
on prohibiting everything written by me. I take that as a genuine sign of
his goodwill to me; when I heard of it I set up a Russian printing press.
But our Saul went much further. The reaction overtook and outstripped the
Count, he would not take part in strangling the university and resigned
his position as director. But that is not all. Two or three months after
Strogonov’s resignation Golohvastov too resigned, horrified by a series
of senseless measures dictated to him from Petersburg.

So ended the public career of Dmitry Pavlovitch, and having cast off the
burden of state affairs he settled down to dignified repose like a true
Muscovite, busying himself with looking after his land and surrounded by
his family, his trotting horses, and his well-bound books.

In his private life all had gone well during the period of his
curatorship, that is, children had come into the world in due season
and had cut their teeth in due season. His estate was provided with
lawful heirs. Moreover, the last ten years of his life were soothed
and delighted by another personage. I mean Bytchok the trotter, who
for speed, beauty, muscles, and hoofs was the champion not only of
Moscow but of all Russia. Bytchok furnished the poetic side of Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s serious existence. Several portraits of Bytchok in oils
and in water-colours hung in his study. Just as Napoleon is represented
first as a thin consul with long, damp locks; then as a fat emperor with
a tuft of hair on his forehead and little short legs, sitting astride on
a chair; then as an emperor retired from business, standing, his hands
folded behind his back, on a rock in the midst of the splashing ocean—so
Bytchok was represented at the various moments of his brilliant career:
in the stall in which he spent his youth; in the fields, free, with only
a little bridle on; and finally in light hardly visible harness with a
minute box on runners and beside him a coachman in a velvet cap and a
blue, full coat, with a beard combed as regularly as an Assyrian bull
god—the very coachman who had won upon him I do not know how many goblets
of Sazin workmanship which stood under glass cases in the drawing-room.

One would have thought that, free from the tedious cares of his
university work, with an immense estate and an immense income, Dmitry
Pavlovitch might well have lived and lived long. Fate decreed otherwise;
soon after his retirement he, a strong, healthy man, a little over fifty,
began to ail, got worse and worse, developed consumption of the throat,
and after a painful illness died in 1849.

And here I cannot help pausing to reflect over those two graves, and the
series of strange questions to which I have referred already rise up in
my mind again.

Death brought the two unlike brothers to the same level. Which of them
made the best use of his interval between the two mute and blank abysses?
One wasted both himself and his property, but he had his brief time
of honey of the best lime-flower flavour. Let us admit that he was a
useless man, but he did no intentional harm to any one. He left his
children in poverty; that was bad, but still they received an education
and were bound to get something from their uncle. And how many men who
have worked hard all their lives breathe their last with bitter tears in
their eyes, looking at their children for whom they could secure neither
education nor provision. Carlyle, to comfort people who are too much
touched at the fate of the luckless son of Louis XV., tells them: ‘It is
true that he was trained as a shoemaker, that is, he received the poor
education which millions of children of poor villagers and workmen have
received and are receiving now.’

The other brother did not live at all, he ‘served’ life just as priests
serve the mass, that is, with extraordinary dignity performed an
accustomed ritual, more ceremonial than profitable. He no more paused
to consider why he was performing it than his brother. If from Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s life two or three things, such as Bytchok, races, the
goblets, and two or three entrances and exits—for instance when he
entered the university with consciousness that he was in control of it,
when he went out of the room for the first time wearing his star, when
he was presented to his Imperial Majesty and when he led his Imperial
Majesty through the lecture-rooms—all that is left is prose: nothing but
a stiff and constrained official business morning. No doubt the thought
of the importance of his share in the affairs of state afforded him
satisfaction: etiquette is a poetry of a sort, an artistic gymnastic of
a sort like parades and dances; but what a poor sort of poetry compared
with the sumptuous feasts in which his brother spent his life after
secretly marrying a pretty girl with enchanting eyes.

And to complete it all, Dmitry Pavlovitch’s regular life, his exemplary
behaviour in the moral, the official, and the hygienic sphere, did not
even win him health or length of years and he died as suddenly as his
brother, only with far greater suffering.[126]

Well, and _all right_[127] too!




Chapter 32

THE LAST VISIT TO SOKOLOVO—THE THEORETICAL RUPTURE—A STRAINED
POSITION—DAHIN! DAHIN!


After the reconciliation with Byelinsky in 1840 our little group of
friends went on without any important disagreement: there were shades of
opinion, personal views, but what was of most importance and common to
all was based on the same principles. I do not think it could have gone
on like that for ever. We were bound to reach a line, a limit at which
some would halt while others would pass over it.

Three or four years later I began with profound regret to notice that
though we started from the same first principles we were reaching
different conclusions—and not because we interpreted them differently but
because not all of us _liked_ them. At first these disputes were half in
jest. We used to laugh, for instance, at the Little Russian obstinacy
with which Ryedkin tried to deduce a logical proof of a personal soul. I
remember one of the last jests of dear, kind-hearted Kryukov about it. He
was very ill and Ryedkin and I were sitting by his bedside. It had been a
dull, cloudy day, and all at once there was a flash of lightning followed
by a loud clap of thunder. Ryedkin went to the window and let down the
blind. ‘Will that do any good?’ I asked him. ‘Why,’ Kryukov answered for
him, ‘Ryedkin believes in _die Persönlichkeit des absoluten Geistes_, and
so covers the window that He may not see where to aim if He should think
fit to shoot at us.’

But it may well be imagined that such an essential difference in outlook
would not long remain a jesting matter.

I find in a diary of that period the following sentence written
with evident _arrière-pensée_: ‘Personal relations are very bad for
straightforward thinking. Through respect for the excellent qualities of
individuals we sacrifice the sharp clarity of thought for their sakes. It
needed great strength to weep and yet be able to sign the death-warrant
of Camille Desmoulins.’

The germs of the angry dissensions of 1846 were already latent in this
envy of Robespierre’s strength.

The questions upon which we came in collision were not casual ones;
like fate, there was no escaping them. They are the stumbling-blocks
on the road of knowledge which have been the same in all ages,
terrifying men and alluring them. And just as liberalism carried out
consistently inevitably brings a man face to face with the social
question, so philosophy—if only a man trusts himself to it without
anchorage—inevitably beats him with its waves upon the grey rocks
upon which all who have had the temerity to think—from the seven wise
men of Greece up to Kant and Hegel—have been cast. Instead of simple
explanations almost all have tried to get round them and have only
covered them with fresh layers of symbols and allegories, and that is how
it is that even now they stand as menacingly, while navigators are afraid
to make straight for them and to convince themselves that they are not
rocks at all but only fog seen in a fantastic light.

This step is not easy, but I believed both in the strength and in the
will of our friends; they had not to seek anew the way out as Byelinsky
and I had. He and I had spent weary hours struggling in the squirrel’s
wheel of dialectic repetition and had leapt out of it in the end at our
own risk. They had our example before their eyes and Feuerbach in their
hands. For a long time I could not believe it, but at last I reached
the conviction that though our friends did not share Ryedkin’s method
of proof they were yet in reality more in agreement with him than with
me, and that, for all the independence of their minds, there were
still truths of which they were frightened. I differed from all except
Byelinsky, even from Granovsky and Yevgeny Korsh.

This discovery filled me with deep regret; the limit at which they
hesitated, once recognised in words, could no longer be ignored.
Discussions arose from the inner need to reach the same standard again;
to do so we had, so to speak, to call to each other to find out where
each one stood.

Before we ourselves brought our theoretical split into the light of day
it had been noticed by the younger generation, who stood much nearer to
my standpoint. Not only in the university and the Lyceum but even in
the clerical schools young people were eagerly reading my articles on
‘Dilettantism in Philosophy’ and my letters on the ‘Study of Nature.’
This last fact I learned from Count S. Strogonov to whom Filaret
complained of it, threatening to take precautionary measures against such
pernicious spiritual fare.

About the same time I learned of their success among seminarists from a
different source. This incident gives me so much pleasure that I cannot
pass it over.

The son of a priest of our acquaintance living in the Moscow province,
a young man of seventeen, came several times to me for the _Notes of
the Fatherland_. He was shy, scarcely spoke, blushed, was confused, and
in haste to get away. His open and intelligent face was eloquent in his
favour, and at last I overcame his youthful diffidence and began talking
to him about the _Notes of the Fatherland_. It was the philosophical
articles that he read with great attention and assiduity. He told me how
eagerly the seminary students in the higher course read my historical
exposition of the philosophical systems and how it astonished them after
the philosophic manuals of Burmeister and Wolf.

The young man took to coming to see me sometimes, and I had ample
opportunity for gauging his ability and capacity for work.

‘What do you intend doing when you have finished your studies?’ I asked
on one occasion.

‘Enter the priesthood,’ he answered, blushing.

‘Have you thought seriously of the life that awaits you if you go into
the priesthood?’

‘I have no choice, my father definitely objects to my taking up any
secular calling. I shall have leisure enough for my studies.’

‘You must not be angry with me,’ I replied, ‘but I cannot help telling
you my opinion openly. Your conversation, your way of thinking, which you
have not concealed from me, and the liking you have for my work—all that,
and besides the sincere interest I take in your future together with my
age, gives me the right to speak. Think again a hundred times before
you put on the cassock. It will be far more difficult to take it off
afterwards, and perhaps it will be hard for you to breathe in it. I will
ask you one very simple question: Tell me, is there in your soul faith in
any one dogma of the theology you are being taught?’

The young man, dropping his eyes, said after a pause: ‘I am not going to
lie to you—no!’

‘I knew that. Only think now of your future position. You will have every
day for the whole of your life to lie aloud in the face of the people,
to be false to truth; why, that is the sin against the Holy Spirit,
conscious, premeditated sin. Will you be able to face such duplicity?
Your whole social position will be a falsehood. How will you look into
the eyes of one who is praying in earnest; how will you comfort the dying
with heaven and eternal life; how will you absolve men’s sins. And you
will be forced to convert heretics too, and to condemn them for their
heresy.’

‘That is awful! awful!’ said the young man, and he went away perturbed
and agitated.

He came back the next evening.

‘I have come to tell you,’ said he, ‘that I have thought a great deal
about what you said. You are perfectly right, the priestly calling is
out of the question for me and I assure you that I would sooner go for a
soldier than allow myself to be made a priest.’

I pressed his hand warmly and promised that when the time came I would do
my utmost to persuade his father to agree to his wishes.

So I in my time have saved a soul alive or have at least assisted in its
salvation.

I was able to get a nearer view of the bent of the students for
philosophy. Through the whole academic year of 1845 I attended the
lectures on comparative anatomy. In the lecture-room and the dissecting
theatre I became acquainted with a new generation of young people. Their
prevailing tendency was absolutely realistic, _i.e._, that of positive
science. It is remarkable that this was the tendency of almost all the
students who came from the Tsarskoe-Syelo Lyceum. The Lyceum, turned by
the suspicious and petrifying despotism of Nicholas out of its beautiful
park, was still the same great nursery of talent; Pushkin’s bequest, the
poet’s blessing, survives the coarse blows of ignorant force.[128]

With joy I welcomed a new, vigorous generation in these Moscow students
from the Lyceum.

Well, it was these young university students, devoted with all the
impatience and fire of youth, with all the flush of health, to the world
of realism that was opening before them, who discerned, as I have said,
the point of difference between us and Granovsky. Passionately as they
loved him, they were beginning to revolt against his ‘romanticism.’ They
urgently desired that I should bring him over to our side, regarding
Byelinsky and me as the representatives of their philosophical opinions.

This was the position in 1846. Granovsky was beginning a new course
of public lectures. Again all Moscow gathered round his platform,
again his plastic, dreamy eloquence set all hearts quivering; but the
completeness, the enthusiasm there had been in his first course was
lacking, as though he were tired or as though some idea with which he
could not cope were absorbing and hindering him. That was just how it
was, as we shall see later.

At one of these lectures in March one of our common acquaintances ran in
headlong to tell us that Ogaryov and S—— had arrived from foreign parts.

We had not met for several years and very rarely corresponded.... What
would they be like?... How would they stand?... With beating hearts
Granovsky and I dashed off to Yar’s where they were staying. And here
they were at last—and how changed, and what a beard—and we had not seen
each other for some years; we fell to looking at trifles and talking of
trifles though we felt that we wanted to talk of something else.

At last our little circle was almost all assembled—now we would have a
life!

We had spent the summer of 1845 at a villa in Sokolovo. It is a beautiful
corner of the Moscow district, some fifteen miles from the town on the
Tver road. There we took a little country house standing almost in the
park which sloped away downhill to a little river. On the one side
stretched our Great Russian ocean of cornfields; on the other there was a
wide view into the distance, for which reason the owner of the house had
not failed to call the arbour placed there ‘Belle Vue.’

Sokolovo belonged at one time to the Rumyantsovs. The wealthy landowners
and aristocrats of the eighteenth century with all their faults were
possessed of a breadth of taste which they have not transmitted to their
heirs. The old-fashioned villages and homesteads on the banks of the
river Moskva are exceptionally fine, especially those in which the last
two generations have made no reforms and no changes.

We had spent our time happily there. No serious cloud darkened the
summer sky; we lived in our park, working hard and going for long walks.
Ketscher grumbled less, though he did sometimes lift his eyebrows very
high and utter weighty sayings with vivid mimicry. Granovsky and E——
used to come for the night almost every Saturday and sometimes used
to stay till Monday. Shtchepkin had taken another villa a little way
off. He often walked over, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a white coat
like Napoleon at Longwood, with a basket of gathered mushrooms; he made
jokes, sang Little Russian songs, and was almost the death of us with
his stories, which I do believe would have made Ioann the Sorrowful,
who spent his life weeping over the sins of this world, shed tears of
laughter....

Sitting in a friendly group in a corner of the park under a big lime
tree, we used to regret nothing but Ogaryov’s absence. Well, here he was,
and in 1846 we went again to Sokolovo and he with us; Granovsky took
a little lodge for the whole summer, and Ogaryov was installed in the
entresol over the steward, a naval officer who had lost one ear.

And for all that, two or three weeks later an undefined feeling was
whispering to me that our _villeggiatura_ would not be a success and that
there was no help for it. Who has not had the experience of preparing
some festivity, rejoicing at the coming gaiety of his friends, and
when they arrive everything goes well, there is nothing amiss, yet the
expected gaiety does not come off. Life only passes well and briskly when
one does not feel the blood circulating in one’s veins and does not think
how the lungs rise and fall. If every shock is felt, you may be sure
there will be pain, a disharmony which one cannot always overcome.

The first days after our friends’ arrival were spent in the enthusiasm
and cordiality of festivities; before they were over my father was taken
ill. His death and all the worries and business that followed distracted
us from theoretical questions. In the peace of our life at Sokolovo our
divergencies were bound to come to the surface.

Ogaryov, who had not seen me for four years, was absolutely of the same
tendency as I was. We had moved over the same ground by different paths
and found ourselves together. Natalie, too, was with us. Our serious and
at first sight overwhelming deductions did not alarm her; she gave a
special poetical turn to them.

Arguments became more frequent and came back in a thousand variations.
One day we were dining in the garden. Granovsky was reading in the _Notes
of the Fatherland_ one of my letters on the study of nature (it was the
one on the Encyclopaedists, I remember) and was delighted with it.

‘But what is it you like?’ I asked him. ‘Can it be only the method of
exposition? You cannot possibly agree with the underlying implications of
it.’

‘Your opinions,’ answered Granovsky, ‘are just as much an historical
moment in the study of thought as the writings of the Encyclopaedists
themselves. I like in your articles just what I like in Voltaire or
Diderot; they stir vividly and sharply questions which rouse a man and
urge him forward, and as for the one-sidedness of your views I don’t want
to go into that. Does any one talk of Voltaire’s theories nowadays?’

‘Do you mean to say that there is no standard of truth and that we rouse
men only to talk nonsense to them?’

The conversation continued for some time on these lines. At last I
observed that the development of science, its contemporary condition,
_obliges us_ to accept certain truths apart from whether we like them
or not; that, once recognised, they cease to be historical problems and
become simply irrefutable facts of knowledge like the theories of Euclid,
like the laws of Kepler, like the connection of cause and effect and the
indivisibility of spirit and matter.

‘All that is so far from being obligatory,’ answered Granovsky with a
slight change in his face, ‘that I never shall accept your dry, cold
idea of the unity of soul and body; with it the immortality of the soul
disappears. You may not need it, but I have buried too much to give up
that belief. Personal immortality is essential for me.’

‘Life would be a splendid affair,’ I said, ‘if anything any one wants
were always true at once as in fairy tales.’

‘Only think, Granovsky,’ added Ogaryov, ‘why, it’s a sort of running away
from unhappiness.’

‘Listen,’ answered Granovsky, turning pale and assuming the air of a
disinterested outsider, ‘you will greatly oblige me if you will never
speak to me again on these subjects; there are plenty of interesting
things of which we can talk with far more profit and pleasure.’

‘Certainly, I shall be delighted,’ I said, feeling a cold chill on my
face. Ogaryov said nothing, we all glanced at one another and that glance
was quite enough; we all loved one another too much not to gauge to the
full what had happened. Not a word more was said. The discussion was not
resumed. Natalie tried to cover up the incident and set things right. We
came to her help. Children, who always come to the rescue in such cases,
served as a subject of conversation, and the dinner ended so peacefully
that no outsider coming in would have noticed anything wrong....

After dinner Ogaryov jumped on his horse Kortik while I mounted the
gendarme’s discarded nag and we rode out into the open country. We
were as sad as though some one near and dear were dead; for till then
Ogaryov and I had expected that we should come to an agreement, that our
friendship would blow away our differences like dust, but the tone and
meaning of Granovsky’s last words had revealed a distance between us such
as we had never imagined. So here was the boundary line, the limit, and
with it the censorship. Neither he nor I spoke all the way. As we came
home, we shook our heads sadly and both said with one voice: ‘And so it
seems we are alone again.’

Ogaryov took a chaise and three horses and drove to Moscow; on the way he
composed a little poem from which I extract the following lines:

    ‘... For neither grief nor tedium can exhaust me,
    The truth I’ve spoken fearlessly in gatherings of my friends,
    And friends have fled from me in childish terror.
    He too has gone, whom like a brother
    Or like a sister, haply, I fondly loved and cherished....
    ...
    Once more we will set out alone upon our cheerless journey,
    Speaking of truth, unwearied and undaunted,
    And let the dreams and people pass us by.’[129]

I met Granovsky the next day as though nothing had happened, a bad sign
on both sides. The pain was still so keen that it could find no words;
and dumb pain that has no outlet like a mouse in the stillness gnaws away
thread after thread....

Two days later I was in Moscow. Ogaryov and I went to see Korsh. He was
as solicitously gracious and mournfully sweet with us as though he were
sorry for us, but, hang it all, had we committed some crime? I asked
Korsh straight out, had he heard of our discussion. He had; he said that
we had all been too hot over abstract subjects; pointed out that the
perfect identity between people and between opinions of which we dreamed
did not exist, that people’s sympathies, like chemical affinity, have
their limit of saturation which could not be exceeded without stumbling
upon aspects on which men were strangers again. He jested at our being
so young when over thirty, and he said all this with friendliness and
delicacy, one could see that he did not find it easy.

We parted peacefully. Blushing a little I thought of my ‘naïveté,’ and
afterwards when I was left alone I felt as I lay in bed that another bit
of my heart had been torn away—skilfully, painlessly, but it was gone!

Nothing further happened ... only everything seemed clouded over with
something dark and colourless; the freedom from constraint, the complete
_abandon_ had vanished from our circle. We became more careful, we edged
round certain questions, that is, we really did retire at ‘the limit of
chemical affinity’—and all this gave us the more pain and bitterness
because we had great and genuine love for one another.

I may have been too intolerant, may have argued conceitedly and answered
sarcastically ... perhaps so ... but in reality I am convinced even now
that for really intimate relations it is essential to have the same
religion, to be at one in the theoretical convictions that really matter.
Of course theoretical agreement alone is not enough for intimacy between
men; I was nearer in sympathy, for instance, to Ivan Kireyevsky than to
many of my own set. What is more, one may be a good and faithful ally
agreeing in some definite cause and differing in opinions. I was on such
terms with men for whom I had the greatest respect, though I differed
from them on many subjects—for instance, with Mazzini and with Worcell.
I did not try to convince them nor they me, we had enough in common to
go the same way together without quarrelling. But between us brothers of
one family, who had been so near and had lived one life together, it was
impossible to differ so deeply.

If only we had had some inevitable work which would have absorbed us
completely; but as it was, all our activity lay precisely in the sphere
of thought and the propaganda of our convictions ... how was compromise
possible in that realm?...

The little rift in one of the walls of our temple of friendship grew
wider, as is always the case, through trifles, misunderstandings,
unnecessary openness where it would have been better to be silent and
harmful silence where it was essential to speak; these things are decided
only by the tact of the heart, there are no rules to guide one.

Soon afterwards everything was at sixes and sevens among the ladies
too....

There was no help for it at the moment.

To go away, far away, for years, only to go! But it was not easy to go.
The fetters of police supervision were on my legs, and without permission
from Nicholas a foreign passport could not be got.




Chapter 33

A POLICE-OFFICER IN THE PART OF A VALET—THE POLICE-MASTER
KOKOSHKIN—‘DISORDER IN ORDER’—DUBBELT ONCE MORE—THE PASSPORT


A few months before my father’s death Count Orlov was appointed to
succeed Benckendorf. I wrote at the time to Olga Alexandrovna to ask
whether she could procure me a passport for abroad or permission on some
pretext or other to visit Petersburg in order to get one for myself.
My old friend answered that the latter was easier to manage, and a few
days later I received from Orlov the ‘Most High’ permission to visit
Petersburg for a short time to arrange my affairs. My father’s illness,
his death, arranging my affairs in reality, and some months spent in
the country delayed me till winter. At the end of November I set off
for Petersburg, having first sent a petition for a passport to the
governor-general. I knew that he could not grant it because I was still
under _strict_ police supervision, all I wanted was that he should send
on the petition to Petersburg.

On the day of my departure I sent in the morning to get a permit from
the police, but instead of a permit a policeman came to say that there
were certain difficulties and that the local police-superintendent
himself would come to me. He did come, and asking me to see him alone
he mysteriously informed me that five years ago I had been forbidden to
visit Petersburg and without the ‘Most High’ orders he could not sign the
permit.

‘That won’t stand in our way,’ I said, laughing, and took the letter out
of my pocket.

The police-superintendent, greatly astonished, read it, asked permission
to show it to the police-master, and two hours later sent me my permit
and the letter.

I must mention that my police-superintendent carried on half the
conversation in extraordinarily polished French. How mischievous it is
for a police-superintendent, or indeed any Russian policeman, to know
French, he had learnt by very bitter experience.

Some years previously a French traveller, the legitimist Chevalier
Preaux, arrived in Moscow from the Caucasus. He had been in Persia and
in Georgia, had seen a great deal, and was so incautious as to criticise
severely the military operations in the Caucasus, and still more severely
the administration of government there. Afraid that Preaux would say the
same thing in Petersburg, the governor-general of the Caucasus prudently
wrote to the Minister of War that Preaux was a very dangerous military
agent of the French government. Preaux was living quite happily in Moscow
and was very well received by Prince D. V. Golitsyn, when suddenly the
latter received orders to send the Frenchman from Moscow to the frontier
accompanied by a police-officer. To do anything so stupid and so rude is
always more difficult to an acquaintance, and so Golitsyn after two days
of hesitation invited Preaux to his house, and beginning with an eloquent
introduction told him at last that reports of some sort about him,
probably from the Caucasus, had reached the Tsar, who had ordered that he
should leave Russia, that they would, however, give him an escort....

Preaux, incensed, observed to Golitsyn that, seeing that the government
had the right to eject him, he was prepared to go, but that he would not
accept an escort, since he did not consider himself a criminal who needed
to be guarded.

Next day when the police-master came to Preaux the latter met him with a
pistol in his hand and told him point-blank that he would not permit a
police-officer to enter his room or his carriage, and that he would send
the bullet through his head if he attempted to enter by force.

Golitsyn was a very decent man, which made it the more difficult for him;
he sent for Veiller, the French consul, to ask his advice. The latter
found a way out of the difficulty; he asked for a police-officer who
spoke French well and promised to present him to Preaux as a traveller
who begged Preaux for a place in his carriage on condition of paying half
the travelling expenses.

From the consul’s first words Preaux guessed what it meant.

‘I don’t sell seats in my carriage,’ he said to the consul.

‘The man will be in despair.’

‘Very well,’ said Preaux, ‘I will take him for nothing, but he must
undertake a few little services in return; he’s not an ill-humoured
fellow I suppose, if he is I will leave him on the road.’

‘The most obliging man in the world; he will be entirely at your
disposition. I thank you on his behalf.’ And the consul galloped off to
Prince Golitsyn to announce his success.

In the evening Preaux and the _bona fide_ traveller set off. Preaux did
not speak all the way; at the first station he went indoors and lay down
on the sofa. ‘Hey,’ he shouted to his companion, ‘come here and take off
my boots.’ ‘Upon my word, what next?’ ‘I tell you, take off my boots,
or I will turn you out on the road; I am not going to keep you.’ The
police-officer took off the boots. ‘Brush them and polish them!’ ‘That’s
really too much!’ ‘Very well, you can stay here.’ The officer polished
the boots.

At the next station there was the same story with his clothes, and so
Preaux went on tormenting him till they reached the frontier. To console
this martyr of the secret service, the Sovereign’s special attention was
drawn to him and in the end he was made a police-superintendent.

The third day after my arrival in Petersburg the house porter came
to ask me from the local police: ‘With what papers had I come to
Petersburg?’ The only paper I had, the decree concerning my retirement
from the service, I had sent to the governor-general with my petition
for a passport. I gave the house-porter my permit, but he came back
with the remark that it was valid for leaving Moscow but not for
entering Petersburg. Then a police-officer arrived with a summons to the
police-master’s office. I went to Kokoshkin’s office, which was lighted
by lamps though it was daytime, and within an hour he arrived. Kokoshkin
more than other persons of the same order was a servant of the Tsar,
a man in favour, ready to do any dirty job, with no distinct aims, no
conscience, no reflection. He served and made his pile as naturally as
birds sing.

Pokrovsky told Nicholas that Kokoshkin was a terrible bribe-taker. ‘Yes,’
answered Nicholas, ‘but I sleep soundly at night knowing that he is
police-master in Petersburg.’

I looked at him while he was talking to other people.... What a battered
old decrepitly dissolute face he had; he was wearing a curled wig which
was glaringly incongruous with his sunken features and wrinkles.

After conversing with some German women in German and with a familiarity
showing that they were old acquaintances, which was evident, too, from
the way the women laughed and whispered, Kokoshkin came up to me, and
looking down asked in a rather gruff voice: ‘Why, are not you forbidden
to enter Petersburg by the “Most High”?’

‘Yes, but I have a permit.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I have it here.’

‘Show it. How’s this? You are using the same permit twice.’

‘Twice?’

‘I remember that you came before.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘And what is your business here?’

‘I have business with Count Orlov.’

‘Have you been to the Count, then?’

‘No, but I have been to the secret police.’

‘Have you seen Dubbelt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I saw Orlov himself yesterday and he told me that he had sent you
no permit.’

‘You have it in your hand.’

‘God knows when that was written, and the time has passed.’

‘It would be strange on my part to come without permission and begin with
a visit to General Dubbelt.’

‘If you don’t want to get into trouble you will kindly go back, and no
later than within the next twenty-four hours.’

‘I was not proposing to remain here long ... but I must wait for Count
Orlov’s answer.’

‘I cannot give you leave to do so, besides Count Orlov is much displeased
at your coming without permission.’

‘Kindly give me my permit and I will go at once to the Count.’

‘It must remain with me.’

‘But it is a letter to me, addressed to me personally, the only document
on the strength of which I am here.’

‘The document will remain with me as a proof that you have been in
Petersburg. I seriously advise you to go to-morrow that nothing worse may
befall you.’

He nodded and went out. Much good it is talking to them!

The old General Tutchkov had a lawsuit with the Treasury. His village
elder undertook some government contract, he did something dishonest and
made away with the money entrusted to him. The court ordered that the
money should be paid by the landowner who had given the village elder the
authorisation. But no authorisation in regard to the undertaking ever had
been given and Tutchkov stated this in his answer. The case was brought
before the Senate, and the Senate again decided:

‘Inasmuch as retired Lieutenant-General Tutchkov gave an authorisation
...’ and so on. To which Tutchkov again answered: ‘Inasmuch as retired
Lieutenant-General Tutchkov gave no authorisation ...’ and so on. A year
passed, again the police appeared with a stern repetition: ‘Inasmuch
as retired Lieutenant-General, etc.,’ and again the old man wrote the
same answer. I don’t know how this interesting case ended. I left Russia
without waiting for the conclusion.

All that is not at all exceptional but quite the normal thing. Kokoshkin
holds in his hands a document of the genuineness of which he has no
doubt, on which there is a number and date so that it can be easily
verified, in which it is written that I am permitted to visit Petersburg,
and says: ‘Since you have come without permission you must go back,’ and
puts the document in his pocket.

Tchaadayev was right indeed when he said of these gentry: ‘What rogues
they all are!’

I went to the Third Section and told Dubbelt what had happened. He roared
with laughter. ‘What a muddle they always make of everything! Kokoshkin
told the Count you had come without permission and the Count said you
were to be sent away, but I explained the position to him afterwards; you
can stay as long as you like. I’ll have the police written to at once.
But now about your petition; the Count does not think it would be of any
use to ask permission for you to go abroad. The Tsar has refused you
twice, the last time it was Count Strogonov who interceded for you; if he
refuses a third time, you won’t get to the waters during this reign, for
certain.’

‘What am I to do?’ I asked in horror, for the idea of travel and freedom
had taken deep root in my heart.

‘Go to Moscow: the Count will write a private letter to the
governor-general telling him that you want to go abroad for the sake of
your wife’s health, assuring him that he knows nothing but what is good
of you, and asking him whether he thinks it would be possible to relieve
you from police supervision. He can make no answer but “yes” to such a
question. We will report to the Tsar the removal of police supervision,
and then you take a passport for yourself like anybody else, and you can
go to any watering-place you like, and good luck to you.’

All this seemed to me extremely complicated, and indeed I fancied it was
a device simply to get rid of me. They could not refuse me point-blank,
it would have brought down upon them the wrath of Olga Alexandrovna, whom
I visited every day. When once I had left Petersburg I could not come
back again; corresponding with these gentry is a difficult business.
I communicated some part of what I was feeling to Dubbelt; he began
frowning, that is, grinning more than ever with his lips and screwing up
his eyes.

‘General,’ I said in conclusion, ‘I do not know, but the fact is I do not
feel certain that Strogonov’s representation reached the Tsar.’

Dubbelt rang the bell and ordered the papers relating to my case to be
brought, and while waiting for them said to me good-naturedly: ‘The Count
and I are suggesting to you the course of proceeding by which we think
you most likely to get your passport; if you have better means at your
disposal, make use of them, you may be sure that we will not hinder you.’

‘Leonty Vassilyevitch is perfectly right,’ observed a sepulchral voice.
I turned round; beside me, looking older and more grey-headed than ever,
stood Sahtynsky, who had received me five years before in the same Third
Section. ‘I advise you to be guided by his opinion if you want to go.’ I
thanked him.

‘And here’s the case,’ said Dubbelt, taking a thick manuscript from the
hands of a clerk (what would I not have given to read the whole of it! In
1850 I saw my ‘dossier’ in Carlier’s office in Paris; it would have been
interesting to compare them). Turning the pages, he handed it to me open;
there was Benckendorf’s entry after Strogonov’s letter petitioning for
permission for me to go for six months to a watering-place in Germany. On
the margin was written in big letters in pencil: ‘Too soon.’ The pencil
marks were glazed over with varnish, and below was written in ink: ‘“Too
soon,” written by the hand of his Imperial Majesty.—Count A. Benckendorf.’

‘Do you believe now?’ asked Dubbelt.

‘Yes, I do,’ I answered, ‘and I believe in your advice so fully that I
will go to-morrow to Moscow.’

‘Well, you can stay and amuse yourself here a little, the police will not
worry you now, and before you go away, look in and I will tell them to
show you the letter to Shtcherbatov. Good-bye. _Bon voyage_, if we don’t
meet again.’

‘A pleasant journey,’ added Sahtynsky.

We parted, as you see, on friendly terms.

On reaching home I found a summons from the superintendent of the Second
Admiralty Police-Station I believe it was. He asked me when I was going.

‘To-morrow evening.’

‘Upon my word, but I believe, I thought ... the general said to-day. His
Excellency will put it off, of course. But will you allow me to make
certain of it?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes; by the way, give me a permit.’

‘I will write it in the police-station and send it to you in two hours’
time. By what diligence are you thinking of going?’

‘The Serapinsky, if I can get a seat.’

‘Very good, and if you do not succeed in getting a seat kindly let us
know.’

‘With pleasure.’

In the evening the policeman turned up again; the superintendent sent to
tell me that he could not give me the permit, and that I must go at eight
o’clock next morning to the chief police-master’s.

What a plague and what a bore! I did not go at eight o’clock, but
in the course of the morning I looked in at the office of the chief
police-master. The police-station superintendent was there; he said to
me: ‘You cannot go away, there is an order from the Third Section.’

‘What has happened?’

‘I don’t know. The general gave orders you were not to be given a permit.’

‘Does the office-manager know?’

‘Of course he knows,’ and he pointed out to me a colonel in a uniform and
wearing a sword sitting at a big table in another room; I asked him what
was the matter.

‘To be sure,’ he said, ‘there was an order concerning you, and here it
is.’ He read it through and handed it to me. Dubbelt wrote that I had a
perfect right to come to Petersburg and could remain as long as I liked.

‘And is that why you won’t let me go? Excuse me, I can’t help laughing;
yesterday the chief police-master was sending me away against my will,
to-day he is keeping me against my will, and all this on the ground that
the document gives me leave to remain as long as I like.’

The absurdity was so evident that even the colonel-manager laughed.

‘But why should I pay for a place in the diligence twice over? Please
tell them to write me a permit.’

‘I cannot, but I will go and inform the general.’

Kokoshkin told them to write me a permit, and as he walked through the
office said to me reproachfully: ‘It’s beyond anything. First you want to
stay, then you want to go; why, you have been told that you can stay.’

I made no answer.

When we had driven out of the city gates in the evening and I saw once
more the endless plain stretching in all directions, I looked at the sky
and vowed with all my heart never to return to that city of the despotism
of blue, green, and variegated police, of official muddle, of flunkeyish
insolence, of gendarme romance, in which the only civil man was Dubbelt,
and he a chief of the secret police.

Shtcherbatov answered Orlov somewhat reluctantly. He had at that time
a secretary who was not a colonel but a pietist, who hated me for my
articles as an ‘atheist and Hegelian.’ I went myself to talk to him. The
pious secretary, in an oily voice and with Christian unction, told me
that the governor-general knew nothing about me, that he did not doubt my
lofty moral qualities, but that he would have to make inquiries of the
head police-master. He wanted to drag the business out; moreover, this
gentleman did not take bribes. In the Russian service disinterested men
are the most terrible of all; the only ones who do not take bribes in all
simplicity are Germans; if a Russian does not take money he will take it
out in something else and be a villain and a terror into the bargain.
Fortunately the head police-master Luzhin gave me a good character.

Ten days later on returning home I stumbled upon a gendarme at my
door. The appearance of a police-officer in Russia is as bad as a tile
falling upon one’s head, and therefore it was not without a particularly
unpleasant feeling that I waited to hear what he had to say to me; he
handed me an envelope. Count Orlov informed me that his Imperial Majesty
commanded that I should be relieved from police supervision. With that I
received the right to a foreign passport.

    ‘Rejoice with me, for I am free at last!
    Free to set forth to foreign lands at will!
    But is it not a dream, deceiving me?
    Not so! To-morrow come the post-horses,
    And then “vom Ort zu Ort” I’ll gallop on,
    Paying for passports what the price may be....
    Well, I’ll set forth! And then—what shall I find?
    I know not! I have faith! And yet—and yet—
    God knows alone what still may be my fate....
    With fear and doubt I stand before the gate
    Of Europe. And my heart is full
    Of hope, of troubled shadowy dreams....
    I am in doubt, my friend, you see,
    I shake my head despondingly....’

                                     OGARYOV: Humorous Verse.[130]

Six or seven sledges accompanied us as far as Tchorny Gryaz. There for
the last time we clinked glasses and parted, sobbing.

It was evening, the covered sledge crunched through the snow ... you
looked mournfully after us but did not guess that it meant a funeral and
eternal separation. All were there, only one was missing, the nearest of
the near: he was ill, and by his absence, as it were, washed his hands of
my departure.

It was the 21st of January 1847....

The sergeant gave me back our passports: a small, old soldier in a clumsy
casque covered with American leather, carrying a gun of disproportionate
size and weight, lifted the barrier; an Ural Cossack with narrow little
eyes and broad cheek-bones, holding the reins of his little, shaggy,
dishevelled nag, which was covered all over with little icicles, came up
to wish me a happy journey; the pale, thin, dirty little Jewish driver
with rags twisted four times round his neck clambered on the box.

‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’ said our old acquaintance, Karl Ivanovitch, who was
seeing us as far as Taurogen, while Tata’s wet nurse, a handsome peasant
woman, dissolved in tears as she said farewell.

The little Jew whipped up his horses, the sledges moved off. I looked
back, the barrier had been lowered, the wind swept the snow from Russia:
on to the road and blew the tail and mane of the Cossack’s horse to one
side.

The nurse in a sarafan and a sleeveless jacket was still looking after
us and weeping; Sonnenberg, that symbol of the parental home, that comic
figure from the days of childhood, waved his silk handkerchief—all around
was the endless plain of snow.

‘Good-bye, Tatyana! Good-bye, Karl Ivanovitch!’

Here was a milestone and on it, covered with snow, a thin and
single-headed eagle with outspread wings ... and it is so much to the
good that it is one head less.




Appendix

(To Chapter 29)


I

N. H. KETSCHER (1842-1847)

I must speak of Ketscher again, and this time in far more detail. On my
return from exile I found him as before in Moscow—though, indeed, he had
become so rooted in Moscow and so much a part of the life there that I
cannot imagine Moscow without him, or him in any other city. He did try
moving to Petersburg, he could not stand six months of it, threw up his
position and reappeared on the banks of the Neglinny in Bazhanov’s café
to preach free-thought to officers as they played billiards, to teach
actors dramatic art, to translate Shakespeare, and to love and worry his
old friends. It is true that he had now a new circle, _i.e._, the circle
of Byelinsky and Bakunin; but though he lectured them day and night, he
was still heart and soul with us.

He was then going on for forty, but he remained absolutely an old
student. How did that happen? It is just that that we must investigate.

Ketscher is a perfect example of the class of strange personalities that
were developed in the stagnant swamp of the Russia of the Petersburg
period, especially after 1812, who were the consequence of it, the
victims of it, and indirectly the stepping-stones from it to other
things. These people broke away from the wearisome and ignoble common
track and never found one of their own, spent their lives in seeking it
and got no farther than the search. The characteristics of these victims
are very varied; they are not all like Onyegin or Petchorin they are
not all idle and superfluous people; there are people who work hard and
yet accomplish nothing, people who are failures: I have been tempted a
thousand times to describe a whole series of original figures, to draw
striking portraits taken from life, but I have stopped short, overwhelmed
by my material. There is nothing of the herd, of the rank and file
about them; they are of all shapes and figures, but one common feature
or rather one _common misfortune_ connects them all. Looking into the
dark grey background, they see soldiers under the stick, serfs under the
lash, faces that betray a stifled moan, carts on their way to Siberia,
prisoners trudging in the same direction, shaven heads, branded faces,
helmets, epaulettes, plumes ... in short, the Russia of Petersburg. It is
that that torments them; they have neither the strength to accept it nor
to tear themselves away nor to alter things. They try to escape from that
background and cannot—they have no ground under their feet; they try to
cry out against it—they have no voice, nor are there ears to hear them.

It is no wonder that with this loss of balance there are among them
more original and eccentric than practically useful and perseveringly
industrious people, that there is as much that is inharmonious and
senseless in their lives as there is good and humane.

Ketscher’s father was a scientific instrument-maker. He was famed for
his surgical instruments and extreme honesty. He died early, leaving
his widow a large family to bring up and business affairs in confusion.
Consequently there could be in Ketscher’s case no question of real
contact, that is, of direct contact with the simple people such as
is, even in a wealthy household, absorbed with one’s foster-mother’s
milk, with one’s earliest games. The foreign manufacturers and traders,
craftsmen and their employers, make up a narrow circle, cut off by
habits, interests, and everything else both from the lower and the
upper classes of Russia. Often in those circles the family life is pure
and moral in comparison with the savage tyranny and hidden vice of our
merchants, with the sad and dreary drunkenness of our workmen, and with
the narrow, filthy life of our government clerks which rests entirely on
thieving. It is, nevertheless, entirely alien to the world surrounding
it, it is foreign, and from the very first gives a different _pli_ and
different fundamental principles.

Ketscher’s mother was a Russian, and I imagine that it was owing to
that fact that Ketscher did not grow up a foreigner. I do not think she
took any part in the children’s education, but what was of the greatest
consequence was that they were baptized into the Orthodox Church, which
meant that they had no religion whatever. Had they been Lutherans or
Catholics they would have been drawn in the German direction. They would
have gone to one or other _Kirche_, and would insensibly have passed into
its _Gemeinde_, with its alienating and isolating influence, with its
rival coteries and its parochial interests. No one sent Ketscher to the
Russian Church, of course; besides, even if he had been in the habit of
going to it sometimes as a child, it has not the spider-like character of
its sister churches, especially with foreigners.

It must be remembered that the period of which I am speaking knew nothing
of hysterical orthodoxy. The Church, like the State, did not fly to any
weapon for its defence and was not jealous of its rights, perhaps because
no one was attacking them. Every one knew what these two beasts were like
and no one put a finger in the jaws of either. They, for their part, did
not snatch at the strangers within their gates, being doubtful of their
orthodoxy or of their loyalty. When the Chair of Theology was founded in
the Moscow University, old Professor Heym, famous for his lexicons, said
with horror in the university hall: ‘_Es ist ein Ende mit der grossen
Hochschule Ruthenias_.’ Even Magnitsky’s and Runitch’s savage epidemic of
bigotry, senseless, flagrant as it was, and (as always with us) carried
out by spies and policemen, passed over like a malignant storm-cloud,
broke over the people who happened to be on the road, and vanished in
the shape of diverse Fotys and countesses.[131] In the high schools
and boarding-schools the catechism was taught as a form and for the
examinations, which always began with ‘Scripture.’

In due time Ketscher entered the Academy of Medicine and Surgery. That
was also a purely foreign institution and also not particularly orthodox.
One of the lecturers there was Just Christian Loder, the friend of
Goethe and the teacher of Humboldt, one of the pleiades of free and
vigorous thinkers who have raised Germany to a height of which she never
dreamed. For these men science was still a religion and propaganda a
warfare; freedom from the fetters of theology was new for them; they
still remembered the struggle for it, they had faith in their conquest
of it and were proud of it. Loder would never have consented to teach
anatomy according to the catechism of Filaret. Beside him stood Fischer
of Waldheim and the surgeon Hildebrandt, of whom I have spoken in another
place. There was never one word of Russian nor one Russian face in the
Academy, but there were various other German laboratory assistants,
demonstrators, and chemists: everything Russian was thrust into the
background. There is only one exception that we remember, _i.e._,
Detkovsky. Ketscher cherished his memory, and he probably had a good
influence on the students. The medical students, however, made up of two
species, Germans and seminarists, did not even in later days take part in
the common life of the universities, but confined themselves to their own
affairs.

Those affairs seemed of little account to Ketscher, which is the best
proof of his not being a genuine German and not putting his profession
before everything.

His own family circle could have no special attraction for him, and from
early years he had preferred to live apart. The rest of his surroundings
could only repel and jar upon him. He set to reading and re-reading
Schiller.

In later years Ketscher translated the whole of Shakespeare, but Schiller
left indelible traces upon him.

Schiller was exactly the right author for our students. Posa and Max,
Karl Moor and Ferdinand were students, robber-students: it is all the
protest of the first dawn, of the first revolt. More swayed by his
heart than his intellect, Ketscher understood and absorbed the poetical
theorising of Schiller, the revolutionary philosophy in his dialogue, and
there he stopped. He was satisfied: criticism and scepticism were utterly
alien to him.

A few years after his first reading of Schiller he came upon another
gospel and his moral life was determined for ever. Everything else
interested him little and passed without leaving a trace. The revolution
of the ’nineties, that vast, colossal tragedy in the style of Schiller,
with its bloodshed and its side issues, with its gloomy virtues and its
bright ideals, with the same character of dawn and protest, absorbed him
entirely. In this, too, Ketscher did not attempt to analyse. He accepted
the French Revolution as though it were a biblical legend, he believed
in it, he loved its leading figures, he had his personal preferences and
dislikes among them; nothing drew him behind the scenes.

Such he was when I met him at Passek’s in 1831, and such he was when I
parted from him in 1847 on the high road at Tchorny Gryaz.

This—not romantic, but so to speak ethico-political—dreamer could hardly
have found the surroundings he was seeking in the Academy of Medicine
and Surgery of those days. A worm was gnawing at his heart and medical
science could not stifle it. Withdrawing from the persons surrounding
him, he took to living more and more in one of the characters with which
his imagination was filled. Continually coming into contact with very
different interests and petty people, he began to shun society, got
into the way of scowling, telling bitter truths that were uncalled for,
and truths that every one knew, and tried to live like La Fontaine’s
‘Sonderling,’ or ‘Robinson Crusoe’ in Sokolniky. In the little garden
of their house there was an arbour, and here ‘the apothecary Ketscher
took refuge to translate the apothecary Schiller’ as N. A. Polevoy used
to jest in those days. The door of the arbour had no lock and there was
hardly room to turn round in it, but that was just right for him. In the
morning he used to dig in the garden, plant and transplant flowers and
shrubs, treat the poor of his district gratis, correct the proofs of ‘The
Robbers’ and of ‘Fiesco,’ and instead of evening prayers would recite
speeches of Marat and of Robespierre. In fact, if he had worked less with
books and more with his spade, he would have been just what Rousseau
wished every man to be.

Ketscher made our acquaintance through Vadim in 1831. In our circle,
which consisted in those days of Sazonov, the elder Passeks, and two or
three other students, besides Ogaryov and me, he saw the first promise
of the accomplishment of his cherished dreams, the first signs of new
growth on the fields that had been mown so thoroughly in 1826, and so
he attached himself to us. Being older than we, he soon acquired ‘the
rights of censorship’ and would not let us take a step without comments
and sometimes reproofs. He believed that he was a practical man and more
experienced than we; moreover, we liked him, liked him very much in fact.
If any one fell ill, Ketscher was like a sister of mercy, and never
left the invalid till he recovered. When Kolreif, Antonovitch and the
others were arrested, Ketscher was the first to get into the barracks to
see them, did his best to entertain them, lectured them, and went so far
that Lissovsky, the general of the gendarmes, sent for him and impressed
upon him that he must be more careful and must remember his position (he
was an army doctor). When Nadyezhdin, who was theoretically in love,
wanted to be secretly married to a young lady whose parents forbade her
to think of him, Ketscher undertook to assist him and arrange a romantic
elopement, and, wrapped in his celebrated black cloak lined with red, sat
on a seat in the Rozhdestvensky Boulevard with Nadyezhdin waiting for
a secret signal. For a long time they waited in vain; Nadyezhdin grew
weary and disheartened. Ketscher stoically consoled him; despair and
his consolations had a singular effect on Nadyezhdin, he fell asleep.
Ketscher scowled and strode gloomily up and down the boulevard. ‘She
isn’t coming,’ said Nadyezhdin, half asleep, ‘let us go home to bed.’
Ketscher scowled more than ever, shook his head gloomily, and led the
sleepy Nadyezhdin home. When they had gone, the girl came out into the
porch of her house and the signal agreed upon was repeated not once but
a dozen times, and she waited an hour or two; all was quiet and she
more quietly still returned to her room, probably shedding tears but
completely cured of her love for Nadyezhdin. It was a long time before
Ketscher could forgive Nadyezhdin his sleepiness; he would shake his
head, while his lower lip quivered, and say: ‘He did not love her.’

The sympathy Ketscher showed at the time of our imprisonment and at
the time of my marriage has been described already. For the five years
from 1834 to 1840, in which he was almost the only one of our circle
left in Moscow, he represented it with pride and glory, preserving our
tradition, and not changing it in a single detail. So we found him,
some of us in 1840 and some of us in 1842. In us exile, contact with a
different world, reading, and work had made many changes. Ketscher, our
irremovable representative, remained the same as ever. Only instead of
Schiller he was translating Shakespeare.

One of the first things which Ketscher, who was extremely delighted at
having his old friends gathered together again in Moscow, did was to
renew his censorship _morum_—and this was the occasion of the first signs
of friction, which for a long time he failed to notice. His scolding
sometimes angered us, which had never happened in old days, and sometimes
bored us. In the past we had lived at such high pressure and so much
in common that no one had paid attention to little stumbling-blocks in
the pathway. Time, as I have said, had made many changes; character
had developed in different directions—and the part of a kind but
fault-finding uncle was often worse than absurd. Every one tried to turn
it into a jest, to cloak his superfluous candour and critical love under
his friendliness and good intentions, and they made a great mistake.
Yes, what was amiss was that it was necessary to cloak, to explain away,
to practise restraint. If he had been checked from the very first,
those unhappy misunderstandings with which our Moscow life ended at the
beginning of 1847 would never have arisen.

Our new friends, however, were not quite so indulgent as we were, and
even Byelinsky, as intolerant of injustice as Ketscher himself, would
sometimes lose all patience and, though he was very fond of him, would
give him severe lessons, refusing to argue with him for months together.
Cold or indifferent Ketscher never was. He was invariably either
violently aggressive or ardently affectionate, passing rapidly from
being the warmest of friends into being the sternest of judges; this, of
course, made coldness and silence harder for him to bear than anything.

Immediately after a quarrel or a series of violent attacks Ketscher’s
attention was distracted, his anger passed without leaving a trace,
probably he was inwardly dissatisfied with himself, but he never admitted
it; on the contrary, he tried to turn everything into a joke and again
overstepped the limit beyond which a joke ceases to be amusing. It was
the everlasting repetition of the famous ‘gander’ in the reconciliation
of Ivan Ivanovitch with Ivan Nikiforovitch.[132] Every one must have seen
children who once they have yielded to temptation are nervously unable to
stop short of any naughtiness, the conviction that they will be punished
seems to intensify the temptation. Feeling that he had again succeeded
in irritating some one into cold and biting replies, he returned to an
utterly gloomy frame of mind, raised his eyebrows, strode about the room,
became a tragic figure from some play of Schiller’s, a juryman from
the court of Fouquier-Tinville,[133] in a ferocious voice brought out
a series of accusations against all of us, accusations for which there
was not the slightest foundation, convinced himself in the end of their
truth, and, overwhelmed with grief that his friends were such scoundrels,
went morosely home, leaving us dumbfoundered and furious, until wrath
gave way to mercy and we laughed like lunatics.

Early next morning, Ketscher, mild and mournful, was pacing up and down
his room, savagely smoking his pipe, waiting for one of us to come to
scold him and be reconciled. He would make it up, always, of course,
preserving his dignity as of an old, though exacting, uncle. If no one
appeared, Ketscher, concealing a mortal dread in his heart, would go
mournfully to a café in Neglinny Street, or to the bright, peaceful
haven in which he was always met by a good-natured laugh and a friendly
greeting, _i.e._, to M. S. Shtchepkin’s, and there stay till the storm he
had raised abated. He complained of us, of course, to Schtchepkin. The
kind-hearted old man gave him a good scolding, told him that he talked
nonsense, that we were not such miscreants as he made out, and offered to
take him at once to see us. We knew that Ketscher was miserable after his
outbursts, and understood, or rather forgave, the feeling which prevented
him from saying simply and directly that he was wrong and so effacing at
the first word all traces of discord. The ladies, who almost always took
his part, were foremost in making approaches to him. They liked his open
simplicity, which went as far as rudeness (he never spared them), and
regarded it as eccentricity. Their support convinced Ketscher that that
was the way to behave, that it was charming and was, moreover, his duty.

Our quarrels and disputes at Pokrovskoe were sometimes full of absurdity,
and at the same time whole days were overshadowed by them.

‘Why is the coffee not nice?’ I asked Matvey.

‘It has not been properly made,’ answered Ketscher, and suggested that
his method should be tried. The coffee so made was just the same.

‘Bring the spirit-lamp and coffee here. I will make it myself,’ said
Ketscher, and set to work. The coffee was no better, as I observed
to Ketscher. He tried it and, fixing his eyes upon me from under his
spectacles, asked in a voice already a little bit excited: ‘So in your
opinion this coffee is no better?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it is really amazing that even in such a trifle you refuse to
change your opinion.’

‘It is not I, but the coffee.’

‘Really it is beyond anything, this miserable vanity.’

‘Upon my word, I didn’t make the coffee and I didn’t make the
coffee-pot....’

‘I know you, anything to prove your point; what pettiness over the
beastly coffee—it’s hellish vanity!’ He could say no more; heartbroken at
my despotism and vanity in matters of taste, he thrust his cap down on
his head, snatched up a bark basket and went off into the woods. He came
back towards evening, having walked fifteen miles; a successful search
for edible fungi had dispelled his gloomy mood. I, of course, made no
reference to coffee, but paid various civilities to the fungi.

Next morning he tried to raise the coffee question again, but I declined
to take up the challenge.

One of the chief subjects of our disputes was the education of my son.
Education shares the fate of medicine and philosophy: on those subjects
every one in the world has positive and sharply defined opinions, except
the few who have devoted a long and serious study to them. Ask about
the building of a bridge or draining of a swamp, and a man will tell
you frankly that he is not an engineer or an agricultural expert. Begin
talking about dropsy or consumption, he will suggest a remedy, one that
he remembers, has heard spoken of, or that has benefited his uncle. But
in questions of education he goes farther still. ‘That is my principle’
he tells you, ‘and I never depart from it; I don’t like trifling in
matters of education, it is a subject I feel too keenly about.’

What ideas Ketscher was bound to have about education may be gathered to
the minutest detail in the sketch we have given of his character. In this
he was consistent, which is more than can be said of people who discourse
on education as a rule. Ketscher’s ideas were those of Rousseau’s
‘Émile,’ and he firmly believed that the negation of everything which is
done with children now would of itself be excellent education. He wanted
to wrest the child from artificial life and consciously restore him to
a savage condition, to that primitive independence in which equality is
carried so far as to wipe out the distinction between man and the monkey.

We were ourselves not so very far removed from this view, but in him,
like everything that he had once assimilated, it was a fanatical creed
which admitted neither of doubt nor argument. A very real and genuine
need is felt for something very different from the old-fashioned
theological, scholastic, aristocratic education in which dogmatism,
formalism, strained pedantic classicism, and external discipline are
considered of more importance than moral development. Unluckily, in
education as in everything else, the violent and revolutionary method,
while breaking down the old, has given us nothing to replace it. The
wild assumption of the ‘normal man,’ which the followers of Jean Jacques
adopted, cut the child off from his historical surroundings, made him a
foreigner in them, as though education were not the development of the
life of the race in the individual.

The arguments about education were rarely confined to the theoretical
field, the application was too near at hand. My son, at that time seven
or eight years old, was a delicate child, very liable to attacks of fever
and dysentery. This weakness lasted until our visit to Naples, or rather
till we met at Sorrento a doctor of whom we knew nothing, who altered the
whole system of diet and treatment. Ketscher wanted to harden him all at
once like tempered steel. I would not allow it, and he was furious: ‘You
are a conservative,’ he shouted angrily, ‘you are ruining the unfortunate
child, you are turning him into an effeminate little gentleman and at the
same time a slave.’

The child was naughty and shouted when his mother was ill. I checked him:
apart from the plain necessity of doing so, it seemed to me perfectly
right to make him restrain himself for the sake of somebody else, for the
sake of his mother who loved him beyond measure; but Ketscher said to me
gloomily:

‘What right have you to check his shouting? He ought to shout, it is no
life at all. The accursed authority of parents!’

These discussions, however lightly I took them, made our relations
difficult and threatened a serious estrangement between Ketscher and
his friends. If this had come about, he would have been more severely
punished than any one, both because he was very much devoted to us
all and because he did not know how to live alone. His character was
eminently expansive and not at all self-centred. Some one was necessary
to him. His very work was a continual conversation with some one else,
that some one else was Shakespeare. After working the whole morning he
felt dull. In the summer he could walk in the country or work in his
garden; but in winter there was nothing left for him but to put on his
famous cloak or his rough, camel-coloured overcoat and go from near
Sokolniky to us, to Arbat, or to Nikitsky Street.

His captious intolerance was due to the fact that he never had the
intellectual exercise of verifying, analysing, and making problems
clear: for him there were no problems; all was settled and he went
straight forward without looking back. Perhaps if he had been engaged
in practical work this might have been a good thing, but he had none.
Active participation in active affairs was impossible, only the three
uppermost grades in the service take part in them in Russia. And he
transferred his thirst for activity to the private life of his friends.
We were spared by theoretical work from the emptiness which gnawed at his
heart. Ketscher settled all questions summarily, straight off, in one
way or another—which did not matter; having once settled them, he went
on without hesitating at anything, remaining obstinately faithful to his
conviction.

For all that there was no serious estrangement between us till 1846.
Natalie was very fond of Ketscher, he was inseparably connected with
the memory of the 9th of May 1838. She knew that a tender affection lay
hid under his hedgehog-like prickles and was unwilling to see that the
prickles were growing and sending their roots farther and farther down.

A quarrel with Ketscher seemed to her something sinister; she fancied
that if time could file away, and with such a tiny file, one of the
links that had held so firmly throughout our youth, it would next attack
another, and the whole chain would be broken. In the midst of sullen
words and harsh answers I used to see her turn pale and entreat me with
her eyes to stop, she would shake off her momentary vexation and hold out
her hand. Sometimes this touched Ketscher, but he made tremendous efforts
to show that he did not really care, that he was ready to make it up, but
that he would perhaps go on quarrelling.

The dreadful fluctuating relation of bullying affection and yielding
affection might have been prolonged at this stage for years. But new
circumstances which complicated Ketscher’s life brought things to a head.

He had a love affair, as queer as everything else in his life, which made
him settle down quickly in rather clammy domesticity. Ketscher’s life,
which was based on the utmost simplicity, on the elementary requirements
of a student’s Bohemian existence among his comrades, was suddenly
transformed. A woman appeared in his home, or to be more correct a home
appeared because in it there was a woman. Till then no one had conceived
of Ketscher as a domestic character, for in his _chez soi_ he liked
to be irregular in everything, to walk about as he lunched, to smoke
between the soup and the beef, to sleep in any bed but his own, so that
Konstantin Aksakov observed jestingly ‘that Ketscher was distinguished
from the human species by the fact that men dine while Ketscher feeds.’
All at once he had a dwelling, a domestic hearth, a roof of his own!

This was how it happened.

A few years before, Ketscher, as he walked every day between Sokolniky
and Basmanny Street, used to meet a poor, almost destitute little girl.
She used to return that way, tired out and depressed, from some workshop.
She was plain, shy, scared, and pathetic. No one noticed her existence,
no one pitied her. Without parents or relations she had been taken for
the sake of Christian charity into some dissenting community, there grew
up, and left it to go to hard work with no defence or support, alone in
the world. Ketscher got into conversation with her and taught her not
to be afraid of him, questioning her about her sorrowful childhood and
wretched existence. He was the first person in whom she found sympathy
and warmth, and she attached herself to him body and soul. His life
was lonely and cheerless; behind all the noise of suppers with his
friends, of first nights at the Moscow theatres, and of the Bozhanovsky
coffee-house, there was an emptiness in his heart which he would, of
course, not have admitted to himself, but which made itself felt. The
poor, colourless flower fell of itself on his bosom—and he accepted
it, not thinking much about the consequence and probably not attaching
special importance to the incident.

In the best and most progressive men there still exists something akin to
the property qualification for the franchise in their attitude to women,
and there are classes below it which are regarded as naturally destined
to be victims. We have all treated them as of no account, so there is
hardly any one who can dare to throw a stone.

The orphan was passionately devoted to Ketscher. Being brought up in
a dissenting community had left its traces on her: she had gained
from it a capacity for blind faith, for idol-worship, a capacity for
persistent, concentrated fanaticism and boundless devotion. Everything
that she had loved and worshipped, everything she had feared, everything
she had obeyed, Christ and the Mother of God, the holy saints and the
wonder-working ikon—all that she found now in Ketscher, the man who was
the first to pity her, the first to be kind to her. And all this was
half-hidden, half-buried, dared not express itself.

She had a child; she was very ill, the baby died.... The bond which
should have strengthened the tie between them broke it. Ketscher grew
colder to S——, went to see her less often, and then abandoned her
altogether. That this child of nature would not ‘cease to love him
easily’ might have been confidently predicted. What had she left in all
the wide world but her love? There was nothing else but to throw herself
in the river Moskva. The poor girl used to go out when her day’s work
was done, scantily clothed in her poor garments, regardless of rain or
cold, along the road leading to Basmanny Street, and would wait for
hours together to meet him, to watch him pass, and then to weep, to weep
the whole night through; as a rule she hid herself, but sometimes she
bowed and spoke. If he answered kindly, S—— was happy and ran home in
good spirits. Of her ‘misfortune,’ of her love she dared not speak, she
was ashamed. Two years or more passed like this. In silence, without
repining, she endured her fate. In 1845 Ketscher moved to Petersburg.
This was too much for her. Not to see him even in the street, not to
observe him from a distance and watch him pass, to know that he was
hundreds of miles away among strangers and not to know whether he was
well or whether any trouble had befallen him—this she could not bear.
Entirely without means and without assistance, S—— began saving up her
kopecks, devoted all her efforts to this one object, worked for months,
then vanished and made her way somehow or other to Petersburg. There,
tired, thin, and hungry, she went to Ketscher, imploring him not to spurn
her but to take her, telling him that she wanted nothing, that she would
find a corner for herself, would find work and live on bread and water,
if only she could stay in the city where he was and might sometimes see
him. Only then Ketscher fully understood what a heart beat in her bosom.
He was shattered, overwhelmed. Pity, remorse, the consciousness of being
so loved changed his attitude: now she should remain there with him, this
should be her home, he would be her husband, her friend, her protector.
Her dreams had come true; forgotten were the cold autumn nights,
forgotten the terrible journey and the tears of jealousy and bitter sobs:
she was with him and would certainly never be parted from him living.
Before Ketscher came back to Moscow no one knew all this story except
Mihail Semyonovitch Shtchepkin, now it was neither possible nor necessary
to conceal it; we two and all our circle received with open arms this
child of nature who had performed so heroic a feat. And this girl, full
of love for him as she was, did Ketscher an infinite amount of harm with
her absolute devotion and submission. On her lay all the blessing and all
the curse that lies upon the proletariat, especially upon ours.

We in our turn did her almost as much harm as she did Ketscher.

And in both cases it was done in complete ignorance and with the purest
intentions. She completely ruined Ketscher’s life as a child may ruin
a fine engraving with his paint-brush, supposing that he is adorning
it. Between Ketscher and S——, between S—— and our circle, lay a vast,
terrible chasm, steep and precipitous, and with no bridge, no pass to
cross it. We and she belonged to different ages of mankind, to different
geological formations, to different volumes in the history of the world.
We were the children of New Russia fresh from the university and the
academy, we were fascinated by the political splendour of the West and
religiously cherished our infidelity, openly denying the Church, while
she had been brought up in a dissenting community, in a Russia of the
days before Peter, in all the bigotry of sectarianism, with all the
superstitions of a hidden religion, with all the legendary marvels of
old-world Russian life.

Having by an extraordinary effort of will fastened the severed ties
again, she kept tight hold of the knot. Ketscher could not escape
now. But indeed he did not wish to. Blaming himself for the past, he
strove sincerely to efface it; S——’s stupendous effort had won him.
Yielding before it, he knew that he too was making a sacrifice, but,
being an extremely pure and generous nature, he was glad to make it as
an atonement. But he knew only the material side of the sacrifice: the
practical restriction of his freedom. The incongruity of an old student
with Schilleresque dreams living with a woman for whom not merely the
world of Schiller but even the world of reading and writing, of all
secular education, did not exist, never entered his head.

People may say what they like, but the saying _inter pares amicitia_ is
perfectly true and every _mésalliance_ is foredoomed to unhappiness.
A great deal that is stupid, supercilious, and bourgeois is implied
in the saying, but in essence it is true. In the worst of all forms
of inequality, the inequality of culture, there is one salvation: the
education of one person by the other; but for that two rare gifts are
needed: one must know how to educate and the other must know how to be
educated; one must be able to lead, the other to follow.

Far more often the companionship of an undeveloped personality, confined
to the pettiness of personal life with no other interests to engross
the heart, weighs the other down, induces foolishness and fatigue;
imperceptibly he grows petty and narrow, and though he feels ill at
ease, yet, entangled in nets and meshes, he reconciles himself to it.
Sometimes it happens that neither of them yields, and then the marriage
turns into a permanent war, an everlasting duel in which they grow set
and remain for ever in fruitless efforts on the one side to lift up, on
the other to drag down: that is, both trying to defend their several
positions. When their strength is equal, this conflict swallows up their
whole life and the strongest natures are exhausted and sink helpless by
the way. The more cultured nature is the first to succumb, the aesthetic
feelings are deeply wounded by the difference of level. The best moments,
which should be bright and musical, are poisoned by it: expansive natures
passionately desire that all who are near and dear to them should be near
to their thoughts, to their religion; this is taken for intolerance. For
them the proselytism of the home is the continuation of their apostolic
work, their propaganda; their happiness is limited where they are not
understood ... and most often there is no wish to understand them.

To educate a mature woman is a very difficult task; it is especially
difficult in those marriages which are the consequence and not the
commencement of intimate relations. Ties that have been lightly,
frivolously begun rarely rise above the level of the bedroom and the
kitchen. The common roof comes too late for education under it to be
possible; only now and then some misfortune will rouse a soul that sleeps
but is capable of awakening. For the most part _la petite femme_ never
becomes a full-sized one, never becomes wife and sister together; she
either remains mistress and courtesan, or becomes cook and mistress.

Living under the same roof is in itself a terrible thing over which
half the marriages come to ruin. Living cramped up together, people
come too close to each other, see each other too minutely, too much in
deshabille, and gradually petal by petal tear away all the flowers of
the wreath that crowned each with grace and poetry. But similarity of
culture goes a long way to smooth things over. If it is absent and there
is idle leisure, one cannot be for ever babbling nonsense, talking of
housekeeping or paying compliments; and what is to be done with a woman
when she is something between an odalisque and a servant, a creature
bodily near and intellectually remote. She is not wanted by day and she
is for ever on the spot; a man cannot share his interests with her and
she cannot share her gossip with him.

Every uneducated woman living with an educated husband reminds me of
Delilah and Samson, she cuts off his strength and there is no guarding
oneself from her. Between dinner, even if it is late, and bed, even if
one goes to it at ten o’clock, there is an endless period in which one
does not want to go on working and yet is not ready for sleep, when the
linen has been counted and expenses reckoned up. It is in those hours
that the wife drags the husband down into the narrow circle of her
trivialities, into the world of irritable resentments, tittle-tattle, and
spiteful insinuations. This is bound to leave its traces. Relations of
cohabitation between a man and a woman without equality of culture are
sometimes enduring when they rest on convenience, on common housekeeping,
I had almost said on hygiene. Sometimes these working associations are a
mutual help combined with mutual satisfaction; for the most part a wife
is taken as a nurse, as a good housewife _pour avoir un bon pot-au-feu_
as Proudhon said to me. The formula of the old jurisprudence is very
clever, _a mensa et toro_; destroy the common bed and common board and
they will separate with untroubled conscience.

These business-like marriages are scarcely better. The husband is
continually at his work, professional or commercial, at his office, his
counting-house, or his shop. His wife is continually busy with the linen
and the stores. The husband returns tired; everything is ready for him,
and everything goes with the same little even trot, to the gates of the
cemetery to which their parents have preceded them. This is a purely town
phenomenon and it is more often met with in England than anywhere; this
is the petty-bourgeois happiness preached by the moralists of the French
stage and dreamt of by the Germans[134]; different stages of culture
can live together more easily within a year after the man leaves the
university; there is a division of work and precedence given to the man.
The husband, particularly if he has money, becomes what the popular sense
calls him, _mon bourgeois_ of his wife. By this path and, thanks to the
laws of inheritance, it is a path that never gets overgrown with grass,
every woman remains perpetually a _kept woman_, her husband’s if not some
other man’s. She knows this.

    ‘Dessen Brot man isst,
    Dessen Lied man singt.’

But these marriages have a moral unity of their own, they have a
similarity of outlook, a similarity of object. Ketscher himself had no
object and was incapable of being either the ‘bourgeois’ or the tutor.
He could not even struggle with S——, she always gave way. He frightened
her with his loud voice and his grumbling temper. Though her heart
was developed she had a heavy, stubborn intelligence, that stagnancy
of brain which we often meet with in those who are quite unaccustomed
to abstract thought, and which is one of the distinguishing traits
of the period before Peter the Great. United to the man she loved so
intensely, so devotedly, she desired nothing and feared nothing. And
indeed what had she to fear? Poverty? but had she not been poor all
her life, had she not suffered destitution, that humiliating poverty.
Work? but she had toiled from morning till night in a workroom for a few
coppers. Quarrelling, separation? Yes, that last had terrors, and great
terrors too; but she so utterly abandoned all personal will that it was
really difficult to quarrel with her, and ill-humour she would put up
with, maybe she would have put up with blows even, so long as she were
satisfied that he loved her a little and did not want to part with her.
And that he did not want, and there was a fresh reason for not wanting it
on the top of everything else. With the instinct of love S—— understood
it very well. Dimly aware that she could not fully satisfy Ketscher, she
took to making up for what she lacked by continual waiting upon him and
solicitude for him.

Ketscher was over forty. He had not been spoilt in regard to domestic
comfort. He had spent all his life at home as the Kirghiz in his cart,
with no property and no desire to possess it, with no conveniences of
any sort and no craving for them. By degrees everything was changed; he
was surrounded by a network of attention and services, he saw a childish
delight when he was pleased with anything, alarm and tears when he
raised his eyebrows, and this went on every day from morning till night.
Ketscher took to staying at home more often; he was sorry to leave her
continually alone. Besides, it was hard for him not to be struck by the
difference of her absolute submission and our growing opposition. S——
endured his most unjust outbursts with the gentleness of a daughter who,
concealing her tears, smiles to her father and waits _sans rancune_ till
the storm is over. S——, submissive, slavishly meek, trembling, ready to
weep and kiss his hand, had an immense influence on Ketscher. Intolerance
is fostered by giving way to it.

Did not Rousseau’s Thérèse, poor, stupid Thérèse, turn the prophet of
equality into a petty vulgarian, perpetually absorbed in preserving his
own dignity?

S——’s influence on Ketscher showed itself in the way Diderot describes
when he complains of Thérèse. Rousseau was suspicious; Thérèse developed
his suspiciousness into a petty readiness to take offence, and with no
intention of doing so estranged him from his best friends. Remember that
Thérèse could not read properly and could never be taught to read the
time on the clock—which did not prevent her from fostering Rousseau’s
hypochondria till it passed into gloomy madness. In the morning Rousseau
would go to see Baron d’Holbach. A servant would bring in lunch and set
places for three—Holbach, his wife, and Grimm; engaged in conversation,
no one would notice it but Jean Jacques. He would pick up his hat. ‘But
you must stay to lunch,’ Madame d’Holbach would say and order another
place to be laid; but by then it was too late to set things right.
Rousseau, livid with vexation and gloomily cursing the whole human race,
would run home to Thérèse and tell her that no plate was set for him
as a hint for him to go. Such tales were just to her taste, she could
take warm interest in them, they put her on a level with him and indeed
a little above him, and she herself began talking scandal, sometimes
against Madame d’Houdetot, sometimes against David Hume, sometimes
against Diderot. Rousseau would rudely break off all relations, would
write senseless and insulting letters, sometimes calling forth terrible
replies (for instance, from Hume), and withdrew to Montmorency abandoned
by every one, and for lack of human beings cursing the sparrows and the
swallows to whom he threw grain.

Once more:—without equality there can be no real marriage. The wife who
is excluded from all the interests that occupy her husband, who is apart
from them and does not share them, may be a concubine, a housekeeper, a
nurse, but not a wife in the full, honourable sense of the word. Heine
said of his ‘Thérèse’ that she ‘does not know and never will find out
what he wrote about.’ This was thought charming, amusing, and it never
occurred to any one to ask: ‘Why, then, was she his wife?’ Molière, who
read his comedies aloud to his cook, was a hundred times more humane, but
Madame Heine quite unintentionally paid her husband back. During the last
years of his martyred existence she surrounded him with her own friends,
faded _dames aux camellias_ of a past season, grown moral as they grew
wrinkled, and their washed-out, grey-headed adorers.

I do not mean to say that a wife must necessarily do and like what
her husband does and likes. The wife may prefer music and the husband
painting, that does not disturb their equality. I have always thought
that the official trailing of husband and wife about together was
dreadful, absurd, and senseless, and the higher placed they are the more
ludicrous it is. Why should the Empress Eugénie appear at cavalry drill,
and why should Victoria draw her husband to the opening of parliament
with which he had nothing to do? Heine did well not to take his
better-half to the receptions at the Court functions of Weimar. The prose
of their marriage did not lie in that, but in the absence of any common
ground, any common interest to unite them apart from sexual attraction.

I will pass to the harm which we did to poor S——. The mistake we made
was again the mistake of all Utopias and idealisms. When one side of a
question is correctly grasped, no attention is commonly paid to that
to which that side adheres and whether it can be separated from it, no
attention to the vast network of veins connecting the raw flesh with the
whole organism. We still think like Christians that we have but to say to
the lame man: ‘Take up thy bed and walk.’

At one stroke we flung the solitary and half-savage S——, who had seen no
one, from her loneliness into our circle. We liked her originality, we
wanted to preserve it, and we destroyed the last chance of her developing
by removing all desire for improvement, assuring her that she was all
right as she was. But she did not herself care to remain simply as she
was. What was the result? We—revolutionaries, socialists, champions
of the emancipation of women—turned a naïve, devoted, simple-hearted
creature into a Moscow petty-bourgeoise!

Did not the Convention, the Jacobins, and the Commune itself turn France
into a petty-bourgeoise, turn Paris into an _épicier_?

The first house that was opened with love and warm-heartedness to S——
was ours. Natalie went to see her and forcibly brought her to us. For a
year S—— behaved quietly and was shy of strangers; timid and reserved as
before, she was full of the poetical charm of the peasant in a way. There
was not the faintest desire to attract attention by her strangeness; on
the contrary there was the desire to be unnoticed. Like a child or a weak
little wild animal she took refuge under Natalie’s wing; her devotion
in those days knew no bounds. She loved playing with Sasha for hours
together and used to tell him and us details of her childhood, her life
among the _raskolniks_, her suffering as an apprentice, _i.e._, in the
workroom.

She became the plaything of our circle; that, of course, she liked; she
saw that her position, that she herself was original, and from that
time she was lost; no one could have saved her. Natalie alone thought
seriously of her education. S—— did not belong to the common herd; she
had escaped a number of mean defects; she was not fond of fine clothes,
did not care for luxury, for expensive things, nor for money—so long
as Ketscher was satisfied and found nothing wanting she did not mind
about anything else. At first S—— loved to have long, long talks with
Natalie and trusted her, meekly listened to her advice, and tried to
follow it.... But after she had looked about her and was at home in our
circle, perhaps worked up by others who were amused at her oddities,
she began to display a sort of injured antagonism and would answer any
criticism very far from naïvely: ‘Oh, I am such a poor creature, how
could I change or improve? It seems I must go down to my grave just as
silly and foolish.’ In these words there was a note of wounded vanity,
conscious or not conscious. She ceased to feel free with us and came less
and less often to see us. ‘Natalya Alexandrovna, God bless her,’ she
would say, ‘no longer likes poor me.’ It was not natural to Natalie to be
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody or to be effusive like a schoolgirl;
an element of deep serenity and great aesthetic feeling was always
predominant in her. S—— did not understand the value of the difference
between Natalie’s attitude to her and that of others, and forgot who had
been the first to hold out a hand to her and warmly welcome her; with
her Ketscher too drew away from us and grew more and more morose and
irritable.

His suspiciousness greatly increased. In every careless word he saw an
intention, a spiteful motive, a desire to wound, and not to wound him
only but also S——. She for her part wept, complained of her lot, resented
slights to Ketscher, and by the law of moral reverberation his own
suspicions returned to him multiplied tenfold. His scolding affection
began to change into a desire to find us in fault, into a supervision, a
continual espionage, and the petty faults of his friends came more and
more to eclipse all their other qualities in his eyes. Our pure, lofty,
mature circle began to be invaded by the tittle-tattle of servant girls
and the bickerings of provincial government clerks.

Ketscher’s irritability became infectious; continual accusations,
explanations, reconciliations, poisoned our gatherings. This corrosive
dust settled in every crevice and by degrees dissolved the cement that
united so firmly our relations with our friends. We all succumbed to the
influence of gossip. Even Granovsky grew ill-humoured and irritable, took
Ketscher’s part unfairly, and lost his temper. Ketscher used to go to
Granovsky with his accusations against Ogaryov and me. Granovsky did not
believe them, but pitying Ketscher, ‘who is ill, wounded and yet so fond
of you,’ took his side emphatically and was angry with me for want of
tolerance. ‘Why, you know what he is like; it’s an illness. The influence
of S——, who is good-natured but uneducated and tiresome, is driving him
farther and farther in that unfortunate direction.’

To end this melancholy tale I will quote two instances.... They show
vividly how far we had got from the theory of making coffee at Pokrovskoe.

One evening in the spring of 1846 we had five intimate friends with us,
and among them Mihail Semyonovitch Shtchepkin. ‘Have you taken the house
at Sokolovo this year?’ he asked. ‘Not yet,’ I answered, ‘I haven’t the
money and one has to pay the rent in advance.’ ‘Surely you are not going
to stay all the summer in Moscow?’ ‘I shall wait a little, then we shall
see.’ That was all. No one took any notice of this conversation, and
other subjects followed peacefully a second afterwards. We were intending
to go next day after dinner to Kuntsovo, which we had loved from
childhood. Ketscher, Korsh, and Granovsky went with us. The excursion
took place, and everything went well except that Ketscher raised his
eyebrows more gloomily than ever. But in the end we all came in for a
storm.

It was a spring evening, warm but not scorchingly hot; the trees had
only just come out into leaf. We sat in the garden jesting and talking.
All at once Ketscher, who had been silent for half an hour, got up and
stood facing me. With the face of a prosecutor of the Vehme,[135] and
with his lips quivering with indignation, he said: ‘I must say that you
were clever in the way you reminded Mihail Semyonovitch yesterday that he
hadn’t paid you the nine hundred roubles he borrowed from you.’

I really did not understand; especially as I certainly had not thought of
Shtchepkin’s debt for the last four months.

‘It was delicate I must say: the old man has no money now and he is just
going to the Crimea with his immense family, and here you tell him in the
presence of five persons: “I haven’t the money to take a summer villa.”
Ough, how disgusting!’

Ogaryov took my part. Ketscher flew at him and there was no end to the
absurd accusations he brought against him; Granovsky tried to soothe him
but could not and went away together with Korsh before the rest of us. I
felt incensed and humiliated and answered very harshly. Ketscher looked
at me from under his brows and without saying a word went back to Moscow
on foot. We were left alone and in a state of something like pitiful
irritability drove home. I wanted this time to give Ketscher a good
lesson and to drop relations with him for a time, if I did not break them
off altogether. He was penitent and shed tears: Granovsky insisted on our
making peace, talked to Natalie, and was deeply distressed. I made it up,
but not light-heartedly, and said to Granovsky: ‘You see, it will last
for three days.’

That was one pleasure excursion, here is another.

Two months later we were at Sokolovo. Ketscher and S—— were going back
to Moscow in the evening. Ogaryov rode part of the way with them on his
Circassian horse, Kortik. There was no shadow of misunderstanding or
ill-humour.

Ogaryov came back two or three hours later; we laughed together at the
day having passed off so peacefully, and separated for the night.

Next day Granovsky, who had been in Moscow overnight, met me in our park;
he was thoughtful and more melancholy than usual, and at last he told me
he had something on his mind and wanted to talk to me. We went by the
long avenue and sat down on the seat, the view of which is familiar to
every one who has been at Sokolovo.

‘Herzen,’ Granovsky said to me, ‘if only you knew how difficult, how
painful it is to me ... how I love you all in spite of everything, and
I see with horror that everything is dropping to pieces. And now, as
though in mockery, these petty mistakes, damnable carelessness, lack of
delicacy....’

‘But tell me please what has happened,’ I asked, genuinely alarmed.

‘Why, Ketscher is furious with Ogaryov, and indeed, to tell the truth,
it would be hard not to be; I try, I do what I can, but I haven’t the
strength, particularly when people don’t care to do anything themselves.’

‘But what is the matter?’

‘Why, this: yesterday Ogaryov rode part of the way with Ketscher and S——.’

‘It was arranged in my presence, and indeed I saw Ogaryov in the evening
afterwards and he did not say a word.’

‘On the bridge Kortik shied and began rearing, and Ogaryov pulling him
up was so vexed that he swore before S—— and she heard and Ketscher
heard too. I dare say he didn’t think, but Ketscher asks why he never
happens to be so careless in the presence of your wife and mine. What is
one to say to that?... And besides, for all her simplicity S—— is very
sentimental, which is quite natural in her position.’

I said nothing. This was beyond all bounds.

‘What’s to be done?’

‘It’s very simple,’ I said. ‘We must break off all acquaintance with
scoundrels who are capable of intentionally forgetting themselves before
a woman. To be the intimate friend of such people is contemptible....’

‘But he doesn’t say that Ogaryov did it intentionally.’

‘Then what’s the talk about? And you, Granovsky, Ogaryov’s friend, repeat
the ravings of a madman who ought to be put in an asylum. For shame!’

Granovsky was disconcerted.

‘My God!’ he said, ‘is it possible that our little group of friends—the
one place where I found hope, repose, and love, where I took refuge from
our oppressive environment—will break up in hatred and anger?’

He covered his eyes with his hand. I took the other hand; my heart was
very heavy.

‘Granovsky,’ I said to him, ‘Ketscher is right: we have all come too
close to each other, we are too cramped and we have stepped over each
other’s traces.... _Gemach!_ my friend, _gemach!_ We need airing,
refreshing. Ogaryov is going to the country in the autumn. I am soon
going abroad—we will part without hatred and anger; what was true in our
friendship will be set right, will be purified by absence.’

Granovsky wept. With Ketscher I had no explanation on that subject.
Ogaryov did, as a fact, go to the country in the autumn, and afterwards
we too went away.

News of our Moscow friends reached us more and more rarely. Frightened
by the terror that followed 1848, they waited for a safe opportunity to
send letters. These opportunities were rare, passports were hardly ever
given. From Ketscher we had not a word for years together; he was never
fond of writing, however.

The first living news was brought me in 1855 after I had moved to London.
Ketscher, I heard, was in his element, conspicuous at banquets in honour
of the heroes of Sebastopol, embracing Pogodin and Kokorev, embracing
the sailors from the Black Sea, making an uproar, scolding, admonishing.
Ogaryov, who had come straight from the graveside of Granovsky, told me
little; what he did tell was gloomy.

Another year and a half passed. During that time I had finished this
chapter, and to whom first of outsiders was it read?

Yes—_habeant sua fata libelli_.

In the autumn of 1857, Tchitcherin came to London; we were expecting him
with impatience: once one of Granovsky’s favourite pupils and a friend of
Korsh and Ketscher, he seemed to us one of our intimate circle. We had
heard of his rudeness, his conservative leanings, his boundless vanity,
and his _doctrinaire_ attitude, but he was still young ... many angles
are rubbed down by the passage of time.

‘I have long hesitated whether I should come and see you or not; so many
Russians visit you now that one needs more courage not to come than to
come; I, as you know, though fully respecting you, do not agree with you
in everything.’

That was how Tchitcherin began.

He made his approach not simply, not in the spirit of youth; he had
stones hidden in his bosom, the light in his eyes was cold, there was a
challenge and a dreadful, repellent conceit in the tones of his voice.
From the first words I saw that this was not an opponent but an enemy;
but I stifled the instinctive warning and we got into conversation.

Our talk soon passed to reminiscences and to questions from me. He
described the last months of the life of Granovsky, and when he went away
I felt better pleased with him than at first.

After dinner next day conversation turned on Ketscher. Tchitcherin spoke
of him as a man whom he liked, laughing without malice at his sallies;
from the details he told me I learned that his affection for his friends
was still as denunciatory, that S——’s influence had reached such a point
that many of his friends were up in arms against her, avoided their
society, and so on. Carried away by the stories he told me and my own
recollections, I offered to read Tchitcherin my unpublished chapter about
Ketscher and read aloud the whole of it. I have many times repented doing
this, not because he made a bad use of what I read, but because I was
vexed and pained that at forty-five I was capable of exposing our past
before a coarse man who afterwards jeered with such merciless impudence
at what he called my ‘temperament.’

The wide differences that separated our views and our temperaments were
soon made plain.

From the first days an argument sprang up from which it was clear that
we differed in everything. He was a disciple of the French democratic
order and had a dislike for English freedom, not reduced to any logical
order. He saw in the empire the education of the people, and advocated a
powerful state and the abasement of the individual before it. It will be
readily understood what these ideas became when applied to Russia. He was
a governmentalist, looked upon the government as far superior to society
and its movements, and took the Empress Catherine II. for almost the
ideal of what Russia needed. All this theory came from a regular edifice
of dogma from which he could always and at once deduce his theosophy of
bureaucracy.

‘Why do you want to be a professor,’ I asked him, ‘and try to get a
lecturer’s chair? You ought to be a Minister and try to get a portfolio.’

Arguing with him, we saw him off at the railway station and parted
agreeing about nothing but our mutual respect.

A fortnight later he wrote to me from France with enthusiasm about
the working classes, about the institutions. ‘You have found what you
were looking for,’ I answered, ‘and very quickly; that comes of going
there with ready-made views.’ Then I suggested that we should begin a
correspondence in print and wrote the beginning of a long letter.

He did not care to do so and said that he had no time and that such an
argument would do harm....

A remark made in the _Bell_ concerning doctrinaires in general he took
as aimed at himself; his _amour-propre_ was stung, and he sent me his
‘denunciation,’ which made a great talk at the time.

Tchitcherin got the worst of the campaign, of that I have no doubt. The
outburst of indignation invoked by his letter printed in the _Bell_ was
universal in the younger generation and in literary circles. I received
dozens of articles and letters, one of which was published. We were still
mounting an uphill path in those days, and had no need of Katkov’s[136]
drags to hold us back. The coldly offensive, insolently smooth tone,
more perhaps than was actually said, incensed the public and me alike;
it was something new in those days. On the other hand, those who took
Tchitcherin’s side were: Elena Pavlovna, the Iphigenia of the Winter
Palace; Timashov, the head of the Third Section; and N. H. Ketscher.

Ketscher remained true to the reaction, not because he ‘preferred
Grandison to Lovelace’ but because carried without a guiding compass _à
la remorque_ of a circle he remained true to it without noticing that
it was sailing in the opposite direction. The man of a coterie, for him
questions followed the banner of personalities and not the other way
about.

Never having worked through to a single clear understanding or to a
single clear conviction, he advanced with noble aspirations and bandaged
eyes, and was continually beating his enemies, not noticing that the
positions were changed and that in their game of blind-man’s buff he beat
us, beat others, is even now beating some one, even now imagining that he
is accomplishing something.

I append the letter I wrote to Tchitcherin as the beginning of a friendly
discussion which was prevented by his attacking me like a prosecutor:

    ‘MY LEARNED FRIEND,—It is impossible for me to argue with you;
    you know so much, you know it so well, everything in your
    brain is fresh and new, and what matters most is that you are
    convinced you do know it, and so, untroubled, you resolutely
    await the rational development of events in accordance with
    the programme revealed by science. You cannot be in disharmony
    with the present; you know if the past was this and that, the
    present is bound to be this and that, and is bound to lead to
    this and that in the future; you are able to reconcile yourself
    to it through your ideas and your interpretation of it. Yours
    is the happy lot of a priest, comforting the sorrowful with
    the eternal truths of your theory and with your faith in them.
    All these advantages you derive from your dogmatic belief,
    because dogma excludes doubt. Doubt means that a question is
    open; dogma, that the question is closed, settled. And so
    every dogma is exclusive and uncompromising, while doubt can
    never attain so sharp a finality; it is the very essence of
    doubt to be ready to agree with the speaker or conscientiously
    to seek significance in his words, even to the extent of
    losing precious time needed for finding objections. Dogma sees
    truth from a definite angle, accepted as the sole stronghold
    of salvation, while doubt strives to escape from all angles,
    looks all round, returns on its tracks, and often paralyses all
    action by its humility before truth. You, my learned friend,
    know definitely in what direction to go, how to lead; I do not
    know. And so I feel that it is for us to observe and study,
    and for you to teach others. It is true that we can say what
    ought not to be done, we can unite men to act, rouse thought,
    set it free from chains, dispel the phantoms of church and
    police-station, of academy and criminal court—that is all; but
    you can say what ought to be done.

    ‘The attitude of dogma to its object is the religious attitude,
    that is the attitude from the point of view of eternity;
    the temporary, the transitory, persons, events, generations
    scarcely enter into the _Campo Santo_ of philosophy, or, if
    they enter, it is only when purified from real life in the
    form of an herbarium of logical shadows. Dogma as a whole
    lives really in all times, and lives in its own period as
    though it were the past, not spoiling its theoretical attitude
    by too passionate an interest in it. Knowing the necessity
    of suffering, dogma keeps itself as a Simeon Stylites on a
    pedestal, sacrificing everything temporary to the eternal, the
    living particulars to general ideas. In short, the dogmatists
    are first of all historians, while we, together with the crowd,
    are your substratum; you stand for history _für sich_, we—for
    history _an sich_. You explain to us where our disease lies,
    but are we diseased? You bury us, reward us, or punish us after
    our death, you are our doctors and priests; but are we sick or
    dying?

    ‘This antagonism is nothing new and it is of great value for
    progress, for development. If all mankind could believe you, it
    might be rational, but would die of universal boredom. The late
    Filiminov put as an inscription on his “fool’s cap”: _Si la
    raison dominait le monde, il ne s’y passerait rien_.

    ‘The geometrical dryness of dogma, the algebraic impersonality
    of it, gives it the widest power of generalisation; it must
    shun sensations and, like Augustus, command Cleopatra to be
    veiled. But for active intervention passion is more essential
    than dogma, and man has no algebraic passions. The general
    he can understand, but it is the particular that he loves or
    hates. Spinoza with all the outspoken vigour of his genius
    maintained the necessity of reckoning as essential only the
    incorruptible, the eternal, the unchanging substance, and
    not resting one’s hopes on the fortuitous, the relative,
    the personal. Every one understands this in theory, but man
    attaches himself only to the particular, the personal, to the
    accomplished fact; in the reconciling of these extremes, in
    their harmonious combination, lies the highest wisdom of life.

    ‘If from this general definition of our opposite points of view
    we pass to particular examples we shall find that though our
    goal is the same, there is no less antagonism between us; even
    in those instances in which we start from agreement. An example
    will make this clear. We are completely agreed in our attitude
    to religion; but this only goes so far as the denial of
    supernatural religion, but as soon as we come into contact with
    _sublunary_ religion the distance between us is immense. You
    have moved from the dark, incense-laden walls of a cathedral
    to a well-lighted government office, from Guelph you have
    turned Ghibelline, you have replaced the hierarchies of heaven
    by grades in the service, the absorption of the individual
    soul in God by its absorption in the State, God is replaced by
    centralisation, the priest by the police-inspector.

    ‘You see in this change an advance, a triumph, we see new
    chains. We want to be neither Guelphs nor Ghibellines. Your
    secular, civic, and legal religion is the more terrible
    for being deprived of all that is poetical, fantastic, of
    all that is childlike in character; in place of which you
    have the red-tape of officialdom, the idol of the State with
    the Tsar at the top and the hangman at the bottom. You want
    man set free from the church to hang about for a couple of
    centuries in the hall of a government office, while the caste
    of high-priest officials and monks of dogma decide in what way
    and to what degree he is to be free, like our committees for
    the emancipation of the peasants. And all that repels us; we
    can accept a great deal, make concessions, sacrifice something
    to circumstance; but for you it is not a sacrifice. Of course
    in that too you are happier than we. Losing your religious
    faith you are not left without any support; and finding that
    faith in the State may take the place of Christianity for
    mankind, you have accepted it, and you have done very well for
    your moral hygiene, for your peace of mind. But this remedy
    sticks in our throat and we hate your government offices,
    your centralisation, quite as much as the Inquisition, the
    Consistory, the Book of Precepts.

    ‘Do you grasp the difference? You, as a teacher, want to
    teach, to direct, to herd your flock. We, like a flock that
    is becoming conscious, do not want to be herded, but want
    to have our own village courts, our own representatives,
    our own delegates, to whom we can entrust the management of
    our affairs. That is why the authority of the government is
    an insult to us at every step, while you applaud it as your
    predecessors the priests applauded the temporal power. You may
    even differ from it as the clergy has sometimes differed from
    it or like people quarrelling on board ship: however great the
    distance between you may be, you are still in the same boat,
    and for us, laymen, you are still on the side of the government.

    ‘Civic religion—the apotheosis of the State—is a purely Roman
    idea and in the modern world, principally French. It is
    consistent with a strong state, but is incompatible with a
    free people; through it you may get splendid soldiers, but
    you cannot have independent citizens. The United States, on
    the contrary, have, so far as it is possible, abolished the
    religious character of the police and the administration.’


EPILOGUE

On re-reading the chapter about Ketscher I cannot help reflecting on
the original, eccentric characters who live or have lived in Russia.
What whimsical personalities occur again and again in the history of our
culture! In what countries, under what degrees of latitude and longitude
could a figure be found as angular, as rugged, as captious and erratic,
as good-natured and ill-natured, as noisy and unmanageable as Ketscher’s
except in Moscow?

And how many of these original figures have I watched ‘in all their
varied kinds,’ from my father to Turgenev’s ‘Children.’ ‘This is how
the Russian oven turns them out,’ Pogodin said to me. And indeed, what
marvels it does turn out, especially when the head is made on the
German pattern ... from Russian buns and bread-rings to Orthodox loaves
flavoured with Hegel, and French rolls _à la quatre-vingt-treize_! It
would be a pity if all these original products should be lost and leave
no trace. We usually dwell only upon the leading figures.

But in them the effect of the Russian oven is less obvious; in them
its peculiarities are corrected and redeemed; they are examples of the
Russian type of intelligence rather than of the influence of their
environment. These are followed by all sorts of unattached individuals
who have lost their way; the eccentric figures among them are beyond all
reckoning. The tiny connecting links that make up the chain of historical
movements, the particles of yeast which are lost in the dough, they have
raised it, not for their own benefit. Men who awoke early in the dark
night and groped feeling their way to work, stumbling against everything
in their road, they awakened others to quite different labours.

... I will try some day to save two or three more profiles from complete
oblivion. They are almost lost already in the grey fog from which only
the mountain tops and high crags stand out.


II

BASIL AND ARMANCE

(_An episode of the year 1844._)

A very characteristic episode is connected with our second
_villeggiatura_; it would really be a pity not to put it in, although
Natalie and I had very little to do with it. This episode might be
called: ‘Armance and Basil, or the philosopher from civility, the
Christian from courtesy, and George Sand’s “Jacques” turned into the
Jacques of Destiny.’ It began at a French fancy dress ball.

In the winter of 1843 I went to a fancy dress ball. There were a mass of
people there, five thousand if I remember right, and scarcely any one I
knew. Basil was whirling round with a masked lady, he had no thoughts
to spare for me. He was slightly shaking his head and screwing up his
eyelashes, as connoisseurs do when they find the wine excellent and the
grouse marvellous.

The ball took place in the hall of a reputable society. I walked about
and sat down a little, looking at Russian aristocrats dressed up as
pierrots of all sorts, zealously doing their best to look like Parisian
shopmen and desperate dancers of the _cancan_, and went upstairs to
supper; there Basil sought me out. He was in an utterly abnormal state,
and in the first glow of the acute period of love; it was more acute as
Basil was about that time forty and his hair was beginning to be thin on
his lofty brow. He talked to me incoherently of some French ‘Mignon,’
with all the simplicity of a Klärchen and all the playful charm of a
Parisian _grisette_.

At first I imagined that this was one of those romances in one chapter
in which there is a conquest on the first page and a bill to pay on the
last. But I became convinced that this was not the case. Basil saw his
Parisian girl a second or third time and followed circumvolutionary
tactics without making a direct attack. He introduced me to her. Armance
really was a lively, charming child of Paris, who took after her parent.
From her language to her manners and the special shade of independence
and boldness—everything about her was characteristic of the respectable
working-class of the great city, she was still a work-girl not a
petty-bourgeoise. This type has never existed among us. The careless
gaiety, the easy manners, freedom, mischief, were all combined with the
instinct of self-preservation, the instinctive feeling of danger and
honour. Flung as children sometimes from ten years old into the battle
of poverty and temptation, defenceless, surrounded by the pestilential
infection of Paris and snares of all sorts, they become their own
providence and protection. Such girls may readily give themselves, but it
is hard to take them by surprise, unawares. Those of them who might be
bought never get into this class of working girls; they are bought before
they reach that stage, are whirled off and engulfed in another type,
sometimes for ever, sometimes to reappear six or seven years later in
their carriage in Longchamps or in the box at the opera—_mit Perlen und
Diamanten_.

Basil was over head and ears in love. A theorist in music and a
philosopher in painting, he was one of the most complete representatives
of the ultra-Hegelians. He spent his whole life soaring in an aesthetic
heavens among philosophical and critical niceties. He looked upon life as
he did upon Shakespeare, reducing everything in life to its philosophical
significance, making everything lively boring and everything fresh
stale; in fact, leaving no emotion of the heart in its directness and
simplicity. This attitude, however, was characteristic in varying degrees
of almost every circle of that period; some broke loose from it by
talent, others from liveliness, but traces of it persisted for a long
time with all—some kept the jargon, others the philosophy itself.

‘Let us go’ Bakunin said to T—— in Berlin at the beginning of the
’forties, ‘and plunge into the gulf of real life, let us fling ourselves
into the waves’; and they went to ask Varnhagen von Ense to dip them like
a dexterous bathing man into the gulf of practical life and to present
them to a pretty actress. It will be readily understood that with such
preparations there is no reaching a plunge into the passions that ‘devour
the secret sources of our spirit,’ nor indeed to any action whatever. The
Germans too do not get to action; but then Germans do not seek action,
but simply tranquillity. Our temperament on the other hand cannot endure
this attitude—_des theoretischen Schweigens_—gets entangled, stumbles,
and trips up more funnily than seriously. And so our philosopher in love
at forty began, screwing up his eyes, to collate all the speculative
theories on the demonic power of love which drew Hercules and the
frail youth alike to the feet of Omphale, began to explain to himself
and others the moral idea of the family, the foundations of marriage
(Hegel’s _Philosophy of Law_, Chapter _Sittlichkeit_). There was no
impediment on the side of Hegel. But the phenomenal world of fortuity and
appearances—the world of the spirit not yet freed from tradition—was
not so accommodating. Basil had a father, Pyotr Konytch, a wealthy man
who had himself been married three times in succession and had had three
children by each marriage. On learning that his son, and the eldest one
too, wanted to marry a Catholic, a poor girl, and a French one, coming
moreover from Kuznetsky Bridge, he resolutely refused his blessing.
Basil, who had adopted the _chic_ and manners of scepticism, might have
perhaps dispensed with the parental blessing; but the old man associated
with the blessing not only consequences _jenseits_ (in the other world),
but also _diesseits_ (in this world), to wit, his inheritance.

The old man’s opposition hurried things on, as is always the case, and
Basil began to think of hastening the _dénouement_. The only thing left
to do was to get married without wasting words, and later on to make the
old man accept _un fait accompli_, or to conceal the marriage from him
in the expectation that before long he would neither bless nor curse nor
dispose of his fortune.

But the unenlightened world of tradition had to be reckoned with even
then. To be married on the quiet in Moscow was not easy and was extremely
expensive, and the wedding would have reached his father’s ears at once
through deacons, sacristans, church servitors, match-makers, clerks,
shopboys, and gossips of all sorts. It was proposed to sound our Father
Ioann in the village of Pokrovskoe, known to my readers from the scandal
of his stealing when inebriated a silver watch and box from the sacristan.

Father Ioann, on learning that the disobedient son was about forty,
that the bride was not Russian and that her parents were not here,
that, besides me, a university professor would sign as a witness, began
thanking me for this kind service, probably supposing that I was trying
to marry Basil in order to secure him a two-hundred rouble note. He was
so touched that he shouted to the next room: ‘Wife, wife, bring out two
or three eggs,’ and a bottle wrapt in paper out of the cupboard, in order
to regale me.

Everything went well.

The day of the wedding and other details were not fixed: Armance was to
come to Pokrovskoe to stay with us. Basil who meant to accompany her was
to return to Moscow and, after making the final arrangements, to come
from his father’s curse to receive the drunken blessing of Father Ioann.

In expectation of _i promessi sposi_ we ordered supper to be got ready
and sat down to wait for them. We waited and waited: it struck twelve
o’clock at night. No one came.... One o’clock—still no one. The ladies
went to bed. A—— and Ketscher and I set to upon the supper. _Le ore
suonan al quadriano, e una e due e tre_ ... but ... still no sign of them.

At last the tinkle of a bell came nearer and nearer, there was the rumble
of wheels over the bridge. We rushed into the porch. A coach drawn by
three horses drove rapidly into the yard and stopped, Basil came out. I
went up to give my hand to Armance; she seized my hand at once, but with
such force that I almost cried out—and then flung herself on my neck
repeating with a giggle, ‘Monsieur Herstin’ ... it was no other than
Vissarion Grigoryevitch Byelinsky in _propria persona_.

There was no one in the coach but Byelinsky who was laughing till he
coughed and Basil who was crying till he had a cold in his nose. We
looked at one another in amazement. I must observe that, to add to the
effect, there had been no trace of Byelinsky in Moscow till two days
before. ‘Give me something to eat,’ Byelinsky said at last, ‘I’ll tell
you then what marvels have been happening among us; I must defend poor
Basil, who is more afraid of you than of Armance.’

This is what had happened. Seeing that things were moving rapidly to a
climax Basil took fright; he began to reflect and was utterly overwhelmed
as he pondered on the mercilessly fatal character of marriage, its
indissolubility according to the code of Russian law and the code
of Hegel; he locked himself up, a victim to the spirit of agonising
investigation and ruthless analysis. His terror grew from hour to hour,
the more so as the way of retreat was not easy either, and to decide to
take it needed almost as much character as the marriage itself. This
terror grew till Byelinsky, who on arriving from Petersburg went straight
to see him, knocked at his door. Basil described to him all the horror
with which he was going to meet his happiness, and all the aversion with
which he was entering upon marriage with love—and asked his advice and
help.

Byelinsky answered that he must be mad after this—consciously and knowing
beforehand what it would be—to take such fetters upon himself. ‘Herzen
now,’ he said, ‘got married and eloped with his wife, and came from exile
to get her; but ask him: he never once reflected whether he ought to
do so or not and what the consequence would be. I am sure it seemed to
him that he could do nothing else. Well! But you want to do the same,
analysing and reflecting.’

This was all Basil wanted; he wrote to Armance that very night, a
dissertation upon marriage, upon his luckless theorisings, upon the
impossibility of simple happiness, from an analytic spirit, he laid
before her all the disadvantages and dangers of their union and asked her
advice—what they should do now.

He brought her answer with him.

In Byelinsky’s account and in Armance’s letter their two natures,
hers and Basil’s, came out vividly. A marriage between persons of
such opposite temperaments would certainly have been strange. Armance
wrote sorrowfully: she was surprised, wounded, did not understand his
reflections, and saw in them a pretext and a sign of cooling love. She
said that, since it was so, there must be no talk of marriage, gave him
back his promise, and concluded by saying that after what had happened
they had better not meet. ‘I shall remember you with gratitude,’
she wrote, ‘and do not blame you in the least. I know that you are
exceedingly good, but even more exceedingly weak! Good-bye, and may you
be happy.’

Such a letter could not have been altogether agreeable to receive. In
every word there was strength, vigour, and haughtiness. The child of
splendid plebeian stock, Armance was worthy of her origin. Had she been
an Englishwoman, what a tight hold she would have kept of Basil’s letter,
how by the lips of her virtuous solicitor she would have described with
indignation and shamefaced modesty his first pressure of her hand, his
first kiss, and how her lawyer with tears in his eyes and chalk on his
wig would have exhorted the jury to compensate injured innocence with a
couple of thousand pounds.

The French woman, the poor sewing girl never thought of that.

The two or three days they spent at Pokrovskoe were depressing for the
ex-bridegroom. He was like a school-boy who has disgraced himself in
class, and is afraid both of the teacher and his comrades. He wrote me
a letter which showed confusion and dissatisfaction with himself and
asked me to come and say good-bye. At the beginning of August I went from
Pokrovskoe to Moscow; while I was away Natalie received at Pokrovskoe a
new dissertation from him. I went to Basil’s and came straight in upon
a farewell banquet. They were drinking champagne, and in the toasts and
good wishes there were strange hints. ‘Of course you don’t know,’ Basil
murmured into my ear: ‘You see I ... er ...’ and he added in a whisper:
‘you see Armance is going with me. What a girl; only now I have learned
to know her,’ and he shook his head.

This was as great a surprise as Byelinsky’s unexpected appearance.

In the letter to Natalie he explained to her at great length that thought
and reflection upon marriage had brought him to hesitation and despair;
he doubted both of his love for Armance and his suitability for family
life; that in that way he had come to the agonising feeling that he ought
to break off everything and flee to Paris, that in that state of mind he
had come, pitiful and ridiculous, to Pokrovskoe. After he had reached
this decision he had read the letter of Armance over again and made a
fresh discovery, to wit, that he loved Armance very much, and he had
therefore asked her to see him and had again offered her his hand. He had
thought again of the priest at Pokrovskoe, but the proximity of Mamonov’s
factory frightened him. He was intending to be married in Petersburg and
at once to set off for France. ‘Armance is as happy as a child!’

In Petersburg Basil thought fit to be married in the Kazan cathedral.
That philosophy and learning might not be forgotten, he asked the chief
priest Sidonsky, the learned author of the _Introduction to the Study
of Philosophy_, to perform the ceremony. Sidonsky had long known Basil
from his learned articles as a free and worldly thinker and a disciple of
the German philosophy. After all the strange things that had happened to
Armance, she had the honour rarely vouchsafed to any of serving as the
occasion for one of the most comic meetings of two sworn foes, learning
and religion.

To show off his worldly culture Sidonsky began before the wedding talking
of the latest philosophic _brochures_, and when everything was ready and
the sacristan held up the epitrahil which, stooping, he began to put on,
he said to Basil, dropping his eyes: ‘Pardon me, it is a ceremony; I
know very well that the Christian ritual has outlived its time, that....’

‘Oh, no, no,’ Basil interrupted in a voice full of sympathy and
compassion: ‘Christianity is eternal; its essence, its substance, cannot
pass away.’

Sidonsky, with a chaste glance, thanked his ‘chivalrous’ antagonist,
turned to the choir and chanted: ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord, now
and for ever and ever!’ ‘Amen,’ boomed the choir, and the ceremony went
on in due order, and Sidonsky led Basil in a crown and Armance in a crown
round the lectern ... making Isaiah rejoice.

From the cathedral Basil took Armance home and leaving her there spent a
literary soirée at Krayevsky’s. Ten days later Byelinsky saw the happy
pair into the steamer. At this point it will be supposed that the story
is certainly ended.

Not a bit of it.

Things went very well as far as the Cattegat; but at that point George
Sand’s accursed novel _Jacques_ turned up.

‘What do you think of _Jacques_?’ Basil asked Armance as she was
finishing the novel.

Armance told him her opinion of it, Basil informed her that it was quite
mistaken, that her criticism wounded his spirit on its deepest side, and
that his philosophy of life had nothing in common with hers.

The sanguine Armance was unwilling to change her philosophy of life, so
they both crossed the Belt.

When they came out into the German Ocean Basil felt more at home, and
made another attempt to persuade Armance to take a different view of
_Jacques_ and to change her philosophy of life.

Almost dying of sea-sickness, Armance with a last effort declared that
she would not change her opinion of _Jacques_.

‘What have we in common after that?’ observed Basil, flying into a rage.

‘Nothing,’ answered Armance, ‘and _si vous me cherchez, querelle_, then
let us simply part as soon as we touch land.’

‘You have decided,’ said Basil, very high and mighty; ‘you prefer....’

‘Anything in the world to living with you; you are an insufferable man,
weak and tyrannical.’

‘Madame!’

‘Monsieur!’

She went to the cabin, he remained on deck. Armance kept her word. From
Havre she went to her father, and a year later returned to Russia and
indeed went on to Siberia.

This time I believe the story of this intermittent marriage is ended.

Though indeed Barère[137] has said:

    ‘Only the dead do not return.’


       _Written 1857_,
    LAUREL HOUSE, PUTNEY.




FOOTNOTES


[1] Kaunitz (1711-1794) was for over forty years the leading statesman of
Austria under Maria Theresa and Joseph II., and one of the most prominent
figures in European politics.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[2] Among my papers are several letters of Sasha’s written between 1835
and 1836. Sasha was left behind in Moscow while her friend was in the
country with the princess. I cannot read this simple and passionate
whisper of the heart without deep feeling. ‘Can it be true,’ she writes,
‘that you are coming? Ah, if you really did come, I don’t know what
would happen to me. You would not believe how often I am thinking of
you, almost all my desires, all my thoughts, all, all, all are with
you.... Ah, Natalya Alexandrovna, how splendid you are, how sweet, how
noble!—but I cannot express it. Truly, these are not studied words, they
are straight from the heart....’

In another letter she thanks Natalie for writing so often. ‘It is really
too good, but there, that’s you, you,’ and she ends the letter with the
words: ‘They keep interrupting me, I embrace you, my angel, with true
immeasurable love. Give me your blessing!’

[3] Skalozub, a character in Griboyedov’s celebrated play, ‘Woe from Wit’
(or perhaps better, ‘Sorrow comes from having Sense’), is the typical
coarse, ignorant, blustering military bully.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[4] I know very well how affected the French translation of names sounds,
but a name is a traditional thing and how is one to change it? Besides,
all unslavonic names are with us, as it were, shortened and less musical;
we, educated to some extent, ‘not in the law of our fathers,’ in our
youth ‘romanticised’ names, while the powers in authority ‘Slavonised’
them. As a man is promoted and attains to influence at court, the letters
in his name are changed—thus, for instance, Count Strogonov remained
to the end of his days Sergeyey Grigoryevitch, but Prince Golitsyn
was always called Sergiey Mihailovitch. The last example of such a
transformation we saw in General Rostovtsov, celebrated in connection
with the Fourteenth of December; throughout the reign of Nicholas he was
Yakov, as was Yakov Dolgoruky, but with the accession of Alexander II. he
became Iakov, the same as the brother of our Lord!

[5] Xavier Saintine (1798-1865), a French writer of whose many plays
and stories only _Picciola, or the Prisoner’s Flower_ is still well
known.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[6] From Pushkin’s _Yevgeny Onyegin_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[7] The reference is probably to Bulgarin, a journalist in close
relations with Benckendorf (Chief of the Secret Police). This Bulgarin
made many petty personal attacks on Pushkin, who in a well-known poem
addresses him by the name Vidok-Figlyarin.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[8] Shemyaka was a prince of ancient Russia, whose injustice is
still remembered in the proverbial expression, a ‘Shemyaka’s
judgment.’—(_Translator’s Note._)

[9] The difference between the style of Natalie’s letters and mine
is very great, especially in the early part of our correspondence;
afterwards it was less unequal and in the end becomes similar. In my
letters, together with genuine feeling there are affected expressions,
far-fetched high-flown phrases, the influence of the school of Hugo and
the new French novelists is apparent. There is nothing of the sort in her
letters, her language is simple, poetic, and sincere, the only influence
that can be discerned in it is the influence of the Gospel. At that time
I was still trying to write in the grand style and wrote badly, because
it was not my own language. A life in spheres cut off from practical
experience, and too much reading prevents a young man for years from
speaking and writing naturally and simply. Intellectual maturity only
begins when the style is established and has taken its final form.

[10] On the other hand, the enlightened government appointed as French
master in the same Vyatka high school the celebrated Orientalist
Vernikovsky, who was a colleague of Kovalevsky’s and Mickiewicz’s, and
was exiled in connection with the Philarets’ case.[11]

[11] The Philarets or ‘lovers of virtue’ were a students’ society of
the Vilna University in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Their object was to promote learning, to help the poor, and to preach
ideals of goodness and justice. Tovjanski and Mickiewicz were members of
it.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[12] A fragment of this chapter was published in the _Polar Star_, vol.
i. page 79, together with the following note:

Who is entitled to write his reminiscences?

Every one.

Because no one is obliged to read them.

In order to write one’s reminiscences it is not at all necessary to be
a great man, nor a notorious criminal, nor a celebrated artist, nor
a statesman—it is quite enough to be simply a human being, to have
something to tell, and not merely to desire to tell it but at least some
little ability to do so.

Every life is interesting; if not the personality, then the environment,
the country are interesting, life itself is interesting. Man likes to
enter into another existence, he likes to touch the subtlest fibres
of another’s heart, and to listen to its beating ... he compares, he
checks it by his own, he seeks in himself confirmation, justification,
sympathy....

But may not memoirs be tedious, may not the life described be colourless
and commonplace?

Then we shall not read it—there is no worse punishment for a book than
that.

Moreover, that is no drawback to the writing of memoirs. Benvenuto
Cellini’s _Diary_ is not interesting because he was an excellent worker
in gold but because it is in itself as interesting as any novel.

The fact is that the very word ‘entitled’ to this or that form of
composition does not belong to our epoch, but dates from an era of
intellectual immaturity, from an era of poet-laureates, doctors’ caps,
peddling savants, certificated philosophers, diplomaed metaphysicians
and other Pharisees of the Christian world. Then the act of writing
was regarded as something sacred, a man writing for the public used a
high-flown unnatural choice language, he ‘expounded’ or ‘sang.’

We simply talk; for us writing is the same sort of secular pursuit,
the same sort of work or amusement as any other. In this connection it
is difficult to dispute ‘the right to work.’ Whether the work will win
recognition and approval is quite a different matter.

A year ago I published in Russia part of my memoirs under the title of
_Prison and Exile_. I published it in London at the beginning of the war.
I did not reckon upon readers nor upon any attention outside Russia.
The success of that book exceeded all expectations: the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, the most chaste and rigid of journals, published half the book
in a French translation; the clever and learned _Athenaeum_ printed
extracts in English; the whole book has appeared in German and is being
published in England.

That is why I have ventured to print extracts from other parts.

In another place I speak of the immense importance my memoirs have for
me personally, and the object with which I began writing them. I confine
myself now to the general remark that the publication of contemporary
memoirs is particularly useful for us Russians. Thanks to the censorship,
we are not accustomed to anything being made public, and the slightest
publicity frightens, checks, and surprises us. In England any man who
appears on any public stage, whether as a huckster of letters or a
guardian of the press, is liable to the same hisses and applause as the
actor in the lowest theatre in Islington or Paddington. Neither the Queen
nor her husband are excluded. It is a mighty curb!

Let our Imperial Actors of the secret and open police, who have been so
well protected from publicity by the censorship and paternal punishments,
know that sooner or later their deeds will come into the light of day.

[13] Jeanne Deroin was a disciple of Saint Simon who published an
_Almanach des Femmes_ in 1851.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[14] These little notes were kept by Natalie, and on many of them she
wrote a few words in pencil. I could not preserve any of the letters she
wrote to me in prison. I was obliged to destroy them all at once.

[15] I omit it.

[16] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[17] Arnold Ruge (1802-1880) began his political career with six years’
imprisonment in connection with the _Burschenschaft_ movement, founded
the _Deutsche Jahrbücher_, the journal of the Young Hegelian School,
and some ten years later _Die Reform_, a more definitely political
paper. From 1849 he lived in England, advocated a universal democratic
state, and wrote many books, of which his autobiography is now of most
interest.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[18] Tovjanski was a Pole, and at one time a member of the Society of
Philarets. He held that there were many Messiahs, of whom Napoleon was
one and himself another.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[19] His real name was Gaunot, and he was an adventurer well known in
Paris between 1830 and 1850. He went in for being a god and called his
religion _evadisme_ (from Eve and Adam), and himself Mapah from _mater_
and _pater_. He suggested to Dumas that the latter should become his
chief disciple.

[20] Théroigne de Méricourt, called ‘l’Amazone de la liberté,’ assisted
at the taking of the Bastille and became a popular heroine. Later on
she was publicly whipped by a crowd of women, and lost her reason in
consequence of this outrage.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[21] Carus, K. G. (1789-1869), a distinguished German physiologist,
author of numerous works on anatomy, physiology, and allied
subjects.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[22] Stefan Yavorsky was a famous monk and theologian of the eighteenth
century.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[23] ‘The Tarantass,’ a story by Count Sologub, author of various
comedies and novels satirising the official class.

[24] Parasha, an early poem of Turgenev’s.

[25] Motchalov, the great Russian actor, was particularly famous for his
playing of Hamlet.

[26] _Murmolka_, a peasant cap, and _zipun_ a long homespun peasant
coat.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[27] Saharov, Ivan Petrovitch (1807-1863), a well-known archaeologist and
ethnographist, was a doctor of medicine and lecturer on palaeology. His
discoveries are now regarded somewhat sceptically, but he did much for
Russian antiquarian study.

[28] Meiendorf, Alexander Kazimirovitch (1788-1865), a writer on
historical and geographical subjects.

[29] Ioakinth Bitchurin (1777-1853), a monk and at one time an
archimandrite, head of the Orthodox Mission to Pekin, and later on a
translator from the Chinese in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was an
authority on Chinese language and history.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[30] The reference is to the open letter in which Byelinsky expressed his
passionate indignation at the _Correspondence with Friends_, published by
Gogol.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[31] Klyutchnikov vividly expressed this in the following image:
‘Stankevitch is a silver rouble that envies the size of a copper
piece.’—Annenkov, _Biography of Stankevitch_, p. 133.

[32] Botkin, Vassily Petrovitch (1810-1865), the self-taught son of a
merchant, was a fine critic and authority on art and literature. His
criticism was greatly valued by his friends, and his writings (chiefly
articles in magazines) give no idea of his real importance in the history
of Russian culture. His brother was the great physician.

[33] Krassov, Vassily Ivanovitch (1810-1855), a poet, at one time
professor of literature in Kiev. His brother Ivan was a teacher of
history in the Petersburg secondary schools.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[34] Victor Hugo, after reading _My Past and Thoughts_, in the French
translation, wrote me a letter in defence of the youth of France at the
period of the Restoration.

[35] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.

[36] Date of Peter the Great’s death.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[37] Timofeyev, a sixth-rate writer of forgotten poems.

[38] Kukolnik, Nestor (1805-1868), was a schoolfellow of Gogol’s, and a
very popular writer of stories and dramas in the most extreme romantic
style—fearfully bombastic and unreal, and hyper-patriotic.

[39] The Moravian Brethren, called _Herrnhuter_ from the little town of
Herrnhut in Saxony, where they settled in 1722, are a Protestant sect who
abjure military service, the taking of oaths, and all distinctions of
rank.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[40] I declare, on my word of honour, that the word ‘scoundrel’ was used
by this worthy old person.

[41] Paul Louis Courier (1772-1825), a learned and brilliant writer of
political pamphlets and letters, who discovered a complete manuscript
of Longus’s _Daphnis and Chloe_, of which he published a French
translation.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[42] Miss Wilmot’s words.

[43] The Comte d’Artois—afterwards Charles X.

[44] The Comte de Ségur (1753-1830) was French ambassador in Petersburg
and a favourite of Catherine II. He was a man of action as well
as a spirited writer, served in the American War of Independence,
welcomed every movement on the side of liberty, and wrote a charming
account of his times in his _Galerie Morale et Politique_, and his
_Mémoires_.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[45] The Grand Duke, brother of Nicholas I., is meant.—(_Translator’s
Note._)

[46] Perun was the God of sky and of thunder, the chief God of the
ancient Slavs.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[47] This is so true that a German who has abused me a dozen times in the
_Morning Advertiser_ adduced as proof that I had never been exiled the
fact that I had the post of councillor in the provincial government.

[48] I am not certain whether these dissenters were Duhobors.

[49] The landowner in ‘The Agent,’ one of Turgenev’s ‘Sportsman’s
Sketches.’

[50] Saltytchiha was a lady notorious in the reign of Catherine
for her cruelty to her serfs. She was eventually brought to
justice.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[51] _Property in Serfs._

[52] Araktcheyev left, I believe, a hundred thousand roubles to be paid a
hundred years later, together with the accumulated interest, to the man
who should write the best history of the reign of Alexander I.

[53] Araktcheyev was a pitiful coward, as Count Toll tells us in his
memoirs, and the Secretary of State Martchenko in a little story of the
Fourteenth of December published in the _Polar Star_. I have heard that
he was in hiding during the Staraya Russa rising, and was in deadly
terror of Reihel the general of Engineers.

[54] I am extremely sorry that I have forgotten the Christian name of the
worthy gentleman. I remember his surname was Zherebtsov.

[55] These extracts are inserted here by the author in a slightly altered
form.—_Note to Russian edition._

[56] Here Herzen describes how, returning late one evening after a
festive supper party with his friends, he was tempted by a maidservant,
who, half undressed, opened the door to him. This transgression came to
the knowledge of Natalya Alexandrovna.—_Note to Russian edition._

[57] Written in England.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[58] Zurbaran, a Spanish painter of religious subjects. A well-known
picture of his is of a monk castigating himself before an effigy of the
Madonna.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[59] Puchta, a German professor and authority on Roman law.

[60] Savigny, a German university teacher, of French origin, and an
authority on modern jurisprudence.

[61] Roteck, a German university teacher and authority on Roman
law.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[62] Buchez, Philippe (1796-1865), a French philosopher and political
writer; at first a follower of Saint Simon, afterwards an advocate of
what he called Christian Socialism.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[63] Cabet, Étienne (1788-1856), was a French communist, one of the
leaders of the Carbonari, and author of a philosophical and social
romance _Voyage en Icarie_, describing a Communist Utopia. In 1848
a band of French workmen went out to found an ‘Icarian colony’ in
Texas.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[64] Readers of _The Possessed_ may be interested to know that Dostoevsky
is supposed (I cannot say whether on sufficient evidence) to have
modelled the character of Stepan Trofimovitch in the earlier chapters of
that novel on Granovsky.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[65] Ciceruacchio, a popular leader (his real name was Angelo Brunetti)
in Rome, who had great influence from 1847, supporting the reforms of
Pius IX., and active in bringing about the proclamation of a republic in
February 1849. He was captured and shot with his sons the following July.

[66] The late Emperor of Austria, Francis Joseph.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[67] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.

[68] The _Domostroy_ was a sixteenth-century book of moral precepts and
practical advice written by the priest Sylvester, the adviser of Ivan the
Terrible.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[69] Deutschthum was the nationalist movement in Germany. It was
considered more patriotic to spell it Teutschthum.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[70] Barclay de Tolly was one of the ablest of the Russian generals
of 1812. He was, as a matter of fact, of Scottish not of German
descent.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[71] Shishkov, born 1754, began his career as a naval officer and
attained the rank of vice-admiral, but, disapproving of the reforms of
the early years of Alexander’s reign, left the navy. From 1812 he became
prominent as a writer and president of the Academy, and from 1824 to 1828
was Minister of Public Instruction. Intensely conservative and patriotic,
he bitterly opposed every new movement in literature and politics.

[72] Shebuev (1776-1855) was a well-known painter of historical pictures
in the pseudo-classical style.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[73] At first the national hymn was very naïvely sung to the tune of ‘God
save the King,’ and indeed it was scarcely ever sung. It was among the
innovations of Nicholas. From the time of the Polish War the national
hymn composed by Colonel Lvov of the _Corps of gendarmes_ was, by
Imperial command, sung at all the royal festivities and at large concerts.

The Emperor Alexander was too well educated to like crude flattery; he
listened with disgust in Paris to the Academicians’ despicable speeches
grovelling at the feet of the Conqueror. On one occasion meeting
Chateaubriand in his vestibule he showed him the last number of the
_Journal des Débats_, and added: ‘I assure you I have never once seen
such dull abjectness in any Russian paper.’ But in the time of Nicholas
there were literary men who fully justified his Imperial confidence, and
outdid all the journalists of 1814 and even some of the prefects of 1852.
Bulgarin wrote in the _Northern Bee_ that among the other advantages of
the railway between Moscow and Petersburg, he could not think without
emotion that the same man would be able to hear a service for the health
of his Imperial Majesty in the morning in the Kazan Cathedral, and in
the evening in the Kremlin! One would have thought it difficult to excel
this awful absurdity, but there was found a literary man in Moscow who
surpassed its author. On one of Nicholas’s visits to Moscow a learned
professor wrote an article in which, speaking of the immense mass of the
people crowding before the palace, he added that the Tsar had but to
express the faintest desire—and those thousands rushing to carry it out
would gladly fling themselves into the river Moskva. The sentence was
erased by S. G. Strogonov, who told me this charming anecdote.

[74] Lyapunov, a national hero who fought the Poles in the ‘Time of
Trouble.’ Several plays were written about him—one by Gedeonov, on which
Turgenev wrote a criticism. Kukolnik’s play is meant here.—(_Translator’s
Note._)

[75] I was at the first performance of Lyapunov in Moscow and saw the
hero tuck up his sleeves and say something like, ‘I’ll wash my hands in
Polish blood.’ A hollow moan of repulsion broke from the whole body of
the theatre; even the gendarmes, policemen, and people in stalls, the
numbers on whose seats had somehow been rubbed off, could not summon up
the pluck to applaud.

[76] The Uniats are members of the Greek Church who accept the supremacy
of the Pope.

[77] ‘The Hand of the Most High saved the Fatherland’ is the title of a
play by Kukolnik.

[78] Baron Joseph Jellachich, an Austrian general, who was also a poet
and politician. In 1848 he was appointed Ban of Croatia, and took part in
suppressing the revolt of the Hungarians.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[79] Tchaadayev was often at the English Club. On one occasion Menshikov,
Minister of Naval Affairs, went up to him with the words: ‘How is it,
Pyotr Yakovlevitch, you don’t recognise your old acquaintances?’ ‘Oh, it
is you,’ answered Tchaadayev, who really had not recognised him, ‘but how
is it you are wearing a black collar? I fancy that you used to wear a red
one.’ ‘Why, don’t you know I am Minister of Naval Affairs?’ ‘You! why, I
imagine you have never steered a boat.’ ‘You don’t need much wit to bake
a pot, you know,’ answered Menshikov, a little bit displeased. ‘Oh well,
if it is on that principle ...’ answered Tchaadayev.

A Senator was making great complaints of being very busy. ‘With what?’
asked Tchaadayev. ‘Upon my soul, the mere reading of the notes and
papers!’ and the Senator made a gesture indicating a pile a yard from the
floor. ‘But you don’t read them?’ ‘Oh yes, sometimes I do, and besides,
it is often necessary to give my opinion on them.’ ‘Well, I don’t see the
necessity,’ answered Tchaadayev.

[80] We now know for certain from Yakushkin’s _Diary_ that Tchaadayev was
a member of the Decembrist society.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[81] Charles François Chevé (1813-1875) was a political writer, at one
time a follower of Proudhon, but afterwards a Catholic.

[82] Ronge was the founder of a school of Liberal Catholicism.

[83] Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the great Polish poet, author of _Pan
Tadeusz_, spent some time in Russia and was a friend of Pushkin and his
circle.

[84] Sigismund Krasinski (1812-1859), a Polish poet, author of _Nieboska
Komedeja_, the _Undivine Comedy_.

[85] Lady Morgan (_née_ Sydney Owenson) (1789-1859), a lively Irish
authoress (and something of an adventuress), published many novels as
well as entertaining memoirs.

[86] _Mémoires d’un Prisonnier d’État au Spitzberg_, by Alexandre
Andryane, is probably the work here referred to.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[87] Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul (1763-1845), was in 1811 Professor of
Philosophy in Paris, opposed materialism, supported the Scottish School
of Reid and Stewart, and originated the ‘Doctrinaire’ School of which
Jouffroy and Cousin were afterwards representative.

[88] Friedrich Schlegel, German critic, author of _Lectures on the
Philosophy of History_, and _History of Literature_, joined the Roman
Catholic Church.

[89] Heinrich Leo (1799-1878), originally a Radical, went over to the
reactionary side on hearing of the murder of Kotzebue. He was much
influenced by Herder, and was suspected of leanings towards Catholicism.

[90] Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), commonly called ‘Vater Jahn,’ is
chiefly known for his advocacy of gymnastic clubs. He was also connected
with the formation of the _Burschenschaft_, a students’ association
persecuted by the government authorities. He was in prison from 1819 to
1825.

[91] Prince Hohenlohe, nicknamed the ‘miracle-worker,’ was brought up by
Jesuits, became a priest, preached in Munich and other towns, and set out
to heal diseases. He was checked in his activities both by the Pope and
the police.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[92] Translated by Juliet Soskice.

[93] Translated by Juliet Soskice.

[94] The name _Slav_ is derived from _Slovo_, _word_,
_language_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[95] ‘Moreover,’ he said to me in the presence of Homyakov, ‘they boast
of speech, but in the whole race Homyakov is the only one who speaks.’

[96] Granovitaya Palata, the hall in the Kremlin in which the Tsar and
his councillors used to meet before the time of Peter the Great.

[97] Novgorod, the most famous city in the earliest period of Russian
history, was to some extent a republic under the rule of its princes from
Rurik upwards. It was almost destroyed and was deprived of its liberties
by Ivan III. in 1471.

[98] The Ulozhenie is the code of laws of Tsar Alexis Mihailovitch
(father of Peter the Great), compiled in the seventeenth
century.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[99] The Varangians were Scandinavian and Norman tribes, whose rulers
were, according to tradition, summoned in 862 by the Northern Slavs to
rule over them.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[100] Written at the time of the Crimean War.

[101] Shevyryov, professor of literature in Moscow University and author
of a _History of Poetry_, in which he advances many fantastic theories.
Pogodin was professor of history, and they were co-editors of the
_Moskvityanin_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[102] Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov were the sons of Sergey Timofeyevitch
Aksakov (1791-1859), a writer of the first rank, some of whose charming
pictures of the country and old-fashioned Russian life are now accessible
in excellent translations by J. D. Duff.

[103] Alexandr Ivanovitch Turgenev, a distinguished person in his own
day, now chiefly remembered for having been a very good friend to
Pushkin, was one of the Turgenevs of Simbirsk, and not related to the
famous Turgenev, who has left among his critical articles an obituary
notice of this Alexandr Ivanovitch.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[104] The Larins and Lensky are characters in Pushkin’s _Yevgeny
Onyegin_. Tchatsky is the hero of Griboyedov’s _Woe from Wit_, and
Famussov is a character in the same play.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[105] Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789), of German origin, one of the French
encyclopaedists, was the social centre round which all the leading
literary and philosophic celebrities of Paris gathered. He was a
passionate atheist, and an extremely good-hearted man, giving shelter to
his worst enemies, the Jesuits, when they were persecuted.

[106] Delphine Gay (Mme. de Girardin) wrote witty verses, novels, and
plays.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[107] Sobakevitch and Nozdryov are characters in Gogol’s _Dead
Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[108] Novikov, a man of letters and mystic of the time of Catherine, was
imprisoned and exiled for advocating the emancipation of the serfs.

[109] The Kireyevskys’ mother did not share their views. This is the only
explanation I can discover for his being described as ‘lonely in his own
family.’—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[110] From Lermontov’s translation of Goethe’s poem.—(_Translator’s
Note._)

[111] Baron Haxthausen was a learned German who after a visit to
Russia at this period wrote an account of the Russian system of land
tenure.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[112] Both were authors of a very low order; Gretch, a trifle more
stupid and less unscrupulous than Bulgarin, who was scurrilous in his
attacks on Pushkin, and commonly believed to be in the pay of the
police.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[113] Katchenovsky, Mihail Trofimovitch (1775-1842), of humble origin
and largely self-educated, became editor of the _Vyestnik Yevropi_, and
professor of Fine Arts, of Literature, and later on of History in Moscow
University. His sceptical attitude on historical subjects gave offence,
and he was superseded in the Chair of History by Pogodin.—(_Translator’s
Note._)

[114] Yazykov, a friend of Pushkin’s.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[115] This Glinka, one of the founders of the League of Public Welfare,
out of which the Decembrist movement developed, was exiled in 1826, but
allowed to return later. He was a literary character of the mild and
pious type.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[116] K. Kavélin’s article, and Yury Samarin’s reply to it. They are
dealt with in the _Développement des Idées Révolutionnaires en Russie_.

[117] The famous chief of a band of robbers whose feats have passed into
a legend. He flourished in France during the early part of the eighteenth
century.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[118] The peace between France and Austria in 1797 was concluded at Campo
Formio, a village in Italy.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[119] In the Time of Trouble at the beginning of the seventeenth century
the famous Troitse-Sergievsky Monastery made an heroic resistance against
the Poles. Avraamy Palitsyn, the Father Superintendent, together with the
Abbot, issued manifestoes calling on the people to drive out the Poles
and elect a Tsar.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[120] Lampi, J. B., was an Austrian painter who came to Petersburg
in 1792, and painted portraits of Catherine, Potyomkin, and various
distinguished persons.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[121] The popular writer Victor Joseph Étienne de Jouy (1754-1846) was
known as the ‘hermit of the Chausseé d’Antin,’ the name of his most
widely read prose work.

[122] Weiss, Bernhard (1827-1892), a learned German, who became adviser
to the government in spiritual concerns, and author of many theological
works.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[123] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[124] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[125] A character in Gogol’s _Inspector General_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[126] I think while I am speaking of Dmitry Pavlovitch I ought not to
omit to mention his last action in regard to me. After my father’s death
he was left owing me forty thousand silver roubles. I went abroad without
claiming this money. When he died, he directed his executors that I
should be the first of his debtors to be paid, because I could officially
claim nothing. I received the money by the next post after that by which
I heard of his death.

[127] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[128] The story of how one of the students got into the university is
so full of the native flavour of the Nicholas period that I cannot
resist telling it. The anniversary day with which we are all familiar
from Pushkin’s superb verses was celebrated annually in the Lyceum. As
a rule, on this day of parting from companions and seeing again former
schoolfellows the young people were allowed to make merry. On one of
these anniversaries a youth who had not yet finished his studies in a
light-hearted moment flung a bottle at the wall; unluckily, the bottle
struck a marble slab on which was inscribed in gold letters: ‘His
Imperial Majesty the Emperor graciously deigned to visit us on such and
such a date ...’ and broke a piece off it. A superintendent ran up, fell
upon the culprit with terrible abuse, and tried to remove him. The youth,
insulted before his comrades and exhilarated by the wine, tore the cane
out of his hand and struck him with it. The superintendent promptly
reported the incident; the youth was arrested and kept in detention on
the terrible charge not merely of striking a superintendent but also
of sacrilegious disrespect for a slab on which the sacred name of the
monarch was inscribed.

He might very easily have been sent for a soldier had not another
calamity saved him. At that very time his elder brother died. His mother,
overwhelmed with grief, wrote to him that he was now her only hope and
support, and urged him to make haste and finish his studies and come to
her. The principal of the Lyceum, General Bronevsky I believe it was, was
touched on reading this letter and resolved to save the youth without
bringing it to the knowledge of Nicholas. He told the Grand Duke Michael
of the incident, and the latter directed that he should be expelled
from the Lyceum privately, and that that should end the matter. The
youth left the Lyceum with a certificate on which he could not enter any
educational institution, that is, almost every career was barred to him
for he was not at all wealthy, and all this for damaging a slab adorned
with the Imperial name! And even this was only thanks to the peculiar
favour of Providence which killed his brother at the right moment, to a
tenderness unheard of among generals, and an indulgence almost incredible
in a grand duke! Being a young man of exceptional talent, he succeeded
long afterwards in obtaining the right to attend lectures in the Moscow
University.

[129] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.

[130] Translated by Juliet M. Soskice.

[131] See p. 335, Vol. I.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[132] One of Gogol’s Mirgorod stories.

[133] Public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal under the
Terror.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[134] There is no difference of culture between husband and wife among
the proletariat or the peasants, but there is a terrible equality of
slavery and terrible inequality of power between the husband and the wife.

[135] The _Vehme_ or _Vehmgerichte_ were mediaeval German tribunals
which tried capital charges and were greatly dreaded for their
severity.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[136] Katkov, one of Stankevitch’s circle, afterwards became a
Slavophil of the most reactionary type and editor of the _Moscow
Gazette_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[137] Barère de Vieuzac (1753-1841), a member of the Committee of Public
Safety, nicknamed the Anacreon of the Guillotine.—(_Translator's Note._)




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