My past and thoughts, vol 3 (of 6) : The memoirs of Alexander Herzen

By Herzen

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Title: My past and thoughts, vol 3 (of 6)
        The memoirs of Alexander Herzen

Author: Aleksandr Herzen

Translator: Constance Garnett


        
Release date: April 1, 2026 [eBook #78336]

Language: English

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

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PAST AND THOUGHTS, VOL 3 (OF 6) ***




THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDER HERZEN

III




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 III

                              [Illustration]

                                 NEW YORK
                              ALFRED A. KNOPF

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

                           FIRST PUBLISHED 1924




PART V

PARIS—ITALY—PARIS

(1847-1852)


As I begin to publish yet another part of _My Past and Thoughts_, I pause
in hesitation at the fragmentariness of my narratives, my pictures, and
the running commentary of my reflections. There is less external unity
about them than about those of the earlier parts. I cannot weld them into
one. In filling in the gaps, it is very easy to give the whole thing a
different background and a different lighting—the truth of the period
would be lost. _My Past and Thoughts_ is not an historical monograph,
but the reflection of historical events on a man who has accidentally
been thrown into contact with them. That is why I have decided to leave
my disconnected chapters as they were, stringing them together like the
mosaic pictures in Italian bracelets—all of which refer to one subject
but are only held together by the setting.

My _Letters from France and Italy_ are essential for completing this
part, especially in regard to the year 1848; I had meant to make extracts
from them, but that would have involved so much reprinting that I did not
attempt it.

Many things that have not appeared in _The Polar Star_ have been put into
this edition, but I cannot give everything to my readers yet, for reasons
both personal and public. The time is not far off when not only the pages
and chapters here omitted, but the whole volume, which is most precious
to me, will be published.

    GENEVA, _29th July 1866_.




_SECTION ONE_

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION AND AFTER IT




Chapter 34

THE JOURNEY

THE LOST PASSPORT—KÖNIGSBERG—THE HAND-MADE NOSE—WE ARRIVE!—AND DEPART


In Lautzagen the Prussian gendarmes invited me into their office. The
old sergeant took the passports, put on his spectacles, and with extreme
distinctness began reading aloud all that was unnecessary:

_Auf Befehl s.k. M. Nikolai des Ersten ... allen und jeden, denen daran
gelegen_, etc. etc.... _Unterzeichner Peroffski, Minister des Innern,
Kammerherr, Senator und Ritter des Ordens St. Wladimir ... Inhaber eines
goldenen Degens mit der Inschrift für Tapferkeit...._

This sergeant who was so fond of reading reminded me of another one.
Between Terracino and Naples a Neapolitan carbineer came to the diligence
four times, asking every time for our visas. I showed him the Neapolitan
visa: this and the half _carlino_ were not enough for him; he carried off
the passports to the office, and returned twenty minutes later insisting
that my companion and I should go before the brigadier. The latter, a
drunken old officer, asked me rather rudely, ‘What is your surname and
where do you come from?’ ‘Why, that is all in the passport.’ ‘I can’t
read it.’ We conjectured that reading was not the brigadier’s strong
point. ‘By what law,’ asked my companion, ‘are we bound to read aloud
our passports? We are bound to have them and to show them, but not to
dictate them; I might dictate anything.’ ‘_Accidenti_,’ muttered the old
man, ‘_va ben, va ben!_’ and he gave back our passports without writing
anything.

The learned gendarme at Lautzagen was of a different type; after reading
three times in the three passports all the decorations of General
Perovsky, including his buckle for an unblemished record, he asked me:
‘But who are you, _Euer Hochwohlgeboren_?’ I stared, not understanding
what he wanted of me. ‘_Fräulein Maria E._, _Fräulein Maria K._, _Frau
H._—they are all women, there is not one man’s passport here.’ I looked:
there really were only the passes of my mother and two of our friends who
were travelling with us; a cold shudder ran down my back.

‘They would not have let me through at Taurogen without a passport.’

‘_Bereits so_, but you can’t go on further.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘Perhaps you have forgotten it at the office. I’ll tell them to harness a
sledge for you; you can go yourself, and your family can keep warm here
meanwhile. _Heh! Kerl! Lass er mal den Braunen anspannen._’

I cannot remember that stupid incident without laughing, just because I
was so utterly disconcerted by it. The loss of that passport of which I
had been dreaming for years, which I had been trying to obtain for two
years, the minute after crossing the frontier, overwhelmed me. I was
certain I had put it in my pocket, so I must have dropped it—where could
I look for it? It would be covered by snow.... I should have to ask for
a new one, to write to Riga, perhaps to go myself: and then they would
send in a report, would notice that I was going to the mineral waters in
January. In short, I felt as though I were in Petersburg again; visions
of Kokoshkin and Sartynsky, Dubbelt and Nicholas, passed through my mind.
Good-bye to my journey, good-bye to Paris, to freedom of the press,
to concerts and theatres ... once more I should see the clerks in the
ministry, police—and every other sort of—officers, town constables with
on their back the two bright buttons with which they look behind them
... and first of all I should see again the little wrinkled soldier in
a heavy casque with Number 4 mysteriously inscribed on it, the frozen
Cossack horse.... I might even see the nurse again at ‘Tavroga,’ as she
had called it.

Meanwhile they put a big, melancholy, angular horse into a little sledge.
I got in beside a driver in a military overcoat and high boots, he gave
the traditional lash with the traditional whip—when suddenly the learned
sergeant ran out into the porch, in his shirt-sleeves, and shouted:
‘_Halt! Halt! Da ist der vermaledeite Pass_,’ and he held it unfolded in
his hands.

I was overtaken by hysterical laughter.

‘What are you doing with me? Where did you find it?’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘your Russian sergeant folded them one inside the other:
who could tell it was there? I never thought of unfolding them.’

And yet he had three times over read: _Es ergehet deshalb an alle hohen
Mächte und an alle und jede, welchen Standes und welcher Würde sie auch
sein mögen...._

I reached Königsberg tired out by the journey, by anxiety, by many
things. After a good sleep in an abyss of feathers, I went out next
day to look at the town. It was a warm winter’s day: the hotel-keeper
suggested that we should take a sledge. There were bells on the horses
and ostrich feathers on their heads ... and we were gay; a load was
lifted from our hearts, the unpleasant sensation of fear, the gnawing
feeling of suspicion, had vanished. Caricatures of Nicholas were exposed
in the window of a bookshop; I rushed in at once to buy a stock of them.
In the evening I went to a small, dirty, and inferior theatre, and
came back from it excited, not by the actors but by the audience, which
consisted mostly of workmen and young people; in the intervals between
the acts every one talked freely and loudly, all put on their hats (a
very important thing, as important as the right to wear a beard, etc.).
This ease and freedom, this element of greater serenity and liveliness
impresses the Russian abroad. The Petersburg government is still so
coarse and crude, so absolutely nothing but despotism, that it positively
likes to inspire fear; it wants everything to tremble before it—in
fact, it desires not only power but the theatrical display of it. To
the Petersburg Tsars the ideal of public order is the discipline of the
waiting-room and the barracks.

... When we were setting off for Berlin I got into the carriage, and a
gentleman muffled up in wraps took the seat beside me; it was evening, I
could not see him distinctly. Learning that I was a Russian, he began to
question me about the strictness of the police and about passports; I, of
course, told him all I knew. Then we passed to Prussia; he spoke highly
of the disinterestedness of the Prussian officials, the excellence of the
administration, praised the king, and finally made a violent attack on
the Poles of Posen on the ground that they were not good Germans. This
surprised me; I argued with him, I told him bluntly that I did not share
his views, and then said no more.

Meanwhile it was getting light; only then I noticed that my neighbour,
the conservative, spoke through his nose, not because he had a cold in
it, but because he had not one at all, or at least had not the most
conspicuous part. He probably noticed that this discovery did not afford
me any special satisfaction, and so thought fit to tell me, by way of
apology, the story of how he had lost his nose and how it had been
restored. The first part was somewhat confused, but the second was very
circumstantial: Diffenbach himself had carved him a new nose out of his
hand; his hand had been bound to his face for six weeks; _Majestät_ had
come to the hospital to look at it, and was graciously pleased to wonder
and approve.

    ‘A dit: c’est vraiment étonnant,
    Le roi de Prusse en le voyant.’

Apparently Diffenbach had been preoccupied with something else and had
carved him a very ugly nose. But I soon discovered that his hand-made
nose was the least of his defects.

Getting from Königsberg to Berlin was the most difficult part of our
journey. The belief has somehow gained ground among us that the Prussian
posting service is well organised: that is all nonsense. Travelling by
post-chaise is only pleasant in France, Switzerland, and England. In
England the post-chaises are so well built, the horses so elegant, and
the drivers so skilful that one may travel for pleasure. The carriage
moves at full speed over the very longest stages, whether the road runs
uphill or downhill. Now, thanks to the railway, this question is becoming
one of historical interest, but in those days we learned by experience
what German posting chaises and horses could be. They were worse than
anything in the world except perhaps the German post-drivers.

The way from Königsberg to Berlin is very long; we took seven places in
the diligence and set off. At the first station the conductor told us to
take our luggage and get into another diligence, sagaciously warning us
that he would not be responsible for our things being safe. I observed
that I had inquired at Königsberg and was told that we should keep the
same seats: the conductor spoke about snow, and said that we had to get
into a diligence provided with runners; there was nothing to be said to
that. We had to transfer ourselves with our goods and our children in
the middle of the night in the wet snow. At the next station there was
the same business again, and the conductor did not even trouble himself
to explain the change of carriages. We did half the journey in this way;
then he informed us quite simply that we ‘should be given only five
seats.’

‘Five? Here are my tickets.’

‘There are no more seats.’

I began to argue; a window in the posting station was thrown open with
a bang and a grey-headed man with moustaches asked rudely what the
wrangling was about. The conductor said that I demanded seven seats,
and that he had only five; I added that I had tickets and a receipt for
the fares for seven seats. Paying no attention to me, he said to the
conductor in an insolent, husky, Russo-German military voice: ‘Well,
if this gentleman does not want the five seats, throw his things out;
let him wait till there are seven seats free.’ Whereupon the worthy
stationmaster, whom the conductor addressed as _Herr Major_, and whose
name was Schwerin, shut the window with a slam. On considering the
matter, we, as Russians, decided to go on. Benvenuto Cellini in like
circumstances would, as an Italian, have brought out his pistol and shot
the stationmaster.

Our friend who had been repaired by Diffenbach was at the time in the
restaurant; when he clambered on to his seat and we set off, I told him
what had happened. He was in a very genial mood, having had a drop too
much; he showed the greatest sympathy with us, and asked me to give him
a note on the subject when we got to Berlin. ‘Are you an official in the
posting service?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he answered, still more through his
nose; ‘but that doesn’t matter ... you ... see ... I am in what is called
here the central police service.’

This revelation was even more distasteful to me than the hand-made nose.

The first person to whom I expressed my liberal opinions in Europe was a
spy—but he was not the last.

Berlin, Cologne, Belgium—all passed rapidly before our eyes; we looked at
everything half absent-mindedly, in passing; we were in haste to arrive,
and at last we did arrive.

... I opened the heavy, old-fashioned window in the Hôtel du Rhin; before
me stood a column:

            ‘... with a cast-iron doll,
    With scowling face and hat on head,
    And arms crossed tightly on his breast.’

And so I was really in Paris, not in a dream but in reality: this was the
Vendôme column and the Rue de la Paix.

In Paris—the word meant scarcely less to me than the word ‘Moscow’! Of
that minute I had been dreaming from childhood. If I might only see
the Hôtel de Ville, the Café Foy in the Palais Royal, where Camille
Desmoulins picked a green leaf and, fixing it on his hat for a cockade,
shouted ‘_A la Bastille!_’

I could not stay indoors; I dressed and went out to stroll about the
streets ... to look up Bakunin, Sazonov: here was Rue St. Honoré, the
Champs-Élysées—all those names which had been familiar for long years ...
and here was Bakunin himself....

I met him at a street corner; he was walking with three friends and,
just as in Moscow, discoursing to them, continually stopping and waving
his cigarette. On this occasion the discourse remained unfinished; I
interrupted it and took him with me to find Sazonov and surprise him with
my presence.

I was beside myself with happiness!

And at that happiness I will stop here.

I am not going to describe Paris once more. My first acquaintance with
European life, the glorious tour in Italy just awakened from sleep,
the revolution at the foot of Vesuvius, the revolution before St.
Peter’s, and finally the news—like a flash of lightning—of the 24th of
February—all that I have described in my _Letters from France and Italy_.
I could not with the same vividness reproduce now impressions half
effaced by time and overlaid by others. They make an essential part of my
_Records_—what is a letter but a record of a brief period?




Chapter 35

THE HONEYMOON OF THE REPUBLIC

THE ENGLISHMAN IN THE FUR-JACKET—THE DUC DE NOAILLES—FREEDOM AND HER BUST
IN MARSEILLES—THE ABBÉ SIBOUR AND THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC IN AVIGNON


‘_To-morrow we are going to Paris; I am leaving Rome full of life and
excitement. What will come of it all? Can it last? The sky is not free
from clouds; at times there is a chilly blast from the sepulchral vaults
bringing the smell of death, the odour of the past; the historical_
tramontano _is strong, but whatever happens I am grateful to Rome for the
five months I have spent there. The feelings I have passed through remain
in the soul, and the reaction will not extinguish quite everything._’

This is what I wrote at the end of April 1848, sitting at my window in
the Via del Corso and looking out into the ‘People’s square,’ in which I
had seen and felt so much.

I left Italy in love with her and sorry to leave her: there I had met not
only great events but also the very nicest people—but still I went. It
would have seemed like being faithless to all my convictions not to be in
Paris when there was a republic there. Doubts are apparent in the lines
I have quoted, but faith got the upper hand, and with inward pleasure I
looked in Cività at the consul’s seal on my visa on which was engraved
the imposing words, ‘République Française’—I did not reflect that the
very fact that a visa was needed showed that France was not a republic.

We went by a mail steamer. There were a great many passengers on
board, and as usual they were of all sorts: there were passengers from
Alexandria, Smyrna, and Malta. One of the terrible winds common in
spring blew up just after we passed Leghorn: it drove the ship along
with incredible swiftness and with insufferable rolling; within two or
three hours the deck was covered with sea-sick ladies; by degrees the
men too succumbed, except a grey-headed old Frenchman, an Englishman
from Canada in a fur-jacket and a fur-cap, and myself. The cabins, too,
were full of sufferers, and the stuffiness and heat in them were enough
alone to make one ill. We three sat at night on our portmanteaus, covered
with our overcoats and railway rugs, in the howling of the wind and the
splashing of the waves, which at times broke over the fore-deck. I knew
the Englishman; the year before I had travelled in the same steamer with
him from Genoa to Cività Vecchia. It happened we were the only two at
dinner; he did not say a word all through the meal, but over the dessert,
softened by the marsala and seeing that I on my side had no intention of
entering upon a conversation, he gave me a cigar and said that he had
brought his cigars himself from Havana. Then we talked: he had been in
South America and California, and told me that he had long been intending
to visit Petersburg and Moscow, but should not go until there were
_proper_ means of communication and a direct route between London and
Petersburg.[1]

‘Are you going to Rome?’ I asked, as we approached Cività.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered.

I said no more, supposing that he considered my question impertinent, but
he immediately added:

‘That depends on whether I like the climate in Cività.’

‘Then you are stopping here?’

‘Yes; the steamer leaves to-morrow.’

At that time I knew very few Englishmen, and so I could hardly conceal
my laughter, and was quite unable to do so when I met him next day,
walking by the hotel in the same fur-coat, carrying a portfolio, a
field-glass, and a little dressing-case, followed by a servant laden with
his portmanteau and various belongings.

‘I am off to Naples,’ he said as he came up to me.

‘Why, don’t you like the climate?’

‘It’s horrid.’

I forgot to mention that on our first journey together he occupied the
berth which was directly over mine. On three occasions during the night
he almost killed me, first from fright, and then with his feet; it was
fearfully hot in the cabin, he went several times to have a drink of
brandy and water, and each time, climbing down and climbing up, he trod
on me and shouted loudly, in alarm: ‘Oh—beg pardon—_J’ai avais soif._’
‘_Pas de mal!_’

Consequently we met this time like old friends; he spoke with the
greatest approbation of my immunity from sea-sickness, and offered me his
Havana cigars. As was perfectly natural, the conversation soon turned on
the revolution of February. The Englishman, of course, looked upon the
revolution in Europe as an interesting spectacle, as a source of new and
curious observations and experiences, and he described the revolution in
New Colombia.

The Frenchman took a different interest in these matters ... within
five minutes an argument had sprung up between him and me: he answered
evasively, cleverly, and with the utmost courtesy, yielding nothing,
however. I defended the republic and revolution. Without directly
attacking it, the old gentleman championed the traditional forms of
government as the only ones durable, popular, and capable of satisfying
the just claims of progress and the necessity of settled security.

‘You cannot imagine,’ I said to him in joke, ‘what a peculiar
satisfaction you give me by your implied criticisms. I have been for
fifteen years speaking about the monarchy just as you speak about
the republic. The parts are changed; in defending the republic, I am
the conservative, while you, defending the legitimist monarchy, are a
_perturbateur de l’ordre politique_.’

The old gentleman and the Englishman laughed. A tall, gaunt gentleman,
whose nose has been immortalised by _Charivari_[2] and Philipon, the
Comte d’Argout,[3] came up to us. (_Charivari_ used to declare that
his daughter did not marry because she did not want to sign herself
‘So-and-so, _née d’Argout_.’) He joined in the conversation, addressed
the old gentleman with deference, but looked at me with a surprise not
far removed from repulsion; I noticed this, and began to be at least four
times as _red_ in my remarks.

‘It is a very remarkable thing,’ the grey-headed old Frenchman said to
me: ‘you are not the first Russian I have met of the same manner of
thinking. You Russians are either the most absolute slaves of your Tsar,
or—_passez-moi le mot_—anarchists. And it follows from that, that it will
be a long time before you are free.’ Our political conversation continued
in that strain.[4]

When we were approaching Marseilles and all the passengers were busy
looking after their luggage, I went up to the old gentleman and, giving
him my card, said that I should like to think that our discussion on the
swaying boat had left no unpleasant impression. The old gentleman said
good-bye to me very charmingly, delivered himself of another epigram
at the expense of the republicans whom I should see at last at closer
quarters, and gave me his card. It was the Duc de Noailles, the kinsman
of the Bourbons, and one of the leading counsellors of Henry the Fifth.[5]

Though this incident is quite unimportant, I describe it for the benefit
and education of our ‘dukes’ of the three highest ranks. If some senator
or privy councillor had been in Noailles’ place he would simply have
taken what I said for insolence and breach of discipline and would have
sent for the captain of the boat.

A Russian minister of the year 1850[6] sat with his family in his
carriage on the steamer to avoid all contact with passengers who were
common mortals. Can one imagine anything more ridiculous than sitting in
an unharnessed carriage ... and on the sea, too, and for a man double the
ordinary size into the bargain!

The arrogance of our great dignitaries is not due to aristocratic
feeling—the grand gentleman is dying out; it is the feeling of liveried
and powdered flunkeys in great houses, extremely abject on one side and
extremely insolent on the other. The aristocrat is a personality, while
our faithful servants of the throne are entirely without personality;
they are like Paul’s medals, which bear the inscription: ‘Not to us,
not to us, but to thy name.’ Their whole training leads up to this: the
soldier imagines that the only reason why he must not be beaten with
sticks is that he wears the Anna ribbon; the station superintendent
considers his position as an officer the barrier that protects his cheek
from the traveller’s hand; an insulted clerk points to his Stanislav or
Vladimir ribbon—‘not for ourselves, not for ourselves ... but for our
rank!’

On leaving the steamer at Marseilles, I met a great procession of the
National Guard, which was carrying to the Hôtel de Ville the figure
of Liberty, _i.e._ of a woman with immense curls and a Phrygian cap.
With shouts of ‘_Vive la République!_’ thousands of armed citizens were
marching in it, and among them workmen in blouses who had been enrolled
in the National Guard. I need hardly say that I followed them. When the
procession reached the Hôtel de Ville, the general, the mayor, and the
commissaire of the Provisional Government, Démosthène Ollivier, came
out into the portico. Démosthène, as might be expected from his name,
prepared to deliver an oration. An immense circle formed about him:
the crowd, of course, moved forward, the National Guards pressed it
back, the crowd would not yield; this offended the armed workmen, they
lowered their guns and, turning round, began with the butt-ends hitting
the toes of the people who stood in front; the citizens of the ‘one and
indivisible republic’ stepped back....

This proceeding surprised me the more because I was still completely
under the influence of the manners of Italy, and especially of Rome,
where the proud sense of personal dignity and the inviolability of the
person is fully developed in every man—not merely in the _facchino_
and the postman, but even in the beggar who holds out his hand for
alms. In Romagna such insolence would have been greeted with twenty
_coltellate_.[7] The French drew back—perhaps they had corns?

This incident made an unpleasant impression on me. Moreover, when I
reached the hotel I read in the newspapers what had happened at Rouen.[8]
What could be the meaning of it? Surely the Duc de Noailles was not
right?

But when a man wants to believe, his belief is not easily uprooted, and
before I reached Avignon I had forgotten the butt-ends at Marseilles and
the bayonets at Rouen.

In the diligence with us there was a thick-set, middle-aged abbé of
dignified deportment and attractive exterior. For appearance’ sake he
took up his breviary, but to avoid dropping asleep put it back soon
afterwards in his pocket and began talking charmingly and intelligently,
with the classical correctness of the language of Port-Royal and the
Sorbonne, and with many quotations and chaste witticisms.

Indeed, it is only the French who know how to talk. The Germans can make
declarations of love, confide their secrets, give lectures, and scold.
In England routs are so much liked just because they make conversation
impossible ... there is a crowd, no room to move, every one is pushing
and being pushed, no one knows anybody; while if people come together in
a small party they immediately have wretchedly poor music, singing out of
tune, or boring little games, or with extraordinary heaviness the hosts
and guests try to keep the ball of conversation rolling, with sighs and
pauses reminding one of the luckless horses who almost at their last gasp
under the whip drag a heavy-laden barge against the stream.

I wanted to taunt the abbé with the republic, but I did not succeed. He
was very glad that liberty had come without excesses, above all without
bloodshed and fighting, and looked upon Lamartine as a great man,
something in the style of Pericles.

‘And of Sappho,’ I added, without, however, entering upon an argument. I
was grateful to him for not saying a word about religion. So talking, we
arrived at Avignon at eleven o’clock at night.

‘Allow me,’ I said to the abbé as I filled his glass at supper, ‘to
propose a rather unusual toast: “To the republic, _et pour les hommes
d’église qui sont républicains_.”’ The abbé got up, and concluded some
Ciceronian sentences with the words: ‘À la République future en Russie.’

‘À la République universelle!’ shouted the conductor of the diligence and
three men who were sitting at the table. We clinked glasses.

A Catholic priest, two or three shopmen, the diligence conductor, and
Russians—we might well drink to the universal republic!

But it really was very jolly.

‘Where are you bound for?’ I inquired of the abbé, as we took our seats
in the diligence again, and I asked his pastoral blessing on a cigar.

‘For Paris,’ he answered; ‘I have been elected to the National Assembly.
I shall be delighted to see you if you will call; this is my address.’
He was the Abbé Sibour, _doyen_ of something or other and brother of the
Archbishop of Paris.[9]

A fortnight later there came the fifteenth of May, that sinister
_ritournelle_ which was followed by the terrible days of June. That all
belongs not to my biography but to the biography of mankind....

I have written a great deal about those days. I might end here like the
old captain in the old song:—

    ‘Ici finit tout noble souvenir,
    Ici finit tout noble souvenir.’

But with those accursed days the last part of my life begins.




Appendix I

(_From ‘West European Sketches—Notebook I.’_)


I

THE DREAM

Do you remember, friends, how lovely was that winter day, bright and
sunny, when six or seven sledges accompanied us to Tchornaya Gryaz, when
for the last time we clinked glasses and parted, sobbing?

... Evening was coming on, the sledge crunched through the snow, you
looked mournfully after us and did not divine that it was a funeral and
a parting for ever. All were there but one, the dearest of all; he alone
was far away, and by his absence seemed to wash his hands of my departure.

That was the 21st of January 1847.

Seven years[10] have passed since then, and what years! Among them were
1848 and 1852.

All sorts of things happened in those years, and everything was
shattered—public and personal: the European revolution and my home, the
freedom of the world and my individual happiness.

Of the old life not one stone remained standing. At that time my powers
had reached their fullest development; the previous years had given
me pledges for the future. I left you full of daring and reckless
self-reliance, with haughty confidence in life. I was in haste to tear
myself away from the little group of people who had been so closely knit
together and had come so close to each other, bound by a deep love and
a common grief. I was lured by distance, space, open conflict, and free
speech. I was seeking an independent arena, I longed to try my powers in
freedom....

Now I expect nothing: after what I have seen and experienced, nothing
will move me to much wonder or to deep joy; joy and wonder are curbed by
memories of the past and fear of the future. Almost everything has become
a matter of indifference to me, and I desire as little to die to-morrow
as to live long years; let the end come as accidentally and senselessly
as the beginning.

And yet I have found all that I sought, even recognition from this old
self-complacent world—and at the same time I have lost all my faith, all
that was precious to me, have met with betrayal, treacherous blows from
behind, and indeed a moral corruption of which you in Russia have no
conception.

It is hard for me, very hard, to begin this part of my story; avoiding
it, I have written the preceding parts, but at last I am brought face to
face with it. But away with weakness: what one could live through, one
must have the strength to remember.

From the middle of the year 1848 I have nothing to tell of but agonising
experiences, unavenged insults, undeserved blows. My memory holds nothing
but melancholy images, my own mistakes and other people’s: mistakes of
individuals, mistakes of nations. When there was hope of salvation, death
crossed the path....

... The last days of our life in Rome conclude the happy part of my
memories, that begin with the awakening of thought in childhood and
youthful vows on the Sparrow Hills.

Alarmed by the Paris of 1847, I had opened my eyes to the truth for a
moment, but was carried away again by the current of events seething
about me. All Italy was ‘awakening’ before my eyes! I saw the King of
Naples tamed and the Pope humbly asking the alms of the people’s love—the
whirlwind which set everything in movement carried me, too, off my feet;
all Europe took up its bed and walked—in a fit of somnambulism which we
took for awakening. When I came to myself, all was over; la Sonnambula,
terrified by the police, had fallen from the roof; friends were scattered
or were furiously slaughtering one another.... And I found myself alone,
utterly alone, among the graves and the cradles—their guardian, defender,
avenger, and I could do nothing just because I tried to do more than the
common.

And now I sit in London where chance has flung me—and I stay here because
I do not know what to do. An alien race swarms about me and hurries
hither and thither, wrapped in the heavy breath of ocean; a world
dissolved into chaos, lost in a fog in which all outlines are blurred, in
which light becomes a murky glimmer.

... And that other land—washed by the deep blue sea under the canopy of
deep blue sky ... it is the one bright spot left on this side of the
grave.

O Rome, how I love to return to your deceptions, how gladly I recall day
by day the time when I was intoxicated with you!

... A dark night. The Corso is filled with people, here and there are
torches. It is a month since a republic has been proclaimed in Paris.
News has come from Milan—there they are fighting, the people demand war,
there is a rumour that Charles Albert is on the way with troops. The
talk of the angry crowd is like the intermittent roar of waves which
alternately break with a splash and pause for a breathing space. The
crowds form into ranks. They go to the Piedmont Ambassador to find out
whether war has been declared.

‘Fall in, fall in with us,’ shout dozens of voices.

‘We are foreigners.’

‘All the better; Santo Dio, you are our guests.’

We joined the ranks.

‘The front place for the guests, the front place for the ladies, _le
donne forestiere_!’

And with passionate shouts of approval the crowd parted to make way.
Ciceruacchio and with him a young Roman poet, the author of the people’s
songs, pushed their way forward with a flag, the tribune shook hands with
the ladies and with them stood at the head of ten or twelve thousand
people—and all moved forward in that majestic and harmonious order which
is peculiar to the Roman people.

The leaders went into the Palazzo, and a few minutes later the
drawing-room doors opened on the balcony. The ambassador came out to
appease the people and to confirm the news of war; his words were
received with frantic joy. Ciceruacchio was on the balcony in the glaring
light of torches and candelabra, and beside him under the Italian flag
stood four young women, all four Russians—was it not strange? I can see
them now on that stone platform, and below them the swaying multitude,
mingling with shouts for war and curses for the Jesuits, ‘_Evviva le
donne forestiere!_’

In England, they and we should have been greeted with hisses, abuse,
and perhaps stones. In France, we should have been taken for _agents
provocateurs_. But here the aristocratic proletariat, the descendants of
Marius and the ancient tribunes, gave us a warm and genuine welcome. We
were received by them into the European struggle ... and with Italy alone
the bond of love, or at least of warm memory, is still unbroken.

And was all that ... intoxication, delirium? Perhaps—but I do not envy
those who were not carried away by that beautiful dream. The sleep could
not last long in any case: the ruthless Macbeth of real life had already
raised his hand to murder sleep and....

_My dream was past—it has no further change._[11]


II

IN THE STORM

On the evening of the 24th of June, coming back from the Place Maubert,
I went into the Quai d’Orsay. A few minutes later I heard a discordant
shouting, and the sound came nearer and nearer. I went to the window:
a grotesque comic _banlieu_ marched in from the suburbs to the support
of order; clumsy, rascally fellows, half peasants, half shopkeepers, a
little bit drunk, in wretched uniforms and old-fashioned casques, they
moved rapidly but in disorder, with shouts of ‘_Vive Louis-Napoléon!_’

It was the first time I heard that ill-omened shout. I could not restrain
myself, and when they reached the café I shouted at the top of my voice:
‘_Vive la République!_’ Those standing near the windows shook their fists
at me, an officer muttered some word of abuse, brandishing his sword;
and for a long time afterwards I could hear the shouts of welcome to the
man who had come to strangle half the revolution, to destroy half the
republic, to inflict himself upon France, as a punishment for forgetting
in her hysteria both other nations and her own proletariat.

At eight o’clock in the morning of the 26th of June, Annenkov and I went
out to the Champs-Élysées. The cannonade we had heard in the night had
ceased; only from time to time there was an interchange of shots and
the beating of drums. The streets were empty, but the National Guards
stood on each side of them. On the Place de la Concorde there was a
detachment of the _Garde mobile_; near them some poor women with brooms,
some ragpickers and _concierges_ from the houses near, were standing. The
faces of all were gloomy and horror-stricken. A lad of seventeen leaning
on his gun was telling them something; we joined them. He and all his
comrades, boys like himself, were half drunk, their faces blackened with
gunpowder and their eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights and drink; many
were dozing with their chins resting on the muzzle of their gun....
‘And what happened then there’s no need to describe.’ After a pause he
went on: ‘Yes, and they fought well, too, but we paid them out for our
comrades! What lots of them fell! I stuck my bayonet up to the hilt in
five or six of them; they’ll remember us,’ he added, trying to assume the
air of a hardened criminal. The women were pale and silent; a man who
looked like a _concierge_ observed: ‘Serve them right, the blackguards!’
... but this savage comment evoked not the slightest response. They were
all of too ignorant a class to be moved to pity by the massacre and by
the wretched boy whom others had turned into a murderer.

Silent and mournful, we went on to the Madeleine. Here we were stopped by
the National Guards. At first, after searching our pockets, they asked
where we were going, and let us through; but the next cordon beyond the
Madeleine refused to let us through and sent us back; when we went back
to the first cordon, we were stopped again. ‘But you saw us pass here
just now!’ ‘Don’t let them pass,’ shouted an officer. ‘Are you laughing
at us, or what?’ I asked. ‘It’s no use your talking to me,’ answered the
shopman in uniform rudely. ‘Take them to the police: I know one of them’
(he pointed to me); ‘I have seen him more than once at meetings. I dare
say the other is the same sort too; they are neither of them Frenchmen,
I’ll answer for it—march.’ Two soldiers in front, two behind, and one
on each side escorted us. The first man we met was a _représentant du
peuple_ with the silly badge in his button-hole; it was De Tocqueville,
the writer on America. I appealed to him and told him what had happened:
it was not a joking matter; they kept people in prison without any sort
of trial, threw them into the cellars of the Tuileries, and shot them. De
Tocqueville did not even ask who we were; he very politely bowed himself
off, delivering himself of the following banality: ‘The legislative
authority has no right to interfere with the executive.’ He might well be
a minister under Napoleon III.!

The ‘executive authority’ led us down the boulevard to the Chaussée
d’Antin to the _commissaire de police_. By the way, it may not be out of
place to observe that neither when we were arrested, nor when we were
searched, nor when we were on our way, did I see a single policeman;
all was done by the bourgeois soldiers. The boulevard was completely
empty, all the shops were closed; the inmates rushed to their doors and
windows when they heard our footsteps, and kept asking who we were: ‘_Des
émeutiers étrangers_,’ answered our escort, and the worthy bourgeois
looked at us and gnashed their teeth.

From the police-station we were sent to the Hôtel des Capucines; the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs has its quarters there now, but at that
time there was some temporary police committee there. We went with our
escort into a large study. A bald old gentleman in spectacles, dressed
entirely in black, was sitting alone at a table; he asked us over again
all the questions that the commissaire had asked us. ‘Where are your
passports?’ ‘We never carry them with us when we go for a walk.’ He took
up some manuscript book and spent a long time looking in it, apparently
found nothing, and asked one of our convoy: ‘Why did you arrest them?’
‘The officer gave the order; he says that they are very suspicious
characters.’ ‘Very well,’ said the old man; ‘I will inquire into the
case; you can go.’

When the escort had gone, the old man asked us to explain the cause of
our arrest. I put the facts before him, adding that the officer might
perhaps have seen me on the fifteenth of May near the Assembly; and
then described the incident of the previous day. I had been sitting in
the Café Comartine when suddenly there was a false alarm, a squadron of
dragoons rushed by at full speed, the National Guard began to form ranks.
Together with some five people who happened to be in the café, I went
up to the window; a National Guard standing below shouted rudely, ‘Did
you hear that the windows were to be shut?’ His tone justified me in
supposing that he was not addressing me, and I did not take the slightest
notice of his words; besides, I was not alone, though I happened to be
standing in front. Then the defender of order raised his gun, and, as all
this took place in the _rez-de-chaussée_, tried to thrust at me with his
bayonet, but, seeing his movement, I stepped back and said to the others:
‘Gentlemen, you are witnesses that I have done nothing—is it the habit of
the National Guard to stick foreigners!’ ‘_Mais c’est indigne, mais cela
n’a pas de nom!_’ my neighbours chimed in. The panic-stricken café-keeper
rushed to shut the windows; a vile-looking sergeant commanded him to turn
every one out of the café—I fancied he was the same man who had ordered
us to be detained. Moreover, the Café Comartine was but a few steps from
the Madeleine.

‘So that’s how it is, gentlemen: you see what imprudence leads to. Why
walk out at such a time?—minds are exasperated, blood is flowing....’

At that moment a National Guard brought in a maidservant, saying that
an officer had caught her in the very act of trying to post a letter
addressed to Berlin. The old man took the envelope and told the soldier
he could go.

‘You can go home,’ he said to us; ‘only, please do not go by the same
streets as before, and especially not by the cordon which arrested you.
But stay, I will send some one to escort you; he’ll take you to the
Champs-Élysées—you can get through that way.’

‘And you,’ he said, addressing the servant, giving her back the letter,
which he had not touched, ‘post it in some letter-box further away.’

And so the police protected us from the armed bourgeois!

On the night between the 26th and the 27th of June, so Pierre Leroux
relates, he went to Sénart to beg him to do something for the prisoners
who were being suffocated in the cellars of the Tuileries. Sénart, a man
well known as a desperate conservative, said to Pierre Leroux: ‘And _who_
will answer for their lives on the way? The National Guard will kill
them. If you had come an hour earlier you would have found two colonels
here: I had the greatest difficulty in bringing them to reason, and
ended by telling them that if these horrors went on I should give up the
president’s chair in the Assembly and take my place in the barricades.’

Two hours later, on returning home, the _concierge_ made his appearance
accompanied by a stranger in a dress coat and four men disguised as
workmen, though they had the moustaches of _municipales_ and the
deportment of gendarmes. The stranger unbuttoned his coat and waistcoat
and, pointing with dignity to the tricoloured scarf, said that he was the
commissaire of police, Barlet (the man who on the 2nd of December, in
the National Assembly, took by the collar the man who had himself taken
Rome—General Oudinot), and that he had orders to search me. I gave him my
key, and he set to work exactly as Police-master Miller did in 1834.

My wife came in: the commissaire, like the officer of gendarmes who
once came to us from Dubbelt, began apologising. My wife looked calmly
and directly at him, and when at the end of his speech he begged her
indulgence, said: ‘It would be cruelty on my part not to enter into your
position; you are sufficiently punished by being forced to do what you
are doing.’

The commissaire blushed, but did not say a word. Rummaging among the
papers and laying aside a whole heap of them, he suddenly went up to
the fireplace, sniffed, touched the ashes, and, turning to me with an
important air, asked: ‘What was your object in burning your papers?’

‘I haven’t been burning papers.’

‘Upon my word, the ash is still warm.’

‘No, it is not warm.’

‘_Monsieur, vous parlez à un magistrat!_’

‘The ash is cold, all the same, though,’ I said, flaring up and raising
my voice.

‘Why, am I lying?’

‘What right have you to doubt my word? ... here are some honest workmen
with you, let them try it. Besides, even if I had burnt papers: in the
first place, I have a right to burn them; and in the second, what are you
going to do?’

‘Have you no other papers?’

‘No.’

‘I have a few letters besides, and very interesting ones; come into my
room,’ said my wife.

‘Oh, your letters....’

‘Please don’t stand on ceremony ... why, you are only doing your duty;
come along.’ The commissaire went in, glanced very slightly at the
letters, which were for the most part from Italy, and was about to go....

‘But you haven’t seen what is below—a letter from the Conciergerie, from
a convict, you see; don’t you want to take it with you?’

‘Really, Madame,’ answered the policeman of the republic, ‘you are so
prejudiced; I don’t want that letter at all.’

‘What do you intend to do with the Russian papers?’ I asked.

‘They will be translated.’

‘The point is, where you will take your translator from. If he is from
the Russian Embassy, it will be as good as betraying people to the
Russian Government; you will ruin five or six people. You will greatly
oblige me if you will mention at the _procès-verbal_ that I beg most
urgently that a Polish _émigré_ should be chosen as a translator.’

‘I believe that can be done.’

‘I thank you; and I have another favour to ask of you: do you know
Italian at all?’

‘A little.’

‘I will show you two letters; in them the word France is not mentioned.
The man who wrote them is in the hands of the Sardinian police; you will
see by the letters that it will go badly with him if they get into the
hands of the police.’

‘_Mais, ah ça!_’ observed the commissaire, his dignity as a man beginning
to be aroused; ‘you seem to imagine that we are connected with the police
of all the despotic powers. We have nothing to do with other countries.
We are unwillingly compelled to take measures at home when blood is
flowing in the streets and when foreigners interfere in our affairs.’

‘Very well, then, you can have that letter.’

The commissaire had not lied; he certainly did know _very little_
Italian, and so, after turning the letters over, he put them in his
pocket, promising to return them.

With that his visit ended. The Italian letters he gave back next day,
but my papers vanished completely. A month passed; I wrote a letter to
Cavaignac,[12] inquiring why the police did not return my papers nor say
what they had found in them—a matter of very little consequence to them,
perhaps, but of the greatest importance for my honour.

What gave rise to this last phrase was as follows. Several persons of my
acquaintance had intervened on my behalf, considering the visit of the
commissaire and the retention of my papers outrageous. ‘We wanted to make
certain,’ Lamoricière[13] told them, ‘that he was not _an agent of the
Russian Government_.’ This was the first time I heard of this abominable
suspicion; it was something quite new for me. My life had been as open,
as public, as though it were lived in a glass hive, and now all at once
this terrible accusation, and from whom?—from a republican government!

A week later I was summoned to the prefecture. Barlet was with me.
We were received in Ducou’s room by a young official very like some
Petersburg head-clerk of the free-and-easy type. ‘General Cavaignac,’ he
told me, ‘has charged me to return your papers without examination. The
information collected concerning you renders it quite superfluous; no
suspicion rests upon you; here is your portfolio. Will you please first
sign this?’

It was a receipt stating that all the papers had been returned to me
complete.

I stopped and asked whether it would not be more in order for me to look
through the papers first.

‘They have not been touched. Here is the seal, indeed.’

‘The seal has not been broken,’ observed Barlet soothingly.

‘My seal is not here. Indeed, it was not put on them.’

‘It is my seal, but you know you had the key.’

Not wishing to reply with rudeness, I smiled. This enraged them both: the
head-clerk became the head of a department; he snatched up a penknife
and, cutting the seal, said in a rather rude tone: ‘Pray look, if you
don’t believe, but I have no time to waste,’ and walked out with a
dignified bow. Their resentment convinced me that they really had not
looked at the papers, and so, after a cursory glance at them, I signed
the receipt and went home.




Chapter 36

LA TRIBUNE DES PEUPLES—MICKIEWICZ AND RAMON DE LA SAGRA—THE CHORUS OF THE
REVOLUTION OF JUNE 13, 1848—CHOLERA IN PARIS—DEPARTURE


I left Paris in the autumn of 1847, without having formed any ties
there; I remained completely outside the literary and political circles.
There were many reasons for that. No direct occasion of contact with
them occurred, and I did not care to seek it. To visit them simply
in order to stare at celebrities, I thought unseemly. Moreover, I
particularly disliked the tone of condescending superiority which
Frenchmen assume with Russians: they approve of us, encourage us, commend
our pronunciation and our wealth; we put up with it all, and behave as
though we were asking them a favour, or even apologising for ourselves,
delighted when, from politeness, they affect to take us for Frenchmen.
The French overwhelm us with a flood of words, we cannot keep pace with
them; we think of an answer, but they do not care to hear it; we are
ashamed to show that we notice their blunders and their ignorance—they
take advantage of all that with hopeless self-complacency.

To get on to a different footing with them, one would have to impress
them with one’s consequence; to do so, one must possess all sorts of
privileges, which I had not at that time, and of which I took advantage
at once when they were at my disposal.

Moreover, it must be remembered that there are no people in the world
with whom it is easier to strike up a nodding acquaintance than the
French—and no people with whom it is more difficult to get on to really
intimate terms. A Frenchman likes to live in company, so as to display
himself, to have an audience, and in that respect he is as much a
contrast to the Englishman as in everything else. An Englishman is
always looking at people because he is bored; he looks at men as though
from a stall in a theatre; he makes use of people as an entertainment,
or as a means of obtaining information. The Englishman is always asking
questions, the Frenchman is always giving answers. The Englishman is
always wondering, always thinking things over; the Frenchman knows
everything for certain, he is finished and complete, he will go no
further: he is fond of preaching, talking, holding forth—about what, to
whom, he does not care. He feels no need for personal intimacy, the café
satisfies him completely. Like Repetilov in _Woe from Wit_, he does not
notice that Tchatsky is gone and Skalozub is in his place, that Skalozub
is gone and Zagoretsky is in his place—and goes on holding forth about
the Chamber, about the jury, about Byron (this he pronounces as though it
were a French name), and other important matters.

Coming from Italy, with the enthusiasm of the February revolution still
fresh in my heart, I stumbled on the 15th of May, then passed through
the agony of the June days and the state of siege. It was then that
I obtained a deeper insight into the _tigre-singe_ of Voltaire—and I
lost even the desire to become acquainted with the mighty ones of this
republic.

On one occasion a possibility arose of common work which would have
brought me into contact with many persons, but that did not come off.
Count Xaveri Branicki gave seven million francs for a magazine to deal
with foreign politics and other nations, and especially with the Polish
question. The usefulness and appropriateness of such a magazine were
obvious. French papers show little interest or knowledge in dealing with
what is happening outside France; during the republic, they thought it
sufficient to encourage from time to time all the nations of the world
with the phrase _solidarité des peuples_, and the promise that as soon
as they had time to turn round at home they would found a world-wide
republic resting upon universal brotherhood. With the means at the
disposal of the new magazine, which was to be called _La Tribune des
Peuples_, it might have been made the _Moniteur_ of the international
movement and progress. Its success was the more certain as there was no
other international periodical; there are sometimes excellent articles in
_The Times_ and the _Journal des Débats_ on special subjects, but they
are occasional and disconnected. The _Augsburg Gazette_ would be the most
international organ if its _black-and-yellow_ proclivities were not so
glaringly conspicuous.

But it seems that all the excellent projects of the year 1848 were doomed
to be prematurely born and to perish before cutting their first tooth.
The magazine turned out poor and feeble—and died at the slaughter of the
innocents after the 14th of June 1849.

When everything was ready and on the point of beginning, a house was
taken and fitted up with big tables covered with cloth and little
sloping desks; a lean French _littérateur_ was engaged to watch over
the international mistakes in spelling; to edit it, a committee was
nominated from former Polish nuncios and senators, and at the head of
this Mickiewicz was appointed, with Hoetsky as his assistant;—all that
was left to arrange was a triumphal opening ceremony, and what date could
be more suitable for that than the anniversary of February the 24th, and
what form could it more suitably take than that of a supper?

The supper was to take place at Hoetsky’s. When I arrived I found many
of the guests already there, and among them scarcely a single Frenchman;
on the other hand, other nationalities, from the Sicilians to the
Croats, were fully represented. I was really interested in one person
only—Adam Mickiewicz; I had never seen him before. He was standing by
the fireplace with his elbow on the mantelpiece. Any one who had seen his
portrait in the French edition of his works, taken, I believe, from the
medallion executed by David d’Angers,[14] could recognise him at once
in spite of the great change wrought by the years. Many thoughts and
sufferings had left their trace on his face, which was rather Lithuanian
than Polish. The whole impression made by his figure, his head, his
luxuriant grey hair and weary eyes, was suggestive of past suffering,
of acquaintance with spiritual pain, and of the exaltation of sorrow—he
was the plastic embodiment of the destiny of Poland. The same impression
was made on me later by the face of Worcell, though the features of the
latter, in spite of being even more expressive of suffering, were more
animated and gracious than those of Mickiewicz. It seemed as though
Mickiewicz were held back, preoccupied, distracted by something: that
something was the strange mysticism into which he retreated further and
further away.

I went up to him. He began questioning me about Russia: his information
was fragmentary; he knew little of the literary movement after Pushkin,
having stopped short at the time when he left Russia. In spite of
his leading idea of a fraternal league of all the Slavonic peoples—a
conception he was one of the first to develop—he retained some hostility
to Russia. And, indeed, it could hardly be otherwise after all the
atrocities perpetrated by the Tsar and his satraps; besides, we were
speaking at a time when the terrorism of Nicholas was worse than ever
before.

The first thing that surprised me disagreeably was the attitude to him
of the Poles, his followers: they approached him as monks approach an
abbot, with self-abasement and reverent awe; some of them kissed him on
the shoulder. I suppose he was accustomed to these expressions of servile
devotion, for he accepted them with the greatest _laisser aller_. To be
recognised by people of the same way of thinking, to have influence on
them, to see their affection, is desired by every one who is devoted,
body and soul, to his cause and lives in it; but external signs of
sympathy and respect I should not like to receive—they destroy equality
and consequently freedom. Moreover, in that respect we can never compete
with bishops, heads of departments, and colonels of regiments.

Hoetsky told me that at the supper he was going to propose a toast ‘to
the memory of the 24th of February 1848,’ that Mickiewicz would respond
with a speech in which he would expound his views and the spirit of the
new magazine; he wished me as a Russian to reply to Mickiewicz. Not being
accustomed to public speaking, especially without preparation, I declined
his invitation, but promised to propose the health of Mickiewicz and to
say a few words describing how I had drunk his health before in Moscow at
a public dinner given to Granovsky in the year 1843. Homyakov had raised
his glass with the words, ‘To the great Slavonic poet who is absent!’ The
name (which we dared not pronounce) was not needed; every one got up,
every one raised his glass and, standing in silence, drank to the health
of the exile. Hoetsky was satisfied. Having thus arranged our _extempore_
speeches, we sat down to the table. At the end of the supper, Hoetsky
proposed his toast. Mickiewicz got up and began speaking. His speech
was elaborate, clever, and extremely adroit—that is to say, Barbès[15]
and Louis-Napoleon could both have applauded it with perfect sincerity;
it made me wince. As he developed his thought I began to feel uneasy and
oppressed, and, that not the slightest doubt might be left, waited for
one word, one _name_—it was not slow to appear!

Mickiewicz worked up to the theme that democracy was now entering upon
a new open campaign, at the head of which stood France; that it would
_again_ hasten to the liberation of all oppressed nationalities under
the same eagles, under the same standards, at the sight of which all
principalities and powers had trembled; and that it would be led by a
member of that dynasty which has been crowned by the people, and, as
it seemed, ordained by Providence itself to guide revolution by the
well-ordered path of authority and victory.

When he had finished, except for two or three exclamations of his
adherents, a general silence followed. Hoetsky was very well aware of
Mickiewicz’s blunder, and, wishing to efface the impression of it as
quickly as possible, came up with a bottle and, as he filled my glass,
whispered to me, ‘Well?’ ‘I am not going to say a word after that
speech.’ ‘Please do say something.’ ‘Nothing will induce me.’

The silence continued; some people kept their eyes fixed on their plates,
others scrutinised their glasses, others fell into private conversation
with their neighbours. Mickiewicz’s face changed colour, he wanted to say
something more, but a loud ‘_Je demande la parole_’ put an end to the
painful position. Every one turned to the man who had risen to his feet.
A rather short man of seventy, with a fine vigorous face, stood with a
glass in his trembling hand; anger and indignation were apparent in his
large black eyes and his excited face. It was Ramon de la Sagra.[16] ‘To
the 24th of February,’ he said: ‘that was the toast proposed by our host.
Yes, to the 24th of February, and to the downfall of every despotism,
whether of king or emperor, of a Bourbon or a Bonaparte. I cannot share
the views of our friend Mickiewicz—he looks at things like a poet, and
is right from his own point of view; but I don’t want his words to pass
without protest in such a gathering’; and so he went on and on, with all
the fire of a Spaniard and the authority of an old man.

When he had finished, twenty glasses, among them mine, were held out to
clink with his.

Mickiewicz tried to retrieve his position, said a few words of
explanation, but they were unsuccessful. De la Sagra did not give way.
Every one got up from the table, and Mickiewicz went away.

There could scarcely have been a worse omen for the new journal; it
succeeded in existing after a fashion till the 13th of June, and its
disappearance was as little noticed as its existence. There could be no
unity in the editing of it. Mickiewicz had rolled up half of his imperial
banner _usé par la gloire_. The others did not dare to unfurl theirs;
hampered both by him and by the committee, many of the contributors
abandoned the journal at the end of the month; I never sent them a single
line. If the police of Napoleon had been more intelligent, the _Tribune
des Peuples_ would never have been prohibited on account of a few lines
referring to the 13th of June. With Mickiewicz’s name and devotion to
Napoleon, with its revolutionary mysticism and dream of the democracy
in arms, with the Bonapartes at its head, the journal might have been a
veritable treasure for the President, a clean organ of an unclean cause.

Catholicism, so alien to the Slavonic genius, has a shattering effect
upon it. When the Bohemians no longer had the strength to resist
Catholicism, they were crushed; in the Poles, Catholicism has developed
that mystical exaltation which keeps them perpetually in the world of
dreams. If they are not under the direct influence of the Jesuits, they
either create some idol for themselves, or give themselves up to the
influence of some visionary instead of working for freedom. Messianism,
that mania of Wronski’s, that delirium of Tovjanski’s, had turned the
brains of hundreds of Poles, among them of Mickiewicz himself. The
worship of Napoleon takes a foremost place in this insanity. Napoleon had
done nothing for them; he had no love for Poland, but he liked the Poles
who shed their blood for him with the poetic titanic courage displayed in
their famous cavalry attack of Sommo Sierra.[17] In 1812 Napoleon said to
Narbonne: ‘I want a camp in Poland, not a forum. I will not permit either
Warsaw or Moscow to open a club for demagogues’—and of him the Poles made
a military incarnation of God, setting him on a level with Vishnu and
Christ.

Late one winter evening in 1848, I was walking with one of the Polish
followers of Mickiewicz along the Place de la Vendôme. When we reached
the column the Pole took off his cap. ‘Good heavens!...’ I thought,
hardly daring to believe in such idiocy, and meekly asked what was his
reason for taking off his cap. The Pole pointed to the bronze figure
of the emperor. How can we expect men to refrain from domineering or
oppressing others when it wins so much devotion!

Mickiewicz’s private life was gloomy; there was something unfortunate
about it, something dark, some ‘visitation of God.’ His wife was for
a long time out of her mind. Tovjanski recited incantations over her,
and is said to have done her good; this made a great impression on
Mickiewicz, but traces of her illness remained ... things went badly with
them. The last years of the great poet, who outlived himself, were spent
in gloom. He died in Turkey while taking part in an absurd attempt to
organise a Cossack legion, which the Turkish Government would not permit
to be called Polish. Before his death he wrote a Latin ode to the honour
and glory of Louis-Napoleon.

After this unsuccessful attempt at journalism I withdrew even more
completely into a small circle of friends, enlarged by the arrival of
new exiles. At first I had sometimes visited a club, and taken part in
three or four banquets, _i.e._ had eaten cold mutton and drunk sour
wine, while I listened to Pierre Leroux or Father Cabet and joined in
the Marseillaise. Now I was sick of that, too. With deep pain I watched
and recorded the success of the forces of dissolution and the decadence
of the republic, of France, of Europe. From Russia came no gleam of
light in the distance, no good news, no friendly greeting: my people
had given up writing to me; personal, intimate, family relations were
suspended. Russia lay speechless, bruised as though dead, like an unhappy
peasant-woman at the feet of her master, beaten by his heavy fists.
She was then entering upon that terrible five years from which she is
emerging now to follow the coffin of Nicholas.[18]

Those five years were for me, too, the most unhappy period of my
life; I have no longer such treasures to lose, such convictions to be
shattered....

... The cholera raged in Paris; the heavy air, the sunless heat,
made one depressed; the sight of the luckless, terrified people, and
rows of funeral hearses which raced each other as they drew near the
cemeteries—all this was in harmony with the political events.

The victims of the epidemic fell near at hand, at one’s side. My mother
went to St. Cloud with a friend, a lady of five-and-twenty. As they
were coming back in the evening, the lady felt rather unwell; my mother
persuaded her to stay the night. At seven o’clock the next morning they
came to tell me that she had cholera. I went in to see her, and was
aghast. Not one feature was unchanged; she was still handsome; but all
the muscles of her face were drawn and contracted, dark shadows lay
under her eyes. With some difficulty I succeeded in finding Rayer[19] at
the Institute, and brought him home with me. After glancing at the sick
woman, Rayer whispered to me: ‘You can see for yourself all there is to
be done here.’ He wrote a prescription and went away.

The sick woman called me and asked: ‘What did the doctor say? He did tell
you something, didn’t he?’ ‘He sent for some medicine.’ She took my hand,
and her hand amazed me even more than her face: it had grown thin and
angular as though she had been seriously ill for a month: and fixing her
eyes upon me full of suffering and horror, she said: ‘Tell me, for God’s
sake, what he said ... is it that I am dying?... You are not afraid of
me, are you?’ she added. I felt fearfully sorry for her at that moment;
that terrible consciousness not only of death, but of the infectiousness
of the disease that was rapidly sapping her life, must have been
intensely painful. Towards the morning she died.

Ivan Turgenev was about to leave Paris, the lease of his flat was up; he
came to us for a night. After dinner he complained of the heat; I told
him that I had had a bathe in the morning; in the evening he too went for
a bathe. When he came back he felt unwell, drank some soda-water with a
little wine and sugar in it, and went to bed. In the night he woke me.
‘I am a lost man,’ he said; ‘it’s cholera.’ He really was suffering from
sickness and spasms; happily, he escaped with ten days’ illness.

After burying her friend, my mother went away to the Ville d’Avray.
When Turgenev was taken ill, I sent Natalie and the children to her and
remained alone with him, and when he was a great deal better I moved
there too.

On the morning of June the 12th, Sazonov came to see me there. He was
in a very enthusiastic mood: talked of the popular outbreak that was
impending, of the certainty of its being successful, of the glory
awaiting those who took part in it, and pressed me urgently to join in
reaping the laurels. I told him that he knew my opinion of the present
position—that it seemed to me stupid, without believing in it, to
co-operate with people with whom one had hardly anything in common.

To this the enthusiastic agitator replied that it was of course more
safe and peaceful to stay at home and write sceptical articles while
others were in the market-place championing the liberty of the world, the
solidarity of peoples, and many other good things.

A very despicable feeling, but one which has led and will lead many men
into making great mistakes—even committing crimes—impelled me to say:
‘What makes you imagine I am not going?’

‘I concluded that from what you have just said.’

‘No; I said it was stupid, but I did not say that I never do anything
stupid.’

‘That is just what I wanted! That’s what I like in you! Well, it’s no
use losing time; let us go to Paris. This evening the Germans and other
refugees are assembling at nine o’clock; let us go first to them.’

‘Where are they meeting?’ I asked him in the train.

‘In the Café Lamblin, in the Palais Royal.’

This was my first surprise.

‘In the Café Lamblin?’

‘The “reds” usually meet there.’

‘For that very reason I should have thought that they ought to meet
somewhere else.’

‘But they are all used to going there.’

‘I suppose the beer is very good!’

Various _habitués_ of the revolution were sitting with dignity at a
dozen little tables, gloomily and significantly looking about them from
under wide-brimmed felt hats and short-peaked caps. These were the
perpetual suitors of the revolutionary Penelope, the invariable actors
who take part in every popular demonstration and form its _tableau_,
its background, and who are as terrifying in the distance as the paper
dragons with which the Chinese tried to scare the English.

In the troubled times of social storms and reconstructions in which
states move out of their common routine for a long period, a new kind of
people spring up who may be called the chorus of the revolution; grown
on shifting and volcanic soil, nurtured in an atmosphere of anxiety when
every sort of work is suspended, they grow inured from their earliest
years to the conditions of political ferment, and like the theatrical
setting of it, its impressive and brilliant _mise en scène_. Just as to
Nicholas drill was the most important part of the military art, to them
the everlasting banquets, demonstrations, protests, collections, toasts,
banners, are the most important part of the revolution.

Among them there are good, valiant people, sincerely devoted and ready
to face a bullet; but for the most part they are very unintelligent and
extremely pedantic. Immovable conservatives in everything connected with
revolution, they stop short at some programme and never advance beyond it.

Discussing all their lives a small number of political ideas, they only
know their rhetorical side, so to speak, their ceremonial trappings,
_i.e._ the commonplaces which are invariably brought on the scene _à tour
de rôle_, like the ducks in a well-known children’s toy—in newspaper
articles, in speeches, at banquets and in parliamentary sallies.

In addition to the naïve people and the revolutionary doctrinaires,
unappreciated artists, unsuccessful literary men, students who finished
their studies without taking their degree, briefless barristers, actors
with no talents, persons of great vanity but of little capacity, with
vast pretensions but no perseverance or power of work, are all naturally
drawn into this circle. The external authority which guides the human
herd in ordinary times is weakened in times of revolution; people,
left to themselves, do not know what to do. The younger generation is
impressed with the apparent ease with which men attain celebrity in times
of revolution, and rushes into futile agitation; this accustoms the young
to violent excitements and destroys the habit of work. Life in the clubs
and cafés is attractive, full of movement, flattering to vanity and free
from restraint. There is no fear of being late, there is no need to work:
what is not done to-day may be done to-morrow, or may not be done at all.

The chorus of the revolution, like the chorus of a Greek play, is divided
into two halves; the botanical classification may be applied to them:
some of them may be called cryptogamous and others phanerogamous. Some
become eternal conspirators, are continually changing their lodgings
and the shape of their beards. They mysteriously invite one to some
extraordinarily important interview, if possible at night, or in some
inconvenient place. Meeting their friends in public, they do not like
saluting them with a bow, but greet them with a significant glance. Many
of them keep their address a secret, never tell one what day they are
going away, never say where they are going, write in cypher or invisible
ink news which is printed openly in the newspapers.

In the days of Louis-Philippe, so I was told by a Frenchman, E., who had
been mixed up in some political affair, was in hiding in Paris. With all
its attractions such a life becomes _à la longue_ wearisome and tedious.
Delessert,[20] a _bon vivant_ and a rich man, was at that time prefect;
he served in the police not from necessity but for the love of it, and
liked at times a festive dinner. He and E. had many friends in common.
One day ‘between the peas and the cheese,’ as the French say, one of
them said to him: ‘What a pity it is that you persecute poor E.! We are
deprived of a capital talker, and he is obliged to hide like a criminal.’

‘Upon my soul,’ said Delessert, ‘his case is completely forgotten! Why is
he in hiding?’

His friends smiled ironically.

‘I will try to convince him that it is all nonsense—and you, too.’

On reaching home he called one of his chief spies and asked him, ‘Is E.
in Paris?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the spy. ‘Is he in hiding?’ asked Delessert.
‘Yes,’ answered the spy. ‘Where?’ asked Delessert. The spy took out his
notebook, looked in it, and read E.’s address. ‘Well, then, go to him
to-morrow early in the morning and tell him that he need not be anxious,
that we are not looking for him, and he can live in peace at his flat.’

The spy carried out his task exactly, and two hours after his visit E.
mysteriously informed his friends that he was leaving Paris and would be
in hiding in a remote town, because the prefect had found out the place
where he was concealed!

Just as the conspirators try to conceal their secret with a transparent
veil of mystery and an eloquent silence, the phanerogamous try to display
and blurt out all they possess.

They are the permanent tribunes of the clubs and cafés; they are
perpetually dissatisfied with everything, they repeat everything—even
things that have not happened, while things that have happened are
by them squared and cubed and distorted out of all proportion, like
the mountains on a relief map. One is so used to seeing them that one
unconsciously looks for them in every row in the street, at every
demonstration, at every banquet.

... The spectacle at the Café Lamblin was still new to me; at that time
I was not familiar with the back premises of the revolution. It is
true that in Rome I had been in the Cafe delle Belli Arti and in the
square, I had been in the Circolo Romano and in the Circolo Popolare;
but the movement in Rome had not then that exotic character which became
particularly apparent after the failure of 1848. Ciceruacchio and his
friends had a _naïveté_ of their own, their southern expressiveness
which strikes one as affectation and their Italian phrases which seem
to us theatrical; but they were in a period of youthful enthusiasm,
they had not yet fully awakened from their three centuries of sleep.
_Il popolano_ Ciceruacchio was not in the least a political agitator by
trade; he liked nothing better than to retire in peace to his little
house in Strada Ripetta and to carry on his trade in wood and timber like
a _pater familias_ and free _civis romanus_.

The men surrounding him were free from all traces of that vulgar,
babbling pseudo-revolutionism, of that _taré_ character which is so
depressingly common in France.

I need hardly say that in speaking of the café agitators and
revolutionary lazzaroni I was not thinking of those mighty workers for
the emancipation of humanity, of those martyrs for the love of their
fellow-creatures and fiery champions of independence whose words could
not be suppressed by prison, nor exile, nor banishment, nor poverty—of
those creators of events, by whose blood and tears and words a new
historical order is established. I am talking about the stagnant margin
covered with barren weeds, to whom agitation itself is goal and reward,
who like the process of revolution for its own sake, as Tchitchikov’s
Petrushka[21] liked the process of reading, or as Nicholas liked drill.

There is nothing for reaction to rejoice at in this—it is overgrown with
worse weeds and toadstools, not only at the margin but everywhere. In
its ranks are whole multitudes of officials who tremble before their
superiors, scurrying spies, volunteer assassins ready to murder on either
side, officers of every loathsome kind from the Prussian junker to the
rapacious French Algerian, from the guard to the _page de chambre_—and
that is only touching on the secular side, saying nothing of the
mendicant fraternity, the intriguing Jesuits, the priests who act as
police, and the other members of the ranks of angels and archangels.

If there are among reactionaries any who resemble our dilettante
revolutionaries, they are the courtiers employed for ceremonies, the
people who are conspicuous at levees, christenings, royal weddings,
coronations, and funerals, the people who exist for the uniform, for gold
lace, who make up the aureole and fragrance of power.

In the Café Lamblin, where the desperate _citoyens_ were sitting over
their _petits verres_ and big glasses, I learned that they had no sort of
plan, that the movement had no real centre and no programme. They were
waiting for inspiration to descend upon them as the Holy Ghost descended
upon the heads of the apostles. There was only one point on which all
were agreed—_to come to the meeting-place unarmed_. After two hours of
empty chatter, we went off to the office of the _True Republic_, agreeing
to meet at eight o’clock next morning at the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle,
facing the Château d’Eau.

The editor was not at home: he had gone to the ‘montagnards’ for
instructions. About twenty people, for the most part Poles and Germans,
were in the big, grimy, poorly lighted and still more poorly furnished
room which served as an assembly hall and a committee room. Sazonov took
a sheet of paper and began writing something; when he had written it, he
read it aloud to us: it was a protest in the name of the _émigrés_ of all
nationalities against the occupation of Rome, and a declaration of their
readiness to take part in the movement. Those who wished to immortalise
their names by associating them with the glorious morrow he invited to
sign it. Almost all wished to immortalise their names, and signed it. The
editor came in, much dejected, anxious to impress on every one that he
knew a great deal but was bound to keep silent; I felt convinced that he
knew nothing at all.

‘_Citoyens_,’ he said, ‘_la Montagne est en permanence._’ Well, who
could doubt its success—_en permanence_! Sazonov gave the editor the
protest of the democracy of Europe. The editor read it through and said:
‘That’s splendid, splendid! France thanks you, _citoyens_; but why the
signatures? There are so few, that if we are unsuccessful our enemies
will vent all their anger upon you.’

Sazonov insisted on the signatures remaining; many agreed with him. ‘I
won’t take the responsibility for it,’ said the editor; ‘excuse me, I
know better the people we have to deal with.’ With that he tore off the
signatures and delivered the names of a dozen candidates for immortality
to the flame of the candle, while he sent the protest itself to the
printer.

It was daybreak when we left the office; groups of ragged boys and
wretched, poorly dressed women were standing, sitting, and lying on the
pavement near the various newspaper offices, waiting for the piles of
newspapers—some to fold them, and others to run with them all over Paris.
We walked out on to the boulevard: there was absolute stillness; now and
then one came upon a patrol of National Guards and police-sergeants,
strolling about and looking slyly at us.

‘How free from care the city sleeps,’ said my comrade, ‘with no
foreboding of the storm that will waken it to-morrow!’

‘Here are those who keep vigil for us all,’ I said to him, pointing
upwards—that is, to the lighted window of the _Maison d’Or_.

‘And very appropriately, too. Let us go in and have an absinthe; my
stomach is a bit upset.’

‘And I feel empty; it wouldn’t be amiss to have some supper too. How they
eat in the Capitole I don’t know, but in the Conciergerie the food is
abominable.’

From the bones left after our meal of cold turkey, no one could have
guessed either that cholera was raging in Paris, or that in two hours’
time we were going to change the destinies of Europe. We ate at the
Maison d’Or as Napoleon slept before Austerlitz.

Between eight and nine o’clock, when we reached the Boulevard Bonne
Nouvelle, many groups of people had already gathered there, evidently
impatient to know what they were to do; their faces showed perplexity,
but at the same time something in their aspect betrayed great
exasperation. Had those people found real leaders the day would not have
ended in a farce.

There was a minute when it seemed to me that something was really going
to happen. A gentleman rode on horseback down the boulevard rather
slowly. He was recognised as one of the ministers (Lacroix), who was
probably taking horse exercise so early not merely for the sake of fresh
air. He was surrounded by a shouting crowd, who pulled him off his horse,
tore his coat, and then let him go—that is, another group rescued him and
escorted him away. The crowd grew; by ten o’clock there may have been
twenty-five thousand people. No one we spoke to, no one we questioned,
knew anything. Chersosi, a _carbonaro_ of old days, assured us that the
_banlieu_ was coming through the Arc de Triomphe with a shout of ‘_Vive
la République!_’

‘Above all,’ the elders of the democracy repeated again, ‘be unarmed, or
you will spoil the character of the whole thing—the all-powerful people
ought to show the National Assembly its will peacefully and solemnly so
as to give the enemy no occasion to blaspheme.’

At last columns were formed; we foreigners made up a guard of honour
immediately behind the leaders, among whom were E. Arago[22] in the
uniform of a colonel, a former minister, Bastide,[23] and other
celebrities of 1848. We moved down the boulevard, shouting various things
and singing the Marseillaise. One who has not heard the Marseillaise sung
by thousands of voices in that state of nervous excitement and suspense
which is inevitable before a struggle can hardly realise the overwhelming
effect of the revolutionary hymn.

At that minute there was really something grand about the demonstration.
As we slowly moved down the boulevards all the windows were thrown open;
ladies and children crowded at them and came out on to the balconies; the
gloomy and agitated faces of their husbands, the fathers and proprietors,
peeped out from behind them, not observing that in the fourth storeys and
attics other heads, those of poor seamstresses and working girls, were
thrust out—they waved handkerchiefs, nodded, and greeted us. From time to
time as we passed by the houses of well-known people all sorts of shouts
were uttered.

In this way we reached the point where the Rue de la Paix joins the
boulevards; it was closed by a platoon of the Vincennes Chasseurs, and
when our column came up to it the chasseurs suddenly moved apart like
the scenery in a theatre, and Changarnier,[24] mounted upon a small
horse, galloped up at the head of a squadron of dragoons. With no summons
to the crowd to disperse, with no beating of the drums or other legal
formalities, he scattered the foremost ranks, cut them off from the
others, and, changing the dragoons into open formation, ordered them
to clear the street at full speed. The dragoons with positive zest fell
to riding down people, striking them with the flat of their swords and
using the edge at the slightest resistance. I hardly had time to take in
what was happening when I found myself nose to nose with a horse which
was snorting in my face, and a dragoon swearing also right in my face
and threatening me with a blow if I did not move away. I retreated to
the right, and in one instant was carried away by the crowd and squeezed
against the railings of the Rue Basse des Remparts. Of our rank the only
one left besides me was M. Strübing. Meanwhile the dragoons pressed upon
the foremost ranks with their horses, and the people, unable to get away,
were thrust back upon us. E. Arago leaped over into the Rue Basse des
Remparts, slipped, and dislocated his leg; Strübing and I jumped down
after him. We looked at each other in a sort of frenzied indignation;
Strübing turned round and shouted aloud: ‘_Aux armes! Aux armes!_’ A man
in a workman’s blouse caught him by the collar and, shoving him out of
the way, said; ‘Have you gone mad? Look there!’ A thick brush of bayonets
was moving down the street—the Chaussée d’Antin it must have been. ‘Get
away before they hear you and cut off all escape. All is lost, all!’
he added, clenching his fist; and, humming a tune as though there were
nothing the matter, rapidly walked away. We made our way to the Place de
la Concorde. In the Champs-Élysées there was not a single platoon from
the _banlieu_; why, Chersosi must have known that there was not. It had
been a diplomatic lie to save the situation, though it would perhaps have
been fatal if any had believed it.

The shamelessness of attacking an unarmed crowd aroused great resentment.
If anything really had been prepared, had there been leaders, nothing
would have been easier than for fighting to have begun in earnest.
Instead of showing itself in its full strength, the _Montagne_, on
hearing how absurdly the sovereign people had been dispersed by horses,
hid itself behind a cloud. Ledru-Rollin carried on negotiations with
Guinard.[25] Guinard, the artillery commander of the National Guard,
wanted to join the movement, wanted to give men, but would not on any
consideration give ammunition—he seems to have wished to act by the moral
influence of cannons; Forestier[26] was doing the same with his legion.
Whether it helped them much, we saw by the Versailles trial. Every one
wanted to do something, but no one ventured; the most foresight was shown
by some young men who built their hopes on the new regime—they ordered
themselves prefects’ uniforms, which they declined to take after the
movement failed, and the tailor had to put them up for sale.

When the hurriedly rigged-up government was installed at the _Arts et
Métiers_, the workmen, after walking about the streets with inquiring
faces and finding neither advice nor leadership, went home, convinced
once more of the ineffectiveness of the _Montagnard_ fathers of the
country; perhaps they gulped down their tears like the man who said
to us, ‘All is lost!’—or perhaps laughed in their sleeves at the
discomfiture of the _Montagne_.

But the dilatoriness of Ledru-Rollin, the pedantry of Guinard—these were
the external causes of the failure, and were as _appropriate to the
occasion_ as decisive characters and fortunate circumstances when they
are needed. The internal cause was the poverty of the republican idea in
which the movement originated. An idea that has outlived its day may
hobble about the world for years—may even, like Christ, appear after
death once or twice to its devotees; but it is hard for it ever again
to lead and dominate life. Such ideas never gain complete possession of
a man, or gain possession only of incomplete people. If the _Montagne_
had been victorious on the 13th of June, what would it have done?
There was nothing new they could call their own. It would have been an
insipid reproduction of the gloomy Rembrandt or Salvator Rosa picture
of 1793 without the Jacobins, without the war, without even the naïve
guillotine....

After the 13th of June and the attempted rising at Lyons, arrests
followed. The mayor came with the police to us at the Ville d’Avray to
look for Karl Blind[27] and Arnold Ruge; some of our friends were seized.
The Conciergerie was full to overflowing. In one small room there were
as many as sixty men; in the middle stood a large slop-bucket, which was
emptied once in the twenty-four hours—and all this in civilised Paris,
with the cholera raging. Having no desire to spend some two months in
such pleasant surroundings, fed on rotten beans and putrid meat, I
borrowed a passport from a Moldav-Wallachian and went to Geneva.[28]

Transport in France was in the hands of Laffitte and Calliard in those
days. The diligences were put on the railway lines, then taken off—at
Châlons, I remember—then put on the rails again. A lean, sunburnt
gentleman with a clipped moustache and a rather unpleasant appearance
got into the carriage with me, and looked at me suspiciously; he had a
small travelling-bag, and a sword wrapped up in American leather. He was
obviously a police-sergeant in disguise. He scanned me carefully from
head to foot, then retreated into the corner and did not utter a single
word. At the first station he called up the conductor and told him that
he had left behind an excellent map, and would be grateful for a scrap
of paper and an envelope. The conductor said they only had three minutes
before the bell would ring; the sergeant jumped out, and returning
looked at me more suspiciously than ever. For four hours the silence
continued: my permission to smoke he even asked without speaking; I
answered in the same way with my head and my eyes, and took out a cigar.
When it began to get dusk he asked me, ‘Are you going to Geneva?’ ‘No,
to Lyons,’ I answered. ‘Ah!’ With that the conversation ended. A little
while later the door opened and the conductor with difficulty thrust
in a bald-headed, immensely corpulent individual, in a roomy pea-green
overcoat and a bright-coloured waistcoat, with a thick stick, a sack, and
an umbrella. When this typical figure of the virtuous uncle installed
himself between the sergeant and me, I asked him before he had time to
recover his breath: ‘_Monsieur, vous n’avez pas d’objection?_’ Coughing,
mopping his face, and tying a silk handkerchief round his head, he
answered: ‘Not in the least, by all means; my son who is in Algiers is
always smoking, _il fume toujours_’; and with this good opening he began
chatting and telling us stories. Half an hour later, he asked me where I
had come from and where I was going. Hearing that I came from Wallachia,
he added with characteristic French politeness, ‘_Ah, c’est un beau
pays_,’ though he did not know for certain whether it was in Turkey or in
Hungary.

My neighbour answered his questions very laconically. ‘_Monsieur est
militaire?_’ ‘_Oui, monsieur._’ ‘_Monsieur a été en Algérie?_’ ‘_Oui,
monsieur._’ ‘My eldest son, too, he is there now. In Oran,[29] I
suppose?’ ‘_Non, monsieur._’ ‘And in your country are there diligences?’

‘Between Jassy and Bucharest,’ I answered with inimitable assurance.
‘Only, with us, diligences are drawn by oxen.’

This greatly astonished my neighbour, and I am sure he would have taken
his oath that I was a Wallachian; after this happy detail, even the
sergeant was softened and became more conversational.

At Lyons I got out of the diligence and at once went to another
booking-office, climbed upon the roof of another diligence, and five
minutes later was dashing along the road to Geneva. At the last big town
before the frontier, a commissaire of police was sitting with a clerk in
the square before the police-station; gendarmes were standing about, and
a preliminary examination of passports was held. The description in my
passport did not quite fit me, and so, getting down from the knife-board,
I said to the gendarme: ‘_Mon brave_, where could we quickly get a drink
of wine together? Show me; the heat is insufferable.’

‘Why, there’s my sister’s café not two steps away.’

‘But what about my passport?’

‘Give it here, I’ll hand it over to my comrade; he will bring it back to
us.’

A minute later the gendarme and I were sitting over a bottle of Beaune
in his sister’s café, and five minutes later his comrade brought the
passport. I offered him a glass, he put his hand to his hat, and we
returned to the diligence friends. So far all was well. We reached the
frontier; there was a river, over the river a bridge, and on the other
side of the bridge the Piedmontese custom-house. French gendarmes were
sauntering in all directions on the bank, looking for Ledru-Rollin, who
had crossed the frontier long before, and for Félix Pyat,[30] who would
nevertheless cross it later, and like me with a Wallachian passport.

The conductor observed that here they would examine our passports
finally, that this would take rather a long time—half an hour—and so
he advised us to have something to eat at the posting inn. We went in,
and had no sooner sat down than another Lyons diligence drove up; the
passengers came in, and foremost among them was my sergeant. Ough! what
luck! And I had told him that I was going to Lyons. We bowed frigidly;
he, too, seemed surprised; however, he did not say a word.

A gendarme came in, distributed passports; the diligences were already
on the other side of the river. ‘Kindly cross the bridge on foot,
gentlemen.’ Now there will be a bobbery, I thought. We went out ...
and here we are on the bridge—no trouble; and now we were over the
bridge—still no trouble.

‘Ha—ha—ha!’ the sergeant laughed nervously. ‘So we’ve got across! Ough!
it’s like a load off one’s back.’

‘What?’ said I, ‘are you....’

‘Why, you too, it seems?’

‘Upon my word,’ I answered, laughing heartily, ‘I am straight from
Bucharest; came all the way with oxen.’

‘It’s your luck!’ the conductor said to me, holding up his finger. ‘You
must be more careful next time. Why did you give two francs to the boy
who brought you to the inn? It’s a good thing he is _one of us_ too; he
said to me at once, “He must be a red; he didn’t stop a minute at Lyons,
and he was so pleased to get a seat that he gave me two francs.” “You
hold your tongue, it’s not your business,” I said to him, “or some beast
of a gendarme will overhear you and maybe stop him.”’

Next day we reached Geneva, the old haven of refuge for the persecuted.
‘At the time of the king’s death, a hundred and fifty families,’ says
Michelet in his history of the 16th century, ‘escaped to Geneva; a
little later, another fourteen hundred. The refugees from France and the
refugees from Italy founded the real Geneva, that wonderful sanctuary
between three nations; with no support, afraid of the Swiss themselves,
it maintained itself by its moral force alone.’

Switzerland was at this time the meeting-place in which the survivors
left from European revolutions gathered together from all parts.
Representatives of all the unsuccessful risings were shifting about
between Geneva and Basle, crowds of the insurgents were crossing the
Rhine, others were descending the St. Gothard or coming from beyond the
Jura. The cowardly Federal Government did not dare yet to turn them out;
the cantons still clung to their ancient holy right of sanctuary.

All the people whose names were on everybody’s lips, whom I loved at a
distance and was now eager to meet, were passing through Geneva as though
on parade at a review, stopping there to rest and going on again....




Chapter 37

A BABEL OF TONGUES—THE GERMAN UMWALZUNGSMÄNNER—THE FRENCH RED
MONTAGNARDS—THE ITALIAN FUORUSCITI IN GENEVA—MAZZINI, GARIBALDI, AND
ORSINI—THE ROMAN AND THE GERMAN TRADITIONS—A TRIP ON ‘THE PRINCE RADETSKY’


There was a time when in a fit of irritation and bitter mirth I thought
of writing a pamphlet in the style of Grandville’s[31] Illustrations:
_Les réfugiés peints par eux-mêmes_. I am glad I did not do it. Now that
I look at it more calmly, I am less moved to laughter and indignation.
Besides, exile both lasts too long and weighs too heavily on men....

Nevertheless, I do say even now that exile, not undertaken with any
definite object, but forced upon men by the triumph of the opposing
party, checks development and draws men away from the activities of life
into the domain of fantasy. Leaving their native land with concealed
anger, with the continual thought of going back to it on the morrow, men
make no advance, but are continually thrown back upon the past; hope
hinders them from settling down and undertaking any permanent work;
irritation and trivial but exasperated disputes prevent their escaping
from the familiar circle of questions, thoughts, and memories which make
up an oppressive binding tradition. Men in general, and especially men
in an exceptional position, have such a passion for formalism, for the
coterie spirit, for looking their part, that they immediately fall into
a groove and acquire a doctrinaire stamp.

All exiles, cut off from the living environment to which they have
belonged, shut their eyes to avoid seeing bitter truths, and grow more
and more used to a narrow, fantastic circle consisting of inert memories
and hopes that will never be realised.

Add to this, aloofness from all who are not exiles and an element of
exasperation, suspicion, exclusiveness, and jealousy, and this new
stiff-necked Israel becomes perfectly comprehensible.

The exiles of 1849 did not yet believe in the permanence of their
enemy’s triumph; the intoxication of their recent successes had not
yet passed off, the applause and songs of the victorious people were
still ringing in their ears. They firmly believed that their defeat was
a momentary reverse, and did not unpack their trunks. Meanwhile Paris
was under police supervision, Rome was falling under the onslaught of
the French, the brother of the Prussian King was brutally triumphing in
Baden,[32] while Paskevitch in the Russian style had outwitted Görgei[33]
in Hungary by bribes and promises. Geneva was full to overflowing with
refugees; it became the Coblenz[34] of the revolution of 1848. There
were Italians from all parts; Frenchmen escaping from the Bauchart[35]
inquiry and from the Versailles trial; Baden insurgents, who entered
Geneva marching in regular formation with their officers and with Gustav
Struve; men who had taken part in the rising of Vienna; Bohemians; Poles
from Posen and Galicia. All these people were crowded together between
the Hôtel de Bergues and the Post Office Café. The more sensible of
them began to suspect that this exile would not soon be over, talked of
America, and went away. It was quite the opposite with the majority, and
especially with the French, who, true to their temperament, were in daily
expectation of the death of Napoleon and the birth of a republic—some
looking for a republic both democratic and socialistic, others for one
that should be democratic and not at all socialistic.

A few days after my arrival, as I was walking in Les Paquis, I met an
elderly gentleman who looked like a Russian village priest, wearing a low
wide-brimmed hat and a _black_ white coat, and walking along with a sort
of priestly unction; beside him stepped a man of terrific proportions,
who looked as though he had been casually put together of immense blocks
of human flesh. F. Kapp,[36] the young writer, was with me.

‘Don’t you know them?’ he asked me.

‘No; but, if I’m not mistaken, it must be Lot or Noah out for a walk
with Adam, who has put on a coat several sizes too large instead of his
fig-leaves.’

‘They are Struve and Heinzen,’ he answered, laughing: ‘would you like to
make their acquaintance?’

‘Very much.’ He introduced me.

The conversation was trivial. Struve was on his way home, and invited us
to come in; we went with him. His small lodging was crowded with exiles
from Baden. A tall woman, from a distance very good-looking, with a mass
of luxuriant hair flowing loose in an original fashion, was sitting in
the midst of them; this was his wife, the celebrated Amalie Struve.

Struve’s face made a strange impression on me from the very first; it
expressed that moral rigidity which superstitious bigotry gives to
fanatics and dissenters. Looking at his strong, narrow forehead, at the
untroubled expression of his eyes, at his uncombed beard, his slightly
grizzled hair, and his whole figure, I could have fancied that this
was either a fanatical pastor of the army of Gustavus Adolphus who
had forgotten to die, or a Taborite[37] preaching repentance and the
sacrament under two aspects. There was a surly coarseness about the
appearance of Heinzen,[38] that Sobakevitch of the German revolution;
full-blooded and clumsy, he kept looking angrily from under his brows,
and was sparing of words. He wrote later on that it would be sufficient
to _massacre_ two millions of the inhabitants of the globe and the cause
of revolution would go swimmingly. Anybody who had once seen him would
not be surprised at his writing this.

I cannot refrain from relating an extremely funny incident which occurred
to me in connection with this cannibalistic project. There was, and
indeed still is, living in Geneva a Dr. R., one of the most good-natured
men in the world and one of the most constant and platonic lovers of the
revolution, the friend of all the refugees; he doctored them gratis as
well as giving them food and drink. However early one might arrive at the
Café de la Poste, the doctor would already be there and already reading
his third or fourth newspaper; he would beckon one mysteriously and
murmur in one’s ear: ‘I fancy it will be a hot day in Paris to-day.’ ‘Why
so?’ ‘I can’t tell you from whom I heard it, but it was a man in close
relations with Ledru-Rollin; he was here on his way through....’ ‘Why,
you were expecting something yesterday and the day before yesterday too,
weren’t you, Doctor?’ ‘Well, what of that? _Stadt Rom war nicht in einem
Tage gebaut._’

So it was to him as a friend of Heinzen’s that I appealed in the very
same café when the latter published his philanthropic programme. ‘Why,’
I said to him, ‘does your friend write such pernicious nonsense? The
reaction is making an outcry, and indeed it has every reason to: he’s a
regular Marat in a German setting! And how can one ask for two million
heads?’

R. was confused, but did not like to give his friend away. ‘Listen,’
he said at last: ‘you have lost sight of one fact, perhaps: Heinzen is
speaking of the whole human race; in that number there would be at least
_two hundred thousand Chinese_.’ ‘Oh, well, that’s a different matter;
why spare them?’ I answered; and for long afterwards I could never think
of this reassuring fact without bursting into laughter.

Two days after our meeting in Les Paquis, the _garçon_ of the Hôtel de
Bergues, where I was staying, ran up to my room and announced with an air
of importance: ‘General Struve and his adjutants.’ I imagined either
that some one had sent the _garçon_ up as a joke, or that he had made
some blunder; but the door opened and—

    ‘Mit bedächtigem Schritt
    Gustav Struve tritt ...’

and with him four gentlemen: two were in the military uniform worn in
those days by German students, and had in addition red armlets adorned
with various emblems. Struve presented his suite to me, democratically
referring to them as ‘brothers in exile.’ I learnt with delight that
one of them, a young man of twenty, who looked like a _Bursch_ who had
recently emerged from the ‘_fuchs_’[39] stage, was now successfully
filling the post of minister of home affairs _per interim_.

Struve at once began instructing me in his theory of the seven scourges,
_die sieben Geissel_—Popes, priests, kings, soldiers, bankers, etc.—and
of the establishment of some new democratic and revolutionary religion.
I observed that if it depended upon us whether to establish a new
religion or not, it would be better not to establish any, but to leave
it to the will of God, as, from the very nature of the case, it was more
His concern. We argued. Struve made some remark about the _Weltseele_;
I observed that in spite of Schelling’s having so clearly defined the
world-soul by calling it _das Schwebende_, I found great difficulty in
grasping it.

He jumped up from his chair and, coming as close to me as possible, with
the words, ‘Excuse me, allow me,’ began tapping my head with his fingers,
and pressing it with them, as though my skull had been composed of the
keys of a concertina. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he commented, addressing his four
brothers in exile, ‘_Bürger Herzen hat kein, aber auch gar kein Organ
der Venerazion!_’ All were satisfied with the lack of the ‘bump of
reverence’ in me, and I was equally so.

Hereupon he informed me that he was a great phrenologist, and had not
only written a book on Halle’s system but had even selected his Amalie
from it, after first feeling her skull. He assured me that the bump of
the passions was completely absent in her, and that the back part of
the skull where they are located was almost flat. On these grounds,
sufficient for a divorce, he married her.

Struve was a very queer fish: he ate nothing but Lenten food, with
the addition of milk, drank no wine, and kept his Amalie on a similar
diet. This was not enough for him: he went every day to bathe with her
in the Arve, the water of which scarcely reaches the temperature of
eight degrees in the middle of summer, as it flows so swiftly from the
mountains that it has not time to get warm.

Later on it often happened that we talked of vegetarianism. I raised the
usual objections: the formation of the teeth, the great loss of energy in
the digestion of vegetable fibre, and the lower development of the brain
in herbivorous animals. He listened blandly without losing his temper,
but stuck to his opinion. In conclusion, apparently wishing to impress
me, he said: ‘Do you know that a man always nourished on vegetarian diet
so purifies his body as to be quite free from smell after death?’ ‘That’s
very pleasant,’ I replied; ‘but what advantage will that be to me? I
won’t be sniffing myself after death.’ Struve did not even smile, but
said to me with serene conviction: ‘You will speak very differently one
day!’ ‘When my bump of reverence develops,’ I added.

At the end of 1849 Struve sent me the calendar he had newly devised for
‘free’ Germany. The days, the months, everything had been translated into
an ancient German jargon difficult to understand; instead of saints’
days, every day was dedicated to the memory of two celebrities—for
instance, to Washington and Lafayette; but, on the other hand, every
tenth day was devoted to the memory of the enemies of mankind—for
instance, Nicholas and Metternich. The holidays were the days when
particularly great men such as Luther and Columbus were commemorated.
In this calendar Struve had the gallantry to replace Christmas on the
twenty-fifth of December by the festival of Amalie!

Meeting me one day in the street, he said among other things that we
ought to publish in Geneva a journal common to all the exiles, in
three languages, which would carry on the struggle against the ‘seven
scourges’ and maintain the ‘sacred fire’ of the peoples, now crushed by
the reaction. I answered that it would, of course, be a very good thing.
The publishing of papers was at that time an epidemic disease: every
two or three weeks new schemes were started, specimen copies appeared,
prospectuses were sent about, then two or three numbers would come
out—and would all disappear, leaving no trace. People who were incapable
of anything considered themselves competent to edit a paper, scraped
together a hundred francs or so, and spent them on the first and last
number. So I was not in the least surprised at Struve’s intention; but I
was very much surprised by his calling upon me at seven o’clock the next
morning. I thought some misfortune had happened, but Struve, after calmly
settling himself in a chair, brought a sheet of paper out of his pocket
and, preparing to read it, said: ‘_Bürger_, since we agreed yesterday as
to the necessity of publishing a journal, I have come to read you the
prospectus of it.’

When he had read it he informed me that he was going to Mazzini and
many others to invite them to meet at Heinzen’s for deliberation on the
subject. I, too, went to Heinzen’s: he was sitting with a ferocious air
at the table, holding a manuscript in one gigantic paw; the other he
held out to me, muttering thickly, ‘_Bürger, platz!_’

Some eight persons, French and German, were present. Some
ex-representative of the people in the French National Assembly was
making an estimate of the cost, and writing something in slanting lines.
When Mazzini arrived, Struve proposed reading the prospectus that had
been written by Heinzen. Heinzen cleared his throat and began reading it
in German, although the only language common to all was French.

Since they had not the faintest shadow of a new idea, the prospectus was
only the thousandth variation of those democratic lucubrations which are
the same sort of rhetorical exercise on revolutionary texts as church
sermons are on those of the Bible. Indirectly guarding himself from a
charge of socialism, Heinzen said that the democratic republic would of
itself solve the economic question to the general satisfaction. The man
who did not flinch at the demand for two million heads was afraid that
his organ would be considered communistic.

I urged some objection to this when the reading was finished, but from
his abrupt replies, from Struve’s intervention, and from the gestures of
the French deputy, I perceived that we had been invited to the council
to accept Heinzen’s and Struve’s prospectus, not to deliberate upon it;
it was in strict harmony with the theory held by Elpidifor Antiohovitch
Zurov, the military governor of Novgorod.[40]

Mazzini listened with a melancholy air, but agreed, and was almost the
first to subscribe for two or three shares. ‘_Si omnes consentiunt ego
non dissentio_,’ I thought _à la_ Schufterle in Schiller’s _Robbers_, and
I too subscribed.

But the subscribers appeared to be few in number; however often the
French deputy added and subtracted, the sum subscribed was insufficient.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Mazzini, ‘I have thought of a way of getting over the
difficulty: publish the journal at first only in French and German; as
for the Italian translation, I shall put all articles of _interest_ in my
_Italia del Popolo_—that will save you one-third of the expenditure.’

‘To be sure! what could be better!’ Mazzini’s proposition was accepted
by all. He grew a little more cheerful. I was awfully amused, and very
eager to show him that I had seen the trick he had played. I went up to
him and, watching for a moment when no one was near us, I said: ‘How
capitally you got out of the journal!’

‘Well,’ he observed, ‘an Italian part is really superfluous, you know.’

‘So are the two others!’ I added.

A smile glided over his face and vanished as quickly as though it had
never been there.

That was the second time of my seeing him. Mazzini, who knew of my stay
in Rome, wanted to make my acquaintance. One morning I went with L. Spini
to see him in Les Paquis.

When we went in Mazzini was sitting dejectedly at the table listening
to what was being said by a rather tall, graceful, and handsome young
man with fair hair. This was the daring companion-in-arms of Garibaldi,
the defender of Vascello, the leader of the Roman legionaries, Giacomo
Medici. Another young man with an expression of melancholy preoccupation
sat plunged in thought, paying no attention to what was going
forward—this was Mazzini’s colleague in the triumvirate, Marco Aurelio
Saffi.

Mazzini got up and, looking me straight in the face with his piercing
eyes, held out both hands in a friendly way. Even in Italy a head so
severely classical, so elegant in its gravity, is rarely to be met with.
At moments the expression of his face was harshly austere, but it quickly
grew soft and serene. An active, concentrated intelligence sparkled in
his melancholy eyes; there was an infinity of persistence and strength
of will in them and in the lines on his brow. All his features showed
traces of long years of anxiety, of sleepless nights, of past storms,
of powerful passions, or rather of one powerful passion, and also some
element of fanaticism—perhaps of asceticism.

Mazzini is very simple and amiable in his manner, but the habit of
rule is apparent, especially in argument; he can scarcely conceal his
annoyance at contradiction, and sometimes does not conceal it. He
knows his strength, and genuinely despises all the external trappings
of dictatorial authority. His popularity was at that time immense. In
his little room, with the everlasting cigar in his mouth, Mazzini at
Geneva, like the Pope in the old days at Avignon, held in his hands the
threads that like a spiritual telegraph system brought him into living
communication with the whole peninsula. He knew every heart-throb of his
party, felt the slightest tremor in it, promptly responded to everything,
and with amazing tirelessness gave general guidance to everything and
every one.

A fanatic and at the same time an organiser, he covered Italy with a
network of secret societies connected together and devoted to one object.
These societies branched off into arteries that defied detection, split
up, grew smaller and smaller, and vanished in the Apennines and the
Alps, in the regal palazzi of aristocrats and the dark alleys of Italian
towns into which no police can penetrate. Village priests, diligence
conductors, the _principe_ of Lombardy, smugglers, innkeepers, women,
bandits, all were made use of, all were links in the chain that was
bound to him and that was subject to him. From the times of Menotti[41]
and the brothers Bandiera,[42] enthusiastic youths, vigorous men of the
people, vigorous aristocrats, sometimes old men, come forward in constant
succession ... and follow the lead of Mazzini, consecrated by the elder
Buonarotti, the comrade and friend of Gracchus Babeuf,[43] and advance
to the unequal combat, disdainful of chains and the block, and sometimes
at the point of death adding to the shout of ‘_Viva l’Italia!_’ that of
‘_Viva Mazzini!_’

There has never been such a revolutionary organisation anywhere, and it
would hardly be possible anywhere but in Italy, unless in Spain. Now
it has lost its old unity and old strength, it is exhausted by the ten
years of martyrdom, it is worn out by loss of blood and the anguish of
suspense, its thought has grown older; and yet what outbursts, what
heroic examples, there are still: Pianori, Orsini, Pisacane!

I do not think that by the death of one man a country could be raised
from such degradation as France has fallen into now.[44]

I do not justify the plan on which Pisacane made his attempt;[45] it
seemed to me as ill-timed as the two previous risings in Milan: but
that is not the point. I only mean to speak here of the way in which it
was actually carried out. These men overwhelm one with the grandeur of
their tragic poetry, their terrible strength, and silence all blame and
criticism. I know no instance of greater heroism, among either the Greeks
or the Romans, among the martyrs of Christianity or of the Reformation!

A handful of vigorous men sail to the luckless shore of Naples, bearing
a challenge, an example, a living witness that all is not yet dead in
the people. The handsome young leader is the first to fall, with the
flag in his hand—and after him the rest fall, or worse still are caught
in the clutches of the Bourbon. The death of Pisacane and the death of
Orsini were like two fearful thunderclaps in a sultry night. Latin Europe
shuddered—the wild boar,[46] terrified, retreated to Caserta and hid
himself in his lair.

Pale with horror, the man who was driving France in her funeral hearse to
the graveyard trembled in his seat.

Pisacane’s attempt might well be described among the people in these
poetical lines:—[47]

    ...
    Sceser con l’armi, e a noi non fecer guerra,
    Ma s’inchinaron per bacciar la terra:
    Ad uno ad uno li gardai nel viso:
    Tutti aveano una lagrima e un sorriso,
    Li disser ladri usciti dalle tane,
    Ma non portaron via nemmeno un pane;
    E li sentii mandare un solo grido:
    Siam venuti a morir pel nostro lido—
    Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti:
                E sono morti!

    Con gli occhi azzuri, e coi capelli d’oro
    Un giovin camminava innanzi a loro.
    Mi feci ardita, e, presol per la mano,
    Gli chiesi: Dove vai, bel capitano?
    Guardommi e mi rispose: O mia sorella,
    Vado a morir per la mia patria bella!
    Io mi sentii tremare tutto il core;
    Nè potei dirgli: V’ aiuti ’l Signore;
    Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti:
                E sono morti!

    ...

                              (L. Mercantini, _La Spigolatrice di Sapri_.)

In 1849 Mazzini was a power, and it was not for nothing that the
governments feared him; his star was then in its full brilliance—but
it was already setting. It might have maintained itself for long years
yet, growing paler little by little; but after repeated failures and
desperate efforts, it began to decline rapidly.

Some of Mazzini’s friends allied themselves with Piedmont, others with
Napoleon. Mazzini went his revolutionary bypath, the party split up
into factions, the federal character of the Italians showed itself more
conspicuously.

Garibaldi himself, in spite of his own feelings, pronounced a severe
criticism on Mazzini, and, influenced by the enemies of the latter,
published a letter in which he indirectly blamed him.

       *       *       *       *       *

This is what has turned Mazzini grey and made him old, this is what has
given a look of bitter intolerance, even exasperation, to his face, to
his glance. But such men do not give in, do not yield; the worse things
go with them, the higher they hold the flag. If Mazzini loses friends
and money, and barely escapes one day from chains and the gallows, on
the next he takes his stand more obstinately and resolutely than ever,
collects fresh money, seeks fresh friends, denies himself everything,
even sleep and food, ponders whole nights over new plans and every time
actually creates them, flings himself again into the conflict, and, again
beaten, sets to work once more with feverish ardour.

In this unyielding steadiness, in this faith which runs far ahead of
facts, in this inexhaustible activity which failure only incites and
provokes to fresh effort, there is something of grandeur, and, if you
like, something of madness. Often it is just that grain of madness which
is the essential condition of success. It acts on the people’s nerves and
carries them away. A great man acting directly is bound to be a great
maniac, especially with such enthusiastic people as the Italians, who,
moreover, preserve the religious conception of nationality. Only the
sequel can show whether Mazzini has lost his magnetic power over the
Italian masses through his ill-timed and unsuccessful attempts. It is not
reason, it is not logic that leads nations, but faith, love, and hatred.

The Italian refugees were not superior to the other refugees either in
talent or education. The greater number of them knew nothing, indeed,
but their own poets and their own history. But they were free from the
stereotyped, commonplace stamp of the rank and file of French democrats
(who argue, declaim, and feel exactly the same thing in herds, all going
into ecstasies at once), as well as from the uncouth, coarse, pothouse
character typical of the German refugees. The ordinary French democrat is
a bourgeois _in spe_; the German revolutionary, like the German _Bursch_,
is just the philistine over again in a different stage of development.
The Italians are more original, more individual.

The French are turned out ready-made by thousands on the same pattern.
The present government was not originally responsible for this
curtailment of individuality, but it has grasped the secret of it.
Absolutely in the French spirit, it has organised public education—that
is, all education, for there is no home education in France. In every
town of the empire the same thing is being taught on the same day, at the
same hour, from the same books. At all examinations the same questions
are asked, the same examples set; teachers who make any departure from
the text, or make any change in the syllabus, are promptly removed.
This soulless uniformity of education has only put into a compulsory
hereditary form what existed unformulated in men’s minds already.

It is the conventional democratic notion of equality applied to
intellectual development. There is nothing of the sort in Italy. The
Italian, a federalist and an artist by temperament, flies with horror
from every sort of barrack discipline, uniformity and geometrical
regularity. The Frenchman is innately a soldier; he loves discipline,
command, the uniform; he loves to inspire terror. The Italian, if it
comes to that, is rather a bandit than a soldier, and by that I do not
mean anything at all to his discredit. He prefers at the risk of capital
punishment to kill his enemy at his own impulse rather than to kill
by order; but it is without throwing any responsibility on others. He
prefers a meagre livelihood in the mountains, concealing smugglers, to
honoured service in the gendarmerie, discovering them.

The educated Italian, like us, is developed of his own accord by life,
by his passions, by the books that have happened to come into his hands,
and so attains to understanding of one sort or another. This is why there
are gaps, discords, both in his culture and in ours. Our culture, like
his, is in many respects inferior to the specialised finish of the French
and the theoretical learning of the Germans; but, on the other hand, the
colour is more brilliant both in us and in the Italians.

We even have the same defects as they. The Italian has the same tendency
to laziness as we: he does not think of work as an enjoyment; he does not
like the worry of it, the weariness of it, the lack of leisure. Industry
in Italy is almost as backward as among us; the Italians, like us, have
treasures lying under their feet and they do not dig them up. Manners in
Italy have not been influenced by the modern bourgeois tendency to the
same degree as in France and in England.

The history of the Italian petty-bourgeois is quite unlike the
development of the bourgeoisie in France and in England. The wealthy
bourgeois, the descendants _del popolo grasso_, have more than once
successfully rivalled the feudal aristocracy, have been rulers of cities,
and therefore they have been not further from but nearer to the plebeians
and _contadini_ than the rapidly enriched vulgarians of other lands. The
bourgeoisie in the French sense is represented in Italy by a special
class which has come into existence since the first revolution, and which
might be called, as in geology, the Piedmont strata. It is distinguished
in Italy as in the whole continent of Europe by being invariably
liberal in _many_ questions, though in _all_ afraid of the people and
of indiscreet talk about labour and wages, and, what is more, by always
giving way to the enemy above and never to their followers below.

The Italian exiles were drawn from every possible stratum of society.
There were all sorts to be found about Mazzini, from the old names
that occur in the chronicles of Guicciardini and Muratori to which the
people’s ear has been accustomed for centuries, such as Litti, Borromeo,
del Verme, Belgiojoso, Nani, Visconti, to some half-savage runaway Romeo
from the Abruzzi with his dark olive-coloured face and irrepressible
rashness! Here were clericals too, like Sirtori, the heroic priest who,
at the first firing in Venice, tucked up his cassock, and all through
the siege and defence of Marghera fought, gun in hand, in the foremost
ranks under a shower of bullets; here, too, were the brilliant staff
of Neapolitan officers, such as Pisacane, Cosenz, and the brothers
Mezzocappa. Here, too, were peasants from Trasteverina, faithful and
hard as steel in privation, stern, austere, dumb in calamity, modest
and indomitable like Pianori; and beside them, Tuscans, effeminate even
in pronunciation, but ready for the struggle too. Lastly, there were
Garibaldi, a figure taken straight out of Cornelius Nepos, with the
simplicity of a child and the daring of a lion; and Felice Orsini, whose
beautiful head has so lately rolled from the steps of the scaffold.

But at their names I must pause.

I made Garibaldi’s acquaintance in 1854 when he sailed from South America
as the captain of a ship and stayed in the West India Docks; I went to
see him accompanied by one of his comrades in the Roman war, and by
Orsini. Garibaldi, in a thick, light overcoat, with a bright-coloured
scarf around his neck and a cap on his head, struck me as more of
a genuine sailor than as the glorious leader of the Roman legion,
statuettes of whom in fantastic costume were being sold all over the
world. The good-natured simplicity of his manner, the absence of all
affectation, the cordiality with which he received us, all disposed me in
his favour. His crew consisted almost entirely of Italians; he was their
head and chief, and I am sure he was a strict one, but they all looked
happily and affectionately at him; they were proud of their captain.
Garibaldi gave us lunch in his cabin, regaling us with specially prepared
oysters from South America, dried fruits, port—when suddenly he leaped
up, saying, ‘Wait a bit! We will drink a different wine with you,’ and
ran up on deck; then a sailor brought in a bottle; Garibaldi looked at it
with a smile and filled our glasses.... One might have expected anything
from a man who had crossed the ocean, but it was nothing more nor less
than a bottle with the label of his native town Nice, which he had
brought with him to London from America.

Meanwhile, in his simple and unceremonious talk one was more and more
conscious of the presence of strength; without phrases and commonplaces,
the people’s leader, who had amazed all old soldiers by his valour, was
revealed, and it was easy to recognise in the ship-captain the wounded
lion who, fighting at every step, retreated after the taking of Rome
and, as he lost his followers, gathered together again at San Marino,
at Ravenna, in Lombardy, in the Tyrol, in Tessino, soldiers, peasants,
bandits, any one of any sort to strike back at the foe—and all this
beside the body of his wife, who had succumbed to the hardships and
privations of the march.

In 1854 his opinions were widely divergent from those of Mazzini,
although he was on good terms with him. He told him in my presence that
Piedmont ought not to be irritated, that the chief aim now was to shake
off the Austrian yoke, and he greatly doubted whether Italy was as ready
for union and a republic as Mazzini imagined. He was entirely opposed to
all projects and attempts at insurrection.

When he was about to sail for coal to Newcastle-on-Tyne and was from
there setting off to the Mediterranean, I told him how immensely I liked
his seafaring life, and that of all the exiles he was the one who had
chosen the better part.

‘And who forbids them doing the same?’ he replied with warmth. ‘This
was my cherished dream; you may laugh at it if you like, but I cherish
it still. I am known in America: I could have three or four such boats
under my command. I could take all the refugees on them: the sailors,
the lieutenants, the workmen, the cooks, might all be exiles. What can
they do now in Europe? Grow used to slavery and be false to themselves,
or go begging in England. Settling in America is worse still—that’s the
end, that’s the country “of forgetting the fatherland”: it is a new
fatherland, there are new interests, everything is different; men who
have settled in America fall out of the ranks. What is better than my
idea?’ (his face beamed): ‘what could be better than gathering together
round a few masts and floating over the ocean, hardening ourselves in the
rough life of sailors, in conflict with the elements and with danger?
A floating revolution, ready to land on any shore, independent and
unassailable!’

At that moment he seemed to me a hero of antiquity, a figure out of the
_Æneid_ ... who—had he lived in other ages—would have had his legend, his
‘Arma virumque cano!’

Orsini was a man of quite a different type. He showed to the full his
wild strength and terrific energy on the 14th of January 1858, in the
rue Lepelletier; they won him a great name in history, and brought
his head under the knife of the guillotine at thirty-six. I made the
acquaintance of Orsini at Nice in 1851; at times we were even very
intimate, then drifted apart, came together again, and in the end ‘a
grey cat ran between us’ in 1856, and, though we were reconciled, we
never felt the same to each other again. Such types as Orsini are only
developed in Italy; on the other hand, they appear there at all times,
in all ages: they are conspirators and artists, martyrs and adventurers,
patriots, _condottiere_, Teverina and Rienzi, anything you like, but
not vulgar, petty, commonplace, bourgeois. Such characters stand out
vividly in the chronicles of every Italian city. They amaze us by their
goodness, they amaze us by their wickedness, and they impress us by the
strength of their passions and by the strength of their will. The yeast
of restlessness is fermenting in them from early years—they must have
danger, they must have laurels, glory, fame; they are purely southern
natures, with hot blood in their veins, with passions almost beyond
our understanding, ready for any privation, for any sacrifice, from a
sort of thirst of enjoyment. Self-denial and devotion in them go hand
in hand with revengefulness and intolerance; they are simple in many
ways and cunning in many ways. Reckless as to the means they use, they
are reckless, too, of danger; descendants of the Roman patricians and
children in Christ of the Jesuit fathers, reared on classic memories
and the traditions of mediæval turmoils, a mass of ancient virtues and
catholic vices are fermenting in their souls. They set no value on their
own lives nor on the lives of others either; their terrific persistence
is on a level with Anglo-Saxon obstinacy. On the one hand there is a
naïve love of the external, an _amour propre_ bordering on vanity, a
voluptuous desire to have their fill of applause, of glory; on the other,
all the Roman heroism in face of privation and death.

People of this energy can only be checked by the guillotine. Scarcely do
they escape from the gendarmes of Sardinia before they begin hatching
plots in the very claws of the Austrian hawk; and the day after a
miraculous rescue from the dungeons of Mantua they begin, with hands
still bleeding from the leap to freedom, to sketch a plan of grenades,
then, face to face with danger, fling them under a carriage. In the hour
of failure they rise to titanic heights, and by their death deal a blow
more powerful than a bursting grenade....

As a young man Orsini had fallen into the hands of the secret police
of Pope Gregory XIV.; he was condemned for taking part in the movement
in Rome and sentenced to the galleys, and remained in prison till the
amnesty of Pius IX. From this life with smugglers, with bravoes, with
survivors of the Carbonari, he gained a temper of iron and an immense
knowledge of the national spirit. From these men, who were daily in
conflict with the society which oppressed them, he learnt the art of
self-control, the art of being silent not only before a judge but even
with his friends.

Men of Orsini’s stamp have a great influence on others: people are
attracted by their reserved character and at the same time are not at
home with them; one looks at them with the nervous pleasure, mingled with
uneasiness, with which one admires the graceful movements and velvety
gambols of a panther. They are children, but not good children. Not only
Dante’s hell is ‘paved’ with them, but all the later centuries nurtured
on his sinister poetry and the malignant wisdom of Machiavelli are full
of them. Mazzini, too, belongs to their family, in the way that Cosimo
Medici did; Orsini, in the way that Giovanni Procida did. One cannot even
exclude from them the great ‘adventurer of the sea,’ Columbus, nor the
still greater ‘bandit’ of later days, Napoleon Buonaparte.

Orsini was strikingly handsome; his whole appearance, elegant and
graceful, could not but attract attention; he was quiet, spoke little,
gesticulated less than his fellow-countrymen, and never raised his voice.
The long black beard, as he wore it in Italy, made him look like some
young Etruscan priest. His whole head was extraordinarily beautiful, only
a little marred by the irregular line of the nose.[48] And all the same
there was something in Orsini’s features, in his eyes, in his frequent
smile and his gentle voice, that checked intimacy. It was evident that
he was holding himself in, that he never fully let himself go and was
wonderfully self-controlled; it was evident that not one word fell from
those smiling lips without intention, that there were depths behind those
inwardly shining eyes, that, where we should hesitate and step back,
he would smile and without a change of face or tone of voice, would go
forward, remorseless and undoubting.

In the spring of 1852 Orsini was expecting very important news in
regard to his family affairs: he was worried at not getting a letter;
he told me so several times, and I knew in what anxiety he was living.
At dinner-time one day, when two or three outsiders were present, the
postman came into the entry: Orsini sent to ask if there was a letter for
him; it appeared that there was; he glanced at it, put it in his pocket,
and went on with the conversation. An hour and a half later, when we were
alone with him, Orsini said to us: ‘Well, thank God, at last I have
got the answer, and it is all very good news.’ We, knowing that he was
expecting a letter, had not guessed that this was it, with so unconcerned
an air had he opened it and then put it into his pocket. A man like that
is a born conspirator. And he was one, indeed, all his life.

And what was accomplished by him with his energy, by Garibaldi with
his daring, by Pianori with his revolver, by Pisacane and the other
martyrs whose blood is not yet dry? Italy will be delivered from the
Austrians, if at all, by Piedmont; as it was from the Bourbon of
Naples by fat Murat, both under the protection of a Buonaparte. Oh,
_divina Commedia_?—or simply _Commedia_! in the sense in which Pope
Chiaramonti[49] said it to Napoleon in Fontainebleau....

I became very intimate later on with the two men of whom I spoke when
describing my first meeting with Mazzini.

Medici was a Lombard. In his early youth, unhappy at the hopeless
position of Italy, he went to Spain, afterwards to Monte Video and to
Mexico; he served in the ranks of the Cristinos[50]—was, I believe, a
captain—and at last returned to his native place after the election
of Mastai Ferretti.[51] Italy was showing signs of life; Medici threw
himself into the movement. He performed miracles of valour at the head
of the Roman legionaries during the siege; but the French hordes entered
Rome all the same over the bodies of many noble victims—over the dead
body of Laviron, who, as though to atone for the crime of his country,
was fighting against it, and fell, struck down by a French bullet at the
gates of Rome.

One would imagine a tribune and warrior like Medici as a _condottiero_
bronzed by gunpowder and the tropical sun, with bold features, with
abrupt words and vigorous gesticulation. Pale, fair, with soft features,
eyes full of gentleness, and elegant manners, Medici was more like a man
who has spent his whole life in the society of ladies than a guerilla
chieftain and an agitator. A poet, a dreamer, at that time passionately
in love—everything about him was elegant and attractive.

The few weeks spent with him at Geneva did me a great deal of good. It
was the very blackest period for me, in 1852, six weeks after the burial
of my wife. I was utterly shattered: every signpost, every guiding clue
was lost; I do not know whether I was even then like one demented, as
Orsini said in his diary, but I was certainly in a bad way. Medici was
sorry for me; he did not say so, but late in the evening, at twelve
o’clock, he sometimes knocked at my door and came in to talk with me,
sitting on my bed. (Once when we were chatting like this we caught a
scorpion on the quilt.) He would sometimes knock, too, between six
and seven in the morning, saying, ‘It’s a lovely day, let us go to
Albaro’—that was where the Spanish beauty lived with whom he was in love.
He had no hope of a speedy change of circumstances; before him was a
prospect of years of exile, everything was growing worse and gloomier;
but there was something youthful, gay, sometimes naïve, about him. I have
noticed the same thing in almost all characters of that mould.

On the day of my departure several friends came to dine with me—Pisacane,
Mordini, and Cosenz.[52] ... ‘Why is it,’ I asked in jest, ‘that our
friend Medici, with his fair hair and northern aristocratic face, reminds
me more of a Vandyck cavalier than of an Italian?’ ‘That’s natural,’
Pisacane went on, still in jest: ‘Giacomo is a Lombard, he is descended
from some German Ritter.’ ‘Fratelli,’ said Medici, ‘there is not a single
drop of German blood in these veins!’ ‘It’s all very well for you to
talk; no, you must bring proofs, explain why you have the features of
a northerner,’ the former went on. ‘Oh, well,’ said Medici, ‘if I have
the features of a northerner, I suppose one of my ancestresses must have
forgotten herself with a Pole!’

Saffi had the purest and most candid nature that I have met in a man not
Russian. The men of Western Europe are often not very intelligent, and
so seem simple and slow-witted; but gifted natures are rarely simple.
In Germans one meets with the disgusting simplicity of immaturity in
practical life; among the English the simplicity that is due to slowness
of mind, to their always seeming half asleep and not being able to wake
up properly. On the other hand, the French are for ever taken up with
_arrière-pensées_, and absorbed in playing their part. Together with
the lack of simplicity they have another defect: they are all very poor
actors, and do not know how to conceal their little game. Affectation,
boasting, and a habit of fine phrases have so entered into their flesh
and blood that men have perished, have paid with their lives, for the
part they were playing, and yet their sacrifice has been all falsity.
These are terrible things, and many are indignant at their being put
into words, but it is still more terrible to deceive oneself. That is
why it is so comforting, so easy to breathe, when in this jostling
crowd of pretentious mediocrities and insufferable, affected, and
self-glorifying talents one meets a strong man free from the slightest
artificiality, free from pretentiousness, free from the vanity that jars
like a knife scratching on a plate. It is like coming out of a stuffy
theatre-corridor lighted by lamps, after an afternoon performance, into
the sunshine—breathing fresh, wholesome air and seeing real lime trees
after cardboard magnolias and sailcloth palm trees. Saffi is one of these
men. Mazzini, old Armellini, and he were the triumvirate in the time of
the Roman Republic. Saffi was in charge of the ministry of home affairs,
and, up to the end of the struggles with the French, was in a foremost
place, and that meant then under the bullets and cannon-shot.

He returned from exile and once more crossed the Apennines; he made this
sacrifice with no faith in it, from a sense of duty, from a feeling of
great devotion, that he might not wound some, that his absence might
not be a bad example. He spent some weeks in Bologna, where he would
have been shot within twenty-four hours if he had been caught; his task
was not simply to conceal himself—he had to act, to prepare for action,
whilst awaiting news from Milan. I never heard from him about the details
of this part of his life. But I did hear about it, a great deal about
it, from a man who might well be a good judge of deeds of daring, and I
heard it at a time when their personal relations were greatly strained.
Orsini had accompanied him across the Apennines; he used to tell me with
enthusiasm of the even, calm serenity, of the light, almost gay, mood of
Saffi at the time when they were going down the mountains on foot; with
the enemy almost within sight, Saffi would carelessly sing folk-songs and
repeat verses of Dante.... I imagine he would have gone to the stake with
the same verses and the same songs on his lips, with no thought at all of
his heroism.

In London, at Mazzini’s or at his friends’, Saffi was mostly silent; he
rarely took part in argument, sometimes grew eager for a minute and then
subsided again. They did not understand him, that was clear to me, _il
ne savait pas se faire valoir_ ... but I never heard from one of the
Italians who fell away from Mazzini one word, one slightest hint, against
Saffi.

One evening an argument sprang up between Mazzini and me about Leopardi.

There are poems of Leopardi with which I am passionately in sympathy.
Much of his work, like Byron’s, is spoilt by theorising, but sometimes a
line of his, like one of Byron’s, stabs, hurts, wrings the heart. There
are such words, such lines, in Lermontov; there are some in the iambics
of Barbier.[53]

Leopardi was the last book read, looked at before her death, by
Natalie....

To men of action, to agitators who move the masses, these bitter
hesitations, these heartrending doubts are incomprehensible. They see in
them nothing but profitless lamentation, nothing but feeble despondency.
Mazzini could not like Leopardi—that I knew beforehand; but he attacked
him with a sort of exasperation. I felt very much vexed; of course,
he was angry with him for being of no use for propaganda. In the same
way Frederick II. might have been angry with him ... I do not know ...
well, for instance, because he would be of no use as a soldier. It is
the revolting desire to restrict the free play of personality, to force
men into categories and ranks—as though political activity were like
serf-labour to which the bailiffs drive weak and strong, willing and
unwilling alike, without consulting their wishes. Mazzini was angry. Half
in jest and half in earnest, I said to him: ‘I believe you have a grudge
against poor Leopardi for not having taken part in the Roman revolution;
but you know he has an excellent reason to urge in his defence—you keep
forgetting it!’

‘What reason?’

‘Why, the fact that he died in 1836.’

Saffi could not resist defending the poet whom he loved even more than I
did and of course understood even more deeply: he analysed him with that
æsthetic, artistic feeling in which a man rather reveals aspects of his
spirit than ‘thinks.’

From this conversation, and from a few more like it, I saw that their
path was not really the same. The thought of one is seeking means,
concentrated on means alone—that is, in a sense running away from doubt;
it thirsts for nothing but practical activity, and that is in a way
indolence. To the other, objective truth is precious and his mind is
working; moreover, to an artistic nature art is precious in itself, apart
from its relation to reality.

Leaving Mazzini, we talked for a long time yet of Leopardi. His poems
were in my pocket; we went into a café and read several of my favourite
ones.

That was sufficient. When men are in sympathy, in the finer shades, they
need not speak of many things—it is clear that they are at one about
vivid colours and deep shadows.

Speaking of Medici, I mentioned a deeply tragic figure, Laviron. My
acquaintance with him was brief; he flashed by me and vanished in a cloud
of blood. Laviron was an engineer and an architect who had completed his
studies at the Polytechnique. I made his acquaintance in the very heyday
of the revolution, between the 24th of February and the 15th of May (he
was then a captain in the National Guard). The vigorous, stern where
necessary, and gay, good-natured Gallo-Frankish blood of the ’nineties
coursed unmixed in his veins. I imagine that the architect Kleber
was of the same stamp when he carried earth in a wheelbarrow with the
young actor Talma clearing a space for the festival of the Federation.
Laviron belonged to the small number of men who were not intoxicated by
the victory of the 24th of February and the proclamation of a republic.
He was at the barricades when they were fighting, and in the Hôtel de
Ville when those who had not fought were electing dictators: when a new
government came into the town-hall like a _deus ex machina_, he loudly
protested against its composition, and, together with a few vigorous men,
asked where it had come from, why it was the government? With perfect
consistency, on the 15th of May Laviron burst with the Parisian populace
into the bourgeois assembly and, with an unsheathed sword in his hand,
forced the president to admit the orators of the people to the tribune.
The cause was lost and Laviron was forced into hiding. He was judged and
condemned _par contumace_. The reaction was drunk with success; it felt
strong for combat and soon strong for conquest—then came the June days,
proscriptions, exiles, the _Blue_ terror. It was just at that period that
I was sitting one evening on the boulevard in front of Tortoni’s in a
crowd of all sorts of people, and, as is always the case in Paris—under
constitutional and unconstitutional monarchy, under the republic and
under the empire—spies were scattered about everywhere amongst them.
Suddenly—I could not believe my eyes—Laviron walked up to me. ‘How are
you?’ he said. ‘What madness is this?’ I answered in an undertone, and
taking him by the arm I walked away from Tortoni’s. ‘How can you expose
yourself like this, and especially just now?’

‘If only you knew how dreary it is to sit shut up in hiding! it’s enough
to drive one crazy.... I sat thinking and thinking, and then went out for
a walk.’

‘But why on the boulevard?’

‘That makes no difference. I am less known here than on the other side
of the Seine, and who would dream of my walking about by Tortoni’s? I am
going away, though....

‘Where?’

‘To Geneva. Everything is so dreary and sickening; we have terrible
calamities ahead of us. Everywhere there is change for the worse, and
pettiness is everywhere and in everything. Well, good-bye—good-bye; and
may our next meeting be a more cheerful one.’

In Geneva Laviron worked as an architect, and was building something when
suddenly war was declared ‘for the Pope’ against Rome. The French made
their treacherous attack on Cività Vecchia, and were approaching Rome.
Laviron threw down his calipers and galloped off to Rome. ‘You need an
engineer, an artilleryman, a soldier. I am a Frenchman. I am ashamed of
France, and go to fight against my countrymen,’ he said to the triumvirs,
and joined the ranks of the Romans as a sacrifice of atonement for his
country. With gloomy daring he headed the advance; when everything was
lost he still fought on, and fell at the gates of Rome, shot down by a
French bullet.

The French newspapers greeted his death with a shower of abuse, claiming
that it was the judgment of God on an infamous traitor to his country!...

When a man who has long been watching black curls and black eyes suddenly
turns to a fair-haired woman with light-coloured eyebrows, pale and
nervous, his eyes always receive a shock and cannot at once get over it.
The difference of which he has not been thinking, which he has forgotten,
produces an involuntary physical effect upon him.

Exactly the same thing happens when one turns quickly from the Italian
circles to the German.

Undoubtedly the Germans are more developed on the theoretical side
than any other people, but they have not gained much by it so far.
From Catholic fanaticism they have passed to the Protestant pietism of
transcendental philosophy and the romance of philology, and are now
gradually making the transition to exact science; the German ‘studies
diligently at all his stages,’ and his whole history is summed up in
that, and he will get marks for it on the Day of Judgment. The common
people of Germany, who have studied less, have suffered a great deal;
they bought the right to Protestantism by the Thirty Years’ War, the
right to an independent existence—that is, to a colourless existence
under the supervision of Russia—by the struggle with Napoleon. The
emancipation in 1814 and 1815 was the complete victory of the reaction;
and when, in place of Jerome Buonaparte, _der Landesvater_ appeared in
a powdered wig and an old-fashioned uniform long laid by, and announced
that next day was fixed, let us say, for the forty-fifth parade (the one
before, the forty-fourth, had taken place before the revolution), then
all the emancipated people felt as though they had suddenly lost touch
with the present and gone back to another age, and every one felt his
head to see if he had grown a pigtail with a ribbon on it. The people
accepted this with simple-hearted foolishness, and sang Körner’s songs.
Science and learning advanced. Greek tragedies were performed in Berlin,
there were dramatic triumphs for Goethe in Weimar.

The most radical men among the Germans remain philistines in their
private life. Bold as they are in logic, they feel no obligation to
be consistent in practice, and fall into glaring contradictions.
The German mind, in matters revolutionary as well as in everything
else, accepts the general idea in its unconditional—of course, that
is, unreal—significance, and is satisfied with working it out
intellectually, imagining that a thing is done when it is understood, and
that the fact as easily follows the thought as the meaning of the fact is
grasped by the consciousness.

The English and the French are full of prejudices, while a German is
free from them; but both French and English are more consistent in their
lives—the rule they follow is perhaps absurd, but it is what they have
accepted. The German accepts nothing except reason and logic, but he is
ruled in many things by _other considerations_—this is selling the soul
for bribes.

The Frenchman is not morally free: though rich in initiative in practical
life, he is poor in abstract thought. He thinks in received conceptions,
in accepted forms; he gives a fashionable cut to commonplace ideas, and
is satisfied with them. It is hard for him to take in anything new,
although he does rush at it. The Frenchman oppresses his family and
believes it is his duty to do so, just as he believes in the ‘Legion
of Honour’ and the authority of the law-courts. The German believes in
nothing, but takes advantage of public prejudices where it suits him. He
is accustomed to trivial comfort, to _Wohlbehagen_, to peace and quiet,
and, as he goes from his study to the _Prunkzimmer_ or his bedroom,
sacrifices his free thought to his dressing-gown, to his peace and
quiet, and to his kitchen. The German is a great Sybarite, though this
characteristic is not noticed in him, because his poor and narrow luxury
and petty mode of life are not very much to look at; but the Eskimo who
is ready to sacrifice everything for fish-fat is as much an epicurean
as Lucullus. Moreover, the German, lymphatic by temperament, soon grows
heavy and sends down a thousand roots into his familiar mode of life;
anything that might disturb him in his habits terrifies his philistine
temper.

All the German revolutionaries are cosmopolitans, _sie haben überwunden
den Standpunkt der Nationalität_, and are filled with the most touchy,
most obstinate patriotism. They are ready to accept an all-world
republic, to abolish the frontiers between states, but Trieste and Danzig
must belong to Germany. The Vienna students were not above setting
off for Lombardy under the command of Radetsky; they even, under the
leadership of some professor, took a cannon, which they presented to
Innsbrück. With this conceited and martial patriotism, Germany has,
from the time of the first revolution and up to this day, looked with
horror to the right and with horror to the left. On this side, France
with standards unfurled is crossing the Rhine; on that side, Russia is
crossing the Niemen, and the people numbering twenty-five millions finds
itself utterly forlorn and deserted, is scolding with terror, full of
hatred from terror, and to comfort itself proving theoretically from
authentic sources that the existence of France is no longer existence,
while the existence of Russia is not yet existence.

The ‘council of war’ assembled in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfort,
and consisting of various worthy doctors, theologians, chemists,
philologists, and professors, _sehr ausgezeichneten in ihrem Fache_,
applauded the Austrian soldiers in Lombardy and oppressed the Poles
in Posen. The very question of Schleswig-Holstein (_stammverwandt!_)
was only a subject of interest to them from the point of view of
‘_Teutschtum_.’ The first free word, uttered after centuries of silence
by the representatives of emancipated Germany, was in opposition to weak
and depressed nationalities. This incapacity for freedom, these awkwardly
revealed inclinations to retain what had been unjustly acquired, provoke
irony: one forgives insolent pretensions only when accompanied by
vigorous actions, and those were absent.

The revolution of 1848 had everywhere the character of hastiness and
precipitate action, but there was scarcely anything absurd about it in
France and in Italy; in Germany, however, everywhere except in Vienna,
it had a farcical character, incomparably more comic than the humour of
Goethe’s wretched farce, _Der Bürgergeneral_.

There was not a town, not a spot in Germany where at the time of the
rising there was not an attempt at a ‘committee of public safety’ with
all its principal characters: with a frigid youth as Saint-Just, with
gloomy terrorists, and a military genius representing Carnot. I knew two
or three Robespierres personally: they always put on clean shirts, washed
their hands, and had clean nails. On the other hand, there were also
dishevelled Collots d’Herbois; and if there happened to be a man in the
club fonder of beer than the rest and more openly given to dangling after
_Stubermädchen_—he was the Danton, _eine schweigende Natur_!

French weaknesses and defects are partly dissipated by their light and
fugitive character. In the German the same defects assume a more solid
and fundamental character, and hence are more striking. One must see for
oneself these German efforts to play _so einen burschikosen Kamin de
Paris_ in politics in order to do them justice. I was always reminded
of the playfulness of a cow when that excellent and respectable animal,
adorned with all the domestic virtues, takes to frisking and galloping in
the meadow, and with a serious face kicks up her two hind legs or gallops
sideways chasing her own tail.

After the Dresden affair, I met in Geneva one of the agitators who had
taken part in it, and began at once questioning him about Bakunin. He
lauded him up to the skies, and began describing how he had himself
commanded a barricade under his instructions. Inflamed by his own
narrative he went on: ‘A revolution is a thunderstorm; in it one must
listen neither to the dictates of the heart nor to considerations of
ordinary justice.... One must oneself have taken part in such events
fully to understand the Montagne of 1794. Only imagine: we suddenly
observe a vague movement in the royalist party, false reports were
intentionally circulated, suspicious-looking men appeared. I reflected
and reflected, and at last resolved to _terrorise_ my street. “_Männer!_”
I said to my company, “under pain of court-martial, which may at once
sentence you to death in case of disobedience, I command you to seize
every one, regardless of sex, age, or calling, who attempts to cross the
barricade, and to bring him under close guard to me.” This was kept up
for more than twenty-four hours. If the _Bürger_ who was brought to me
was a good patriot, I let him go; but if he was a suspicious character,
then I gave the signal to the guard.’

‘And,’ I said with horror, ‘and they?’

‘And they accompanied him home,’ the terrorist replied with pride and
satisfaction.

I will add another anecdote illustrating the character of the German
champions of freedom.

The youth whom I mentioned, when describing my visit to Gustav Struve, as
filling the post of minister of home affairs wrote me a note a few days
later in which he asked me to find him work of some sort. I suggested
that he should copy for the press the manuscript of my _Vom anderen
Ufer_ from the handwriting of Kapp, to whom I had dictated it in German
from the Russian original. The young man accepted the proposal. A few
days later he told me that he was so uncomfortably lodged with several
students that he had neither space nor quiet to work, and asked leave to
copy it in Kapp’s room. Even there the work made little progress. The
minister _per interim_ arrived at eleven o’clock in the morning, lay on
the sofa, smoked cigars, drank beer ... and went off in the evenings to
gatherings and consultations at Struve’s. Kapp, a man of the greatest
delicacy, was ashamed of him. A week or more passed in this way. Kapp
and I said nothing, but the ex-minister broke the silence: he wrote me a
note asking me for _a hundred francs in advance_ for the work. I wrote
him that he was working so slowly that I could not give him such a sum in
advance, but that since he was in great need of money I was sending him
twenty francs, although he had not yet done ten francs’ worth of copying.

In the evening the minister appeared at the gathering at Struve’s and
reported on my anti-civic action and my misuse of my fortune. The
worthy minister considered that socialism consisted not in a social
organisation, but in a senseless partition of senselessly acquired
property!

In spite of the amazing chaos prevailing in Struve’s brains, he did,
being an honest man, consider that I was not altogether to blame, and
that it might be better for the _Bürger und Bruder_ to copy more and ask
less money in advance. He persuaded him not to make a great outcry over
the story.

‘Well, then, I shall send him back the money—_mit Verachtung_,’ said the
minister.

‘What nonsense!’ cried a student. ‘If the _Bruder und Bürger_ does not
care to take the money, I suggest that we spend it on beer and send out
for some at once to drink to the perdition _der Besitzenden_.’

‘Do you agree?’

‘Yes, yes, we all agree—bravo!’

‘We will drink,’ cried the orator, ‘and pledge ourselves not to bow to
the Russian aristocrat who has insulted the _Bruder_.’

‘Yes, yes, we must not bow to him.’

And so they drank the beer and gave up bowing to me.

All these absurd failings, together with the peculiar _Plumpheit_ of
the Germans, jar upon the southern nature of the Italians and excite a
physical, racial hatred in them. The worst of it is that the good side
of the Germans, that is, their philosophical culture, is either of no
interest to the Italian or beyond his ken; while the vulgar, ponderous
side is always conspicuous. The Italian often leads the most frivolous
and idle life, but with a certain artistic, rhythmic grace about it, and
that is why he can least put up with the bear-like joking and clumsy
familiarity of the jovial German.

The Anglo-Germanic race is far coarser than the Franco-Roman. There is
no help for that: it is its physical characteristic; it is absurd to
be angry with it. The time has come to accept once for all that the
different races of mankind, like different species of animals, have their
different characteristics and are not to blame for them. No one is angry
with the bull for not having the beauty of the horse or the swiftness of
the stag; no one reproaches the horse because its flesh is not so good to
eat as that of the ox: all that we can ask of them in the name of animal
brotherhood is to graze peaceably in the same field without kicking
or goring each other. In nature, everything attains to whatever it is
capable of attaining to, is formed as chance determines, and so takes
its generic _pli_: training goes some distance, corrects one thing and
develops another; but to expect beef-steaks from horses, or horses’ paces
from bulls, is nevertheless absurd.

To grasp concretely the difference between the two opposite traditions
of the European races, one has but to glance at the street-boys in Paris
and in London; I take them as an example because they are absolutely
spontaneous in their rudeness.

Look how the Parisian _gamins_ jeer at any queer Englishman, and how the
London street-boys mock at a Frenchman; in this little instance the two
opposite types of two European races are sharply defined. The Parisian
_gamin_ is insolent and persistent, he can be insufferable: but, in the
first place, he is witty, his mischief is limited to jests, and he is as
amusing as he is annoying; and, in the second, there are words at which
he blushes and at once desists, there are words which he never uses; it
is difficult to stop him by roughness, and if the victim lifts his stick
I would not answer for the consequences. It must be noted, too, that the
French boys need something to attract their attention: a red waistcoat
with blue stripes, a brick-coloured coat, a strange-looking muffler, a
flunkey carrying a parrot or a dog, things only done by Englishmen and,
take note, only outside England. To be simply a foreigner is not enough
to make them mock and run after you.

The wit of the London street-boys is simpler. It begins with guffawing at
the sight of a foreigner,[54] if only he has a moustache, a beard, or a
wide-brimmed hat; then they shout some twenty times: ‘_French pig! French
dog!_’ If the foreigner turns to them with some reply, the neighings and
bleatings are redoubled; if he walks away, the boys run after him—then
all that is left is the _ultima ratio_ of lifting a stick, and sometimes
bringing it down on one of them. After that the boys run away full speed,
dropping oaths and sometimes throwing mud or a stone from a distance.

In France, a grown-up workman, shopman, or woman selling wares in the
street never takes part with the _gamins_ in the pranks they play upon
foreigners; in London, all the dirty women, all the grown-up shopmen
grunt like pigs and abet the boys.

In France there is one shield which at once checks the most persistent
boy—that is, poverty. In the country that knows no word more insulting
than the word _beggar_, the foreigner is the more persecuted the poorer
and more defenceless he is. One Italian refugee, who had once been an
officer in the Austrian cavalry and had left his country after the war,
completely destitute, when winter came, wore his greatcoat of a military
officer. This excited such a sensation in the market-place through which
he had to pass every day, that the shouts of ‘Who’s your tailor?’ roars
of laughter, and finally tugging at his collar, forced the Italian at
last to give up his greatcoat and, shivering to the marrow of his bones,
to go about in his jacket.

This coarseness in street mockery, this lack of delicacy and tact in the
common people, helps to explain how it is that women are nowhere beaten
so often and so badly as in England,[55] how it is that an English father
is ready to cast dishonour on his own daughter and a husband on his wife
by taking legal proceedings against them.

The rude manners of the English streets are a great offence at first to
the French and the Italians. The German, on the other hand, receives them
with laughter and answers with similar rudeness; an interchange of abuse
is kept up, end he is very well pleased with it. They both take it as a
civility, a pleasant joke. ‘Bloody dog!’ the proud Briton shouts at him,
grunting like a pig. ‘Beastly John Bull!’ answers the German, and each
goes on his way.

This behaviour is not confined to the streets: one has but to look at
the polemics of Marx, Heinzen, Ruge, _et consorts_, which were unceasing
from 1849, have never ceased, and are still kept up on the other side of
the Atlantic Ocean. We are unaccustomed to see in print such expressions,
such accusations: nothing is spared, no respect is paid to personal
honour, to the privacy of the family or the inviolability of a secret.

Among the English, coarseness disappears as we rise higher in the
scale of intelligence or aristocratic breeding; among the Germans it
never disappears. The greatest poets of Germany (with the exception of
Schiller) fall into the most uncouth vulgarity.

One of the reasons of the _mauvais ton_ of Germans is that breeding in
our sense of the word does not exist in Germany at all. Germans are
taught, and taught a great deal, but they are not educated at all,
even in the aristocracy, in which the manners of the barracks, of the
_Junker_, are predominant. They are completely lacking in the æsthetic
sense in daily life. The French have lost it, just as they have lost the
elegance of their language; the Frenchman of to-day rarely knows how to
write a letter free from legal or commercial expressions—the counter and
the barrack-room have distorted their manners.

To conclude this comparison, I will describe an incident in which I saw
with my own eyes and face to face the gulf which separates the Italians
from the _Tedeschi_, and which there will be no bridging for years to
come by any number of amnesties or manifestoes of the brotherhood of
nations.

I was travelling with Tessier du Mothe, in 1852, from Genoa to Lugano. We
reached Arona by night, and, inquiring when the steamer started, learned
that it was at eight o’clock next morning, and went to bed. At half-past
seven the porter came to take our trunks, and by the time we reached the
landing-stage they were already on deck. But in spite of that we looked
at each other with some perplexity instead of going on board.

A huge white flag with the two-headed eagle on it was fluttering over
the hissing and swaying steamer, and on the stern was painted the name,
_Fürst Radetsky_. We had forgotten to ask overnight what steamer was
going, whether an Austrian or a Sardinian. Tessier had at the Versailles
trial been condemned _in contumaciam_ to deportation. Though Austria had
nothing to do with that, yet surely it would seize the opportunity to
keep him in prison for six months, at any rate, while making inquiries.
The example of Bakunin showed what they were capable of doing with me.
By agreement with Piedmont, the Austrians had not the right to demand
passports from those who without landing on the Lombard shore went to
Mogadino, which belongs to Switzerland; but I imagine they would not,
if opportunity arose, disdain so simple a means of seizing Mazzini or
Kossuth.

‘Well,’ said Tessier, ‘to go back is absurd!’

‘Well, let’s go ahead, then!’ and we went on deck.

Just before starting, the passengers were surrounded by a detachment
of soldiers armed with guns—what for? I do not know. Two small cannon,
fastened in a special way, stood on the steamer. When the steamer set
off the soldiers were dismissed. On the cabin walls hung regulations:
among them was the statement that those passengers who were not going to
Lombardy need not show their passports; but it was added that if any one
of such persons were guilty of any offence against the K.K. (Kaiserlich
Königlichen) police regulations he must be judged according to the laws
of Austria. _Or donc_, wearing a Calabrian hat or a tricolor cockade was
a crime against Austria. Only then I fully appreciated what clutches
we were caught in. However, I am far from regretting my trip; nothing
special happened during our journey, but I gathered a rich store of
observations.

Several Italians were sitting on deck; they were smoking cigars in gloomy
silence, looking with concealed hatred at the fair-haired officers
dressed in white jackets who were bustling about on all sides without the
slightest necessity. I must observe that among them were lads of twenty,
and they were mostly young men; I can hear now the jarring, guttural,
barrack-room voices, the insolent laughter that was like coughing,
besides the loathsome Austrian accent in speaking German. I repeat that
there was nothing dreadful about it, but I felt that for their manner of
standing and turning their backs in our very faces, giving themselves
airs and showing off, ‘We are the victors—our side has won,’ they ought
to have been flung into the water; and even more, I felt that I should
have been delighted to have seen it done, and would eagerly have helped.

Any one who had taken the trouble to look for five minutes at these two
groups of men could not fail to understand that there can be no talk
of reconciliation, that in the very blood of these people there lies
a hatred for each other which it will take centuries to dissipate, to
soften and to reduce to an inoffensive racial difference. After midday
some of the passengers went down to the cabin, others asked to have lunch
on deck. Here the racial difference was still more strikingly apparent.
I looked at them with amazement—not a single gesture was the same. The
Italians ate little, with the innate natural grace with which they do
everything. The officers tore off pieces, chewed them loudly, threw down
the bones, shoved their plates; some, bending right down to the table,
with peculiar agility and extraordinary rapidity splashed the soup from
the spoon into their mouths; others ate butter _from a knife_—without
bread or salt. I looked at these performers and, glancing at an Italian,
smiled—he understood me at once, and, responding with a sympathetic
smile, betrayed his intense disgust. Another observation: while the
Italians asked with a smile and gentle manner for a plate or for wine,
every time thanking the waiter with a nod or a glance, the Austrians
treated the attendants with revolting rudeness, just as retired Russian
cornets and lieutenants treat their serfs in the presence of strangers.

By way of a finishing touch, a lanky young officer with pale yellowish
hair called up a soldier, a man of fifty, who looked like a Pole or a
Croat, and began abusing him for some negligence: The old man stood at
attention and, when the officer had finished, tried to say something;
but he had scarcely brought out ‘Your honour,’ when ‘Hold your tongue
and be off!’ the pale yellow youth shouted at him in a husky voice.
Then, turning to his comrades as though nothing had happened, he fell to
drinking beer again. With what object was all this done before us? And
was it not all done expressly for our benefit?

When we landed at Mogadino our long-suffering hearts could be restrained
no longer, and, turning towards the steamer, which had not moved away,
we shouted, ‘_Viva la Republica!_’—while one Italian, shaking his head,
repeated, ‘_E brutissimi, brutissimi!_’

Is it not premature to talk so rashly of the solidarity and brotherhood
of the nations, and will not any artificial covering up of their
hostility be a mere hypocritical truce? I believe that national
peculiarities will lose their offensive character just so far as they
have lost it in cultivated society; but for such breeding to permeate the
depths of the masses needs time. When I look at Folkestone and Boulogne,
at Dover and Calais, then I feel full of dread and want to say—many
centuries.




Chapter 38

SWITZERLAND—JAMES FAZY AND THE REFUGEES—MONTE ROSA


The agitation in Europe was still so violent in 1849 that it was
difficult, living in Geneva, to fix the attention on Switzerland alone.
Moreover, political parties are rather like the Russian Government in the
skill with which they divert the attention of the traveller. If he falls
under their influence, he sees everything, but sees it all not simply but
from a certain angle; he cannot get out of an enchanted circle. His first
impression is prearranged, suborned, and does not belong to himself.
The prejudiced view of the party catches him unawares, unprepared,
indifferent, and, so to say, disarmed, and before he has taken his
bearings it becomes his view. In 1849 I knew only Radical Switzerland,
that Switzerland which brought about a democratic revolution, which in
1847 suppressed the _Sonderbund_.[56] Then more and more surrounded
by the refugees, I shared their indignation with the cowardly Federal
Government and the pitiful part it was playing in the face of its
reactionary neighbours.

I learnt more about Switzerland and got to understand it better on later
visits, and most of all in London. In the dreary leisure of the years
1853 and 1854 I learnt a great deal, and formed a different view of many
things that I had experienced or seen in the past.

Switzerland was passing through a difficult ordeal. Among the ruins of
the whole world of free institutions, among the fragments of foundering
civilisations grinding each other into dust, amidst the destruction of
all conditions of human life, of all political forms, for the benefit of
a brutal despotism, two countries remained as they were—one behind its
sea, the other behind its mountains, both mediæval republics, both firmly
rooted in the soil by the traditions of ages.

But what a difference of power and position between England and
Switzerland! If Switzerland, too, is like an island behind her mountains,
her position, shut in by other countries, and her national spirit compel
her to steer her course with care, and also make her politics far
from simple. In England the common people do not stir, they are three
centuries behindhand. Activity in England is confined to a certain class:
the majority of the people are outside any movement; they are scarcely
stirred by Chartism, and even that is confined exclusively to the town
workmen. England stands aside, flings its inflammable material across
the ocean as it accumulates, and there it grows triumphantly. Ideas do
not crowd upon her from the Continent, but enter slowly, adapted to her
manners and translated into her language.

It is utterly different in Switzerland: she has no ruling caste, nor
even striking differences between the town and country. The patriarchal
patricians of the cantons could not hold out against the first pressure
of democratic ideas. Every doctrine, every idea passes backwards and
forwards across Switzerland, and they all leave their traces on her: she
speaks three languages. Calvin preached there; the tailor Weitling[57]
preached there; there Voltaire laughed and Rousseau was born. That land
in which every man from the ploughman and the workman upwards has a
hand in the government, which is oppressed by powerful neighbours, has
no standing army, no bureaucracy, and no dictatorship, remains after
the storms of revolution and the saturnalia of reaction the same free
republican federation as before.

I should very much like to know how conservatives explain the fact
that the only countries in Europe that are tranquil are those in which
personal freedom and freedom of speech are the least restricted. While
the Austrian Empire, for instance, is kept up by a series of _coups
d’état_ with the stimulant of galvanic shocks and administrative
revolutions, and the French throne is only maintained by terrorism and
the abolition of all legality, in Switzerland and England even the absurd
and antiquated forms that have grown up with their freedom are preserved
unshaken under its mighty canopy.

The behaviour of the Federal Council in regard to political refugees,
whom they turned out at the first request from Austria and from France,
was disgraceful. But the responsibility for it falls exclusively on the
Government; questions of foreign policy are by no means so near the
heart of the people as domestic problems. In reality all nations are
only interested in their own affairs; everything outside is confined to
a remote preference or simply a rhetorical exercise, sometimes sincere,
but even then rarely affecting practice. The nation which has gained a
reputation by its humane sympathy with all and everything knows less
geography than any and is more than any tainted with insufferably
susceptible patriotism. Moreover, the Swiss is by nature itself not
drawn to distant horizons: he is confined to his native valley by his
mountains, as the dweller by the sea to its shore, and as long as he is
not interfered with in it he says nothing.

The right, assumed by the Federal Government, of dealing with the
refugees did not really belong to the Swiss central government at all;
according to its law, the question of the exiles was in the jurisdiction
of each canton. The Swiss Radicals, carried away by French theories,
tried to strengthen the central government in Berne, and made a great
mistake. Fortunately, the attempts at centralisation, except in those
instances in which its practical benefit is obvious, such as the
organisation of the post and maintenance of roads and currency, were
not at all popular in Switzerland. Centralisation may do a great deal
for order and for various public undertakings, but it is incompatible
with freedom. It easily brings a nation to the position of a well-tended
flock, or a pack of hounds cleverly kept in order by a huntsman.

That is why the Americans and the English hate it as much as the Swiss.

Numerically weak, uncentralised Switzerland is a many-headed hydra, a
Briareus; you cannot vanquish her at one blow. Where is her head? Where
is her heart? Moreover, one cannot imagine a king without a capital
city. A king is as great an absurdity in Switzerland as the grades of
the Russian civil service in New York. The mountains, republicanism, and
federalism have reared and preserved in Switzerland a mighty, vigorous
breed of men, as sharply differentiated from each other as the soil is by
the mountains, and as united by them as it is.

It is worth seeing the representatives of various cantons gathered
together at some federal shooting competition, with their several
standards, in their several costumes, with carbine on shoulder. Proud
of their separate individuality and of their unity, coming down from
their native mountains, they greet each other with brotherly shouts and
salute the federal standard (which is kept in the town where the last
competition was held), and yet remain distinct.

In these festivals of a free people, in the military games, free
from the offensive _étalage_ of monarchy and the gorgeous setting of
gold-embroidered aristocracy and dazzling guards, there is something
impressive and powerful. On all sides speeches are delivered, home-made
wine flows, there are sounds of shouting, singing, and bands; and all
are conscious that there is no leaden weight, no oppressive burden of
authority, on their shoulders....

In Geneva soon after my arrival a banquet was given at the end of the
term to the pupils of all the schools. James Fazy, the president of the
canton, invited me to this fête. A big pavilion had been put up in an
open space in Carouge. The council and all the leading figures in the
canton were present, and dined with the children. A number of citizens,
those whose turn it was, in uniform and carrying guns, had been summoned
for a guard of honour. Fazy delivered a speech of a thoroughly radical
character, congratulated the prize-winners, and proposed the health of
‘The future citizens!’ to the strains of music and the firing of cannon.
After this the children filed past him, two by two, to the field where
various sports had been prepared, air-balloons, acrobatic performances,
and so on. The armed citizens—that is, the fathers, uncles, and elder
brothers of the school-children—formed an avenue, and as the head of the
column passed they presented arms.... Yes! presented arms before their
sons and the orphans brought up at the expense of the canton.... The
children were the honoured guests of the town, its ‘future citizens.’
All this was strange to such of us as had been present at Russian school
anniversaries and similar ceremonies.

It seems strange to us, too, that all the workmen, all the grown-up
peasants, the waiters in restaurants as well as the restaurant-keepers,
those who live in mountains and those who live in marshes, have a very
good knowledge of the affairs of the canton, take an interest in them,
and belong to one or other party. Their language, their degree of
culture, is very different; and if a Geneva workman sometimes reminds
one of a member of some Lyons club, while the simple mountaineer is to
this day like the men who surrounded Schiller’s William Tell, that does
not prevent their both taking the warmest interest in public affairs. In
France there are offshoots and branches of political and social societies
in the towns; their members are interested in the revolutionary question,
and incidentally know something of the actual government. But, on the
other hand, those who are outside these associations, and especially the
peasants, know nothing and care nothing either for the affairs of France
or for the affairs of the department.

Lastly, both we Russians and the French are struck by the absence of
all sorts of trappings and vestments, all the operatic setting of a
government. The president of a canton, the president of the Federal
Assembly, the state secretaries (_i.e._ the ministers), and the federal
colonels go to the café like simple mortals, dine at the common table,
discuss public affairs, argue with workmen and argue before them among
themselves, and they all drink the same wine and _kirsch_.

From the beginning of my acquaintance with James Fazy, I was impressed
by this democratic simplicity, and it was only later on that I perceived
that in all matters relating to the law the government of the canton
was anything but weak, in spite of its lack of wardrobe grandeur, of
stripes on trousers, of plumage, of beadles with staves, of sergeants
with moustaches, and all the other gewgaws and superfluities of the royal
_mise en scène_.

In the autumn of 1849 the persecution of refugees who had sought
shelter in Switzerland began; the government was in the weak hands of
doctrinaires, the federal ministers lost their heads. The intimidated
Confederation, which had once refused Louis-Philippe’s request for
the deportation of Louis-Napoleon, now at the command of the latter
turned out those who sought a refuge, and performed the same gracious
act for Austria and Prussia. Of course, the Federal Government had on
this occasion to deal not with a fat old king who disliked extreme
measures, but with men whose hands were wet with blood and who were in
the fury of savage reprisals. But what was the Federal Assembly afraid
of? If it had been capable of looking beyond its mountains, it would
have perceived how much secret alarm lay hidden under the insolence and
menaces of the neighbouring governments. Not one of them had in 1849 a
sufficiently stable position and sense of its own power to begin a war.
The Confederation need only have shown its teeth and they would have
desisted; the doctrinaires preferred timid submission, and began a petty,
unworthy persecution of men who had nowhere to go to.

For a long time some of the cantons, and among them that of Geneva,
maintained their opposition to the Federal Assembly, but at last even
Fazy was drawn, _nolens volens_, into persecuting the refugees.

His position was very unpleasant. The transition from being a conspirator
into being a member of the government, however natural it may be, has its
comic and vexatious sides. In reality, it must be said that it was not
Fazy who went over to the government, but the government who went over to
Fazy; nevertheless, the former conspirator was not always at one with the
president of the canton. He had to strike at his own people, or at times
openly to disregard the Federal decrees, or to take measures against
which he had been declaiming for the last ten years. He followed the one
or the other course as the caprice took him, and so excited the hostility
of both sides.

Fazy was a man of great energy and of great administrative abilities,
but too much of a Frenchman not to like hard-and-fast measures,
centralisation, authority. He had spent his whole life in the political
struggle. As a young man we meet him on the Paris barricades of 1830,
and then in the Hôtel de Ville among the young people who, in opposition
to Lafayette and the bankers, demanded the proclamation of a republic.
Périer[58] and Laffitte[59] considered that the ‘best republic’ was
the Duc d’Orléans; he was made king, while Fazy threw himself into the
extreme republican opposition. Then he was associated with Godefroy
Cavaignac[60] and Marrast,[61] with the Société des Droits de l’Homme
and with the Carbonari, was mixed up with Mazzini’s Savoy expedition,
and published a journal which after the French fashion was suppressed by
successive fines....

Convinced at last that there was no doing anything in France, he
bethought himself of his native land, and transferred all his energy and
all the experience he had gained as a politician, a journalist, and a
conspirator to the advancement of his ideas in the canton of Geneva. He
thought out a radical revolution in it, and carried it through. Geneva
rose up against its old government. Debates, attack and counter-attack,
passed from private rooms and newspapers into the market-place, and
Fazy appeared at the head of the rebellious part of the town. While he
was organising and stationing his armed friends, a grey-headed old man
looked out of a window and, having been an officer by profession, could
not resist giving advice where to station a cannon or a company. Fazy
obeyed him. The advice was excellent—but who was this officer? Count
Osterman-Tolstoy, commander-in-chief of the allied armies at Kulm, who
had left Russia on the accession of Nicholas and had lived afterwards
almost permanently at Geneva.

During this revolution Fazy showed that he possessed to the full not
merely tact and judgment, but also the audacity which Saint-Just
considered necessary in a revolutionary. Having vanquished the
Conservatives almost without bloodshed, he appeared before the Grand
Council and informed it that it was dissolved. The members wanted to
arrest him, and asked with indignation: ‘In whose name dare he speak like
that?’

‘In the name of the people of Geneva, who are sick of your bad government
and are with me,’ and thereupon Fazy pulled back the curtain on the
council-room door. A crowd of armed men filled the hall, ready at Fazy’s
first word to lower their guns and fire. The old ‘patricians’ and
peaceful Calvinists were disconcerted. ‘Go, while there is yet time!’
observed Fazy, and they meekly trudged home, while Fazy sat down at the
table and wrote a decree or _plébiscite_ announcing that the people of
Geneva, having dissolved the old government, were assembling to elect a
new one and to frame a new democratic code, and in the meantime were
entrusting the executive power to James Fazy. This was his eighteenth of
Brumaire for the benefit of democracy and the people. Though he did elect
himself dictator, the choice was undoubtedly a very good one.

From that time—that is, from the year 1846—he had been governing Geneva.
Since, in accordance with the constitution, the president is elected for
a period of two years and cannot be elected twice in succession, the
people of Geneva appointed every two years some inconspicuous adherent of
Fazy’s, and in this way he remained _de facto_ president, to the great
distress of the Conservatives and Pietists, who always remained in the
minority.

Fazy displayed new abilities during the period of his dictatorship.
Administration, finance, everything made rapid progress; the resolute way
in which radical principles were put into practice won the attachment of
the people: Fazy showed himself as vigorous in organisation as he had
been in destruction. Geneva flourished under his rule. This I was told
not only by his friends but by people completely disinterested, among
others by the celebrated victor of Kulm, Osterman-Tolstoy.

Abrupt and irritable, hasty and intolerant by disposition, Fazy always
had despotically republican leanings; as he grew used to authority, the
despotic _pli_ sometimes got the upper hand. Moreover, events and ideas
after 1848 caught Fazy unawares; he was perplexed on the one hand and
circumvented on the other. Here it was the republic of which he had
dreamed with Godefroy Cavaignac and Armand Carrel ... and yet there
was something wrong about it. His old comrade Marrast, as president of
the National Assembly, observed to him that he had made an incautious
reference to Catholicism ‘at lunch in the presence of the secretary,’
and told him that religion must be respected in order that the priests
might not be incensed; when the ex-editor of the _Nationale_ passed from
room to room in the president’s house, two sentries saluted him. Another
friend and _protégé_ of Fazy’s went further still: he became himself
president of the republic, but would not recognise his old comrade, and
aimed at being a Napoleon.

‘Was the republic in danger?’ And meanwhile the workers and the leading
men were not interested in it; they were all talking of socialism. So
that was what was to blame—and with obstinacy and exasperation Fazy
fell upon socialism. That meant that he had reached his limit, his
_Kulminationspunkt_, as the Germans say, and was going downhill.

Mazzini and Fazy, who had been socialists in the days before socialism,
became its enemies when it began to pass from general tendencies into a
new revolutionary force. Many a lance I have broken with both of them,
and I have seen with surprise how little can be done by logic when a man
does _not want_ to be convinced. If in both these men it was policy,
a concession to the necessity of the times, what need had they to get
so hot about it? What need had they to play their parts so well even
in private conversation? No, there was something else in it, a sort of
grudge against a doctrine formulated _outside_ their own circle: there
was a spite against the very name. I once suggested to Fazy that in
our conversations I should call socialism Cleopatra, that he might not
be angered by the word and prevented from understanding by the sound
of it. Mazzini’s _brochures_ against socialism later on did the famous
agitator far more harm than did Radetsky,—but that is not the point under
discussion here.

One day on reaching home I found a note from Struve—he informed me that
Fazy was turning him out, and very abruptly. The Federal Government had
long before decreed the deportation of Struve and Heinzen; Fazy had
confined himself to communicating the fact to them. What new incident had
occurred?

Fazy did not want Struve to publish his ‘international’ journal in
Geneva; he was afraid—and perhaps he was right—that Heinzen and Struve
would publish such dangerous nonsense as to provoke again threats from
France, to raise a howl from Prussia, and set Austria gnashing its
teeth. How a practical man could imagine that the journal would come
into existence I do not know; anyway, he offered Struve the choice of
giving up the journal or of leaving Geneva. To give it up when Struve
was fanatically dreaming that by means of his journal he would finally
vanquish ‘the seven scourges of mankind’ was too much for the Baden
revolutionary. Then Fazy sent a policeman to him with the order to leave
the canton at once. Struve received the policeman frigidly, and announced
that he was not yet ready for departure. Fazy resented the treatment of
the policeman, and ordered the police to turn Struve out. To enter a
house without a legal warrant was impossible; the measures taken in Berne
had been by the police and not by a legal tribunal (what the French call
_mesures de salut publique_). The policeman knew that, but, wishing to
oblige Fazy, and probably to pay Struve back for his rude reception, got
a carriage ready and sat down with a comrade under a lime-tree not far
from Struve’s house.

Struve, secretly delighted that the era of persecution and martyrdom was
beginning again, and convinced beforehand that nothing of importance
would be done to him, sent notes concerning the proceedings to all
his acquaintances. While awaiting their fervent sympathy and ardent
indignation he could not resist going out to visit his friend Heinzen,
who had received a similar polite _billet-doux_ from Fazy. As Heinzen
lived close by, Struve, _ganz gemüthlich_, went off to him wearing his
indoor clothes and slippers. He had scarcely reached the lime-tree
behind which the crafty son of Calvin was concealed, when the latter
barred his way and, showing the order of the Federal Council, asked
Struve to follow him. Two policemen reinforced the urgency of his
invitation. The astonished Struve, cursing Fazy and putting him on the
list of the ‘seven scourges,’ got into the carriage and was driven off
with the policeman to the canton of Vaud.

Since Fazy had been dictator, nothing of the sort had happened in Geneva.
There was something coarse, unnecessary, and even clownish about it. I
was returning home between eleven and twelve that evening, boiling with
indignation: at the Pont des Bergues I met Fazy; he was walking along in
excellent spirits, accompanied by a few Italian refugees.

‘Ah, good evening; any news?’ he said, seeing me.

‘A great deal,’ I answered with elaborate frigidity.

‘Why, what?’

‘Why, here for instance in Geneva, just as in Paris, men are seized in
the street, carried off by force; _il n’y a plus de sécurité dans les
rues_—I am afraid to walk about....’

‘Oh, you are referring to Struve ...’ answered Fazy, already so angry
that his voice began to break. ‘What is one to do with these nonsensical
people? I am tired of them: I’ll show these gentry what it means to treat
the law with contempt, to be openly disobedient to the orders of the
Federal Council....’

‘A right,’ I observed, smiling, ‘which you reserve for yourself alone.’

‘Am I to expose the canton and myself to danger for the sake of every
lunatic broken out of Bedlam, and to do it under present circumstances
too? And, what’s more, one gets no thanks but only rudeness from them.
Only fancy, gentlemen: I sent a _commissaire_ of the police to him, and
he all but kicked him out—it’s beyond anything! They don’t understand
that an official (_magistrat_) coming in the name of the law must be
treated with respect, mustn’t he?’

Fazy’s companions nodded their heads affirmatively.

‘I don’t agree,’ I said, ‘and see no reason at all to respect a man for
being a policeman and for coming to announce some nonsense written by
Fourrère or Drouey[62] in Berne. There is no need to be rude, but why
should one lavish civilities on a man who comes to one as an enemy, and,
what’s more, an enemy supported by force?’

‘I never heard such things in my life,’ remarked Fazy, shrugging his
shoulders and flashing a withering glance at me.

‘It’s new to you because you have never thought about it. To imagine that
officials are sacred personages is something thoroughly monarchical.’

‘You refuse to see the difference between respect for the law and
slavish servility, because with you the Tsar and the law are the same
thing—_c’est parfaitement russe_!’

‘But how is one to see it when your respect for the law means respect for
a constable or a police-sergeant?’

‘Are you aware, sir, that the _commissaire_ of police whom I sent is not
merely a very honest man, but one of the most devoted patriots? I have
seen him in action....’

‘And an exemplary father of a family,’ I went on; ‘only, that has nothing
to do with either me or Struve; we are not acquainted with him, and
he came to Struve not as a model citizen but as the instrument of an
oppressive power....’

‘Why, upon my soul,’ observed Fazy, growing more and more irate, ‘what
do you care for that Struve? Only yesterday you were laughing at him
yourself....’

‘I should not laugh to-day if you were to hang him.’

‘Do you know what I think——?’ He paused. ‘It’s my opinion that he is
simply a Russian spy.’

‘Oh, Lord, what nonsense!’ I said, bursting into laughter.

‘Nonsense, indeed!’ shouted Fazy still more loudly; ‘I tell you that in
earnest!’

Knowing the unbridled hastiness of my Geneva tyrant, and knowing that
with all his irritability he was in reality a hundred times better than
his words and not an ill-natured man, I might perhaps have let his
shouting pass; but there were other people listening. Besides, he was
president of the canton, and I was just such another vagrant without a
passport as Struve himself, and therefore I responded in a stentorian
voice:

‘Do you imagine because you are president that, if you say a thing,
that’s enough for every one to believe it?’

My shouting produced its effect: Fazy lowered his voice, but, mercilessly
beating his fist against the parapet of the bridge, he observed: ‘Why,
there was his uncle too, Gustav Struve, a Russian attorney in Hamburg.’

‘That’s as good as “The Wolf and the Lamb.” I had better be going home.
Good-bye!’

‘Yes, indeed, we had better go to bed instead of arguing, or we shall end
by quarrelling,’ observed Fazy with a forced smile.

I went to the Hôtel des Bergues; Fazy and the Italians crossed the
bridge. We had been shouting so excitedly that several of the windows
of the hotel had been opened, and an audience consisting of waiters and
tourists had been listening to our discussion.

Meanwhile the policeman and very honest citizen who had carried Struve
off returned, not alone but still accompanied by Struve. A very amusing
incident had occurred in the first little town in the canton of Vaud,
near Coppet, where Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier once lived. The
prefect of the police, an ardent republican, hearing how Struve had been
seized, declared that the Geneva police had acted illegally, and not only
refused to send him on further, but turned him back.

The fury of Fazy may be imagined when, to put the finishing touch to
our conversation, he heard of Struve’s safe return. After exchanging
abuse with the ‘tyrant’ by letter and by word of mouth, Struve departed
to England with Heinzen; there the latter formulated his demand for
two million heads, and then peacefully sailed off with his Pylades to
America, at first with the object of founding a _school for young girls_,
afterwards to edit in St. Louis _The Pioneer_, which is sometimes too
strong for elderly men to stomach.

Five days after our conversation on the bridge I met Fazy in the Café de
la Poste.

‘Why is it I have not seen you for so long?’ he asked; ‘surely you are
not still angry? Well, I must own all this business with the refugees
is enough to drive one out of one’s mind! The Federal Council keeps
bombarding me with one note after another, and here the accursed
_sous-préfet_ of Gex is simply staying here on purpose to see whether
the French are interned. I try to satisfy every one, and for that my own
people are angry with me. Here’s a new trouble now, and a very nasty
one; I am sure they’ll abuse me, and what am I to do?’ He sat down at my
little table and, dropping his voice, went on: ‘This is not a question of
talk: it’s not socialism, it’s simply robbery!’

He handed me a letter. Some German feudal prince complained that when his
little town had been taken by the students various objects of value had
been seized by them, and among other things some ancient vessel of rare
workmanship; that it was in the possession of the late commander of the
legion, Blenker;[63] and as it had come to the knowledge of his highness
that Blenker was living in Geneva, he asked for the co-operation of Fazy
in recovering the stolen articles.

‘What do you say?’ asked Fazy in a solemn voice.

‘Nothing. Lots of things happen in war-time.’

‘What ought I to do, do you think?’

‘Take no notice of the letter, or write to the fool that you are not his
detective in Geneva. What have you to do with his crockery? He ought
to be glad Blenker did not hang him, and here he is worrying about his
goods.’

‘You are a very dangerous sophist,’ said Fazy, ‘and you don’t think what
discredit such things cast on our party.... We can’t leave it like that.’

‘I don’t know why you take it to heart so much. Far worse things are done
in the world. As for the party and its honour, I dare say you will say
again that I am a sophist—but think for yourself, will you do any good
by giving publicity to the matter? Don’t take any notice of the German
prince’s accusation and it will be taken as a calumny; but if people
add to the rumour about it that you sent to make a police search—what
is more, if by ill-luck anything is found—then it will be difficult to
exonerate Blenker and the whole party.’

Fazy was genuinely amazed at the Russian irregularity of my views. The
Blenker affair ended most fortunately. He was not in Geneva: on the
arrival of the police and investigating magistrates, his wife calmly
showed all their possessions and their money, described where they had
got them from, and, hearing about the vessel, found it herself—it was a
very ordinary silver vessel. It had been taken by some young men in the
legion and brought to their colonel as a souvenir of the victory.

Later on, Fazy apologised to Blenker, admitting that he had been over
hasty in the matter. The immoderate passion for discovering the truth,
for going into every detail in criminal cases, for pursuing the guilty
with fury and crushing them, is a purely French failing. The judicial
process is for them a bloodthirsty sport like bull-baiting for the
Spaniards; the prosecutor, like a skilful toreador, is humiliated and
mortified if the baited beast escapes unharmed. In England there is
nothing of the kind: the judge looks with cool unconcern at the prisoner
in the dock, shows no zeal, and is almost pleased when the jury acquit
him.

The refugees, on their side, tormented Fazy and poisoned his existence.
That was all very natural, and one must not be too severe upon it. The
passions unloosed during revolutionary movements are not appeased by
failure, and, having no other outlet, find a vent in peevish restlessness
of spirit. These men had a mortal longing to speak just when they had to
hold their tongues, to keep in the background, to efface and concentrate
themselves; they, on the contrary, were trying not to disappear from
the footlights, but to advertise their existence by every means in
their power. They wrote pamphlets, wrote to the newspapers, talked
at meetings, talked in cafés, spread false news, and frightened the
foolish governments by expectations of an immediate insurrection. The
majority of them belonged to the class of very harmless persons who
make up the chorus of revolution; but the terrified governments with
equal senselessness believed in their power, and, unaccustomed to free,
bold speech, made an outcry about the inevitable danger, the menace to
religion, the throne, and the family, and insisted that the Federal
Council should expel these terrible advocates of disorder and destruction.

One of the first measures taken by the Swiss Government was the removal
from the French frontier of those of the refugees who were specially
disliked by Napoleon. It was particularly disagreeable to Fazy to carry
out this measure; he was personally acquainted with almost all of them.
After informing them of the order to leave Geneva, he did his best not
to know who had gone and who had not. Those who remained had to keep
away from the principal cafés, from the Pont des Bergues, and that was
the very concession they would not make. This led to ludicrous scenes,
suggestive of a boarding-school, scenes in which the performers on
the one side were the representatives of the people, grey-headed men,
well-known literary men over forty, and on the other, the president
of a free canton and the police agents of the servile neighbours of
Switzerland.

Once, in my presence, the _sous-préfet_ of Gex asked Fazy in an ironical
tone: ‘Tell me, M. le président, is So-and-so in Geneva?’ ‘He has been
gone a long time,’ Fazy answered abruptly. ‘I am very glad to hear it,’
said the _sous-préfet_, and went on his way. And Fazy, clutching my arm
convulsively and pointing furiously at a man who was calmly smoking a
cigar: ‘There he is! there he is! Let us move to the other side, so as
not to meet the villain. This is hell—there is no other word for it!’

I could not help laughing. Of course, it was a refugee who had been
expelled, and he was promenading up and down the Pont des Bergues, which
is for Geneva what the Tverskoy Boulevard is for Moscow.

I stayed in Geneva till the middle of December. The measures which the
Russian Government was stealthily beginning to take against me compelled
me to go to Zurich to try to save my mother’s property, upon which the
Tsar ‘of eternal memory’ was beginning to lay his Imperial claws.

This was a terrible period of my life. A lull between two thunderclaps,
an oppressive, painful, but not eventful calm ... there were menacing
omens, but I still, even then, turned away from them. Life was troubled,
inharmonious, but there were bright days in it; for those I was indebted
to the grand natural scenery of Switzerland.

Remoteness from men, and beautiful natural surroundings have a
wonderfully healing effect. From experience I wrote in _A Wreck_:—

‘When the soul bears within it a great grief, when a man has not mastered
himself sufficiently to grow reconciled with the past, to grow calm
enough for understanding, he needs distance and mountains, the sea and
warm mild air. He needs them that sadness may not pass into bitterness
and despair, that he may not grow hard....’

I was longing for a rest from many things even then. A year and a half
spent in the centre of political upheavals and dissensions, in continual
irritation, in the midst of bloody sights, terrible downfalls, and petty
treacheries, had left much bitterness, misery, and weariness at the
bottom of my soul. Irony began to take a different character. Granovsky
wrote to me after reading _From the Other Shore_, which I wrote just at
that time: ‘Your book has reached us. I read it with joy and a feeling
of pride ... but, for all that, there is something of fatigue about it;
you stand too much alone, and perhaps you will become a great writer,
but what was in Russia living and attractive to all in your talent seems
to have disappeared on foreign soil....’ Then Sazonov, who, just before
I left Paris in 1849, read the beginning of my story, _Duty before
Everything_, written two years previously, said to me: ‘You won’t finish
that story, and you will never write anything more like it. Your bright
laughter and good-natured jesting are gone for ever.’

But could a man pass through the ordeal of 1848 and 1849 and remain
the same? I was myself conscious of the change. Only at home, when no
outsiders were present, there were sometimes moments as of old, not of
‘bright laughter’ but of bright sadness; recalling the past and our
friends, recalling recent scenes of our life in Rome, beside the cots of
our sleeping children or watching their play, the soul was attuned to the
mood of old days—there came a breath of freshness, of youthful poetry, of
gentle harmony, there was peace and content in the heart, and under the
influence of such an evening life was easier for a day or two.

These minutes were not frequent; a wretched, depressing distraction
prevented them. The number of visitors kept increasing about us, and
towards evening our little drawing-room in the Champs-Élysées was full of
strangers. For the most part, these were newly arrived refugees, good and
unfortunate people, but I was intimate with only one man.... And why was
I intimate with him!...

I was delighted to leave Paris, but in Geneva we found ourselves in the
same society, though the persons in it were different and it was on a
narrower scale. In Switzerland everything at that time had rushed into
politics; everything—_tables d’hôte_ and coffee-houses, watchmakers and
women—all were divided into parties. An exclusive preoccupation with
politics, particularly in the painful stagnation which always follows
unsuccessful revolutions, is extremely wearisome with its arid barrenness
and monotonous censure of the past. It is like summer-time in big cities
where everything is hot, dusty, airless, where through pale trees the
walls and the hot paving-stones reflect the glaring sun. A living man
craves for air which has not been breathed over a thousand times, free
from the smell of the refuse of life, from the sound of discordant
jangling, from the dirty, putrid stench and everlasting noise.

Sometimes we did in fact tear ourselves away from Geneva, visit the
shores of Lake Léman and the foot of Mont Blanc; and the frowning, gloomy
beauty of mountain scenery with its intense shadows screened all the
vanity of vanities from one’s eyes, refreshing soul and body with the
cold breath of its everlasting glaciers.

I do not know whether I should like to stay for ever in Switzerland. We
dwellers in the plains and prairies after a time feel the mountains a
restriction; they are too immense and too close, they hem us in, limit
us; but sometimes it is good to stay a while in their shadow. Moreover,
a pure and good-hearted race live in the mountains, a race of people
poor but not unfortunate, with few wants, accustomed to a life of sturdy
independence. The froth of civilisation, its verdigris, has not settled
on these people; historical changes have passed like clouds beneath
their feet, scarcely touching them. The Roman world still persists
in Graubünden, the times of the peasant wars have scarcely passed in
Appenzell. Perhaps in the Pyrenees, in the Tyrol, or other mountains, the
same sturdy type of population may be found, but it no longer exists in
Europe as a whole.

In the north-east of Russia, however, I have seen something like it. In
Perm and Vyatka I have come upon people of the same stamp as in the Alps.

Exhausted by the long, unbroken climb step by step up the mountain, my
companion and I, travelling to Zermatt, stopped to give our horses a
rest, and went into a small inn a little above St. Niklaus, if I remember
right. The hostess, a tall, thin, but muscular old woman, was all alone
in the house. Seeing guests, she bustled about, complaining of the
scantiness of her stores, and, after rummaging here and there, brought
out a bottle of _kirsch_, some bread hard as a stone (bread is not a
simple matter in the mountains; it is brought up from the villages on
asses), some smoked mutton (also very dry), some cheese and goat’s milk,
and then proceeded to make us a sort of sweet omelette which I could not
eat; but the mutton, the cheese, and the _kirsch_ were very good. The
woman regaled us as though we were invited guests, put choice morsels
before us with a good-natured air, and kept apologising. Our guides, too,
ate and drank _kirsch_. As I was going away I asked her what we owed her.
The woman pondered for a long time, even went into the other room to
collect her thoughts, and then, after some preliminary remarks about the
dearness of provisions and the difficulty of transport, ventured to say
_five francs_. ‘What!’ I commented, ‘with the horses’ food, too?’ She did
not understand what I meant, and made haste to add: ‘Well, four will be
enough.’

When I was being taken from Perm to Vyatka, in a village where we changed
horses I asked a woman who was sitting on a log beside her hut for some
_kvass_. ‘It’s dreadfully sour,’ she answered; ‘but here, I’ll bring
you some home-made beer; it’s left from the holiday, you see.’ A minute
later she brought me an earthenware jug wrapped in a rag, and a dipper.
The gendarme and I drank to our hearts’ content. As I handed the dipper
back to the old woman I gave her ten or fifteen kopecks, but she would
not take the coin, saying: ‘God bless you! to think of taking from a
travelling man, and you going as you are,’ glancing at the gendarme. ‘But
why should we drink your good beer for nothing, auntie? Take it for cakes
for the children.’ ‘No, kind sir, don’t you think it; but if you’ve money
to spare, give it to the poor or put up a candle to God.’

Another similar incident happened to me on the Great River near Vyatka.
I had gone to look at the curious procession in which the _ikon_ of
St. Nicholas of Hlynov is taken down the river to pay a visit. On the
way back, I went with my driver into a hut where he got some oats. The
people of the house and three pilgrims were sitting down to dinner; there
was a strong smell of cabbage soup, and I asked for some for myself.
A young woman brought me a wooden bowl of soup, a hunk of bread, and
a huge salt-cellar. When I had eaten I gave the master of the house a
quarter-rouble. He looked at me and scratched the back of his head,
saying: ‘That won’t do, you know; here you’ve eaten two-ha’porth and
given me a quarter-rouble; it’s not right for me to take it—it’s a sin
before God and a shame before men.’

I remember I have somewhere mentioned the Perm peasant habit of putting a
piece of bread with _kvass_ or milk outside the window at night, in case
an _unfortunate_—that is, an exile—should be making his way back from
Siberia and be afraid to knock, so that he might find nourishment without
making a noise. I have found a like custom on the Swiss mountains; only,
not being near Siberia, there it is done simply for the benefit of
travellers. On the rather high peaks, where life is scanty, where the
rock stands out like the skull of a man beginning to grow bald, and an
icy-cold wind blows on the vegetation, as dried and withered as the herbs
in a chemist’s shop—there I came upon huts, empty, but with unlocked
doors, that a traveller who had lost his way or had been overtaken by
bad weather might find hospitality even without a host. All sorts of
peasant wares were there, and, on the table, cheese, bread, and goat’s
milk. Some after eating leave a coin on the table, others leave nothing,
but evidently nobody steals. Of course, very few strangers reach them,
but nevertheless these unlocked doors amaze a townsman.

Since I am talking of mountains and heights, I will describe my visit to
Monte Rosa. How can I better finish my chapter on Switzerland than on a
height of seven thousand feet?

From the hut of the old woman who was ashamed to take five francs for
feeding four men and two horses, including a whole bottle of _kirsch_,
we were climbing till late evening up a narrow pass, in places hardly
more than a yard wide, to Zermatt; on the rocky and uneven little path
the accustomed horses moved carefully at a walking pace, picking out the
spot to put their hoof on. The guides were continually reminding us not
to touch the reins, but to let the horse go as it would. On one side was
a steep precipice, some three thousand feet or more. At the bottom below,
the Visp roared and raced along with a sort of senseless haste, as though
trying to find a more open channel to break away from its narrow, stony
bed. Its foaming and whirling surface could be seen here and there; on
its mountainous banks there were regular pinewoods which looked like moss
from the height on which we were moving. On our other side there was a
bare, stony height here and there hanging over our heads. For whole hours
one goes on and on ... the hoofs ring on the stone, the horse slips, the
Visp roars, and still there are the same rocks on one side, beyond which
nothing can be seen, and on the other the abyss below already growing
dim with the twilight—it produces a feeling of dreariness, of nervous
fatigue. I should not care to repeat that journey often.

Zermatt is the highest spot on which several families are living: it
stands as though in a cauldron; huge masses of mountains surround it. One
of the people there takes in the few travellers; we found in his house
a Scotsman, a geologist. It got quite dark while they were setting our
supper; the nearness of the mountains made the evening twice as dark.
Between ten and eleven our hostess, listening at the window, said: ‘Why,
there’s the sound of hoofs, and I can hear the shout of the guides ...
who would care to travel at night-time on such a path?’ The tramp of
hoofs came slowly nearer; the hostess took a lantern and went out with it
to the entrance. I followed her; something began to stand out against the
black darkness, figures appeared in the streak of light from the lantern,
and at last two horses came up to the entrance. On one horse sat a tall,
middle-aged woman, on the other a boy of fourteen. The lady alighted from
the horse as calmly as though she had returned from a ride in Hyde Park,
and went into the common room. She had met the Scotsman before, and so
began talking to him at once. After asking for something to eat, she sent
her son to find out from the guides how long the horses must rest. They
said that two hours would be enough. ‘Surely you are not going on without
waiting for daylight?’ asked the Scotsman. ‘One can’t see an inch before
one’s face, and you’ll be going down by a new road.’

‘This is the time I’ve allowed for it.’

Two hours later the Englishwoman and her son began the descent on the
Italian side, and we went to bed for two or three hours. At dawn we took
as a third guide a botanist who knew all the paths and whistled the
Alpine airs in a wonderful way, and began our ascent of one of the nearer
peaks, climbing towards a sea of ice and the Matterhorn.

At first a greyish mist hid everything and wetted us with a fine rain;
we went up and up and it sank lower; soon it became glaringly bright and
the air became extraordinarily pure and clear.

Hugo describes somewhere ‘what can be heard on the mountains’; his
mountain could not have been a high one. I was struck, on the contrary,
by the complete absence of sound; there was absolutely nothing to
be heard except the light, intermittent grinding from the slipping
avalanches, and that only at rare intervals ... as a matter of fact, the
stillness is deathly, _transparent_—I use the word intentionally,—an
extraordinary rarefaction of the air seems to make _visible_, audible,
this absolute dumbness, this eternal, inanimate, elemental sleep[64] of
primeval ages.

Life is noisy—but everything living is below and hidden in the clouds.
Here are no plants, only grey rough lichen is found here and there
upon the stones. Higher still it is even fresher, and the region of
never-melting frost begins: here there is the dividing line, here is
nothing; only the most inquisitive of all animals crosses it to peep for
a minute at that desert of emptiness, to look at the highest outposts of
the planet, and hastens to descend to his own domain, full of vanities,
of trivial bustle—where he is at home.

We halted before that sea of snow and ice which lay stretched between
us and the Matterhorn; ringed round by mountains that were bathed in
sunshine, dazzlingly white, it looked like the frozen arena of some
titanic coliseum. Hollowed out in places by the winds into the form of
waves, it seems to have grown stiff at the very moment of movement; the
curves of the billows are frozen before they have had time to sink.

I got off my horse and lay down on a granite boulder moored to the shore
by the snowy billows ... mute, motionless whiteness, boundless on all
sides ... a light wind lifted a fine white powder, wafted it away, set
it whirling ... it fell, and all again passed into stillness; but twice
the avalanches breaking away with a hollow reverberation rolled down in
the distance, clinging to the rocks, clashing against them and leaving a
cloud of snow behind them....

A man feels strange in this setting—a visitor, superfluous, an outsider;
and on the other hand he breathes more freely, and as though from the
colour surrounding him grows whiter and purer within ... earnest and full
of a sort of devout gravity!...

What melodramatic rhetoric I should be charged with if I concluded
this picture of Monte Rosa by saying that in that world of whiteness,
freshness, and silence, of the two travellers stranded on that height,
reckoning each other dear friends, one was plotting black treachery
against the other!

Yes, life sometimes plays us melodramatic tricks—it has its _coups de
théâtre_ which are very artificial.




Appendix II

(_From ‘West European Sketches—Notebook II.’_)


I

IL PIANTO

After the days of June, I saw that the revolution was vanquished, but
I still believed in the vanquished, in the fallen, I believed in the
wonder-working powers of the relics, in their moral strength. In Geneva
I began to understand more and more clearly not only that the revolution
was vanquished, but that it was bound to be vanquished.

My head was dizzy with my discoveries, an abyss was opening before my
eyes, and I felt that the ground was giving way under my feet.

It was not the reaction that vanquished the revolution. The reaction
showed itself everywhere densely stupid, cowardly, in its dotage;
everywhere it shamefully retreated into safety before the onrush of the
popular tide, furtively biding its time in Paris, in Naples, in Vienna,
and in Berlin. The revolution fell, like Agrippina, under the blows
of her own children, and, what was worst of all, without their being
conscious of it; there was more heroism, more youthful self-sacrifice,
than good judgment; and the pure, noble victims fell, not knowing why.
The fate of the survivors was almost more grievous. While absorbed
in dissensions among themselves, in personal disputes, in melancholy
self-delusion, and consumed by unbridled vanity, they kept dwelling on
their unexpected days of triumph, and were unwilling to take off their
faded laurels or wedding garments, though it was not the bride who had
deceived them.

Misfortunes, idleness, and poverty induced intolerance, obstinacy,
nervous irritability.... The exiles broke up into little groups, rallying
not round principles but round names and hatreds. The fact that their
thoughts continually turned to the past, and that they lived in an
exclusive, narrow circle, began to find expression in speech and thought,
in manners and in dress; a new class—the class of refugees—was formed,
and grew as stiff and rigid as the rest. And just as once St. Basil the
Great wrote to St. Gregory Nazianzen that he ‘gloated over fasting and
revelled in privations,’ so now there were voluntary martyrs, victims by
vocation, unhappy as a profession, and among them were very conscientious
people; and indeed St. Basil was quite sincere when he wrote to his
friend of his orgies of mortifying the flesh and of the voluptuous
ecstasy of persecution. With all that, ideas did not move a step forward,
thought slumbered.... If these people had been awakened by the blast of a
new trumpet and a new call to battle, they would, like the nine sleeping
maidens, have been the same as on the day on which they fell asleep.

These bitter truths made my heart sink with despondency; I had to live
through a hard stage of my education.

I was sitting mournfully one day in my mother’s dining-room in gloomy,
disagreeable Zurich; it was at the end of December 1849. I was going next
day to Paris. It was a cold, snowy day; two or three logs smoking and
crackling burned reluctantly on the hearth. All were busy with packing.
I sat utterly alone. My life in Geneva floated before my mind; the whole
future looked dark; I felt afraid of something, and I was so insufferably
miserable that if I could I would have fallen on my knees and wept and
prayed; but I could not, and instead of prayer I wrote my curse—my
_Epilogue_ to 1849.

‘Disillusionment, fatigue, _Blasiertheit_!’ The democratic critics said
of those lines, wrung out of me by pain. Yes, disillusionment! Yes,
fatigue!... Disillusionment is a vulgar, hackneyed word, the veil under
which the sloth of the heart, egoism posing as love, the noisy emptiness
of vanity with pretensions to everything and strength for nothing, lie
hidden. All these exalted, misunderstood characters, thin with envy
and miserable with superciliousness, have wearied us for years past,
both in life and in novels. All that is perfectly true; but is there
not something real, characteristic of our times, at the bottom of these
spiritual sufferings which degenerate into absurd parody and vulgar
masquerade?

The poet who found words and voice for this malady was too proud to pose
and to suffer for the sake of applause; on the contrary, he often uttered
his bitter thought with so much humour that simple-hearted readers were
convulsed with merriment. Byron’s disillusionment was more than caprice,
more than a personal mood; Byron was shattered because life deceived him.
And life deceived him not because his demands were unreal, but because
England and Byron were of different ages, were of different educations,
and met just at the epoch when the mist was being dissipated.

This divergence has existed in the past, but in our age it has come to
consciousness; in our age the impossibility of any conviction bridging
the gulf has become more and more evident. After the Roman break-up came
Christianity; after Christianity—the belief in civilisation, in humanity.
Liberalism is the _latest religion_, though its church is not of the
other world but of this. Its theology is political theory; it stands upon
the earth and has no mystical conciliations, it aims at conciliation in
real life. Triumphant and then defeated liberalism has revealed the rift
in all its nakedness; the painful consciousness of this is expressed in
the irony of the modern man, the scepticism with which he sweeps away the
fragments of his shattered idols.

Irony gives expression to the vexation aroused by the fact that
logical truth is not the same as the truth of history, that apart from
dialectical development it has its own development through chance and
passion, that apart from reason it has its romance.

Disillusionment[65] in our sense of the word was not known before the
Revolution; the eighteenth century was one of the most religious periods
of history. I am not speaking now of the great martyr Saint-Just or
of the apostle Jean-Jacques; but was not the pope Voltaire, blessing
Franklin’s grandson in the name of God and Freedom, a fanatic of his
religion of humanity?

Scepticism was proclaimed together with the republic of the 22nd of
September 1792.

The Jacobins and revolutionaries in general belonged to a minority,
separated from the life of the people by their culture: they formed
something like a secular clergy ready to shepherd their human flocks.
They represented the _highest_ thought of their time, its _highest but
not its common consciousness_, not the _thought of all_.

This new clergy had no means of coercion, neither physical nor
supernatural: from the moment that the governing power dropped out of
their hands, they had only one weapon—conviction. But for conviction
to be _right_ is not enough; their whole mistake lay in supposing so;
something more was necessary—_mental equality_.

So long as the desperate conflict lasted to the strains of the hymn of
the Huguenots and the hymn of the Marseillaise, so long as men were burnt
at the stake and blood was flowing, this inequality passed unobserved.
But at last the oppressive edifice of feudal monarchy fell, and slowly
the walls were shattered, the locks torn off the gates ... one more blow
struck, and the brave men advance, the gates are flung open and the crowd
rushes in. But it was not the crowd they expected. Who are these men; to
what age do they belong? These are not Spartans, not the great _populus
Romanus_. _Davus sum, non Œdipus!_ An overwhelming wave of filth flooded
everything. The inner horror of the Jacobins was expressed in the Terror
of 1793 and 1794: they saw their fearful mistake, tried to correct it
with the guillotine; but, however many heads they cut off, they still had
to bow their own before the might of the class of society that was rising
to the top. Everything gave way before it; it overpowered the Revolution
and the Reaction, it filled up the old forms and submerged them because
it made up the one effective majority of its day. Sieyès was more right
than he thought when he said that the petty-bourgeoisie _was everything_.

The petty-bourgeois were not produced by the Revolution; they were ready
with their codes and their traditions, in a different way discordant with
the revolutionary idea. The aristocracy had held them down and kept them
in the background; set free, they passed over the dead bodies of those
who had freed them and established their own regime. The minority were
either crushed or swallowed up among the bourgeois.

A few men of each generation were, in spite of events, left the obstinate
guardians of the idea; these Levites, or perhaps Aztecs, are unjustly
punished for their monopoly of exclusive culture, for the mental
superiority of the well-fed caste, the leisured caste that had time to
work not only with muscles.

We are angered, moved to fury, by the absurdity, by the injustice of this
fact. As though some one (apart from ourselves) had promised us that
everything in the world should be just and beautiful and go easily. We
have marvelled enough at the abstract wisdom of nature and of historical
development; it is time to perceive that in nature as in history there
is a great deal that is fortuitous, stupid, unsuccessful, and confused.
Reason, fully developed thought, comes last. Everything begins with the
foolishness of the newborn child; possibility and striving are innate in
him, but before he reaches development and consciousness he is exposed to
a series of external and internal influences, checks and obstacles. One
has water on the brain, another falls and flattens his skull—both remain
idiots; the third does not fall nor die of scarlet fever—and becomes a
poet, a military leader, a bandit, or a judge. We know as a rule far
more of the successes in nature, in history, and in life: we are only
now beginning to feel that all the cards are not so well shuffled as we
thought, because we are ourselves a losing card, a failure.

It mortifies us to find that the idea is impotent that truth has no
compelling force over the world of actuality. A new sort of Manichæism
takes possession of us, we are led, _par dépit_, to believe in rational
(that is, purposive) evil, as we did believe in rational good—that is the
last tribute we pay to idealism.

The anguish will pass with time; its tragic and passionate character will
be softened: it scarcely exists in the new world of the United States.
That young people, enterprising and more practical than intelligent, is
so occupied in the organisation of its own life that it knows nothing
at all of our agonies. Moreover, there are not two cultures there. The
persons who make up the classes in that society are incessantly changing,
they rise and fall with the bank account of each. The sturdy race of
English colonists is multiplying terribly; if it gets the ascendency,
people will not be the happier for it, but they will be more comfortable.
That comfort will be duller, poorer, more arid than that which floated
in the ideals of romantic Europe; but with it there will be neither
Tsar nor centralisation, and perhaps there will be no hunger either. Any
one, who can put off the old Adam of Europe from himself and be born
again a new Jonathan, had better take the first steamer to some place
in Wisconsin or Kansas; there he will certainly be better off than in
decaying Europe.

Those who _cannot_, remain to live out their lives, representatives of
the fair dream with which men lulled themselves to sleep. They have lived
too much in fantasies and ideals to fit into the age of American good
sense.

There is no great loss in that; we are not many, and we shall soon be
extinct.

But how is it men grow up so out of harmony with their environment?...

Imagine a hothouse-reared youth—the one, for instance, who has described
himself in _The Dream_; imagine him face to face with the most boring,
with the most tedious society, face to face with the monstrous Minotaur
of English life, uncouthly welded together of two beasts—the one sinking
into decrepitude, the other knee-deep in filthy mire, weighed down like
the Caryatides whose everlastingly strained muscles leave not a drop of
blood to spare for the brain. If he could have adapted himself to this
life, he would, instead of dying at thirty in Greece, by now have been
Lord Palmerston or Lord John Russell. But since he could not, there is
nothing surprising in his saying, like his Harold to his ship:

    ‘Nor care what land thou bearest me to,
    But not again to mine.’

But what awaited him in the distance? Spain devastated by Napoleon,
Greece sunk back into barbarism, the general resurrection after 1814
of all the stinking Lazaruses; there was no getting away from them in
Ravenna or in Diodati. Byron could not be satisfied like a German with
theories _sub specie æternitatis_, nor like a Frenchman with political
chatter; he was crushed, but crushed like a menacing Titan, flinging his
scorn in men’s faces and not troubling to soften the blow.

This discordance and disharmony, of which Byron as a poet and a genius
was conscious forty years ago, has, after a succession of painful
experiences, after the filthy transition from 1830 to 1848, and the
infamous one from 1848 to the present, overwhelmed many of us to-day. And
we, like Byron, do not know what to do with ourselves, where to lay our
heads.

The realist Goethe, like the romantic Schiller, knew nothing of this
rending of the spirit. The one was too religious, the other too
philosophical. Both could find peace in abstract spheres. When the
‘spirit of negation’ appears as such a jester as Mephistopheles, then
the disharmony is not yet tragic; his mocking and for ever contradictory
nature is still blended in the higher harmony, and in its own due time
will chime in with everything—_sie ist gerettet_. Lucifer in _Cain_ is
very different; he is the gloomy angel of darkness, on whose brow shines
with dim lustre the star of bitter thought, full of inner discords which
can never be harmonised.

He does not jest with negation, he does not amuse with the impudence of
his infidelity, he does not allure by sensuality, he does not procure
simple maidens, wine, and diamonds, but calmly impels to murder, by some
inexplicable force, like the lure of still moonlit water, that promises
nothing but death in its comfortless, cold, glimmering embraces.

Neither Cain nor Manfred, neither Don Juan nor Byron, has any deduction,
any solution, any ‘moral.’ Perhaps from the point of view of dramatic art
this is a defect, but it gives a stamp of sincerity and shows the depths
of the gulf. Byron’s epilogue, his last word, if you like, is _The
Darkness_; that is the logical conclusion of a life that begins with _The
Dream_. Complete the picture for yourselves.

Two enemies, hideously disfigured by hunger, are dead, they are devoured
by some crab-like monsters ... a ship is rotting—the tarred rope sways in
the muddy waters in the darkness, there is fearful cold, the animals are
dying out, history has already perished and the place is cleared for new
life: our period will be reckoned as the fourth formation—that is, if the
new world arrives at being able to count up to four.

Our historical vocation, our work, lies in the fact that by our
disillusionment, by our sufferings, we reach resignation and humility in
face of the truth, and spare following generations from these troubles.
With us humanity is regaining sobriety, with us recovering from its
drunken orgy; we are its birth-pangs. If the birth-agony ends well, all
is for the best; but we must not forget that the child or mother, or
maybe both, may die by the way, and then—well, then history, like the
Mormon it is, will begin the process over again.... _E sempre bene_,
friends!

We know how Nature disposes of the individual: whether sooner or later,
whether without sacrifice or over the bodies of the dead, she cares not;
she goes her way, or goes any way that chances. Ten thousands of years
she builds up a coral reef, every spring abandoning to death the foremost
ranks. The polypi die without suspecting that they have served the
_progress_ of the reef.

We, too, shall serve something. Entering into the future as an element
in it does not mean that the future will fulfil our ideals. Rome did not
carry out Plato’s idea of a republic nor the Greek idea in general. The
Middle Ages were not the development of Rome. Modern Western thought will
pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence in
its place, just as our body passes into the composition of grass, of
sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality,
but what is there to be done about it?

Now I am accustomed to these thoughts, they no longer terrify me. But at
the end of 1849 I was overwhelmed by them; and in spite of the fact that
every event, every meeting, every contact, every person seemed bent on
tearing away the last green leaves, I still frantically and obstinately
sought a _way of escape_.

That is why I prize now so highly the courageous thought of Byron. He saw
that there is _no escape_, and proudly said so.

I was unhappy and perplexed when these thoughts began to haunt me; I
tried by every means to run away from them ... like a lost traveller,
like a beggar, I knocked at every door, stopped every one I met and asked
my way, but every meeting and every event led to the same result—to
_humility_ in the face of the _truth_, to meek acceptance of it.

Three years ago I sat by Natalie’s sick-bed and saw death drawing her
mercilessly, step by step, to the grave; that life was all that was
precious to me. About me all was darkness; I sat alone in dull despair,
but did not comfort myself with hopes, did not betray my grief for one
moment by the narcotic thought of meeting beyond the grave.

So it is hardly likely that I should be false to myself over the
impersonal problems of life.


II

POST SCRIPTUM

I know that my outlook on Europe will meet with a bad reception at
home. We for our own comfort _want_ a different Europe and believe in
it as Christians believe in Paradise. Dissipating dreams is always a
disagreeable thing to do, but some inner force which I cannot overcome
makes me tell the truth even when it does me harm.

As a rule we know Europe from school, from literature—that is, we do not
know it, but judge it _à livre ouvert_, from books and pictures, just as
children judge the real world from their _Orbis pictus_, imagining that
all the women in the Sandwich Islands hold their hands above their heads
with a sort of tambourine, and, wherever there is a naked negro, there is
sure to be standing five paces from him a lion with a dishevelled mane or
a tiger with fierce eyes.

Our _classic_ ignorance of the Western European will be productive of a
good deal of harm; race hatreds and bloody collisions will develop from
it later on.

In the first place, we know nothing but the top, _cultured_ layer of
Europe, which conceals the heavy substratum of popular life formed by the
ages, and evolved by instincts and by laws that are little understood
in Europe itself. European culture does not penetrate into those
foundations in which, as in the works of the Cyclops, the hand of man is
indistinguishable from that of nature and history passes into geology.
The European states are welded together of two different peoples whose
special characteristics are maintained by utterly different educations.
There is here none of the Oriental unity which makes the Turk who is a
Grand Vizier and the Turk who hands him his pipe just like each other.
Masses of the country population have, since the religious wars and the
peasant risings, taken no active part in events; they have been swayed by
them to right and left like growing corn, never for a minute leaving the
ground in which they are rooted.

Secondly, that stratum with which we do become acquainted, with which we
do enter into contact, we only know historically, not as it is to-day.
After spending a year or two in Europe we see with surprise that the men
of the West do not correspond as a rule with our conception of them, that
they are _greatly inferior_ to it.

Elements of truth enter into the ideal we have formed, but either these
no longer exist or they have completely changed their character. The
valour of chivalry, the elegance of aristocratic manners, the stern
decorum of the Protestants, the proud independence of the English,
the luxurious life of Italian artists, the sparkling wit of the
Encyclopedists and the gloomy energy of the Terrorists—all that has been
melted down and transmuted into one dead level of universally predominant
_bourgeois manners_. They make up a complete whole—that is, a finished,
self-contained outlook upon life with its traditions and rules, with its
own good and evil, with its own manners and its own morality of a lower
order.

As the knight was the leading type of the feudal world, so the merchant
has become the leading type of the new world; feudal lords are replaced
by employers. The merchant in himself is a colourless intermediate
figure; he is the middle-man between the producer and the consumer; he
is something of the nature of a means of communication, of transport.
The knight was more in himself, more of a person, and kept up his
dignity as he understood it, which made him in reality not dependent
either on wealth or on position; his personality was what mattered. In
the petty-bourgeois the personality is concealed or does not stand out,
because it is not what matters; what matters is the ware, the produce,
the thing, what matters is _property_.

The knight was a terrible ignoramus, a bully, a duellist, a bandit
and a monk, a drunkard and a pietist, but he was open and genuine in
everything: moreover, he was always ready to lay down his life for what
he thought right; he had his moral tradition, his code of honour—very
arbitrary, but one from which he did not depart without loss of his own
respect or the respect of his peers.

The merchant is a man of peace and not of war, stubbornly and
persistently sticking to his rights, but weak in attack; calculating,
parsimonious, he sees trade in everything, and, like the knight, enters
into single combat with every one he meets, but measures himself with him
in cunning. His ancestors—mediæval townsmen—were forced to be sly to save
themselves from violence and robbery; they purchased peace and wealth by
evasiveness, by secretiveness and pretence, keeping themselves close and
holding themselves in check. His ancestors, cap in hand and bowing low,
cheated the knight; shaking their heads or sighing, they talked to their
neighbours of their poverty, whilst they secretly buried their hoards
in the earth. All this has naturally passed into the blood and brains
of their descendants, and has become the physical characteristic of a
special human species known as the _middle class_.

While it was in a difficult position and joined with the enlightened
aristocracy in defending its faith, in fighting for its rights, it was
full of greatness and poetry. But this was not for long, and Sancho
Panza, having gained his place and lolling simply at his ease, let
himself go and lost his peasant honour, his commonsense; the vulgar side
of his nature got the upper hand.

Under the influence of petty-bourgeoisie everything is changed in Europe.
Chivalrous honour is replaced by the honesty of the book-keeper, elegant
manners by propriety, courtesy by stiff decorum, pride by a readiness to
take offence, parks by kitchen gardens, palaces by hotels, open to _all_
(that is, all who have money).

The old, out-of-date, but consistent conceptions of relations between
men have been shaken, while no new recognition of the _true_ relations
between men has appeared. This chaotic void has greatly contributed to
the development of all the bad and petty sides of bourgeoisie under the
all-powerful influence of unbridled acquisitiveness.

Analyse the moral principles current for the last half-century, and what
a medley you will find! The Roman conception of the state together with
the Gothic division of powers, Protestantism and political economy,
_salus populi_ and _chacun pour soi_, Brutus and Thomas à Kempis,
the Gospel and Bentham, the balancing of income and expenditure and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. With such a hotch-potch in the head and with a
magnet in the breast, for ever attracted by gold, it was not hard to
arrive at the absurdities reached by the foremost countries of Europe.

The whole of morality has been reduced to the duty of him who has not by
every possible means to acquire, and of him who has to preserve and to
increase his property; the flag which they run up in the market-place
when trading begins has become the banner of a new society. The man has
_de facto_ become the appurtenance of property; life has been reduced to
a perpetual struggle for money.

The political question since 1830 is becoming exclusively the
petty-bourgeois question, and the age-long struggle is expressed in the
passions and tendencies of the ruling class. Life is reduced to a gamble
on the Stock Exchange; everything—the publication of newspapers, the
elections, the legislative chambers—all have become money-changers’ shops
and markets. The English are so used to putting everything into shop
language that they call their old English Church the _Old Shop_.

All parties and shades of opinion in the petty-bourgeois world
have gradually divided into two camps: on one hand the bourgeois
property-owners, obstinately refusing to abandon their monopolies; on
the other the petty-bourgeois who have nothing, who want to tear the
wealth out of the others’ hands but have not the power—that is, on the
one hand _avarice_, on the other hand _envy_. Since there is no real
moral principle in all that, the part taken by any individual on one
or the other side is determined by external conditions of fortune and
social position. One wave of the opposition after the other triumphs—that
is, attains to property or position—and passes naturally from the side
of envy to the side of avarice. Nothing can be more favourable for
this transition than the fruitless swing backwards and forwards of
parliamentary parties—it gives movement and sets limits to it, provides
an appearance of _doing something_, and an external show of public
interest in order to attain their private ends.

Parliamentary government, not as it follows from the popular foundations
of the Anglo-Saxon _Common Law_, but as it has taken shape in the law
of the state, is simply the wheel in a squirrel’s cage, and the most
colossal one in the world. Could a show of a triumphant march forward
whilst remaining majestically in the same spot be possibly achieved more
perfectly than it is by the two English Houses of Parliament?

But just that maintenance of the show is the great point. Upon everything
belonging to contemporary Europe, two characteristics obviously
derived from the shop are deeply imprinted: on one hand, hypocrisy
and secretiveness; on the other, ostentation and _étalage_. It is all
window-dressing, buying at half-price, passing off rubbish for the real
thing, show for reality, concealing some condition, taking advantage of
a literal meaning, seeming instead of being, behaving properly instead
of behaving well, keeping up external _Respektabilität_ instead of inner
dignity.

In this world everything is so much a stage sham that even the coarsest
ignorance assumes an air of education. Which of us has not blushed for
the ignorance of Western European society? I am not here speaking of men
of learning, but of the people who make up what is called society. There
can be no serious theoretical education; it takes too much time and is
too distracting from _business_. Since nothing that lies outside trading
operations and the ‘exploitation’ of their social position is essential
in the petty-bourgeois world, their education is bound to be limited.
That is what accounts for the absurdity and slowness of mind which we see
in the bourgeois, whenever he has to step off the common beaten track.
Cunning and hypocrisy are by no means so clever and so far-sighted as is
supposed; their range is poor, and they are soon out of their depth.

The English are aware of this, and so do not leave the beaten track,
and put up with the not merely burdensome but, what is worse, absurd
inconveniences of their mediævalism through fear of any change.

The French petty-bourgeois have not been so prudent, and for all their
slyness and duplicity have fallen headlong into an empire.

Full of confidence in their victory, they proclaimed universal suffrage
as the basis of their new regime. This arithmetical standard suited their
taste; the truth is determined by addition and subtraction, it could be
reckoned up and put down in figures.

And what did they put to the decision of the votes of all in the present
state of society? The question of the existence of the republic. They
wanted to crush it by means of the people, to make of it an empty word,
because they did not like it. Is any one who respects the truth going
to ask the opinion of the first stray man he meets? What if Columbus or
Copernicus put America or the movement of the earth to the vote?

It was shrewdly conceived, but in the end the good souls overshot their
mark.

The gap between the _parterre_ and the actors, covered at first by the
faded carpet of Lamartine’s eloquence, has grown wider and wider; the
blood of June has washed the channel deeper; and then the question of the
president was put to the irritated people. As answer to the question,
Louis-Napoleon, rubbing his sleepy eyes, stepped out and took everything
into his hands—that is, even the petty-bourgeois, who fancied, from
memory of old days, that he would reign and they would govern.

What you see on the great stage of political events is repeated in
microscopic form on every hearth. The corruption of petty-bourgeoisie has
crept into all the secret places of the family and private life. Never
has Catholicism, never have the ideas of chivalry, been impressed on men
so deeply, so many-sidedly, as the bourgeois ideas.

Noble rank had its obligations. Of course, since its rights were partly
fantastic, its obligations were fantastic too, but they did provide a
certain mutual security between equals. Catholicism laid still more
obligations. Feudal knights and believing Catholics often failed to carry
out their obligations, but the consciousness that, by so doing, they were
guilty of a breach of the social bonds recognised by themselves prevented
them from being free in their lapses and from justifying their behaviour.
They had their holiday attire, their official setting which was not false
but rather their ideal.

We are not now concerned with the nature of those ideals. They were
tried and their cause was lost long ago. We only want to point out that
petty-bourgeoisie on the contrary involves no obligations, not even the
obligation to serve in the army, so long as there are volunteers; or
rather, its only obligation is _per fas et nefas_ to have property. Its
gospel is brief: ‘Heap up wealth, multiply thy riches till they are like
the sands of the sea, use and misuse thy financial and moral capital,
without ruining thyself, and in comfort and honour thou wilt attain
length of years, marry thy children well, and leave an honoured memory
behind thee.’

The destruction of the feudal and Catholic world was essential, and was
the work not of the petty-bourgeois but simply of free men—that is,
of men who had set themselves free from all wholesale classification.
Among them were knights like Ulrich von Hutten, gentlemen like Voltaire,
watchmakers’ apprentices like Rousseau, army doctors like Schiller,
and merchants’ sons like Goethe. The petty-bourgeois took advantage of
their work and showed themselves emancipated, not only from monarchs and
slavery but from all social obligations, except that of contributing to
the hire of the government who guarded their security.

Of Protestantism they made _their own_ religion, a religion that
reconciles the conscience of the Christian with the practice of the
usurer, a religion so bourgeois that the common people, who shed their
blood for it, have abandoned it. In England the working class goes to
church less than any.

Of the Revolution they tried to make their own republic, but it slipped
between their fingers, just as the civilisation of antiquity slipped away
from the barbarians—that is, with no place in real life, but with hope
for _instaurationem magnam_.

The Reformation and the Revolution were both so terrified by the
emptiness of the world which they had come into that they sought
salvation in two forms of monasticism—the cold, dreary bigotry of
Puritanism and the frigid, artificial civic morality of republican
formalism.

Both the Quaker[66] and the Jacobin forms of intolerance were based on
the fear that the ground was not firm under their feet; they saw that
they needed to take strong measures, to persuade men in the one case that
this was the church, in the other that it was freedom.

Such is the general atmosphere of European life. It is most oppressive
and insufferable where the modern Western system is most developed,
where it is most true to its principles, where it is most wealthy and
most _cultured_—that is, most industrial. And that is why it is not so
unendurably oppressive to live in Italy or Spain as it is in England or
France.... And that is why poor, mountainous, rustic Switzerland is the
only corner of Europe into which one can retreat in peace.[67]




Chapter 39

MONEY AND POLICE—THE EMPEROR JAMES ROTHSCHILD AND THE BANKER NICHOLAS
ROMANOV—POLICE AND MONEY


In the December of 1849 I learnt that the authorisation for the mortgage
of my estate sent from Paris and witnessed at the Embassy had been
destroyed, and that after that an injunction had been laid on my mother’s
fortune. There was no time to be lost, and, as I have mentioned in a
previous chapter, I at once left Geneva and went to my mother’s.

It would be hypocritical to affect to despise property in our time of
financial disorganisation. Money is independence, power, a weapon.

And no one flings away a weapon in time of war, though it may have come
from the enemy or be ever so rusty. The slavery of poverty is awful; I
have studied it in all its aspects, living for years with men who have
escaped from political shipwrecks in the clothes they stood up in. And so
I thought it right and necessary to take every measure to snatch what I
could from the bear’s claws of the Russian Government.

Even so, I was not far from losing everything. When I left Russia I had
no definite plan; I only wanted to remain abroad as long as possible.
The Revolution of 1848 arrived and drew me into its whirlpool before
I had done anything to secure my property. Worthy persons have blamed
me for throwing myself headlong into political movements and leaving
the future of my family to the will of the gods. Perhaps it was not
altogether prudent; but if, living in Rome in 1848, I had sat at home
considering ways and means of saving my property while revolting Italy
was surging before my windows, then I should probably not have remained
in foreign countries, but have returned to Petersburg, have entered the
service again, might have become a vice-governor, have sat at the head
prosecutor’s table, and should have addressed my secretary with insulting
familiarity and my minister as ‘Your High Excellency.’

I had no such self-restraint and good sense, and I am infinitely thankful
for it now. My heart and my memory would be the poorer if I had missed
those bright moments of faith and enthusiasm! What could have made up to
me for the loss of them? Indeed, why speak of me? What would have made up
for it to her whose broken life was nothing afterwards but suffering that
ended in the grave? How bitterly would my conscience have reproached me
if, from prudent caution, I had robbed her of almost the last minutes of
untroubled happiness! And after all I did succeed in saving almost all
our property except the Kostroma estate.

After the June days my position was becoming dangerous. I made the
acquaintance of Rothschild, and asked him to change for me two Moscow
Bank bonds. Business then was not flourishing, of course; the exchange
was in a very bad way; his terms were not good, but I at once accepted
them, and had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile of compassion on
Rothschild’s lips—he took me for a reckless _prince russe_ who had run
into debt in Paris, and so fell to calling me _Monsieur le Comte_.

On the first bonds the money was promptly paid; but on the later ones
for a much larger sum, though the payment was made, Rothschild’s
representative informed him that an injunction had been laid on my
capital—luckily I had withdrawn it all.

And so I found myself in Paris with a large sum of money in the midst of
general upheaval, without experience or knowledge what to do with it.
Yet everything was fairly well arranged. As a rule, the less excitement,
uneasiness, and anxiety there is in financial matters, the better they
succeed. Greedy money-grubbers and financial cowards are as often ruined
as spendthrifts.

By the advice of Rothschild, I bought myself some American shares, a few
French ones, and a small house in the Rue Amsterdam, tenanted by the
Havre Hôtel.

One of my first revolutionary steps, which cut me off from Russia,
plunged me into the respectable class of conservative idlers, brought
me acquainted with bankers and notaries, taught me to look at the Stock
Exchange news—in fact, turned me into a West European _rentier_. The
disharmony between the modern man and the environment in which he lives
brings a dreadful confusion into private behaviour. We are in the very
middle of two currents in conflict with each other; we are flung and
shall continue to be flung first in one and then in the other direction,
until one or the other finally overpowers us, and the stream, still
restless and turbulent but flowing in one direction only, makes things
easier for the swimmer by carrying him along with it.

Happy the man who knows how to steer so that, yielding to the waves and
swaying with them, he still swims his own course!

On the purchase of the house I had the opportunity of looking more
closely into the business and bourgeois world of France. The bureaucratic
pedantry over completing a purchase is not inferior to ours in Russia.
The old notary read me several documents, the statute concerning the
reading of them _main levée_, then the actual statute itself—all of this
making up a complete folio volume. In our final negotiation concerning
the price and the legal expenses, the owner of the house said that he
would make a concession and take upon himself the very considerable
expenses of the legal conveyance, if I would immediately pay the whole
sum to him personally. I did not understand him, since from the very
first I had openly stated that I was buying it for ready money. The
notary explained to me that the money must remain in his hands for at
least three months, during which its sale would be advertised and all
creditors who had any claims on the house would be called upon to state
their case. The house was mortgaged for seventy thousand, but there
might be further mortgages in other hands. In three months’ time, after
inquiries had been made, the _purge hypothécaire_ would be handed to the
purchaser and the former owner would receive the purchase money.

The owner declared that he had no other debts. The notary confirmed this.
‘Your honour and your hand on it,’ I said to him—‘you have no other debts
which could be secured by the house?’

‘I will readily give you my word of honour.’

‘In that case, I agree, and will come here to-morrow with Rothschild’s
cheque.’

When I went next day to Rothschild’s, his secretary flung up his hands in
horror: ‘They are cheating you! This is impossible; we will stop the sale
if you like. It’s something unheard of, to buy from a stranger on such
terms.’

‘Would you like me to send some one with you to look into the business?’
Baron James himself suggested.

I did not care to play the part of an ignorant boy, so said that I had
given my word, and took the cheque for the whole sum. When I reached
the notary’s I found there, besides the witnesses, the creditor who had
come to receive the seventy thousand francs. The deed of purchase was
read over, we signed it, the notary congratulated me on being a Parisian
house-owner—there was nothing left to do but to hand over the cheque....

‘How vexing!’ said the house-owner, taking it from my hands; ‘I forgot to
ask you to draw it in two cheques. How can I pay out the seventy thousand
now?’

‘Nothing is easier: go to Rothschild’s, they’ll give it you in two
cheques; or, simpler still, go to the bank.’

‘I’ll go if you like,’ said the creditor; the house-owner frowned and
answered that that was his business, that he would go.

The creditor frowned. The notary good-naturedly suggested that they
should go together.

Hardly able to refrain from laughter, I said to them: ‘Here’s your
receipt; give me back the cheque, I will go and change it.’

‘You will infinitely oblige us,’ they said with a sigh of relief; and I
went.

Four months later the _purge hypothécaire_ was sent me, and I gained ten
thousand francs by my rash trustfulness.

After the 13th of June 1849, the Prefect of Police, Rébillaud, made some
report against me; probably in consequence of his report, strange steps
were taken by the Petersburg Government in regard to my estate. It was
these steps, as I have said, that compelled me to go with my mother to
Paris.

We travelled through Neufchâtel and Besançon. Our journey began with my
forgetting my greatcoat in the posting-station yard at Berne; as I had a
warm overcoat and warm overshoes with me, I did not go back for it. All
went well till we reached the mountains, but in the mountains we were met
by knee-deep snow, eight degrees of frost, and the cursed Swiss _bise_.
The diligence could not go on, the passengers were transferred by twos
and threes into small sledges. I do not remember having ever suffered so
much from cold as on that night. My legs were simply in agony. I stuffed
them into the straw; then the post driver gave me a collar of some sort,
but that was not much help. At the third station I bought from a peasant
woman her shawl for fifteen francs, and wrapped myself in it; but by that
time we were already on the descent, and with every mile it grew warmer.

This road is magnificently fine on the French side; the vast amphitheatre
of immense mountains, so varied in outline, accompanies one up to
Besançon itself; here and there on the crags stand the ruins of fortified
feudal castles. In this landscape there is something mighty and austere,
resolute and morose; gazing at it, a peasant boy grew up and was formed,
the descendant of old country stock, Pierre Joseph Proudhon. And indeed
one may say of him, though in a different sense, what was said by the
poet of the Florentines:

    ‘E tiene ancor del monte e del macigno.’

Rothschild agreed to take my mother’s bond, but would not cash it in
advance, on account of Gasser’s letter. The Board of Trustees did in
fact refuse the payment. Then Rothschild instructed Gasser to demand
an interview with Nesselrode and to inquire of him what was wrong.
Nesselrode replied that though there was no doubt about the bonds and
Rothschild’s claim was valid, the Tsar had commanded that the money
should be retained on secret political grounds.

I remember the amazement in Rothschild’s office on the reception of this
reply. The eye involuntarily glanced to the bottom of the statement
for the sign of Alaric or the seal of Genghis Khan. Rothschild had not
expected such a trick even from so celebrated a master of despotic action
as Nicholas. ‘It is little matter for wonder to me,’ I said to him, ‘that
Nicholas should try to carry off my mother’s money to punish me, or to
catch me with it as a bait; but I could not have imagined that your name
would have so little weight in Russia. The bonds are yours and not my
mother’s; when she signed them she gave them to bearer (_au porteur_),
but since you endorsed them that _porteur_[68] is you; and you are
insolently answered, “The money is yours, but the master has told me not
to pay it.”’

My words produced their effect. Rothschild began to lose his temper, and
walking about the room said: ‘No, I won’t allow myself to be treated
like that; I will bring an action against the bank; I will insist upon a
definite answer from the Minister of Finance!’

‘Well,’ thought I, ‘Vrontchenko won’t understand this gentleman. A
“confidential” reply would have been a favour, but a “definite” one is
too much!’

‘Here you have a sample of how familiarly and _sans gêne_ the autocracy,
upon which the reaction is building such hopes, disposes of property.
The communism of the Cossack is almost more dangerous than that of Louis
Blanc.’

‘I will think what to do,’ said Rothschild; ‘we can’t put up with this.’

Three days after this conversation, I met Rothschild on the boulevard.

‘By the way,’ he said, stopping me, ‘I was speaking of your business
yesterday to Kisselyov.[69] You must excuse me, but I ought to tell you
that he expressed a very unfavourable opinion of you, and does not seem
willing to do anything for you.’

‘Do you often see him?’

‘Sometimes at evening parties.’

‘Be so good as to tell him that you have seen me to-day, and that I have
the worst possible opinion of him, but that at the same time I don’t
think it would be fair to rob his mother on that account.’

Rothschild laughed; I think that from that time he began to surmise that
I was not a _prince russe_, and he took to addressing me as Baron; he
elevated me to this rank, I imagine, to make me worthy of conversing with
him.

Next day he sent for me; I went at once. He handed me an unsigned letter
to Gasser, and added: ‘Here is our proposed letter; sit down and read it
attentively, then tell me whether you are satisfied with it. If you want
to add or change anything, we will do so at once. Meanwhile, allow me to
go on with my work.’

First I looked about me. Every minute a small door opened and one
Bourse agent after another came in, uttering a number in a loud
voice; Rothschild, still reading, muttered without raising his eyes:
‘Yes,—no,—good,—perhaps,—enough,—’ and the number walked out. There were
various persons in the room, capitalists of the common sort, members of
the National Assembly, two or three exhausted tourists with youthful
moustaches and elderly cheeks, those everlasting figures that are seen
drinking wine at watering-places and presenting themselves at courts,
the feeble and lymphatic scions of effete aristocratic families, who
yet presume to pass from the gaming table to the Bourse. They were all
talking together in undertones. The Jewish autocrat sat calmly at his
table, looking through papers and noting something down on them, probably
millions, or at least hundreds of thousands.

‘Well,’ he said, turning to me, ‘are you satisfied?’

‘Perfectly,’ I answered.

The letter was excellent, curt and emphatic as it should be when one
power is addressing another. He wrote to Gasser that the latter must at
once demand an audience with Nesselrode and the Minister of Finance; that
he must tell them that Rothschild is not interested to know to whom the
bonds did belong; that he has bought them and insists on payment, or a
clear legal statement of the reason why payment is deferred; that, in
case of refusal, he would put the matter before the legal authorities,
and he advised them to weigh carefully the consequences of a refusal,
which seemed particularly strange to him when the Russian Government was
negotiating through him for the conclusion of a new loan. Rothschild
wound up by saying that in case of further delay he would be impelled
to give the matter publicity through the newspapers to warn other
capitalists. He recommended Gasser to show this to Nesselrode.

       *       *       *       *       *

We were interrupted.... Schomburg asked me to look in half an hour later.

When half an hour later I was mounting the staircase of the Winter Palace
of Finance in the Rue Laffitte, the rival of Nicholas was coming down it.

‘Schomburg has told me,’ said His Majesty, smiling graciously, and
holding out his own august hand, ‘the letter has been signed and sent
off. You will see how they will come round. I’ll teach them to play
tricks with me.’

I felt inclined to drop on my knees and to offer an oath of allegiance
together with my gratitude, but I confined myself to saying: ‘If you feel
perfectly certain of it, allow me to open an account, if only for half of
the sum.’

‘With pleasure,’ answered the gracious autocrat, and went his way into
the Rue Lafitte.

I made my obeisance to His Majesty, and, being so near, went into the
_Maison d’Or_.

Within a month or six weeks Nicholas Romanov, that Petersburg merchant of
the first guild, who had been so reluctant to pay up, terrified by the
prospect of a meeting of creditors and the publication in the newspapers,
did at the Imperial command of Rothschild pay up the illegally detained
money, together with the interest and the interest on the interest,
apologising for his ignorance of the law, which he certainly could not be
expected to know in his social position.

From that time forth I was on the best of terms with Rothschild. He
liked in me the field of battle on which he had beaten Nicholas; I was
for him something like Marengo or Austerlitz, and he several times
described the details of the business in my presence, smiling faintly,
but magnanimously sparing his vanquished opponent.

While this business was going on—and it occupied about six months—I was
staying at the Hôtel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix. One morning in April I was
told that a gentleman was waiting for me in the hall and particularly
wished to see me. I went out. An abject old individual who looked like a
government clerk was standing in the hall.

‘The Commissaire of Police of the Tuileries Arrondissement So-and-so.’

‘Pleased to see you.’

‘Allow me to read you the decree of the Ministry of Home Affairs,
communicated to me by the Prefect of Police, and relating to you.’

‘Pray do so; here is a chair.’

‘We, the Prefect of Police:[70]—In accordance with paragraph seven of the
law of the 13th and 21st of November and 3rd of December of 1849, giving
the Ministry of Home Affairs the power to expel (_expulser_) from France
any foreigner whose presence in France may be subversive of order and
dangerous to public tranquillity, and in view of the ministerial circular
of the 3rd of January 1850,

                          ‘Do command as follows:

‘The here-mentioned’ (_le N——é_, that is, _nommé_, but this does not
mean ‘aforesaid’ because nothing has been said about me before; it is
merely an ungrammatical attempt to designate a man as rudely as possible)
‘Herzen, Alexandre, age 40’ (they put me on two years), ‘a Russian
subject, living in such a place, is to leave Paris at once on receiving
this announcement, and to depart from the frontiers of France within the
shortest possible time.

‘It is forbidden for him to return in future under pain of the penalties
laid down by the eighth paragraph of the same law (imprisonment from one
to six months and a money fine).

‘All necessary measures will be taken to secure the execution of these
orders.

                     ‘_Fait_ in Paris, April 16, 1850.

                                                 ‘Prefect of Police,
                                                 ‘A. CARLIER.

         ‘Confirmed by the general secretary of the Prefecture.

                                                 ‘CLÉMENT REYRE.’

On the margin:

                    ‘Read and approved April 19, 1850,

                                                 Minister of Home Affairs,
                                                 G. BAROCHE.

‘In the year eighteen hundred and fifty, April the twenty-fourth.

‘We, Émile Boulay, Commissaire of Police of the City of Paris and in
particular of the Tuileries Arrondissement, in execution of the orders of
M. le Prefect of Police of April 23rd:

‘Have notified the Sieur Alexandre Herzen, telling him in words as
written herewith.’ Here follows the whole text over again. It is just as
children tell the story of the White Bull, prefacing every fresh incident
with the same phrase: ‘Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull?’

Then: ‘We have summoned _le dit Herzen_ to present himself in the course
of the next twenty-four hours at the Prefecture for the reception of a
passport and the assignment of a frontier through which he will leave
France.

‘And that _le dit Sieur Herzen n’en prétende cause d’ignorance_ (what a
jargon!) _nous lui avons laissé cette copie tant du dit arrêté en tête de
cette présente de notre procès-verbal de notification_.’

Oh, my Vyatka colleagues in the secretariat of Tyufyaev; oh, Ardashov,
who would write a dozen sheets at one sitting; Veprev, Shtin, and my
drunken head clerk! Would not their hearts rejoice to know that after the
days of Voltaire, of Beaumarchais, of George Sand, and of Hugo, documents
are written like this in Paris?

And, indeed, not only they would be delighted, but also my father’s
village foreman, Vassily Epifanov, who from the deepest sentiments
of politeness would write to his master: ‘Your commandment by this
present preceding post received, and by the same I have the honour to
announce....’ This stupid and vulgar temple _des us et coutumes_, only
fitting for a blind and doting old goddess like Themis, ought surely to
be razed to the ground.

The reading of this document did not produce the result expected; a
Parisian imagines that exile from Paris is as bad as the expulsion of
Adam from Paradise, and without Eve into the bargain. To me, on the
contrary, it was a matter of indifference, since I had already begun to
be sick of Parisian life.

‘When am I to present myself before the Prefecture?’ I asked, assuming a
polite air in spite of the wrath which was filling me.

‘I advise ten o’clock to-morrow morning.’

‘With pleasure.’

‘How early the spring is beginning this year!’ observed the _commissaire_
of the city of Paris and in particular of the Tuileries arrondissement.

‘Exceedingly.’

‘This is an old-fashioned hotel. Mirabeau used to dine here; that is why
it bears his name. You have no doubt been well satisfied with it?’

‘Very well satisfied. Only fancy what it must be to leave it so abruptly!’

‘It’s certainly unpleasant.... The hostess is an intelligent and
excellent woman—Mlle. Cousin; she was a great friend of the celebrated Le
Normand.’[71]

‘Imagine that! What a pity I did not know it! Perhaps she has inherited
her art of fortune-telling and might have predicted my _billet doux_ from
Carlier.’

‘Ha, ha!... It is my duty, you know. Allow me to wish you good-day.’

‘To be sure, anything may happen. I have the honour to wish you good-bye.’

Next day I presented myself in the Rue Jérusalem, more celebrated than
Le Normand herself. First, I was received by some sort of a youthful
spy, with a little beard, a little moustache, and all the manners of an
abortive journalist and an unsuccessful democrat. His face, the look in
his eyes, all wore the stamp of that refined corruption of soul, that
envious hunger for enjoyment, power, acquisition, which I have learned
to read so well on Western European faces, though it is completely
absent from that of the English. He had probably only recently received
his post; he still took pleasure in it, and therefore spoke a little
condescendingly. He informed me that I must leave within three days, and
except for particularly important reasons it was impossible to defer the
date. His impudent face, his accent and his gestures, were such that
without entering into further discussion with him I bowed and then asked,
first putting on my hat, when I could see the Prefect.

‘The Prefect only receives persons who have asked him for an audience in
writing.’

‘Allow me to write to him at once.’

He rang the bell; an old _huissier_ with a chain on his breast walked in;
saying to him with a dignified air, ‘Pen and paper for this gentleman,’
the youth nodded to me.

The _huissier_ led me into another room. There I wrote to Carlier that
I wished to see him in order to explain to him why I had to defer my
departure.

On the evening of the same day I received from the Prefecture the laconic
answer: ‘M. le Préfet is ready to receive So-and-so to-morrow at two
o’clock.’

The same disgusting youth met me next day: he had his own room, from
which I concluded that he was something in the nature of a head clerk.
Beginning his career so early and with such success, he will go far, if
God grants him long life.

On this occasion he led me into a big office. There a stout, tall,
rosy-cheeked gentleman was sitting in a big easy-chair at an immense
table. He was one of those persons who are always hot, with sleek, white,
but flabby flesh, with fat but carefully groomed hands, with a necktie
reduced to a minimum, with colourless eyes, with that jovial expression
which is usually found in men who are completely drowned in love for
their comfort, and who can rise coldly and without great effort to the
utmost infamies.

‘You wish to see the Prefect,’ he said to me; ‘but he asks you to excuse
him; he has been obliged to go out on very important business. If I can
do anything for your benefit I ask nothing better. Here is an easy-chair:
will you sit down?’

All this he brought out smoothly, very politely, screwing up his eyes a
little and smiling with the little cushions of flesh which adorned his
cheek-bones. ‘Well, this fellow has been for years in the service,’ I
thought.

‘You probably know what I’ve come about.’ He made that gentle movement of
the head which every one makes on beginning to swim, and did not answer.

‘I have received an order to leave within three days. As I know that your
minister has the right of expulsion without giving reasons or making
investigations, I am not going to inquire why I am being expelled, nor to
defend myself; but I have, besides my own house....’

‘Where is your house?’

‘Fourteen, Rue Amsterdam ... very important business in Paris, and it is
difficult for me to leave at once.’

‘Allow me to ask, what is your business? Is it to do with the house
or...?’

‘My business is with Rothschild. I have to receive four hundred thousand
francs.’

‘What?’

‘A little over a hundred thousand silver roubles.’

‘That’s a very large sum!’

‘_C’est une somme ronde._’

‘How much time do you need for completing your business?’ he asked,
looking at me more tenderly, as people look at pheasants stuffed with
truffles in the shop windows.

‘From a month to six weeks.’

‘That is a terribly long time.’

‘My business is being settled in Russia. I should not wonder if it is on
that account I am leaving France, indeed.’

‘How so?’

‘A week ago Rothschild told me that Kisselyov spoke ill of me. Probably
the Petersburg Government wishes to hush up the business; I dare say the
ambassador has asked for my expulsion as a favour.’

‘_D’abord_,’ observed the offended patriot of the Prefecture, assuming
an air of dignity and profound conviction, ‘France permits no other
Government to interfere in her domestic affairs. I am surprised that
such an idea could enter your head. Moreover, what can be more natural
than that the Government, which is doing its utmost to restore order to
the suffering people, should exercise its right to expel from the country
in which there is so much inflammatory material, foreigners who abuse the
hospitality she has shown them?’

I determined to get at him by money. This was as sure a method of attack
as the use of texts from the Gospel in discussion with a Catholic, and so
I answered with a smile: ‘I have paid a hundred thousand francs for the
hospitality of Paris, and so consider I have almost settled my account.’

This was even more successful than my _somme ronde_. He was embarrassed,
and saying after a brief pause, ‘We cannot help it, we are obliged to
do our duty,’ he took from the table my _dossier_. This was the second
volume of the novel, the first part of which I had once seen in the hands
of Dubbelt. Stroking the pages, as though they were good horses, with his
plump hand: ‘You see,’ he observed, ‘your connections, your association
with seditious journals’ (almost word for word what Sahtynsky had said to
me in 1840), ‘and the considerable subventions which you have given to
the most pernicious enterprises, have compelled us to resort to a very
unpleasant but necessary step. That step can be no surprise to you. Even
in your own country you brought political punishment upon yourself. Like
causes lead to like results.’

‘I am certain,’ I said, ‘that the Emperor Nicholas himself does not
suspect this solidarity; you cannot really approve of his Government.’

‘_Un bon citoyen_ respects the laws of his country, whatever they may
be....’[72]

‘Probably on the celebrated principle that it is in any case better
there should be bad weather than no weather at all.’

‘To prove to you that the Russian Government has absolutely nothing to
do with it, I promise to obtain from the Prefect a postponement for one
month. You will certainly not think it strange if we make inquiries of
Rothschild concerning your business; it is not so much a question of
doubting....’

‘Do by all means make inquiries. We are at war, and if it had been of
any use for me to have resorted to stratagem in order to remain, do you
suppose I should not have employed it?’

But the worldly and amiable _alter ego_ of the Prefect would not be
outdone.

‘People who talk like that never say what is untrue,’ he replied.

A month later my business was still unfinished. We were visited by an old
doctor, Palmier, whose agreeable duty it is to make a weekly examination
of an interesting class of Parisian women at the Prefecture. Since he
gave such a number of certificates of health to the fair sex, I imagined
he would not refuse to give me a certificate of illness. Palmier was
acquainted, of course, with every one in the Prefecture: he promised
me to give X. personally the history of my indisposition. To my great
surprise Palmier came back without a satisfactory answer. This incident
is worth noting because it shows a brotherly resemblance between the
Russian and the French bureaucracies. X. had given no answer, but had
replied evasively, offended at my not having come in person to inform him
that I was ill, in bed, and could not get up. There was no help for it: I
went next day to the Prefecture, glowing with health.

X. asked me with the greatest sympathy about my illness. As I had not
had the curiosity to read what the doctor had written, I had to invent
an illness. Luckily I remembered Sazonov, who, with his bulky figure
and inexhaustible appetite, complained of aneurism—I told X. I had heart
disease and that travelling might be very bad for me.

X. was sorry for me, and advised me to be very careful; then he went
into the next room, and returned a minute later, saying: ‘You may remain
another month. The Prefect has commissioned me at the same time to tell
you that he hopes and desires that your health may be restored during
that period; if this were not the case, he would greatly regret it, for
he will not be able to postpone your departure a third time.’

I understood that, and made ready to leave Paris about the 20th of June.

I came across the name of X. once more a year later. This patriot and
_bon citoyen_ quietly withdrew from France, forgetting to account for
some thousands of francs belonging to people of the poor or lower-middle
class who had taken tickets in a Californian lottery run under the
patronage of the Prefecture!

When the worthy citizen saw that in spite of all his respect for the
laws of his country he might get into the galleys for swindling, then he
preferred to take a steamer to Genoa. He was a consistent person, who did
not lose his head with failure. He took advantage of the notoriety he
gained by the scandal of the Californian lottery to proffer his services
to a society of speculators which had been formed at that time at Turin
for building railways; the society hastened to accept the services of so
reliable a gentleman.

The last two months I spent in Paris were insufferable. I was literally
_gardé à vue_; my letters arrived a day late and insolently unsealed;
wherever I went I was followed in the distance by a loathsome individual,
who at the corners passed me on with a wink to another.

It must not be forgotten that this was the time of the most feverish
activity of the police. The stupid conservatives and revolutionists of
the Algiers-Lamartine persuasion helped the rogues and knaves surrounding
Napoleon himself to prepare a network of espionage and supervision, so
that, stretching them over the whole of France, they might at any given
minute catch by telegraph, by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the
Élysée, all the active forces of the country and strangle them. Napoleon
III. cleverly turned the weapon entrusted to him against these men
themselves. The 2nd of December meant the promotion of the police to the
position of the executive power.

There has never anywhere, even in Austria or in Russia, been such a
political police as existed in France from the time of the Convention.
There are many causes for this, apart from the peculiar _national_
propensity for police activity. Except in England, where the police have
nothing in common with Continental espionage, the police are everywhere
surrounded by hostile elements and consequently thrown on their own
resources. In France, on the contrary, the police is the most popular
institution. Whatever government seizes power, its police is _ready_;
a part of the people will help it with a zest and a fanaticism which
have to be restrained and not intensified, and will help, too, with
all those terrible means at the disposal of private persons which are
impossible for the police. Where can a man hide from his shopkeeper, his
house-porter, his tailor, his washerwoman, his butcher, his sister’s
husband, his brother’s wife, especially in Paris, where people do not
live in separate houses as they do in London, but in something like coral
reefs or hives with a common staircase, a common courtyard, and a common
porter.

Condorcet escapes from the Jacobin police and successfully makes his way
to some village near the frontier; tired and harassed, he goes into a
little inn, sits down before the fire, warms his hands, and asks for
a piece of chicken. The good-natured old woman who keeps the inn, and
who is a great patriot, reasons like this: ‘He is covered with dust, so
he must have come a _long way_; he asks for chicken, so he must have
_money_; his hands are white, so he must be an _aristocrat_.’ Leaving
the chicken on the stove, she goes to the next inn; there patriots are
sitting—a Mucius Scaevola, the innkeeper—some _citoyen_, a Brutus—a
Timoleon, the tailor. They ask for nothing better, and ten minutes later
one of the wisest leaders of the French Revolution is in prison and
handed over to one of the police of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality!

Napoleon, who had the police talent highly developed, turned his
generals into spies and informers. The butcher of Lyons, Fouché, founded
a complete theory, system, science of espionage—through the prefects,
behind the prefects, through prostitutes and virtuous shopkeepers,
through servants and coachmen, through doctors and barbers. Napoleon
fell, but his tool remained, and not only his tool but the man who
wielded it. Fouché passed over to the Bourbons; the strength of the spies
lost nothing—on the contrary, they were reinforced by monks and priests.
Under Louis-Philippe, in whose reign bribery and corruption became one
of the moral forces of government, half the petty-bourgeois became his
spies, his police chorus, a result to which service in the National
Guard—in itself a police duty—greatly contributed.

During the February republic three or four branches of genuinely secret
police and several of professedly secret ones were formed. There was
the police of Ledru-Rollin and the police of Caussidière, there was the
police of Marrast and the police of the provisional government, there was
the police of order and the police of disorder, the police of Napoleon
and the police of the Duc d’Orléans. All were on the look-out, all were
watching each other and reporting on each other; assuming that these
secret reports were made with conviction, with the best of motives, for
no money gain, yet they were still secret reports.... This fatal habit,
meeting on the one hand with mournful failures, and on the other morbid,
unbridled lust of gold or pleasure, corrupted a whole generation.

We must not forget, too, the moral indifference, the instability of
opinion, which was left like a sediment by successive revolutions and
restorations. Men had grown used to regarding as heroism and virtue
on one day what would on the morrow be a crime punished with penal
servitude; the laurel wreath and the brand of the convict alternated
several times on the same head. By the time they had become accustomed to
this a nation of spies was created.

All the latest discoveries of secret societies and plots, all the latest
denunciations of refugees were made by false members of societies, bribed
friends, men who had won confidence with the object of treachery.

There were examples on all hands of cowards who, through fear of prison
and exile, revealed secrets and ruined their friends—as a faint-hearted
comrade ruined Konarski. But neither among us nor in Austria was there a
legion of young men, cultured, speaking _our_ language, making inspired
speeches in clubs, writing revolutionary articles and serving as spies.

Moreover, the government of Napoleon was excellently placed for making
use of informers of all parties. It represents the revolution and the
reaction, war and peace, the year 1789 and Catholicism, the fall of the
Bourbons and the 4½ per cents. It is served both by Falloux the Jesuit,
and Billault the socialist, and La Rochejacquelein the legitimist, and
the mass of the people to whom Louis-Philippe had been a benefactor. The
refuse of all parties and shades of opinion naturally flows together and
ferments in the Palace of the Tuileries.




Chapter 40

THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE—THE RUSSIAN CONSUL AT NICE—LETTER TO A. F.
ORLOV—PERSECUTION OF A CHILD—THE VOGTS—TRANSFERENCE FROM THE GRADE OF
UPPER COURT COUNCILLOR TO THAT OF SIMPLE PEASANT—RECEPTION AT CHÂTEL
(1850-1851)


A year after our arrival in Nice from Paris I wrote: ‘_In vain I rejoiced
at my quiet seclusion, in vain I drew the pentagram on my doors: I have
not found a quiet haven nor the peace I desired. Pentagrams protect us
from unclean spirits—no polygons protect us from unclean men, unless
perhaps the square of the prison-cell window._

‘_A tedious, wearisome, and extremely empty period, the exhausting
journey between the halting place of 1848 and the halting place of
1852,—there is nothing new except perhaps some personal misfortune
breaking the heart, another vital spring snapped._’—(‘Letters from France
and Italy,’ June 1, 1851.)

Indeed, going over that time makes my heart ache as it does at the memory
of funerals, operations, agonising illnesses. Without touching here upon
my inner life, which was more and more overcast by dark storm-clouds,
public events and the news in the papers were enough to make any one flee
into the desert. France was dropping with the swiftness of a falling
star to the 2nd of December. Germany lay at the feet of Nicholas, to
which Hungary, sold and unhappy, had dragged her. The _condottieri_ of
the police met at their œcumenical councils, and secretly consulted
together concerning common measures of international espionage. The
revolutionaries maintained their empty agitation. The men at the head
of the movement, disappointed in their hopes, lost their heads. Kossuth
returned from America somewhat less nationalistic, Mazzini together
with Ledru-Rollin and Ruge was founding in London the Central European
Committee ... while the reaction was growing more and more ferocious.

After our meeting in Geneva, and then again in Lausanne, I saw Mazzini
in 1850; he was secretly in France, staying in some aristocratic family,
and sent one of his intimate associates to fetch me. Then he told me of
his project of an international league in London, and asked whether I
would like to take part in it _as a Russian_; I made no definite answer.
A year later Orsini came to me in Nice, handed me the programme, various
manifestoes of the European Central Committee, and a letter from Mazzini
renewing his proposition. I did not dream of joining the Committee; what
element of Russian life could I have represented at that time, completely
cut off from everything Russian as I was? But this was not the only
reason why the European Committee did not attract me. It seemed to me
that its basis lacked depth of thought and unity, that there had been no
necessity for its foundation, and that its form was simply a mistake.

The side of the movement which the Committee represented—that is, the
revolt of the oppressed nationalities—was not strong enough in 1851 to
be openly represented by a league. The existence of such a Committee
showed nothing but the tolerance of the English constitution, and partly
too that the English Government did not believe in its power or they
would have suppressed it, either by an alien bill or by a motion for the
suspension of _habeas corpus_.

The European Committee, though it scared all the governments, did
nothing, without perceiving that fact. Even the most earnest people
are terribly easily led away by formalism, and persuade themselves
that they are doing something by having periodical meetings, issuing
masses of papers, minutes, motions, voting, accepting resolutions,
printing manifestoes, _professions de foi_, and so on. The revolutionary
bureaucracy dissolves things into words and forms just as our official
bureaucracy does. In England there are masses of all sorts of
associations which hold impressive meetings attended by dukes and lords,
clergymen and secretaries. Treasurers collect funds, literary men write
articles, and all of them together do absolutely nothing. These meetings,
for the most part philanthropic and religious, on the one hand serve as
an entertainment, on the other soothe the Christian conscience of people
who are given up to worldly interests. But a revolutionary senate in
London could not _en permanence_ maintain this meek-and-mild character.
It was a public conspiracy, a conspiracy with open doors—that is, an
impossible one.

A conspiracy is bound to be secret. The period of secret societies is
over only in England and America. Everywhere where there is a minority,
in advance of the understanding of the masses and hoping to realise an
idea they have grasped, secret societies will be formed, if there is
no freedom of speech or right of free assembly. I speak of this quite
impartially; after my youthful attempts, ending in my exile in 1835, I
have _never been a member of any secret society_, but not at all because
I consider the spending of energy on individual effort more worth while.
I have not been a member of such societies because I have not happened to
come upon a society which was in harmony with my own aims, and in which I
could have achieved anything. If it had been my lot to be in touch with
Pestel’s or Ryleyev’s society,[73] I should have flung myself into it
heart and soul.

Another error or another misfortune of the Committee lay in its lack
of unity. This focussing together of heterogeneous ideals could only
have developed the power of its component parts by common action. If
each member of the Committee had brought nothing but his exclusive
nationality, that would not have mattered; they would have had a unity in
their hatred for the chief enemy they had in common, the Holy Alliance.
But their views, agreed on two negative principles, opposition to
monarchy and to socialism, differed on every other subject. To act in
unison they must have made compromises, and compromises of that kind
are destructive of the one-sided force of each, for the sake of common
accord, tying just the strings which sound most sharply, and so making
the combined effect colourless, blurred, and hesitating.

After reading the papers which Orsini had brought me, I wrote the
following letter to Mazzini:—

    ‘DEAR MAZZINI,—I have a sincere respect for you, and so I am
    not afraid to tell you my opinion frankly. In any case you will
    give me a patient and indulgent hearing.

    ‘You are perhaps one of the chief political leaders of recent
    times whose name has remained surrounded by sympathy and
    respect. One may differ from you in opinion, in method, but
    cannot fail to respect you personally. Your past, the Rome
    of 1848 and 1849, compel you to bear proudly your great
    bereavement until events call back their champion who is in
    advance of them. That is why it is painful to me to see your
    name coupled with the names of men of no ability who have
    ruined the cause, with names which only recall the calamities
    they have brought upon us.

    ‘Is an organisation with these elements possible? It can lead
    to nothing but confusion.

    ‘These men are of no use to you nor to history; all that one
    can do for them is to forgive them their transgressions. You
    want to cover them with your name, you want to share with them
    your influence and your past; they will share with you their
    unpopularity and their past.

    ‘What is there new in the manifestoes, what is there new in
    the _Proscrit_? Where are the signs of the terrible lessons
    that should have been learnt from the twenty-fourth of
    February? This is the continuation of the old liberalism and
    not the beginning of a new freedom—it is an epilogue and not
    a prologue. Why is there not in London the organisation you
    desire? Because it cannot be formed on the basis of indefinite
    ideals, but only on a great idea held in common: and where is
    that?

    ‘The first publication made under such conditions as the
    manifesto you have sent ought to have been full of sincerity,
    but who can read without a smile the signature of Arnold Ruge
    on a manifesto which speaks in the name of Divine Providence?
    From 1838 Ruge has been preaching philosophic atheism; for him
    (if his brain is constructed logically) the idea of Providence
    ought to present itself as everything reactionary in embryo.
    It is a compromise, a bit of diplomacy, of policy, a weapon in
    the hands of our enemies. Moreover, all that is unnecessary.
    The theological part of the manifesto is a pure luxury; it adds
    neither to its meaning nor to its popularity. The common people
    have a positive religion and church. Deism is the religion of
    the rationalists, the representative system applied to faith,
    religion surrounded by atheistic institutions.

    ‘For my part, I advocate a complete rupture with incomplete
    revolutionaries. One scents the reaction a hundred yards from
    them. Having taken the burden of a thousand blunders on their
    shoulders, they go on justifying them to this day—the surest
    proof that they will repeat them.

    ‘In the _Nouveau Monde_ there is the same _vacuum horrendum_;
    the same melancholy chewing over of the cud, at once green and
    dry, which still is not digested.

    ‘Please do not imagine that I am saying this in order to get
    out of doing anything. No, I am not sitting with my arms
    folded. I have too much blood in my veins and energy in my
    character to be satisfied with the part of a passive spectator.
    From my thirteenth year I have served the same idea and the
    same standard—of war against every oppressive power, against
    every form of slavery in the name of absolute personal freedom.
    I should like to continue my little guerilla warfare—like a
    true Cossack ... _auf eigene Faust_, as the Germans say, beside
    the great revolutionary army—not entering into its regular
    ranks until they are completely formed.

    ‘In the interval of waiting, I am writing. Perhaps that
    interval of waiting will last long—it is not in my power to
    change the fitful development of men; but to speak, to appeal,
    to persuade is in my power—and I am doing this with all my
    heart and with all my mind.

    ‘Forgive me, dear Mazzini, both the candour and the length of
    my letter, and do not cease to love me a little and to reckon
    me a man devoted to your cause—but also devoted to his own
    convictions.’

        ‘NICE, _September 13, 1850_.’

To this letter Mazzini answered with a few friendly lines in which,
without touching on the essential point, he spoke of the necessity of
uniting all forces in one activity, deplored the difference of men’s
views, and so on.

In the same autumn in which Mazzini and the European Committee remembered
me, the anti-European Committee of Nicholas remembered me too, at last.

One morning our maid, with a somewhat anxious look, told me that the
Russian consul was downstairs and asking whether I could see him. I
looked upon my relations with the Russian Government as so completely at
an end that I was surprised at this honour, and could not imagine what he
wanted of me.

A German-looking official of the second order walked in.

‘I have the honour to make a communication to you.’

‘Although,’ I replied, ‘I do not know of what nature, I am almost certain
that it will be unpleasant. I beg you to be seated.’

The consul flushed, was a little disconcerted; then sat down on the sofa,
took a document out of his pocket, and after reading, ‘Adjutant-General
Count Orlov has notified to Count Nesselrode and His Im...,’ rose to his
feet again.

At that point I fortunately remembered that the secretary in our Embassy
in Paris had risen from his chair on announcing to Sazonov the Tsar’s
command that he should return to Russia, and Sazonov suspecting nothing
had also got up from his chair, though the secretary had done this from
a deep sense of duty which required that a loyal subject should be on
his legs with his head a little bowed when conveying the sovereign’s
will; and therefore, the more stiffly erect the consul stood, the more
comfortably I buried myself in my armchair, and, wishing him to observe
the fact, said with a nod: ‘Pray go on; I am listening.’

‘...perial Majesty,’ he went on, resuming his seat, ‘has been graciously
pleased to command that So-and-so shall promptly return to Russia and
should be informed thereof, accepting from him no reasons for delaying
his departure and granting him no postponement under any circumstances.’

He paused. I continued sitting without saying a word.

‘What am I to answer?’ he asked, folding up the paper.

‘That I am not going.’

‘How do you mean “not going”?’

‘What I say: simply I’m not going.’

‘Have you considered that such a step...?’

‘I have considered.’

‘But this is beyond anything.... Kindly tell me what I am to write. For
what reason...?’

‘You have been commanded not to accept any reasons.’

‘What am I to say, then? Why, this is disobedience to the will of His
Imperial Majesty!’

‘Say so, then.’

‘This is impossible. I should never venture to write that ...’ and he
crimsoned more than ever. ‘Really, you had better change your mind while
it is all still within four walls.’ (The consul evidently thought the
Third Section was a monastery.)

Philanthropic as I am, I was not willing, for the sake of facilitating
the correspondence of the consul at Nice, to go into one of Father
Leonty’s cells of the Peter-Paul Fortress or to Nertchinsk, especially as
there seemed no prospect that Nicholas would sink into a decline.

‘Surely,’ I said to him, ‘when you were coming here you could not for
one second have imagined that I should go? Forget that you are a consul
and consider the position yourself. My estate has been sequestrated, my
mother’s fortune was detained, and all that without asking me whether I
wished to return. Can I go back after that without taking leave of my
senses?’

He hesitated, continually flushing, and at last hit on a clever, adroit,
and above all new idea.

‘I cannot,’ he said, ‘enter into ... I understand the difficulty of your
position; on the other hand, the gracious mercy of the Sovereign!...’

I looked at him; he blushed again. ‘... Besides, why cut off all way of
retreat. Write to me you are very ill; I’ll send that to the Count.’

‘That’s too stale; besides, what is the object of telling a lie for
nothing?’

‘Well, then, will you be so kind as to give me your answer in writing.’

‘Certainly. Can you leave me a copy of the notice you read to me?’

‘That is not usual.’

‘What a pity! I am making a collection of them.’

Simple as my written answer was, the consul was alarmed by it. He seemed
to think that he might be transferred on account of it to Beyrout or
Tripoli, or I do not know where; he positively declined to venture,
either to accept or to forward it. In spite of my assurances that no
responsibility could fall on him, he refused, and begged me to write
another letter.

‘That’s impossible,’ I answered. ‘I am not taking this step as a joke,
and I am not going to write nonsensical reasons: here is the letter for
you, and you can do what you like with it.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the mildest consul since the days of Junius Brutus and
Calpurnius Bestia: ‘you write the letter, not to me but to Count Orlov,
and I’ll simply forward it.’

‘That’s an easy matter; I’ve only to put _M. le Comte_ instead of _M. le
Consul_. I agree to that.’

As I was copying my letter it struck me that there was no need for me to
write to Orlov in French. If it were in Russian some cantonist in his
office or in the office of the Third Section might read it; it might
be sent to the Senate, and a young head secretary might show it to his
clerks: why deprive them of this satisfaction? And so I translated the
letter, and here it is:—

    ‘DEAR SIR, COUNT ALEXEY FYODOROVITCH,—The Imperial Consul at
    Nice has notified me of the will of the Most High concerning my
    return to Russia. With every inclination to do so, I find it
    impossible to comply with it without making my position clear.

    ‘Before any summons to return, more than a year ago, an
    injunction was placed on my estate, my business papers in
    private hands were confiscated, and, finally, money, a sum
    of ten thousand francs sent to me from Moscow, was seized.
    Such severe and extreme measures against me prove that I am
    not merely accused of some crime, but, before any inquiry,
    any trial has been held, am found guilty and punished by the
    deprivation of part of my property.

    ‘I cannot hope that my mere return can save me from the
    melancholy consequences of a political trial. It is easy for me
    to explain every one of my actions, but in cases of that kind
    it is opinions and theories that are on trial. It is upon them
    that verdicts are based. Can I, should I, expose myself and all
    my family to such a trial?... Your Excellency will appreciate
    the simplicity and candour of my answer, and will bring to the
    consideration of the Most High the reasons that compel me to
    remain in foreign parts in spite of my deep and genuine desire
    to return to my country.’

        ‘NICE, _September 23, 1850_.’

I really do not know whether it was possible to answer more simply and
discreetly; but the habit of slavish silence is so deeply rooted among us
that the consul at Nice thought even this letter monstrously audacious,
and probably Orlov himself thought the same.

To be silent, not to laugh and not to cry, and to answer on a set
pattern, without praise or criticism, without signs of pleasure or grief,
is the ideal to which despotism tries to reduce its subjects and has
reduced the soldiers; but by what means? Well, I will tell you.

On one occasion, Nicholas, seeing a fine young soldier wearing a cross
at a review, asked him: ‘Where did you receive your cross?’ Unluckily
this soldier was a seminarist sent for a soldier in punishment for some
prank, and, wishing to take advantage of the opportunity to display his
eloquence, he answered: ‘Under the victorious eagles of Your Majesty.’
Nicholas looked sternly at him and at the general, pouted, and went on.
When the general following him reached the soldier, white with rage he
shook his fist in his face and said: ‘I’ll beat you into your coffin, you
Demosthenes!’

Is it strange that eloquence does not flourish with such encouragement?

Having got rid of the emperor and the consul, I wanted to get out of the
class of persons living without a passport.

The future was dark and gloomy.... I might die, and the thought that that
same blushing consul would arrive to dispose of everything in my house,
and to seize my papers, compelled me to think of obtaining the rights of
citizenship somewhere. I need hardly say that I fixed upon Switzerland,
in spite of the fact that just about that time the Swiss police had been
playing pranks with me.

Within a year after the birth of my second son we noticed with horror
that he was completely deaf. Various consultations and experiments soon
proved that it was impossible to cure the deafness. But then the question
arose whether we ought to leave him to become dumb, as is usually done.
The schools I had seen in Moscow had seemed to me far from satisfactory.
Talking on one’s fingers and by signs is not conversation; talking must
be by the mouth and the lips. I knew by what I had read that attempts had
been made in Germany and Switzerland to teach deaf mutes to speak as we
speak, and to listen by watching the lips. In Berlin I saw for the first
time an oral lecture given to deaf mutes and heard them recite verses.
This was an immense step in advance of the method of the Abbé de l’Epée.

This teaching was carried to great perfection in Zurich. My mother, who
was passionately fond of Kolya, determined to settle with him for a few
years in Zurich in order to send him to the school.

The child was gifted with exceptional abilities: the everlasting
stillness about him, by concentrating his lively, impulsive character,
assisted his development in a wonderful way, and at the same time
encouraged an exceptional power of plastic observation. His eyes glowed
with intelligence and interest; at five years old he could imitate every
one who came to see us with intentional caricature, and with such comic
mimicry that no one could help laughing.

In six months he had made great progress at the school. His voice was
_voilée_; he scarcely marked the accent, but already spoke German very
fairly and understood everything said to him slowly; nothing could have
been better. On my way through Zurich I thanked the director and council
of the school and paid them various civilities, and they did the same to
me.

But after I had gone away the elders of the town of Zurich learnt that I
was not a Russian count but a Russian _émigré_, and, moreover, friendly
with the radical party, which they could not endure; and, what is more,
with socialists, whom they hated; and, what was worse than all that put
together, that I was not a religious man and openly admitted the fact.
This last they learned from an awful little book, _Vom andern Ufer_,
which had, as though to mock them, come out under their very noses with
the imprint of the best Zurich firm of publishers. On learning this
their conscience troubled them at the thought that they were giving an
education to the son of a man who believed neither in Luther nor in
Loyola, and they set to work to find means to get rid of him. Since
Providence was particularly interested in the question, it at once showed
them the way. The town police suddenly demanded the _child’s passport_;
I answered from Paris, supposing that it was a simple formality, that
Kolya certainly was my son, that his name was on my passport, but that
I could not obtain a separate one for him from the Russian Embassy,
because I was not on the best of terms with them. The police were not
satisfied, and threatened to turn the child out of the school and out of
the town. I spoke of this in Paris; one of my acquaintances published
a paragraph about it in the _National_. Put to shame by publicity, the
police said that they did not insist on turning the child out, but only
on the payment of an insignificant sum of money as a guarantee that the
child was himself and not somebody else. What guarantee is there in a few
hundred francs? On the other hand, if my mother and I had not had the
money, the child would have been turned out. (I asked them about that
through the _National_.) And this could happen in the nineteenth century
in free Switzerland! After what had taken place I disliked the idea of
leaving the child in this den of asses.

But what was to be done? The best teacher in the institution, a young
man who devoted himself enthusiastically to the training of deaf mutes,
a man of a thorough university education, luckily did not share the
views of the police Sanhedrin, and was a great admirer of the very book
which had so stirred the wrath of the pious police-constables of the
canton of Zurich. We suggested to him that he should leave the school,
enter my mother’s household as tutor, and go with her to Italy. He of
course consented. The authorities of the school were furious, but could
do nothing. My mother prepared to go with Kolya and with this young man,
Spielmann, to Nice. Before leaving she sent for her deposit; it was not
given to her, on the pretext that Kolya was still in Switzerland. I
wrote from Nice. The Zurich police demanded proofs that Kolya had the
legal right to live in Piedmont.

This was too much, and I wrote the following letter to the president of
the Zurich canton:—

    ‘M. LE PRÉSIDENT,—In 1849, I placed my son, aged five years, in
    the Zurich School for the Deaf and Dumb. A few months later the
    Zurich police asked my mother for his passport. Since among us
    passports are not required for newborn babies or for children
    going to school, my son had not a separate one but was entered
    upon mine. This explanation did not satisfy the Zurich police.
    They demanded a deposit. My mother, fearing that the child who
    had brought down upon himself such dangerous suspicions on the
    part of the Zurich police would be expelled, paid it.

    ‘In August 1850, my mother, wishing to leave Switzerland,
    asked for the deposit, but the Zurich police did not return
    it; they wished to ascertain first that the child had actually
    left the canton. On reaching Nice my mother asked Messieurs
    Avigdor and Schultgess to receive the money, giving them a
    proof that we, and above all my suspicious six-year-old son,
    were in Nice and not in Zurich. The Zurich police, keeping
    a tight hold on the deposit money, then demanded another
    certificate, to be witnessed by the police here, “that my son
    is officially permitted to live in Piedmont” (_que l’enfant est
    officiellement toléré_). M. Schultgess communicated this to M.
    Avigdor.

    ‘Seeing this eccentric curiosity on the part of the Zurich
    police I refused M. Avigdor’s proposal to send a new
    certificate, which he very graciously offered to take for
    me himself. I did not want to afford the Zurich police this
    satisfaction, since, for all the dignity of its position, it
    has no right to constitute itself an international police, and
    because its demand is insulting not only to me but to Piedmont.

    ‘The Sardinian Government, M. le Président, is a free and
    civilised one; how is it possible that it should not permit
    (_ne tolérera pas_) an invalid child of six years old to live
    in Piedmont? I am really at a loss as to how I am to regard
    this demand of the Zurich police, whether as a strange joke or
    as the result of a partiality for deposits in general.

    ‘Presenting this affair for your scrutiny, M. le Président, I
    beg you as a special favour, in case of another refusal, to
    explain the proceeding, which is so curious and interesting
    that I do not think I shall be justified in concealing it from
    the knowledge of the public.

    ‘I have written again to M. Schultgess to receive the money,
    and I can confidently assure you that neither my mother nor
    myself nor the child who is the object of suspicion have the
    smallest inclination to return to Zurich after these unpleasant
    attentions from the police. There is not the faintest risk of
    it.’

        ‘NICE, _September 9, 1850_.’

I need hardly say that after that the police of the town of Zurich, in
spite of their œcumenical pretensions, paid the deposit.

Except my Swiss naturalisation, I would not have accepted citizenship
in any European country, not even England; I disliked the idea of
voluntarily becoming anybody’s subject. I did not want to change a bad
master for a good one, but to escape from serfdom into being a free
tiller of the soil. This was only possible in two countries: America and
Switzerland.

America—I greatly respect. I believe that she is destined to a great
future, I know that she is now twice as near to Europe as she was; but
American life is distasteful to me. It is very likely that her angular,
coarse, dry elements will be welded together into something different.
America has not yet settled down, she is an unfinished edifice. Labourers
and workmen in their workaday clothes are dragging about beams and
stones, sawing, hewing, hammering. Why should outsiders settle in it
before it is dry and warm?

Moreover, America, as Garibaldi said, is the ‘land for forgetting home’;
let those who have no faith in their fatherland go there—they ought to
get away from their graveyards. It was quite the contrary with me: the
more I lost all hope of a Latin-German Europe, the more my belief in
Russia revived again; but to dream of returning there while Nicholas was
Tsar would have been madness.

And so there was nothing left for it but to ally myself with the free men
of the Helvetian Confederation.

As early as 1849, Fazy had promised to naturalise me in Geneva, but kept
putting it off; perhaps he simply did not want to add to the number of
socialists in his canton. I got sick of this. I was passing through a
black period, the very walls were tottering and might crumble about my
head, misfortune is never far off.... Karl Vogt offered to write about
my naturalisation to J. Schaller, who was at that time president of the
Freiburg canton and leader of the radical party. But, having mentioned
Vogt, I must say something about him first.

In the monotony of the shallow and slow-moving life of Germany one meets
at times, as though to redeem it, sturdy, healthy families full of
strength, persistence, and talent. One generation of gifted persons is
followed by another more numerous, still preserving the same sturdiness
of mind and body. Looking at some dingy, old-fashioned house, in a dark,
narrow side-street, it is hard to believe how many have been the young
lads, in a hundred years, who have come down the worn stone steps of its
staircase with a wallet on their shoulder and all manner of souvenirs,
made of hair or of flowers in it, followed by the blessings and tears
of their mother and sisters ... and have gone out into the world with
nothing but their own strength to look to, and have become distinguished
men of science, celebrated doctors, naturalists, and literary men. And
the little house, covered with tiles, is filled up again in their absence
by a new generation of students, eagerly pressing forward into the
unknown future.

In the lack of any other there is the inheritance of example, the
inheritance of the family fibre. Each one begins for himself, and knows
that the time will come when his old grandmother will lead him down the
worn stone staircase: the grandmother who has seen three generations
into the world, washed them in the little bath, and seen them off with
full confidence in them. He knows that the proud old woman is sure of
him, too, sure that he will do something ... and he invariably does do
something.

_Dann und wann_ after many years all this scattered population is in the
little old home again, all the originals—grown older—of the portraits
hanging in the little drawing-room, in which they are wearing students’
_bérets_ and are wrapped in cloaks with a Rembrandt intention on the
part of the artist: then there is bustle again in the little house, the
two generations get to know each other, become intimate ... and then all
go back to work again. Of course, with all this some one is bound to be
in love with somebody; of course, sentimentality, tears, surprises, and
sweet tarts are the inevitable accompaniment; but all that is effaced
by the real, purely living poetry, full of strength and muscle such
as I have rarely met with in the degenerate, rickety children of the
aristocracy, and still less among the petty-bourgeois, who strictly check
the number of their children in accordance with their account-book.

The ancestral home of Vogt belonged to this class of blessed ancient
German families.

Vogt’s father was an extremely gifted professor of medicine in Berne;
his mother was one of the Vollens, that eccentric Swiss-German family
which was so much talked of at one time. The Vollens were leaders of
Young Germany at the period of _Tugendbunds_ and _Burschenschafts_,
of Karl Sand and of the political _Schwärmerei_ of 1817 and 1818. One
Vollen was thrown into prison for the Wartburg celebration in memory of
Luther: he certainly did deliver an incendiary speech, after which he
made a bonfire of Jesuitical and reactionary books and various symbols
of autocracy and the Papal power. The students dreamed of making him
emperor of a one and undivided Germany. His grandson, Karl Vogt, actually
was one of the _vicars of the empire_ in 1849. Healthy blood must have
flowed in the veins of the son of the Berne professor, in the grandson
of the Vollens—_au bout du compte_, everything depends on the chemical
combination and the quality of the elements. Karl Vogt is not the man to
dispute that with me.

In 1851 I was passing through Berne. Straight from the posting-chaise, I
went to Vogt’s father with a letter from his son. The elder Vogt was at
the university. His wife, a hospitable, lively, and extremely intelligent
old woman, met me; she received me as her son’s friend, and at once
took me to see his portrait. She did not expect her husband home before
six o’clock; I very much wanted to see him, and came back at that time,
but he had already gone to some patients for a consultation. The old
lady greeted me the second time like an old friend, and led me into the
dining-room, wishing me to take a glass of wine. One part of the room
was filled by a large round table fixed immovably into the floor; I had
heard of this table long ago from Vogt, and so was delighted to make its
personal acquaintance. Its inner part moved on an axle: various dishes
were placed upon it; coffee, wine, and everything wanted, such as plates,
mustard, salt, so that any one could turn what he wanted to himself, ham
or preserves, without troubling any one and without the aid of servants.
The only thing was that it would not do to be too dreamy or to talk too
much, or one might put a spoon into the sugar-basin instead of into the
mustard-pot ... if any one had turned the disc. In this large population
of brothers and sisters, intimate friends and relations, in which every
one was differently engaged, and had to keep to fixed hours, a common
dinner in the evening was difficult to arrange. Any one who came in, and
wanted something to eat, sat down to the table, twirled it to the right
or twirled it to the left and managed capitally. The mother and sisters
superintended, and ordered this or that to be brought in.

I could not stay with them; Fazy and Schaller, who were in Berne at the
time, wanted to come and see me in the evening. I promised to visit the
Vogts again if I should stay another half-day, and, after inviting the
younger brother, the law student, to supper with me, went home. I felt
it was out of the question to invite the old father so late, and after
such a day. But about twelve o’clock the waiter, respectfully opening the
door to usher him in, announced: ‘Der Herr Professor Vogt.’ I got up from
the table and went to meet him. A rather tall old man, extremely well
preserved, with a clever, expressive face, walked into the room.

‘Your visit,’ I said, ‘is doubly welcome; I had not dared to ask you so
late after your labours.’

‘I did not want to let you pass through Berne without seeing you. Hearing
that you had been to us twice, and that you had invited Gustav, I invited
myself. I am very, very glad to see you, both from what Karl writes of
you, and, flattery apart, I wanted to make the acquaintance of the
author of _From the Other Shore_.’

‘I thank you most truly: here is a place, please sit down with us; we are
in the middle of supper: what will you take?’

‘I want nothing to eat, but I will drink a glass of wine with pleasure.’

There was so much ease and freedom in his appearance, words, and
movements, together with not that good-heartedness characteristic
of flabby, mawkish, and sentimental people, but with that special
good-heartedness we see in strong natures confident in themselves. His
appearance was not the least constraint to us; on the contrary, it made
everything livelier.

The conversation passed from subject to subject; everywhere and in
everything he was at home, intelligent, _éveillé_, original. The talk
touched on the Federal concert which had been given in the morning in the
Berne Cathedral, at which all had been present except Vogt. The concert
was on an immense scale; musicians and singers had come from all parts
of Switzerland to take part in it. It had, of course, been a concert of
sacred music. Haydn’s celebrated composition had been performed with
talent and understanding. The audience was attentive but cold; it walked
out of the cathedral as people walk out of the morning service; I do
not know how much reverence there was, but there was no enthusiasm. I
experienced the same thing myself. In a moment of candour I said so to
the friends with whom I had gone. Unluckily, they were orthodox, learned,
ardent musicians; they fell upon me, declared I was a profane outsider
who did not know how to listen to deep and serious music.

‘You care for nothing but Chopin’s mazurkas,’ they said.

‘There is no great harm in that,’ I thought, but, considering myself not
a very competent judge, I held my peace.

One needs considerable courage to acknowledge impressions which run
counter to the generally accepted prejudice or opinion. It was a long
while before I could bring myself to say, in the presence of outsiders,
that _Jerusalem Delivered_ was dull, that I could not finish reading the
_New Héloïse_, that _Hermann and Dorothea_ was a masterly production but
disgustingly tedious. I said something of the sort to Vogt, telling him
what I had observed about the concert.

‘Well,’ he asked, ‘do you like Mozart?’

‘Extremely! without reservation.’

‘I knew as much, for I am in complete sympathy with you. How is it
possible for an awakened modern man to force himself artificially into
the religious mood which would make his enjoyment of it natural and
complete? There is no sacred music for us, just as there is no religious
literature; for us it has only an historical interest. In Mozart, on the
other hand, we hear the note of the life familiar to us, he is singing
out of the fulness of feeling and passion, not praying. I remember when
_Don Giovanni_ and the _Nozze di Figaro_ were new, what a delight they
were, what a revelation of a new source of enjoyment! Mozart’s music
created an epoch, a revolution in men’s minds, like Goethe’s _Faust_,
like the year 1789. We saw in his compositions the enlightened thought of
the eighteenth century with its secularisation of life invading music;
with Mozart the revolution and the new age have entered into art. How can
we read Klopstock after _Faust_, or listen to these musical liturgies
without faith?’

The old man talked at length and extraordinarily interestingly. He grew
animated; twice I filled his glass, he did not refuse it, and was in no
haste to drink. At last he looked at his watch: ‘Bah! it’s two o’clock;
good-bye, I have to be with a patient at nine!’

With real affection I escorted him home.

Two years later he showed how much vigour was left in his grey head and
how _real_ his theories were—that is, how close to practice. A Viennese
refugee, Dr. Kudlich, courted one of Vogt’s daughters: the father
consented to the marriage; but, all at once, the Protestant Consistory
demanded the bridegroom’s certificate of baptism. Of course, as an
exile, he could get nothing from Austria, and he presented the sentence
which had been passed upon him in his absence. The mere testimony and
permission of Vogt would have been sufficient for the Consistory, but
the Berne pietists, instinctively hating Vogt and all exiles, persisted.
Then Vogt gathered together all his friends, the professors and various
leading personages of Berne, told them the position, then called his
daughter and Kudlich, took their hands, made them clasp hands, and said
to those present: ‘I call you, friends, to witness that I as father bless
this marriage and give my daughter at her desire to this man.’

This action petrified the pious society of Switzerland; it looked with
indignation and horror at the precedent created not by a hot-headed
youth, nor a homeless refugee, but by an old man of irreproachable
character, respected by every one.

Now let us pass from the father to the elder son.

I made his acquaintance in 1847, at Bakunin’s, but we became particularly
intimate during the two years of our life at Nice. He had not only a
serene intelligence, but one of the serenest characters of all the men I
have seen. I should reckon him a very happy man if I knew that he would
not live long; but there is no counting upon fate, though she has spared
him hitherto, letting him off with nothing worse than a few migraines.
His realistic temperament, full of life and open to everything, has much
to ensure enjoyment, everything to make dullness impossible, and almost
nothing to cause inner torment, the fretting of intellectual discontent,
the suffering from theoretical doubt, and disappointment in practical
life over dreams that cannot be fulfilled. A passionate worshipper of
the beauties of nature, an indefatigable worker in science, he did
everything with extraordinary ease and success; he was not in the least
a dry pedant, but an artist in his own work, he enjoyed it; a radical
by temperament, a realist by constitution, and a humane man through his
clear and good-heartedly ironical outlook, he lived precisely in that
sphere of life to which alone Dante’s words—_Qui è l’uomo felice_—apply.

He spent his life actively and carelessly, never lagging behind, but
everywhere in the foremost rank. He had no fear of bitter truths, and
looked as steadily at men as at polypi and medusæ, expecting nothing from
either but what they could give. His researches were not superficial,
but he felt no impulse to pass beyond a certain depth below which
everything clear ends, and which is in truth, after a fashion, an escape
from reality. He was not lured into those sloughs of despond in which
men revel in their neurotic sufferings. His clear and simple attitude
to life excluded from his healthy outlook the poetry of melancholy, the
ecstasies and morbid humours, which we love as we do everything thrilling
and pungent. His irony, as I observed, was good-natured, his mockery was
light-hearted; he was the first to laugh, and from his heart, at his
own jokes, with which he poisoned the ink and the beer of the pedantic
professors and his parliamentary colleagues _in der Paul’s Kirche_.

This living realism was the common bond of sympathy between us, though
our lives and development had been so different that we disagreed about
many things.

I had not and could not have the harmony and unity that Vogt had. His
education had been as regular as mine had been unsystematic; neither
family continuity nor theoretical growth had ever been interrupted in
him; he was carrying on the tradition of his family. His father stood
beside him an example and a helper; following him, he took up the study
of natural science. Among us each generation is usually at variance with
the one before; there is no common moral tie between us. From my earliest
years I was inevitably struggling against the outlook of every one
surrounding me; I was in opposition in the nursery, because our elders,
our grandfathers, were not Vollens but serf-owners and senators. When I
left it, I flung myself with the same impetuosity into another struggle,
and, as soon as I had finished at the university, was in prison and then
in exile. My continuity of learning was destroyed by this, but it gave me
another kind of training, experience of a world on the one hand wretched,
and on the other hand dirty.

When I was sick of the study of this pathology, I flung myself greedily
upon philosophy, for which Vogt felt an invincible aversion. When he had
completed the medical course and had received his doctor’s diploma, he
could not bring himself to practise, saying that he had not sufficient
faith in the medical hocus-pocus, and devoted himself entirely to
physiology again. His work very soon attracted the attention not only of
German scientists but also of the Parisian Academy of Science. He was
already Professor of Comparative Anatomy in Giessen and the colleague of
Liebig (with whom he afterwards carried on a furious chemico-theological
controversy), when the revolutionary hurricane of 1848 tore him from his
microscope and flung him into the Frankfort Parliament.

I need hardly say that he was in the most radical section, that he
made speeches full of wit and daring, and exhausted the patience of
the mast moderate progressives, and sometimes even of the immoderate
Prussian King. Being by no means a politician, he became, through his
atomic weight, one of the leaders of the opposition; and when Archduke
Johann, who had been a vicar of the Empire, finally threw off the
mask of good-nature and popularity won by marrying the daughter of a
stationmaster and sometimes wearing a frock-coat, Vogt and four others
were elected in his place. Then the fortunes of the German revolution
went rapidly downhill: the governments had attained their object, had
gained time (as Metternich advised), and had no longer need to spare the
parliament. Banished from Frankfort, the parliament had a brief, shadowy
existence at Stuttgart under the melancholy title of _Nach-parlament_.
And there the reactionaries made an end of it. There was nothing left for
the vicars of the Empire but to get away as best they could from certain
prison and penal servitude.... When he crossed the Swiss mountains
Vogt shook the dust of the Frankfort assembly from off his feet, and
inscribing himself in the traveller’s book as ‘K. Vogt, runaway vicar of
the German Empire,’ set to work again upon natural science with the same
untroubled serenity, light-hearted temper, and unwearying industry. He
came to Nice in 1850, with the object of studying marine zoophytes.

Although we started from different directions and came by different
paths, we met in sober maturity in science.

Was I as consistent as Vogt—and in life, did I look at it as soberly?
Now I fancy not. Though indeed I do not know whether it is good to begin
with being sober; it wards off not only many calamities, but also the
best moments of life. It is a difficult question which luckily is settled
for each man, not by choice nor by considerations of what is best, but
by constitution and circumstance. It was not that I tried to retain all
sorts of inconsistent convictions, but _they remained of themselves_,
though I was theoretically emancipated. I outlived the romanticism of
revolution, the mystic belief in progress and in humanity lasted longer
than other theological dogmas; but when I had outlived them, I still
had left a religious belief in individuals, a faith in two or three
men, a confidence in myself, in the human will. There were, of course,
contradictions in this; inner contradictions lead to misfortunes, the
more painful and mortifying because they are deprived of the last comfort
of man, justification in his own eyes....

In Nice, Vogt set to work with extraordinary zeal.... The calm, warm bays
of the Mediterranean Sea is a rich breeding-ground for all _frutti di
mare_, the water is simply full of them. At night the streaks of their
phosphorescent light trail gleaming after a boat and drip from the oar,
the _salpi_ can be picked up with the hand or with any cup or dish. So
he had no lack of material. From early morning Vogt would sit at the
microscope, would watch, would draw, write, or read, and at five o’clock
rush, sometimes with me, into the sea (he swam like a fish); then he
would come to us to dine, and, everlastingly good-humoured, was ready for
a learned discussion or for any sort of nonsense, sang killing songs,
accompanying them on the piano, or told the children stories with such
masterly art that they listened to him for hours without moving.

Vogt possessed an immense talent for exposition. Half in joke he
delivered several lectures on ‘physiology for ladies’ in our house.
Everything came out so living, so simple, and so artistically expressed,
that all the ground he had covered before attaining this clarity was not
suspected. That is the whole problem in teaching—to render science so
intelligible and well assimilated as to make it speak a simple, everyday
language.

There are no difficult sciences; the difficulty lies in the exposition
which is not fully digested. The language of learning, a technical
language with coined words, a shorthand, temporary language, is of use
for students; the meaning is concealed in its algebraic formulæ in order
that in explaining the law the same thing may not be repeated a hundred
times over. Passing through a series of scholastic methods, science has
been overgrown by all this rubbish of the schools, where pedants have
grown so accustomed to the monstrous jargon that they use no other, and
it seems intelligible to them: in former years they even prized it as
something won by hard labour and distinguished from the vulgar tongue. As
we pass from students to real knowledge, props and scaffoldings become
distasteful, and we look for simplicity. Who has not observed that
beginners as a rule make use of many more abstruse words than those who
have mastered the subject?

A second cause of obscurity in science arises from the
unconscientiousness of those who teach it, shown in trying to conceal
part of the truth and to avoid risky questions. Science which has any
object except the knowledge of the truth is not science. It ought to
have the courage of direct, open speech. No one could charge Vogt with
lack of candour, with timid compromise. ‘Sensitive souls’ more readily
reproach him with telling too directly and too simply what he holds for
the truth, in direct contradiction with the generally received deception.
The Christian attitude has trained us to dualism, to ideal imagery, so
thoroughly that everything naturally healthy strikes us unpleasantly.
Our intelligence, warped through ages, is disgusted by naked beauty, by
daylight, and craves for twilight and a veil.

Many when reading Vogt are offended at his accepting the most startling
consequences so readily, at his finding it so easy to sacrifice things,
at his having to make no effort, at his not worrying to try to reconcile
theology with biology; it is as though he had nothing to do with the
former.

As a matter of fact, Vogt’s temperament was such that he never had
thought differently and was incapable of thinking differently; that was
just where his direct realism came in. Theological objections could
have for him only an historical interest; the absurdity of dualism was
so clear to his simple outlook that he could not enter into serious
controversy with it, just as his opponents—the theologians of chemistry
and the holy fathers of physiology—cannot seriously discuss magic or
astrology. Vogt brushed aside their attacks with a jest—and, unluckily,
that is not enough.

The nonsense with which they answered him is the nonsense believed all
the world over, and for that reason very important. The childishness of
the human brain is such that it will not accept the simple truth; for
vague, muddled, and incoherent minds nothing is intelligible but what is
incomprehensible, what is impossible or absurd.

There is no need to go to the common herd for examples; literary
and cultivated circles, legal and learned institutions, governments
and revolutionaries, vie with each other in maintaining the innate
senselessness of mankind. And just as seventy years ago the frigid deist
Robespierre executed Anacharsis Cloots,[74] so the Wagners and their like
would to-day hand Vogt over to the hangman.

The struggle is impossible; all the strength is on their side. Against
a handful of scientists, naturalists, doctors, two or three thinkers
and poets, stands the whole world, from Pius IX. with the Immaculate
Conception to Mazzini with the Republican Iddio; from the Moscow orthodox
hysterics of Slavophilism to Lieutenant-General Radowitz, who when he
was dying bequeathed to Wagner, the professor of physiology, what it
had never occurred to any one to bequeath before—the immortality of the
soul, and its defence; from American spiritualists who call up the dead,
to English missionary colonels who preach the Word of God to Indians on
horseback at the head of their soldiers. There is nothing left for free
men but the consciousness of being right, and hope in future generations.

And suppose it is proved that this senselessness, this religious mania,
is the essential condition of organised society, that for men to live
quietly side by side they must be driven out of their wits and terrified,
that this mania is the one dodge by which history is created?

I remember a French caricature aimed at some time or other against the
Fourierists with their _attraction passionnée_; it represents an ass with
a stick fixed upon its back, and a wisp of hay hung on the stick so that
he can see it. The donkey, thinking to reach the hay, is obliged to move
forward—the hay, of course, moves too, and he follows it. Perhaps the
worthy animal might progress in that way, but all the same he would be
made a fool of!

I will pass now to an account of how hospitably I was received by one
country when another had just turned me out for no reason whatever.
Schaller promised Vogt to take steps about my naturalisation—that is,
to find a commune which would consent to receive me and then to support
the case in the Great Council. For naturalisation in Switzerland it is
essential that some town or village commune should previously agree
to accept the new citizen, a regulation quite in keeping with the
self-government of each canton and each little district. The village
of Châtel near Morat (Murten) agreed to receive my family into the
number of its peasant families for a small money contribution to the
village society. This village is not far from the lake of Murten, the
neighbourhood of which was the scene of the defeat and slaying of Charles
the Bold, whose unhappy death and name were so adroitly used by the
Austrian censorship (and afterwards the Petersburg one) to replace the
name of William Tell in Rossini’s opera.

When the case came before the Great Council, two Jesuitical deputies
raised their voices against me, but did nothing. One of them said that it
ought to be ascertained why I was in exile, and how I had provoked the
anger of Nicholas. ‘Why, but that’s a recommendation in itself!’ somebody
answered, and they all laughed. Another, from far-sighted prudence,
asked for fresh guarantees that in case of my death the education and
maintenance of my children would not fall on the poor commune. This son
in Jesus too was satisfied by Schaller’s answer. My rights of citizenship
were accepted by a vast majority, and I was transformed from an upper
court councillor to a peasant of the village of Châtel near Murten,
_originaire de Châtel près Morat_, as the Freiburg clerk wrote on my
passport.

Naturalisation, however, is no hindrance to a career in Russia. I have
two illustrious examples before my eyes: Louis-Napoleon became a citizen
of Thurgovie, and Alexander the Second a burgher of Darmstadt; both
became emperors after their naturalisation. I am not going so far as that.

On receiving the news of the ratification of my rights, it was almost
necessary for me to go and thank my new fellow-citizens and to make their
acquaintance. Moreover, just at that time I had an intense craving to be
alone, to look into myself, to revise the past, to discern something in
the mist of the future, and I was glad of this external reason.

On the eve of my departure from Nice, I received a summons from the head
of the police _di la Sicurezza publica_. He informed me that I was
ordered by the Minister of the Interior to leave immediately the domains
of Sardinia. This strange step on the part of the tame and evasive
Sardinian Government surprised me far more than my banishment from Paris
in 1850; besides, there was no sort of occasion for it.

I am told that I was indebted for it to the zeal of two or three faithful
Russian subjects living in Nice, and among them it is pleasant for me to
name the Minister of Justice, Panin; it was more than he could tolerate
that a man who had brought upon himself the Imperial wrath of Nicholas
was not only living in peace and in the same town as himself, but was
actually writing articles, though aware that the Most High did not look
upon this with favour. When he went to Turin, this Minister of Justice, I
am told, asked the minister Azeglio, as a friend, to banish me. Azeglio’s
heart, probably, had some intuition that when I was learning Italian in
the Krutitsky Barracks I had read his _La Disfida di Barletta_—a novel
neither ‘classical nor old-fashioned,’ though nevertheless tedious; and
so he did nothing, or perhaps he hesitated to send me out because such
friendly attentions should have been preceded by the sending of a Russian
ambassador, and Nicholas was still sulking over the revolutionary ideas
of Charles Albert.

On the other hand, the chief of police in Nice and the ministers in
Turin took advantage of the suggestion at the first opportunity. Some
days before I was turned out, there was a popular demonstration in Nice,
in which the boatmen and shopkeepers, carried away by the eloquence of
the banker Avigdor, protested, and rather audaciously too, against the
suppression of the free port, talking of the independence of the duchy of
Nice, and its inalienable rights. The imposition of a light customs-duty
on the whole kingdom diminished their privileges, regardless of the
‘independence of the duchy of Nice,’ and its rights ‘inscribed on the
scrolls of history.’

Avigdor, that O’Connell of the Paillon (that is the name of the dry
river that runs through Nice), was thrown into prison, patrols paraded
the streets at night, and so did the people, and both sang songs, the
same songs too; and that was all. Need I say that neither I nor any
other foreigner took any part in this domestic quarrel over tariffs and
customs-duties? Nevertheless, the _Intendant_ pitched upon several of the
refugees as ringleaders, and among them, upon me. The ministry, wishing
to set an example of salutary severity, ordered me to be turned out
together with the rest.

I went to the _Intendant_ (a Jesuit), and, observing to him that it was a
superfluous luxury to turn a man out when he was going of himself and had
his passport already viséd in his pocket, asked him what was wrong. He
declared that he was as surprised as I was, and that the measure had been
taken by the Ministry of the Interior without any preliminary reference
to himself. At the same time, he was so extremely polite that I had no
doubt in my mind that he was responsible for the whole nasty business.
I reported my conversation with him to the well-known deputy in the
opposition, Lorenzo Valerio, and went off to Paris.

Valerio made a savage attack upon the minister in his interpellation, and
demanded the reasons for my deportation. The minister was disconcerted,
denied any influence of the Russian diplomacy, threw everything upon the
report of the _Intendant_, and meekly concluded by saying that if the
ministry had acted too hastily and imprudently it would with pleasure
alter its decision.

The opposition applauded; consequently, _de facto_, the prohibition
was withdrawn, but though I wrote to the minister he made no answer.
I read Valerio’s speech and the answer to it in the newspapers, and
resolved to go simply to Turin on the return journey from Freiburg.
That I might not be refused a visa, I went without a visa; on the Swiss
border of Piedmont, passports are not examined with the savage zeal of
French gendarmes. In Turin I went to the Minister of the Interior: I was
received by his deputy, who superintended the superior police, Count
Pons de la Martino, a man well known in those parts, clever, crafty, and
devoted to the Catholic party.

His reception surprised me. He said to me everything I had meant to say
to him; something similar had happened to me in one of my interviews with
Dubbelt, but Count Pons far outdid that.

He was a very elderly, thin, sickly-looking man of most unprepossessing
appearance, with malicious, sly-looking features, rough grey hair, and
a rather clerical aspect. Before I had time to say a dozen words in
regard to the reason of my asking for an interview with the minister, he
interrupted me with the words:—

‘Why, upon my word, what doubt can there be about it?... Go to Nice,
go to Genoa, stay here—only without the slightest _rancune_ ... it was
all the doing of the _Intendant_ ... you see, we are still learning our
business, we are not accustomed to legality, to constitutional order. If
you had done anything contrary to the law, there is a law-court for that;
then you would have no cause to complain of injustice, would you?’

‘I quite agree with you, I should not.’

‘Instead of that _they take_ steps which cause irritation ... and excite
an uproar—and without any need whatever!’

After this speech against _himself_, he hastily snatched up a piece of
paper with the ministerial imprint, and wrote: _Si permette al Sig. A. H.
di ritornare a Nizza e di restarvi quanto tempo credera convienente. Per
il ministro S. Martino—12 Giulio 1851._ ‘Here, take this to provide for
all possibilities, though you may rest assured that you will never need
it. I am very glad, very glad indeed, that we have settled this business
with you.’

As this was equivalent, in the vulgar tongue, to ‘Go, and God bless you,’
I left my Pons, smiling at the thought of the face of the _Intendant_ at
Nice; but Providence did not favour me with the sight of it—he had been
transferred.

But to return to Freiburg and its canton: when, like all mortals who have
been in Freiburg, we had listened to the celebrated organ and driven
over the celebrated bridge, we set off for Châtel, accompanied by a
good-natured old man, the treasurer of the Freiburg canton. At Murten
the prefect of police, a vigorous man and a radical, asked us to stay
with him, telling us that the village elder had charged him to send word
beforehand of our arrival, as he and the other householders would be very
much disappointed if I came without letting them know; and they were all
in the fields at work when I arrived. After walking about Morat or Murten
for a couple of hours, we set off, and the prefect with us.

Near the elder’s house several old peasants were awaiting us, headed by
the elder himself, a tall, venerable, grey-headed, and rather bent but
muscular old man. He stepped forward, took off his hat, held out his
broad, strong hand to me, and saying, ‘_Lieber Mitbürger ..._,’ delivered
a speech of welcome in such Swiss-German that I did not understand a word
of it. It was possible to make a rough guess at what he could say to me,
and therefore, reflecting that if I concealed that I did not understand
him, he would conceal that he did not understand me, I boldly answered
him:—

‘Dear Citizen Elder, and dear fellow-citizens of Châtel! I am come to
thank you for giving a refuge to me and my children in your commune,
and putting an end to my homeless wandering. I, dear citizens, did not
leave my native land to seek another; I loved the Russian people with my
whole heart, but I left Russia because I could not be a dumb, inactive
witness of oppression. I left it after exile pursued by the ferocious
despotism of Nicholas. His powerful arm, which has reached me everywhere
where there is a king or a lord, is not long enough to reach me in your
commune! Without fear I put myself under your protection, as in a haven
where I can always find peace. You, citizens of Châtel, you a handful of
men, you taking me amongst you, have been able to arrest the lifted hand
of the Russian Emperor armed with a million bayonets. You are stronger
than he! But you are strong only through the free republican institutions
that have been yours for ages! With pride I enter into your commune, and
hurrah for the Helvetian Republic!’

‘_Dem neuen Bürger hoch! Es lebe der neue Bürger!_’ answered the old men,
and warmly pressed my hand; I myself was somewhat agitated!

The village elder invited us into his house.

We went in, and sat down on benches at a long table on which there was
bread and cheese. Two peasants dragged in a bottle of terrific size,
larger than those famous bottles which are snugly stored away for whole
winters in our old-fashioned houses in some corner by the stove, filled
with home-made liqueurs and cordials. This bottle was covered with
basket-work, and full of white wine. The village elder told us that this
was the local wine, but that it was very old, that he remembered the
bottle for over thirty years, and that this wine was only drunk on very
special occasions. All the peasants sat down with us to the table except
two, who were busy with the cathedral-like bottle. They poured wine from
it into a large jug, and the village elder poured it from the jug into
the glasses; there was a glass before every peasant, but he brought me
a grand crystal goblet, observing as he did so to the treasurer and the
prefect: ‘You must excuse me on this occasion; to-day we offer the cup of
honour to our fellow-citizen; you are old friends.’

While the elder was filling the glasses, I noticed that one of the
company, dressed not quite like a peasant, was very restless, mopping his
face, turning crimson, and seeming ill at ease; when the village elder
proposed they should drink my health, he leaped on his feet with the
courage of despair, and addressing me began a speech. ‘That,’ the elder
whispered in my ear with a significant air, ‘is the citizen teacher in
our school.’ I stood up.

The teacher spoke not Swiss but German, and not simply but on the model
of particularly famous orators and writers: he referred both to William
Tell and to Charles the Bold (what would the Austrian and Russian stage
censorship have done?—perhaps they would have called them William the
Bold and Charles Tell), and at the same time did not forget the less new
than expressive comparison of bondage with a gilded cage from which the
bird will still strive to be free. Nicholas caught it hot from him; he
ranked him with very disreputable persons from Roman history. I almost
interrupted him at that point to say, ‘Don’t insult the dead,’ but, as
though from a presentiment that Nicholas would soon be among them, held
my peace.

The peasants listened to him, craning their wrinkled sunburnt necks and
putting up their hands to their ears like sunshades; the treasurer had a
little nap, and to conceal the fact was the first to praise the orator.

Meanwhile the village elder was not sitting idle, but zealously filling
up glasses and preparing toasts like the most practised master of
the ceremonies—‘To the Confederation!’ ‘To Freiburg and its radical
government!’ ‘To President Schaller!’

‘To my kindly fellow-citizens of Châtel!’ I proposed at last, feeling
that the wine, though its taste was not strong, was far from weak in its
effects. All rose to their feet.... The elder said: ‘No, no, _lieber
Mitbürger_, a full glass, as we drank a full glass to you.’ My venerable
friends were becoming expansive, the wine was warming them up.... ‘Bring
your children,’ said one. ‘Yes, yes,’ others chimed in; ‘let them see how
we live: we are simple people, they will learn no harm from us, and we
shall have a look at them.’

‘Certainly!’ I answered, ‘certainly!’

Then the village elder began apologising for the poorness of their
reception, saying that it was all the treasurer’s fault, that he ought
to have let them know two days beforehand, that then it would have been
very different, they might have provided a band, and that they would have
welcomed and escorted me with gun-shots. I very nearly said to him, _à
la_ Louis-Philippe: ‘After all, what has happened?—only one peasant more
in Châtel.’

We parted great friends. I was rather surprised that I had seen not one
woman or girl, nor even one young man. It was a working day, however. It
is noteworthy, too, that to a festivity so unusual for them the pastor
had not been invited.

I felt greatly indebted to them for that. The pastor would certainly have
spoilt it all; he would have delivered a stupid sermon, and with his
decorous propriety would have been like a fly in a glass of wine which
must be removed before you can drink with pleasure.

At last we were seated again in the treasurer’s little carriage, or
rather chaise; we took the prefect to Morat, and set off for Freiburg.
The sky was covered with storm-clouds; I felt sleepy and giddy. I tried
not to go to sleep: surely it cannot be their wine? I wondered with some
contempt for myself.... The treasurer smiled slyly, and then himself
began dozing; drops of rain began falling, I covered myself with my
overcoat, must have fallen asleep ... then woke up at the contact of cold
water.... The rain was pouring in bucketsful, black storm-clouds seemed
striking fire from craggy heights, far-away peals of thunder came rolling
over the mountains. The treasurer was standing in the hall laughing
loudly and talking with the host of the Zöringer Hof.

‘Well,’ the host asked me, ‘it seems our simple peasant wine is very
different from the French, eh?’

‘Why, can we have arrived?’ I asked, emerging drenched from the chaise.

‘There’s nothing strange in that,’ observed the treasurer; ‘what is
strange is that you have slept through a storm such as we have not had
for a long time. Did you really hear nothing?’

‘Nothing!’

Afterwards I found out that the simple Swiss wines, which do not taste
at all strong, acquire great strength with age and act powerfully on
those unaccustomed to them. The treasurer avoided telling me this on
purpose; besides, even if he had told me I could not have refused the
peasants’ good-natured hospitality and their toasts, still less could I
have ceremoniously moistened my lips and made difficulties. That I did
the right thing is proved by the fact that when a year later, on my way
from Berne to Geneva, I met the prefect of Morat at the station, he said
to me: ‘Do you know how you acquired great popularity among our Châtel
peasants?’ ‘No!’ ‘To this day they tell with proud self-satisfaction how
their new fellow-citizen, after drinking their wine, slept through a
storm and drove in a downpour of rain from Morat to Freiburg, knowing
nothing about it.’

And so that is how I became a free citizen of the Swiss Confederation and
got drunk on Châtel wine.[75]




Chapter 41

P. J. PROUDHON—PUBLICATION OF THE ‘VOIX DU PEUPLE’—CORRESPONDENCE—THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF PROUDHON


After the June barricades had fallen the printing-presses fell too. The
panic-stricken journalists held their peace. Only old Lamennais rose up
like the gloomy shadow of a judge, cursed Cavaignac—the Duc d’Alba of the
June days—and his companions, and gloomily told the people: ‘And you be
silent: you are too poor to have the right to speak!’

When the first alarm at this state of siege was over and the newspapers
began coming to life again, they found themselves confronted, not with
violence, but with a perfect arsenal of legal quibbles and judicial
traps. The old baiting, _par force_, of editors, the process in which the
ministers of Louis-Philippe so distinguished themselves, began again.
Its method was to exhaust the guaranteed fund by a series of lawsuits
invariably ending in prison and a money fine. The fine is paid out of
the fund; until that is made up again, the paper cannot be published;
as soon as it is made good, there is a new lawsuit. This game is always
successful, for the legal authorities are always hand in glove with the
government in all political prosecutions.

At first Ledru-Rollin, and afterwards Colonel Frappoli[76] as the
representative of Mazzini’s party, contributed large sums of money, but
could not save _La Réforme_. All the more outspoken organs of socialism
and republicanism were destroyed by this method. Among these, and at the
very beginning, was Proudhon’s _Le Représentant du Peuple_, and later on
_Le Peuple_. Before one prosecution was over, another began.

One of the editors—it was Duchesne, I remember—was three times brought
out of prison into the law-courts on fresh charges; and every time
was again sentenced to prison and a fine. When on the last occasion
before the ruin of the paper the verdict was declared, he said to the
prosecutor: ‘_L’addition, s’il vous plaît!_’ As a matter of fact, it
amounted to ten years of prison and fifty thousand francs fine.

Proudhon was on his trial when his newspaper was suppressed on the 13th
of June. The National Guards burst into his printing-office on that day,
broke the printing-press, dispersed the type, as though to assert, in the
name of the armed bourgeois, that the period of the utmost violence and
police tyranny had come in France.

The irrepressible gladiator, the stubborn Besançon peasant, would not
lay down his arms, but at once contrived to publish a new journal, _La
Voix du Peuple_. It was necessary to obtain twenty-four thousand francs
for the guarantee fund. E. Girardin would have been ready to give it,
but Proudhon did not want to be dependent on him, and Sazonov suggested
that I should contribute the money. I owed a great deal to Proudhon in my
intellectual development, and, after a little consideration, I consented,
though I knew that the fund would soon be gone.

Reading Proudhon, like reading Hegel, cultivates a special faculty,
sharpens the weapon, and furnishes not results but methods. Proudhon is
pre-eminently the dialectician, the controversialist of social questions.
The French seek experimental solutions in him, and, finding no plans of
the phalanstery nor of the Icarian community, shrug their shoulders and
lay the book aside.

It is Proudhon’s own fault, of course, for having put as the motto on
his _Contradictions_: ‘_Destruo et ædificabo_’; his strength lay not in
construction but in criticism of the existing state of things. But this
mistake has been made from time immemorial by all who have broken down
what was old. Man dislikes mere destruction: when he sets to work to
break things down, he is unconsciously haunted by some ideal of future
construction, though sometimes this is like the song of a mason as he
pulls down a wall.

In the greater number of sociological works the ideals advocated,
which almost always are either unattainable at present or lead to some
one-sided solution, are of little consequence; what is of importance
is that, in working up to them, the _problem_ is stated. Socialism has
to deal not only with the solutions of the old empirically religious
tradition, but also with the conclusions of one-sided science; not only
with the juridical deductions resting on traditional legislation, but
also with the deductions of political economy. It is confronted with the
rational system of the epoch of guarantees and of the bourgeois economic
regime, as its immediate predecessor, just as political economy is
related to the theoretically feudal state.

It is in this denial, this destruction of the old social tradition, that
the great power of Proudhon lies; he is as much the poet of dialectics as
Hegel is, with the difference that the one rests on the calm heights of
the philosophic movement, while the other is thrust into the turmoil of
popular passions and the hand-to-hand struggle of parties.

Proudhon is the first of a new set of French thinkers. His works mark
a transition period, not only in the history of socialism but also in
the history of French logic. He has more strength and freedom in his
argumentative tenacity than the most talented of his fellow-countrymen.
Intelligent and single-minded men like Pierre Leroux[77] and
Considérant[78] do not grasp either his point of departure or his method.
They are accustomed to play with ideas as with marked cards, to walk
in a certain attire along the beaten track to familiar spots. Proudhon
often presses on without hesitating to crush anything on the way, without
fearing to destroy or to go too far.

He has none of that sensitiveness, that rhetorical revolutionary
chastity, which takes the place of Protestant pietism in the French ...
that is why he remains a solitary figure among his own people, rather
alarming than convincing them.

People say that Proudhon has a German mind. That is not true; on
the contrary, his mind is absolutely French: he has that racial
Gallo-Frankish genius which appears in Rabelais, in Montaigne, in
Voltaire, and in Diderot ... even in Pascal. It is only that he has
assimilated Hegel’s dialectical method, as he has assimilated all the
methods of Catholic controversy. But neither the Hegelian philosophy
nor the Catholic theology furnished the content nor the character of
his writings; for him these were only weapons with which he tested his
subject, and these weapons he mastered and adapted to his own purposes
just as he adapted the French language to his powerful and vigorous
thought. Such men stand much too firmly on their own feet to be dominated
by anything or to allow themselves to be caught in any net.

‘I like your system very much,’ an English tourist said to Proudhon.

‘But I have no system,’ Proudhon answered with annoyance, and he was
right.

It is just that that puzzles his fellow-countrymen, accustomed to a
moral at the end of the fable, to systematic formulas, to classification,
to abstract binding precepts.

Proudhon sits by a sick man’s bedside and tells him that he is in a very
bad way for this reason and for that reason. You do not help a dying man
by constructing an ideal theory of how he might be perfectly well if he
were not ill, or by suggesting remedies, excellent in themselves, which
he cannot take or which are not to be had.

The external signs and manifestations of the financial world serve him,
just as the teeth of animals served Cuvier as a ladder by which he
descends into the mysteries of social life; by means of them he studies
the forces that are dragging the sick body on to decomposition. If after
every such observation he proclaims a new victory for death, is that his
fault? In this case there are no relatives whom one is afraid to alarm:
we are ourselves dying this death. The crowd shouts with indignation:
‘Remedies! Remedies! Or don’t speak of the disease!’ But why not speak of
it? It is only under despotic governments that we are forbidden to speak
of crops failing, of epidemic diseases, of the numbers slain in war.
The remedy, it seems, is not easily to be found; they have made plenty
of experiments on France since the days of the copious blood-letting of
1793; they have tried victories and violent exercise with her. Setting
her marching to Egypt and to Russia, they have tried parliamentarianism
and _agiotage_, a little republic and a little Napoleon—and has anything
done any good? Proudhon himself once tested his pathology and came
to grief over the People’s Bank—though in itself his idea was good.
Unluckily, he did not believe in magical formulas, or else he would have
been singing out to everybody: ‘League of Nations! League of Nations!
Universal Republic! Brotherhood of all the World! _Grande Armée de la
Démocratie!_’ He did not use these phrases, he did not spare the Old
Believers of the revolution, and for that reason the French look upon him
as an egoist, as an individualist, almost as a renegade and a traitor.

I remember Proudhon’s works, from his reflections _On Property_ to
his _Financial Guidance_; many of his ideas have changed—a man could
hardly live through a period like ours and whistle the same duet in A
minor like Platon Mihailovitch in _Woe from Wit_. What is so startling
in the midst of these changes is the inner unity that holds them all
together, from the essays written as a school task in the Besançon
Academy to the _carmen horrendum_ of Stock Exchange depravity, which
has lately appeared; the same order of thought developing, changing in
form, reflecting events, runs through the _Contradictions of Political
Economy_, and through his _Confessions_, and through his _Journal_.

Inertia of thought is characteristic of religion and doctrinarianism;
they presuppose a persistent narrowness, a finished limitedness, living
apart or in its own narrow circle, rejecting everything new that life
offers ... or at any rate not troubling about it. The real truth must be
found under the influence of events, must reflect them, while remaining
true to itself, or it would not be the living _truth_, but an eternal
truth, at rest from the agitations of this world in the deadly stillness
of holy stagnation.[79] Where, and in what case, I have sometimes asked,
was Proudhon false to the fundamental principles of his philosophy? I
have always been answered that he was so in his political mistakes, his
blunders in revolutionary diplomacy. For his political mistakes he was,
of course, responsible as a journalist; but even in that case he was not
false to himself: on the contrary, some of his mistakes were due to his
believing more in his principles than in the party to which he, against
his own will, belonged, with which he had nothing in common, and with
which he was only associated by hatred for a common foe.

It was not in political activity that his real strength lay; it was
not there that he found the basis of the thought which he clad in
all the armour of his arguments. On the contrary, it is everywhere
clearly evident that politics in the sense of the old liberalism and
constitutional republicanism were, in his eyes, of secondary importance,
as something half over, passing. He was not greatly concerned over
political questions, and was ready to make compromises because he did
not attach special significance to the forms, which in his view were
not essential. All who have abandoned the Christian point of view take
up a similar attitude to religious questions. I may recognise that the
constitutional religion of Protestantism is somewhat freer than the
autocracy of Catholicism, but I cannot take to heart any questions in
regard to church and denomination; probably I should make mistakes, and
concessions in consequence, which the most ordinary graduate in divinity
or parish priest would avoid.

Doubtless, there was no place for Proudhon in the National Assembly
as it was constituted, and his individuality was lost in that den of
petty-bourgeois. In the _Confessions of a Revolutionary_ Proudhon tells
us that he was completely at a loss in the Assembly. And indeed, what
could be done there by a man who said of Marrast’s constitution, that
sour fruit of seven months’ work of seven hundred heads: ‘I give my vote
against your constitution, not only because it’s bad, but because it’s a
constitution.’

The parliamentary dregs greeted one of his speeches: ‘The speech to the
_Moniteur_, the orator to the madhouse!’ I do not think that in the
memory of man there had ever been such parliamentary scenes from the days
when the Archbishop of Alexandria brought to the Œcumenical Councils
monks armed with clubs in the name of the Virgin, up to the days of the
Washington senators who proved the benefits of slavery on each other with
sticks.

But even there Proudhon succeeded in rising to his full height, and
in the midst of the wrangling displayed a brilliance that will not be
forgotten.

Thiers in rejecting Proudhon’s financial scheme made some insinuations as
to the moral depravity of the men who advocated such theories. Proudhon
mounted the tribune, and with his stooping figure and his menacing air
of a sturdy field-worker said to the smiling old creature: ‘Speak of
finance, but do not speak of morality: I may take that as personal,
I have told you so in committee. If you will persist, I—I will not
challenge you to a duel’ (Thiers smiled); ‘no, your death is not enough
for me—that would prove nothing. I challenge you to another sort of
contest. Here from this tribune I will tell the whole story of my life,
fact by fact—any one can pull me up if I forget or omit anything; and
then let my opponent tell the story of his!’ The eyes of all were turned
upon Thiers; he sat scowling, with no trace of a smile on his face, and
made no answer either.

A hostile Chamber sank into silence while Proudhon, looking
contemptuously at the champions of religion and the family, came down
from the platform. That was where his strength lay. In his words one
hears clearly the language of the new world with its new standards and
its new penalties.

From the revolution of February Proudhon foretold what France had come
to; to a thousand different tunes he kept repeating, ‘Beware, do not
trifle; “this is not Catiline at your gates, but death.”’ The French
shrugged their shoulders. The skull, the scythe, the hour-glass—all the
trappings of death—were not to be seen. How could it be death?—it ‘was
a momentary defeat, the after-dinner nap of a great people!’ At last
many people discerned that things were in a bad way. Proudhon was less
downcast than others, less panic-stricken, because he had foreseen it;
then he was accused of callousness and even of having invited disaster.
They say the Chinese Emperor pulls the Court star-gazer’s hair every year
when the latter announces that the days are beginning to draw in.

The genius of Proudhon is really antipathetic to the rhetorical French,
his language is offensive to them. The revolution developed its own
special puritanism, narrow and intolerant, its own obligatory jargon;
and patriots resent everything not written in the official form, just
as the Russian judges do. Their criticism stops short at their symbolic
books, such as the _Contrat Social_ and _Declaration of the Rights of
Man_. Men of faith, they hate analysis and doubt; conspirators, they
do everything in common and turn everything into a party question. An
independent mind is hateful to them as a disturber of discipline, they
dislike original ideas even in the past. Louis Blanc is almost vexed
with the eccentric genius of Montaigne.[80] It is upon this Gallic
feeling, which seeks to subject individuality to the herd, that their
partiality for _equalising_, for the dead level of military discipline,
for centralisation—that is, for despotism—is based.

The blasphemy of the French, their sweeping judgments, are more due
to mischief, caprice, the pleasure of mockery, than the craving for
analysis, than the scepticism that frets the soul. The Frenchman has
an endless number of little prejudices, minute religions, and these he
will defend with the persistence of a Don Quixote, the pertinacity of
a _raskolnik_. That is why they cannot forgive Montaigne or Proudhon
for their free-thinking and lack of reverence for generally accepted
idols. Like the Petersburg censorship, they permit a jest at a titular
councillor, but you must not touch a privy councillor. In 1850 E.
Girardin printed in the _Presse_ a bold and new idea, that the principles
of law are not eternal but go on evolving in different forms with the
development of history. What an uproar this article excited! The campaign
of abuse, of cries of horror, of charges of immorality begun by the
_Gazette_ of France was kept up for months.

To assist in restoring such an organ as the _Peuple_ was worth a
sacrifice; I wrote to Sazonov and Hoetsky that I was ready to supply the
guarantee fund.

Until then I had not seen much of Proudhon; I had met him twice at the
lodgings of Bakunin, with whom he was very intimate. Bakunin was living
at that time with A. Reihel in an extremely modest lodging at the other
side of the Seine in the Rue de Bourgogne. Proudhon often went there
to listen to Reihel’s Beethoven and Bakunin’s Hegel—the philosophical
discussions lasted longer than the symphonies. They reminded me of the
famous all-night arguments of Bakunin with Homyakov at Tchaadayev’s and
at Madame Yelagin’s, also over Hegel. In 1847, Karl Vogt, who also lived
in the Rue de Bourgogne, and often visited Reihel and Bakunin, was bored
one evening with listening to the endless discussions on phenomenology,
and went home to bed. Next morning he went round for Reihel, as they
were to go to the Jardin des Plantes together; he was surprised to
hear conversation in Bakunin’s study at that early hour. He opened the
door—Proudhon and Bakunin were sitting in the same places before the
burnt-out embers in the fireplace, finishing their brief summing-up of
the argument begun overnight.

At first, afraid of the humble rôle of our fellow-countrymen, of being
patronised by great men, I did not try to become more intimate even
with Proudhon himself, and I believe I was not altogether wrong there.
Proudhon’s letter in answer to mine was courteous, but cold and somewhat
reserved.

I wanted to show him from the very first that he was not dealing with
a mad _prince russe_ who was giving the money from revolutionary
dilettantism, and still more from ostentation, nor with an orthodox
admirer of French journalists, deeply grateful for their accepting
twenty-four thousand francs from him, nor with a dull-witted _bailleur
de fonds_ who imagines that providing the guarantee funds for such a
paper as the _Voix du Peuple_ is a serious business investment. I wanted
to show him that I knew very well what I was doing, that I had my own
definite aim in it, and so wanted to have a definite influence on the
paper. While I accepted unconditionally all that he wrote about money,
I demanded in the first place the right to insert articles, my own and
other people’s; secondly, the right to superintend all the foreign part,
to recommend editors, correspondents, and so on for it, and to insist on
payment for the latter for articles inserted. This last may seem strange,
but I can confidently assert that the _National_ and the _Réforme_ would
open their eyes with astonishment if any foreigner ventured to ask to
be paid for an article. They would take it for impudence or madness, as
though for a foreigner to see himself in print in a Parisian paper were
not

    ‘_Lohn der reichlich lohnet_.’

Proudhon agreed to my conditions, but still they made him wince. This
is what he wrote to me in Geneva on the 29th of August 1849: ‘And so
the thing is settled: under my general direction you have a share in
the editorship of the paper; your articles must be accepted with _no
restriction_, except that to which the editors are bound by respect for
their _own opinions_ and fear of legal responsibility. Agreed in ideas,
we can only differ in deductions; as regards the criticism of foreign
events, we leave that entirely to you. You and we are missionaries of
one idea. You will see our line in general discussion, and you will have
to support it: I am sure I shall never have to _correct your views_; I
should regard that as the greatest calamity. I tell you frankly, the
whole success of the paper depends on our agreement. The democratic
and social question must be raised to the level of an undertaking by a
European League. To presuppose that we shall not agree means to assume
that we have not the essential conditions for publishing the paper, and
that _we had better be silent_.’

To this severe missive I replied by the despatch of twenty-four thousand
francs and a long letter, quite friendly, but firm. I told him how
completely I agreed with him theoretically, adding that, like a true
Scythian, I saw with joy that the old world was falling into ruins,
and believed that it was our mission to announce to it its speedy end.
‘_Your fellow-countrymen are far from sharing these ideas._ I know one
free Frenchman—that is you. Your revolutionists are conservatives. They
are Christians without recognising it, and monarchists fighting for a
republic. You alone have raised the question of negation and revolution
to a scientific level, and you have been the first to tell France that
there is no salvation for the edifice that is crumbling from within, and
that there is nothing worth saving from it; that its very conceptions of
freedom and revolution are saturated with conservatism and reaction. As a
matter of fact, the political republicans are but one of the variations
on the constitutional tune of which Guizot, Odilon Barrot, and the rest
play their several versions. This is the view that should be followed
in the analysis of the latest European events, in attacking reaction,
Catholicism, monarchism, not in the ranks of our enemies—that is
extremely easy—but in our own camp. We must unmask the mutual guarantees
existing between the democrats and the powers that be. Since we are not
afraid to attack the victors, let us not from false sentimentality be
afraid to attack the vanquished also.

‘I am thoroughly convinced that if the inquisition of the republic does
not kill our newspaper, it will be the best newspaper in Europe.’

I think that even now. But how Proudhon and I could imagine that
Napoleon’s government—they never stood on ceremony—would put up with a
paper like that, it is difficult to explain.

Proudhon was pleased with my letter, and wrote to me on the 15th of
December from the Conciergerie: ‘I am very glad to have been associated
with you in the same work. I, too, wrote something in the nature of a
philosophy[81] under the title of the _Confessions of a Revolutionary_.
You will not perhaps find in it the _verve barbare_ to which you have
been trained by German philosophy. Do not forget that I am writing for
the French, who, for all their revolutionary ardour, are, it must be
confessed, far inferior to their rôle. However limited my view may be,
it is a hundred thousand times higher than the loftiest heights of our
journalistic, academic, and literary world. I have enough in me to be a
giant among them for another ten years.

‘I completely share your opinion of the so-called republicans; of course,
they are only one species of the genus doctrinaires. As regards these
questions there is no need to convince each other; you will find in me
and my colleagues men who go hand in hand with you....

‘I too think a peaceful methodical advance by imperceptible transitions,
as the political economists and philosophical historians would have it,
is no longer possible for the revolution; we must make terrible leaps.
But as journalists foreseeing the coming catastrophe, it is not for us
to present it as something inevitable and just, or we shall be hated and
kicked out; and we have got to live....’

The paper was a wonderful success. Proudhon from his prison cell
conducted his orchestra in masterly fashion. His articles were full of
originality, fire, and that irritability which prison inflames.

‘What are you, _M. le Président_?’ he writes in one article, speaking
of Napoleon; ‘tell me—man, woman, hemaphrodite, beast, or fish?’ And we
still imagined that such a paper might be kept going!

The subscribers were not numerous, but the street sales were large;
thirty-five thousand to forty thousand were sold per day. The circulation
of particularly attractive numbers—for instance, of those in which
Proudhon’s articles appeared—was even larger; fifty thousand to sixty
thousand were printed, and often on the following day copies were being
sold for a franc instead of a sou.[82]

But for all that, by the 1st of March—that is, in six months’ time—not
only was there no cash in hand, but already part of the guarantee fund
had gone in payment of fines. Ruin was inevitable; Proudhon hastened it
considerably. This was how it happened. On one occasion at his rooms in
Ste. Pélagie I found D’Alton-Shee and two of the editors. D’Alton-Shee,
that peer of France who scandalised Pacquier and frightened all the
peers by answering from the platform the question, ‘Why, are you not a
Catholic?’ ‘No! and what’s more, I am not a Christian at all, and I don’t
know whether I am a deist.’ He was saying to Proudhon that the last
numbers of the _Voix du Peuple_ were feeble: Proudhon was looking through
them and growing more and more morose; then, thoroughly incensed, he
turned to the editors: ‘What is the meaning of it? You take advantage of
my being in prison, and go to sleep there in the office. No, gentlemen:
if you go on like this I will refuse to have anything to do with the
paper, and will publish the grounds for my refusal. I don’t want my name
to be dragged in the mud; you need some one to stand behind you and
overlook every line. The public takes this for my newspaper: no, I must
put a stop to this. To-morrow I will send an article to efface the ill
effects of your scribbling, and I will show how I understand what ought
to be the spirit of my paper.’

Seeing his irritation, it might well be anticipated that the article
would not be the most moderate, but he surpassed our expectations: his
_Vive l’Empereur!_ was a rhapsody of irony—malignant, terrible irony.

In addition to a new action against the paper, the government revenged
itself on Proudhon in its own way. He was transferred to a horrible
room—that is, given a far worse one than before: the window was half
boarded up so that nothing could be seen but the sky; no one was admitted
to see him, and a special guard was put at the door. And these measures,
unseemly for the correction of a naughty boy of sixteen, were taken seven
years ago against one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Men have grown
no wiser since the days of Socrates, no wiser since the days of Galileo;
they have only become more petty. This disrespect for genius, however, is
a new phenomenon that has reappeared during the last ten years. From the
time of the Renaissance talent has to some extent become a protection;
neither Spinoza nor Lessing was shut in a dark room or stood in a
corner. Such men are sometimes persecuted and killed, but they are not
humiliated in trivial ways; they are sent to the scaffold, but not to the
workhouse.

Bourgeois imperial France is fond of equality.

Though persecuted, Proudhon still struggled in his chains; he still made
an effort to bring out the _Voix du Peuple_ in 1850; but that attempt was
soon crushed. My guarantee money had been seized to the last farthing;
the one man in France who still had something to say had no choice but to
be silent.

The last time I saw Proudhon in Ste. Pélagie, I was being turned out
of France, while he still had two years of prison. We parted gloomily;
there was no trace of hope in the near future. Proudhon maintained a
concentrated silence, whilst I was boiling with vexation; we both had
many thoughts in our minds, but no desire to speak.

I had heard a great deal of his roughness, _rudesse_, and intolerance;
I never had any experience of it in my own case. What soft people call
his harshness was the tense muscle of the fighter; his scowling brow
showed only the intense workings of his mind: in his anger he reminded
me of a wrathful Luther or of Cromwell jeering at an opponent. He knew
that I understood him, and, knowing, too, how few did understand him,
appreciated it. He knew that he was considered an undemonstrative man;
and hearing from Michelet of the unhappy death of my mother and Kolya,
he wrote to me from Ste. Pélagie, among other things: ‘Is it possible
that fate should attack us on that side too? I cannot get over the shock
of this terrible accident. I love you, and carry your image deep here in
this heart which so many think is of stone.’

After that I did not see him:[83] in 1851, when, thanks to Léon Faucher,
I visited Paris for a few days, he had been sent away to some central
prison. A year later, when I was passing through Paris in secret,
Proudhon was ill at Besançon.

Proudhon had his weak spot, and there he was incorrigible; there the
limit of his character was reached, and, as is always the case, beyond it
he was a conservative and a follower of tradition. I am speaking of his
views of family life, and of the significance of woman in general. ‘How
lucky is our friend N.!’ Proudhon would say jestingly; ‘his wife is not
so stupid that she can’t make a good _pot-au-feu_, and not clever enough
to discuss his articles. That’s all that is wanted for domestic bliss.’

In this jest Proudhon expressed, laughing, what was the serious basis
of his views on woman. His conceptions of family relations were coarse
and reactionary, but they betrayed, not the bourgeois element of the
townsman, but rather the stubborn feeling of the rustic paterfamilias,
haughtily regarding woman as an inferior, and a servant, and himself as
the autocratic head of the family.

A year and a half after this was written, Proudhon published his great
work on _Justice in the Church and Revolution_.

This book, for which France, sunk into barbarism, condemned him again to
three years’ imprisonment, I read through attentively, and I closed the
third volume weighed down by gloomy thoughts.

It is a terrible ... terrible time!... The atmosphere of decomposition
stupefies the strongest....

This ‘brilliant fighter,’ too, could not resist it, and was broken: in
his last work I see the same controversial power, the same mighty stroke;
but it brings him now to preconceived results—it is no longer free in the
very fullest sense. Towards the end of the book I watched over Proudhon
as Kent watched over King Lear, expecting him to recover his reason, but
he talked more and more wildly—there were the same fits of intolerance,
of unbridled speech, as in Lear; and at the same time ‘_every inch_’
betrays talent, but ... a talent that is ‘_touched_’ ... and he runs
with the corpse, not of a daughter but of a mother, whom he takes to be
living.[84]

Latin thought, religious in its very negation, superstitious in doubt,
rejecting one set of authorities in the name of another, has rarely gone
further, rarely plunged more deeply _in medias res_ of reality, rarely
freed itself from all tangles, with such dialectic boldness and certainty
as in this book. In it, not only the crude dualism of religion but the
more subtle dualism of philosophy is cast off; the mind is set free not
only from heavenly phantoms but from those of the earth, it passes beyond
the sentimental apotheosis of humanity and the fatalism of progress, has
none of the everlasting litanies of brotherhood, democracy, and progress,
which are so pitifully wearisome in the midst of rancour and violence.
Proudhon sacrificed the idols and the language of revolution to the true
understanding of it, and put morality on its only real basis—the heart of
man, recognising no idols, nothing but reason, ‘if it.’

And after all that, the great iconoclast was frightened of human nature
being set free; for, having freed it abstractly, he fell back again
into metaphysics, endowed it with _incredible will_, could not manage
it, and led it to be immolated on the altar of the cold, inhuman God of
_justice_—the God of equilibrium, of stillness and peace, the God of the
Brahmins, who seek to lose all that is personal and to be dissolved, to
come to rest in an infinite ocean of annihilation.

On the empty altar scales were set up. This would be a new Caudine Forks
for humanity.

The ‘justice’ which is his goal is not even the artistic harmony of
Plato’s Republic, the elegant equilibrium of passion and sacrifice; the
Gallic tribune takes nothing from ‘anarchic and frivolous Greece’; he
stoically tramples personal feelings under foot, and does not seek to
harmonise them with the demands of the family and the commune. His ‘free
man’ is a sentry on guard, and a workman who can never rise; he must
serve and stand on guard until he is relieved by death; he must stifle
in himself all personal passion, everything outside duty, because he is
not himself: his meaning, his essence, lies outside himself; he is the
instrument of justice; he is predestined, like the Virgin Mary, to bear
the idea in suffering and to bring it into the world for the salvation of
the state.

The family, the first embryo of society, the first cradle of justice,
is doomed to everlasting, hopeless toil; it is to serve as the means of
purification of the personal; in it the passions are to be stamped out.
The austere Roman family in the workshop of to-day is Proudhon’s ideal.
Christianity has softened family life too much for him: it preferred Mary
to Martha, the dreamer to the housewife: it forgave the sinner and held
out a hand to the penitent, because she loved much; but in Proudhon’s
family, just what is essential is to love little. And that is not all:
Christianity puts the individual far higher than his family relations.
It says to the son: ‘Forsake father and mother and follow me’—to the son
who in the name of Proudhon’s _realisation of justice_ must be put back
into the fetters of absolute paternal power, who in his father’s lifetime
can have no freedom, least of all in the choice of a wife. He is to be
inured to slavery, to become in his turn a tyrant over the children who
are born without love through duty for the continuation of the family. In
this family marriage will be indissoluble, but it will be cold as ice.
Marriage is simply a victory over love; the less love there is between
the cook-wife and the workman-husband the better. And to think that I
should meet these old shabby bogeys from the Hegelianism of the right
wing in the writings of Proudhon!

Feeling is banished, everything is frozen, the colours are gone, nothing
is left but the dull, exhausting toil of the proletariat of to-day,
the toil from which the aristocratic family of ancient Rome, based on
slavery, was at least free: gone is the poetic beauty of the Church,
the delirium of faith, the hopes of paradise; even poetry in those days
‘will be written no more,’ so Proudhon asserts. On the other hand,
labour will become ‘more severe.’ For individual freedom, for the right
of initiative, for independence, one may well sacrifice the lullabys of
religion; but to sacrifice everything for the realisation of the idea of
justice—what nonsense!

Man is doomed to toil, he must labour till his hand drops and the son
takes from the cold fingers of the father the plane or the hammer and
carries on the everlasting work. But what if among the sons there happens
to be one with a little more sense who lays down the drill and asks: ‘But
what are we wearing ourselves out for?’ ‘For the triumph of justice,’
Proudhon tells him. And the new Cain answers: ‘But who made me the keeper
of the triumph of justice?’ ‘Who?—why, is not your whole vocation, your
whole life, the realisation of justice?’ ‘Who has set up that object?’
Cain will answer. ‘It is too stale; there is no God, but the Commandments
remain. Justice is not my vocation; work is not a duty but a necessity;
the family is not for me the fetters of life but the setting for my life,
for my development. You want to keep me in slavery, but I rebel against
you. I revolt against you, against your steel-yard, just as you have been
revolting all your life against bayonets, capital, and Church, just as
all the French revolutionists rebelled against the feudal and Catholic
tradition. Or do you imagine that after the taking of the Bastille,
after the terror, after the war and the famine, after the bourgeois
king and the bourgeois republic, I am going to believe you when you
tell me that Romeo had no right to love Juliet because those old fools
of Montagues and Capulets kept up an everlasting feud, and that, even
at thirty or forty, I must not choose the companion of my life without
my father’s permission, that a woman who has been unfaithful must be
punished and disgraced? Why, what do you take me for with your justice?’

And in support of Cain we would add, from the dialectical side, that
Proudhon’s whole conception of an _aim_ is utterly inconsistent. This
teleology is also theology; this is the republic of February—that is, the
same as the monarchy of July, but without Louis-Philippe. What difference
is there between predetermined teleology and providence?[85]

After emancipating human nature to the last limit, Proudhon took
fright looking at his contemporaries, and, that these convicts, these
_ticket-of-leave men_, might do no mischief, he catches them in the
rat-trap of the Roman family.

The doors of the restored _atrium_, free from _Lares_ and _Penates_,
have been flung open; but not Anarchy, not the annihilation of authority
and the state, is seen seated in the midst, but stern Order, with
centralisation, with regulation of family relations, with inheritance
and deprivation of it as a punishment; and with these things all the old
Roman sins peep out of every crevice with the dead eyes of statues.

The family of antiquity naturally implies the ancient conception of the
fatherland with its jealous patriotism, that ferocious virtue which has
shed ten times more blood than all the vices put together.

Man bound in serfdom to the family becomes again the bondslave of the
soil. His movements are restricted, he puts down roots into his land;
only upon it he is what he is: ‘the Frenchman living in Russia,’ says
Proudhon, ‘is a Russian, and not a Frenchman.’ No more colonies, no more
settlements abroad; every man must live where he is....

‘Holland will not perish,’ said William of Orange in the years of terror;
‘it will go aboard ships and will sail off to Asia, and here we will lift
up the sluices.’ It is people like that who are free.

The English are like that: as soon as they begin to be oppressed, they
sail over the ocean and there found a younger, freer England. And yet
nobody could say of the English that they do not love their country, or
that they are lacking in national feeling. Emigrating in all directions,
England has peopled half the world; while France, lacking in vitality,
has lost one set of colonies and does not know what to do with the rest.
She does not need them; France is pleased with herself and clings more
and more to her centre, and the centre to its master. What independence
can there be in such a country?

On the other hand, how can one abandon France, _la belle France_? ‘Is
not she even now the freest country in the world, is not her language
the finest language, her literature the finest literature, is not her
syllabic line more musical than the Greek hexameter!’ Moreover, her
universal genius absorbs the thought and the literature of all ages and
all countries: ‘has not France made Shakespeare and Kant, Goethe and
Hegel her own?’ And what is more: Proudhon forgot that they corrected
them and dressed them up, as landowners dress up the peasants when they
take them to Court.

Proudhon concludes his book with a Catholic prayer adapted to socialism;
all he had to do was to secularise a few Church phrases and to put
the Phrygian cap in the place of the mitre, for the prayer of the
‘Byzantine’ bishops to be the very thing for the bishop of socialism.
What a chaos! Proudhon, emancipated from everything except reason, still
wants to remain not only a husband after the style of Bluebeard, but also
a French nationalist—with his literary chauvinism and his unlimited power
of the father; and so behind the strong, vigorous words of a free thinker
one seems to hear the voice of the savage old man, dictating his will,
and trying now to preserve for his children the decrepit temple he has
been undermining all his life.

The Latin world does not like freedom, it only likes to struggle for it;
it sometimes finds the force for setting free, never for freedom. Is it
not melancholy to see such men as Auguste Comte and Proudhon setting up
as their last word, the one a sort of mandarin hierarchy, the other his
domestic penal servitude and apotheosis of an inhuman _pereat mundus,
fiat justitia_!




Appendix

(To Chapter 41)


I

... On the one hand we have the Proudhon family, irrevocably welded
together and nailed down, indissoluble marriage, the absolute power of
the father—a family in which for the sake of society all the persons
except one are brought to misery, the savage marriage in which unchanging
feeling, the magic power of a vow, are assumed; on the other hand, the
theories that are coming into vogue, in which marriage and the family are
no longer binding, the irresistible force of passion is assumed, the past
is thought to lay no obligations, and the complete independence of the
individual is asserted.

On the one hand we have woman almost stoned for faithlessness; on the
other, jealousy itself put _hors la loi_ as a morbid, abnormal feeling of
egoism and ownership and the romantic distortion of healthy and natural
ideas.

Where is the truth ... where is the middle line? Twenty-three years ago I
was already seeking a way out of this forest of contradictions.

We are bold in denial and always ready to fling any of our idols into
the river, but the gods of home and family are somehow ‘waterproof’—they
always rise again. Perhaps there is no sense left in them, but there is
still life in them; it seems as though the weapons used against them have
simply glided over their snaky scales, felled them, stunned them ... but
have not killed them.

Jealousy ... Fidelity ... Infidelity ... Chastity ... Dark forces,
menacing words, thanks to which rivers of tears, rivers of blood have
flowed—words that set us shuddering like the memory of the Inquisition,
of torture, of the plague ... and yet they are the words under the
shadow of which, as under the sword of Damocles, the family has lived and
is living.

There is no turning them out of doors by abuse or by denial. They remain
round the corner, slumbering, ready at the slightest call to ruin
everything near and far, to ruin us ourselves....

It seems as though we must abandon the excellent intention of
extinguishing these smouldering embers and confine ourselves humbly to
mitigating and humanely directing the destructive fire. You can no more
bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law-courts.
Passions are facts and not dogmas.

Moreover, jealousy has always enjoyed special privileges. In itself a
strong _absolutely natural_ passion, it has hitherto only been encouraged
instead of being restrained and softened. The Christian doctrine making,
through hatred of the body, everything fleshly of extraordinary value,
and the aristocratic worship of blood, of purity of race, have developed
to the point of absurdity the conception of insulted honour, of a blot
that cannot be effaced. Jealousy has received the _jus gladii_, the
right of judgment and revenge. It has become a duty of _honour_, almost
a virtue. All that will not stand a moment’s criticism—but yet there
still remains at the bottom of the heart a very real insurmountable
feeling of pain, of unhappiness called jealousy, a feeling as elementary
as the feeling of love itself, resisting every effort to deny it, an
‘irreducible’ feeling.

... Here again are the everlasting limits, the Caudine Forks into which
history drives us. On both sides there is truth, on both there is
falsehood. The bold asking for a clear alternative will lead you nowhere.
At the moment of complete denial of one of the terms, it comes back—just
as after the last quarter of the moon the first appears on the other side.

Hegel removed the boundary-posts of human reason, by rising
to the _absolute spirit_; in it they did not vanish but were
_transformed_—_fulfilled_, as the German theological philosophy expresses
it: this is mysticism, philosophical theodicy, allegory, and reality
purposely mixed up. All religious reconciliations of the irreconcilable
are won by means of _redemption_—that is, by sacred transmutation, a
sacred deception, a solution which solves nothing but rests on faith. Can
anything be more opposite to free-will than necessity?—but by faith they
are easily reconciled. Man will accept without a murmur the justice of
punishment for an action which was pre-ordained.

Proudhon himself, in a different range of questions, was far more
humane than German philosophy. From economic contradictions he escapes
by the recognition of both sides under the restraint of a higher
principle. Property as a right and property as a theft are set side by
side in everlasting balance, everlastingly complementary, under the
ever-growing dominance of _justice_. It is clear that the argument and
the contradictions are transferred to another sphere, and that it is the
conception of justice we have to criticise rather than the rights of
property.

The simpler, the less mystic, and the less one-sided, the more real and
practically applicable the higher principle is, the more completely it
brings the contradictory terms to their lowest denomination.

The absolute, ‘all-embracing’ spirit of Hegel is replaced in Proudhon
by the menacing idea of justice. But the problem of the passions is not
likely to be solved by that either. Passion is intrinsically unjust;
justice is remote from the personal, it is impersonal—passion is only
individual.

The solution here lies not in the law-courts but in the humane
development of individual character, in its escape from lyrical
self-centredness into the light of day, in the development of common
human interests.

The radical elimination of jealousy implies eliminating love for the
individual, replacing it by love for woman or for man, by love of the
sex in general. But it is just the personal, the individual, that is
attractive; it is just that which gives colour, tone, intensity to the
whole of our life. Our emotion is personal, our happiness and unhappiness
are personal happiness and unhappiness.

Rationalism with all its logic is as little comfort in personal sorrow as
the consolations of the Romans with their rhetoric. Neither the tears of
loss nor the tears of jealousy can be wiped away, nor should they be, but
it is right and possible that they should flow humanely ... and that they
should be equally free from monastic poison, the ferocity of the beast,
and the wail of the man robbed of his property.[86]


II

To reduce the relations of man and woman to a casual sexual connection
is just as impossible as to exalt and distort them into marriage
indissoluble to the grave. The one and the other may be met at the
extreme of sexual and marriage relations, as a special case, as an
exception but not as a general rule. The casual relation will be broken
off or will continually tend to a closer and firmer union, just as the
indissoluble marriage will tend to grow more and more free from external
bonds.

People have continually protested against both extremes. Indissoluble
marriage has been accepted by them hypocritically, or in the heat of the
moment. Casual relations never have had complete recognition; they have
always been concealed, just as marriage has been a subject of boasting.
All attempts at the official regulation of brothels, although aiming at
their restriction, are offensive to the moral sense of society, which
sees in organisation, recognition. The scheme elaborated by a gentleman
in Paris, in the days of the Directorate, of establishing privileged
brothels with their own hierarchy and to on, was even in those days
received with hisses and overwhelmed by a storm of laughter and contempt.

The normal life of man is as remote from the monastery as from the
cattle-yard; from the sexlessness of the monk, which the Church esteems
above marriage, as from the childless gratification of passion....

Marriage is for Christianity a concession, an inconsistency, a weakness.
Christianity regards marriage as society regards concubinage. The monk
and the Catholic priest are condemned to perpetual celibacy by way of
reward for their foolish triumph over human nature.

Christian marriage in general is gloomy and unjust; it establishes
inequality against the teaching of the Gospel, and delivers the wife
into slavery to the husband. The wife is sacrificed, love (hateful
to the Church) is sacrificed; after the Church ceremony it becomes a
superfluity, and is replaced by duty and obligation. Of the brightest and
most joyous of feelings Christianity has made a pain, a weariness, and a
sin. The human race had either to die out or be inconsistent. Outraged
nature protested.

It protested not only by acts followed by penitence and stings of
conscience, but by sympathy, by rehabilitation. The protest began in
the very heyday of Catholicism and chivalry. The terrible husband, the
Bluebeard in armour with the sword, tyrannical, jealous, and merciless;
the barefoot monk, sullen, senseless, superstitious, ready to avenge
himself for his privations, for his useless struggle; jailers, torturers,
spies, ... and in some cellar or turret a sobbing woman, a page in
chains, for whom no one intercedes. All is darkness, savagery, blood,
bigotry, violence, and Latin prayers chanted through the nose.

But behind the monk, the confessor, and the jailer, who, with the
terrible husband, the father, and the brother, guard the sanctity of
marriage, the folk-legend is forming in the stillness, the ballad is
heard carried from place to place, from castle to castle, by troubadour
and minnesinger—it champions the unhappy woman. The judge condemns,
and the song absolves. The Church hurls its anathema at love outside
marriage, the ballad curses marriage without love. It champions the
love-sick page, the fallen wife, the oppressed daughter, not by argument
but by sympathy, by pity, by lamentation. The song is for the people its
secular prayer, its other escape from the cold and hunger of life, from
spiritual misery and heavy toil.

On holidays the litanies to the Madonna were replaced by the mournful
strains _des complaintes_, which did not heap shame on the unhappy
woman, but wept for her, and set above all the Virgin of Sorrows,
beseeching Her intervention and forgiveness. From ballads and legends
the protest grows into the novel and the drama. In the drama it becomes
a force. In the theatre outraged love, the gloomy secrets of family
injustice, find their tribune, their court of appeal. The hearing of
their case has moved thousands of hearts, wringing tears and cries of
indignation against the serfdom of marriage and the forcible bondage of
the family. The jury of the stalls and the boxes have over and over again
acquitted individuals and found institutions guilty.

Meanwhile, in the period of political reconstructions and secular
tendencies in thought, one of the two strong props of marriage is
beginning to break down. As it becomes less and less of a sacrament—that
is, loses its ultimate foundation—it has leaned more and more on the
police. Only by the mystic intervention of a higher power can Christian
marriage be justified. There is a certain logic in that, senseless,
but still logic. The police-officer, putting on his tricolor scarf and
celebrating the wedding with the civil code in his hand, is a far more
absurd figure than the priest in his vestments, surrounded by incense,
holy images, and miracles. Even the First Consul, Napoleon, the most
bourgeois politician in matters of love and the family, perceived that
marriage at the police-station was a poor affair, and tried to persuade
Cambacérès[87] to add some obligatory phrase, some moral sentence,
particularly one that would impress upon the bride her duty to be
faithful to her husband (not a word about his) and to obey him.

As soon as marriage emerges from the sphere of mysticism, it
becomes _expédient_, an external arrangement. It was introduced
by the panic-stricken ‘Bluebeards’ (shaven nowadays, and changed
into ‘blue-chins’) in judges’ wigs, and academic coats, popular
representatives and liberals, the priests of the civil code. Civil
marriage is simply a state measure of economy, freeing the state from
responsibility for the children and binding men more closely to property.
Marriage without the intervention of the Church became a contract for
the bodily enslavement of each to the other for life. The legislator
has nothing to do with faith, with mystic fantasies, so long as the
contract is fulfilled, and if not he will find means of punishment and
enforcement. And why not punish it? In England, the traditional country
of juridical development, a boy of sixteen, made drunk with ale and gin
and enrolled in a regiment by an old recruiting sergeant with red ribbons
on his hat, is subjected to the most horrible tortures. Why not punish a
girl? Why not punish with shame, ruin, and forcible restoration to her
master the girl who, with no clear understanding of what she is about,
has contracted to love for life, and has permitted something _extra_,
forgetting that the season-ticket is not transferable. But these new
Bluebeards too have been attacked by the troubadours and novelists.
Against the marriage of legal contract, a pathological, physiological
dogma has been set up, the dogma of _the absolute infallibility of the
passions and the incapacity of man to struggle against them_.

Those who were yesterday the slaves of marriage are now becoming the
slaves of love. There is no law for love, there is no strength that can
resist it.

With that, all rational control, all responsibility, every form of
self-restraint is effaced. That man is in subjection to irresistible and
overwhelming forces is a theory utterly opposed to rational freedom and
to reason, to that formation of the character of a free man which all
social theories aim at attaining by different paths.

Imaginary forces, if men accept them as real, have as much power as real
ones, and that is because man’s power of response is the same whatever
force acts on him. The man who is afraid of ghosts is afraid in exactly
the same way as the man who is afraid of mad dogs, and may as easily die
of fright. The difference is that in one case the man may be shown that
his fears are groundless, and in the other he cannot.

I refuse to admit the sovereign position given to _love_ in life, I deny
its autocratic power and protest against the pusillanimous excuse of
having been carried away by it.

Surely we have not freed ourselves from every restraint on earth, from
God and the devil, from the Roman and the criminal law, and proclaimed
reason as our sole guide and standard, in order to lie down humbly, like
Hercules at the feet of Omphale, or to fall asleep in the lap of Delilah?
Surely woman has not sought to be free from the yoke of the family,
from perpetual tutelage and the tyranny of father, husband, or brother,
has not striven for her rights to independent work, to learning and the
position of a citizen, only to begin over again cooing like a dove all
her life and pining for a dozen Leone Leonis[88] instead of one.

Yes, it is for woman that I am most of all sorry in this question;
she is hopelessly torn and destroyed by the all-devouring Moloch of
love. She puts more faith in it, she suffers more from it. She is more
concentrated on the sexual relation, more driven to love.... She is both
intellectually more unstable and intellectually less trained than we.

I am sorry for her.


III

Has any one made a serious and honest attempt to break down conventional
prejudices in female education? They are only broken down by experience,
and so it is life and not convention that suffers.

People go round the questions we are discussing, as old women and
children go round a graveyard or a place where a crime has been
committed. Some are afraid of impure spirits, others of the pure truth,
and are left in fantastic disorder and inconsistent chaos. There is
as little serious consistency in our view of sexual relations as in
practical spheres. We are still haunted by the possibility of combining
Christian morality, which starts from negation of the flesh and leads
towards the other world, with the realistic earthly morality of this
world. People are annoyed at the two moralities not harmonising, and,
to avoid spending time in worrying over the solution of the problem,
pick out according to their tastes and retain what they like of the
Church teaching, and reject what they do not care for; just as those
who do not keep the fasts will zealously eat pancakes, and avoid dull
religious services, whilst still observing religious festivities. Yet I
should have thought it was high time to bring more harmony and manliness
into conduct. Let him who respects the law remain under the law and not
break it, but let him who does not accept it show himself openly and
consciously independent of it.

A sober view of human relations is far more difficult for women than for
us—of that there can be no doubt; they are more deceived by education,
and know less of life, and so they more often stumble and break their
heads and hearts than free themselves. They are always in revolt, and
remain in slavery, strive for revolution, while most frequently they are
propping up the existing regime. From childhood the girl is frightened of
the sexual relation as of some _fearful unclean secret_ from which she
is guarded and scared off as though it were a sin that had some magical
power; and afterwards this same monstrous thing, this same _magnum
ignotum_ which leaves an ineffaceable stain, the remotest hint at which
is shameful and sets her blushing, is made the object of her life. As
soon as a boy can walk, he is given a toy sword to train him to murder,
he is promised an hussar’s uniform and epaulettes; while the girl is
lulled to sleep with the hope of a rich and handsome bridegroom, and she
dreams of epaulettes not on her own shoulders but on the shoulders of her
predestined husband.

    ‘Dors, dors, mon enfant,
    Jusqu’à l’age de quinze ans,
    A quinze ans faut te réveiller,
    A quinze ans faut te marier.’

One must marvel at the fine human nature which is not ruined by such an
education—we might have expected that all the little girls so lulled for
fifteen years would set to work speedily to replace those slain by the
boys who have been trained from childhood with weapons of slaughter.

The Christian teaching imposes the terror of the ‘flesh’ before the
creature is conscious of its sex; it awakens the dreadful question in
the child, instils terror into the adolescent soul, and when the time to
answer it is come—another doctrine, as we have said, raises her sexual
calling to the sought-for ideal for the girl: the schoolgirl becomes the
bride, and the same mystery, the same sin but purified and sanctified,
becomes the crown of her education, the hope of her relations, the goal
of all her efforts, almost a social duty. Accomplishments, learning,
education, intelligence, beauty, wealth, grace, all are devoted to her
_sanctioned_ fall ... to the very same sin, the thought of which was
looked on as a crime but which has now changed its essential nature by a
miracle like that by which the Pope, when held up on a journey, changed a
meat dish into a Lenten dish by his blessing.

In short, the whole training—negative and positive—of a woman remains
a training for sexual relations; round them all her subsequent life
turns. From them she runs, towards them she runs, by them is disgraced,
by them is made proud.... To-day she preserves the negative holiness of
sexlessness, to-day she can only whisper, blushing, of love to her bosom
friend; to-morrow, in the face of the crowd, in glare and noise, in the
light of chandeliers and strains of music, she is flung into the arms of
a man.

Bride, wife, mother, only in old age as grandmother a woman is set free
from sexual life, and then becomes an independent creature, especially
if the grandfather is dead. Woman, struck down by love, does not soon
escape.... Pregnancy, suckling, child-rearing are all the development of
the same mystery, the same act of love; in woman it persists not in the
memory only, but in blood and body, in her it ferments and matures and
rends without breaking its tie.

Christianity breathed with its feverish monastic asceticism, with its
romantic nonsense, upon this physiologically strong, deep relation, and
blew it into the frenzied and destructive flames of jealousy, revenge,
punishment, and insult.

For a woman to extricate herself from this chaos is an heroic feat—only
rare and exceptional natures accomplish it; other women are tortured, and
if they do not go out of their minds it is only thanks to the frivolity
with which we all live without over-subtlety in the face of terrible
catastrophes and misfortunes, senselessly passing from day to day, from
one chance event to another and from one contradiction to another.

What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there
must be in a woman to get over all the fences, all the barriers, within
which she is held captive!

I have seen one such struggle and one such victory....




Chapter 42

THE COUP D’ÉTAT—THE PROCUREUR OF THE LATE REPUBLIC—THE VOICE OF THE COW
IN THE WILDERNESS—BANISHMENT OF THE PROCUREUR—ORDER AND CIVILISATION
TRIUMPHANT


‘Vive la mort, _friends! And a happy new year! Now we shall be
consistent, now we shall not be false to our own ideas, shall not be
terrified at the realisation of what we have foreseen, shall not abjure
the knowledge we have reached by the path of tribulation. Now we shall be
strong and stand up for our convictions._

‘_We saw death approaching long ago; we may grieve, we may feel sympathy,
but we cannot be surprised, we cannot be despairing or downcast. Quite
the contrary, we ought to lift up our heads, we are justified. We have
been called birds of ill omen invoking disaster, we have been reproached
for heresy, for ignorance of the people, for proud isolation, for
childish resentment, while we have only been guilty of seeing the truth
and speaking it openly. Our words, which are still the same, are now the
consolation, the encouragement of those who are terrified by the events
in Paris._’—(‘Letters from France and Italy,’ No. 14. Nice, December 31,
1851.)

One morning (I remember it was the 4th of December) our cook, Pasquale
Rocca, came in to me, and with a look of pleasure announced that
flysheets were being sold in the streets with the news that ‘Buonaparte
has dismissed the Assembly and appointed a red government.’ Who were the
zealous servants of Napoleon who spread such rumours among the people
even outside France (Nice was at that time Italian), I do not know; but
what numbers there must have been of agents of all sorts, political
stokers, whipping the public up end raising the temperature, since there
were enough of them even for Nice!

An hour later Vogt, Hoetsky, Mathieu, and others turned up: all were
surprised ... Mathieu, a typical specimen of a French revolutionary, was
beside himself.

Bald, with a skull the shape of a walnut—that is, a typically Gallic
skull, not spacious but obstinate—with a big, dark, unkempt beard, a
rather good-natured expression, and little eyes, Mathieu was like a
prophet, like a crazy saint, like an augur, and like his bird. He was
a lawyer, and in the happy days of the February republic had been a
_procureur_ or a deputy _procureur_ somewhere. He was a revolutionary to
the tips of his finger-nails; he gave himself up to the revolution as
people give themselves up to religion, with implicit faith, never dared
either to understand or to doubt or to be over-subtle, but loved and
believed, called Ledru-Rollin ‘Ledru,’ and Louis Blanc simply ‘Blanc,’
used the word _citoyen_ whenever he could, and was perpetually conspiring.

On receiving the news of the 2nd of December he disappeared, and returned
two days later completely convinced that France was rising, _que cela
chauffe_, and especially in the south, in the department of Var near
Draguignan. The great thing to be done was to enter into relations with
the leaders of the insurrection.... He had seen some of them, and had
settled with them overnight, passing through Var, to collect trustworthy
and important persons together at a certain spot, for consultation....
But that the gendarmes might not get wind of it, it was settled on both
sides to give as a signal the moo of a cow. If things went well, Orsini
meant to bring all his friends, and, though not quite confident that
Mathieu’s view of the position was correct, he set off with him to cross
the frontier. Orsini came back shaking his head, though, true to his
revolutionary and somewhat _condottieri_ temperament, he proceeded to
prepare his comrades and collect arms. Mathieu vanished.

Twenty-four hours later, Rocca woke me at four o’clock in the morning:
‘Two gentlemen just arrived from a journey; they urgently want to see
you, they say. One of them gave me this note.’ ‘_Citoyen_, for God’s sake
give bearer three or four hundred francs at once, if possible; urgently
necessary.—MATHIEU.’

I snatched up the money and went downstairs: two remarkable individuals
were sitting in the half-dark by the window; accustomed as I am to all
the uniforms of revolution, I was yet struck by the appearance of my
visitors. Both were covered with mud and clay to their knees; one was
wearing a thick red woollen scarf; both had shabby overcoats, a sash
round their waistcoats, and big pistols in the sash; and the rest was as
usual—unkempt shocks of hair, big beards, and tiny pipes. One of them,
beginning with the word _citoyen_, delivered a speech in which he touched
upon my civic virtues and the money expected by Mathieu. I gave him the
money. ‘Is he in safety?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ answered his ambassador; ‘we’re
going to join him at once on the other side of the Var. He is buying a
boat.’

‘A boat! what for?’

‘Citoyen Mathieu has the whole plan for landing—the infamous coward of a
boatman would not let us have the boat on credit....’

‘What, a landing in France ... with one boat...?’

‘It is a secret, _citoyen_, for the time.’

‘_Comme de raison._’

‘Would you like a receipt?’

‘Oh, no need of that!’

Next day Mathieu himself appeared, also muddy to the ears, and worn out
with fatigue; he had been mooing like a cow all night, had several times
fancied he heard an answer, went towards it, and found a real bull or a
cow. Orsini, who had been waiting somewhere for him for ten hours at a
stretch, also came back. The difference between them was that Orsini,
washed, and as always, dressed neatly and tastefully, looked like a
man who had just walked out of his bedroom; while Mathieu bore all the
outward signs of destroying the peace of the state, and attempting to
raise a rebellion. Then the boat question had to be considered. Trouble
is never far off, and he might easily ruin half a dozen of his own
countrymen and half a dozen of the Italians. To stop or dissuade him was
impossible. The leaders who had come to me in the night appeared with
him; one might be certain that he would compromise not only the French
but all of us in Nice. Hoetsky undertook to manage him, and did so like
an artist.

Hoetsky’s window, with a little balcony, looked straight out on the
sea-shore. In the morning he saw Mathieu wandering with a mysterious air
along the beach.... Hoetsky began making signs to him; Mathieu saw them
and signed that he would come to him presently; but Hoetsky, assuming
an air of the most terrible alarm, telegraphed to him with his fingers
that danger was imminent, and insisted on his coming up to the balcony at
once. Mathieu, looking round him, stole up on tiptoe. ‘You don’t know?’
Hoetsky asked him. ‘What?’ ‘A squadron of French gendarmes has come into
Nice.’ ‘You don’t say so!’

‘Sh—sh—sh.... They are looking for you and your friends. They mean to
make a house-to-house search among us—you will be caught at once; don’t
go out into the street.’

‘_Violation du territoire_ ... I shall protest.’

‘Of course; only, now you must escape.’

‘I will go to Ste. Hélène, to Herzen’s.’

‘You must be mad! That’s simply giving yourself up to them. His villa is
on the frontier, with a huge garden, and no one will even know that you
have been arrested—besides, Rocca saw two gendarmes at the gate, even
yesterday.’

Mathieu sank into thought.

‘Go by sea to Vogt’s, hide there for the time, and he, by the way, will
give you the best advice.’

Mathieu went by the sea-coast—that is, twice as far round—to Vogt’s,
and began telling him word for word his conversation with Hoetsky. Vogt
instantly grasped the position and observed to him: ‘The great thing,
dear Mathieu, is not to lose one instant. Within two hours you must go
to Turin: the diligence passes the other side of the hill; I will take a
seat, and take you there by the path.’

‘I’ll run home for my things ...’ and the _procureur_ of the republic was
a little flustered.

‘That’s even worse than going to Herzen’s. Why, you must be
crazy—gendarmes, agents, spies, I don’t know what, are after you ... and
you want to run home to kiss your fat Provençale! What a Celadon![89]
Porter!’ shouted Vogt (his house-porter was a minute German, a killing
person, very much like a coffee-pot that had not been washed for months,
and absolutely devoted to Vogt). ‘Make haste and write that you want a
shirt, handkerchiefs, clothes; he’ll fetch them, and if you like bring
your Dulcinea too so that you may kiss and weep to your heart’s content.’

Mathieu was so overcome with feeling that he embraced Vogt.

Hoetsky arrived. ‘Make haste, make haste!’ he said with an ominous air.

Meanwhile the porter came back, his Dulcinea came also—they had only to
wait for the diligence to come into sight beyond the hill. The seat had
been taken.

‘I suppose you are cutting up rotten dogs or rabbits again?’ Hoetsky
asked Vogt; ‘_quel chien de métier...!_’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Upon my soul, the stench in your room is like the catacombs at Naples.’

‘I notice it myself, but I can’t make it out; it comes from the
corner.... There must be a dead rat under the floor—it’s an awful stink,’
and he picked up Mathieu’s overcoat lying on a chair. It appeared that
the smell came from the overcoat.

‘What the devil have you got in your overcoat?’ Vogt asked him.

‘Nothing!’

‘Oh, it must be my fault,’ observed Dulcinea, blushing, ‘I put a pound of
Limburg cheese, _un peu trop fait_, in his pocket for the journey.’

‘I congratulate your neighbours in the diligence,’ shouted Vogt, laughing
as no one else in the world can laugh.

‘Well, it’s time to start—march!’

And Hoetsky and Vogt saw the agitator off on his way to Turin.

In Turin Mathieu presented himself before the Minister of the Interior
with a protest. The latter received him with irritation and laughter.
‘How could you imagine that French gendarmes could arrest people in the
kingdom of Sardinia? You must be unwell.’

Mathieu referred to the testimony of Vogt and Hoetsky.

‘Your friends,’ said the Minister, ‘have been having a joke at your
expense.’

Mathieu wrote to Vogt; he reeled off a string of nonsense, I do not know
what, in answer. But Mathieu was offended, particularly with Hoetsky, and
a few weeks later wrote a letter to me in which, among other things, he
said: ‘You, _citoyen_, alone among these gentlemen, took no part in this
treacherous intrigue against me....’

What adds to the characteristic oddity of the affair is that there was
a very serious rising in Var, that masses of the population really did
revolt, and that the rising was suppressed with the habitual French
bloodthirstiness. How was it Mathieu and his bodyguard, for all their
zeal and their mooing, did not know how to get in contact with the
rebels? No one suspects him or his comrades of intentionally going to
mess about in the mud and not wanting to go where there was danger—far
from it. That is not in the spirit of the French, of whom Delphine Gay
said that ‘they are afraid of everything except bullets,’ and still less
in the spirit _de la démocratie militante_ and the red republic.... Why
did Mathieu go to the right when the revolting peasants were on the left?

A few days later—like yellow leaves driven before the wind—the luckless
victims of the suppressed rising began streaming into Nice. There were
so many of them that the Piedmont government allowed them to remain for
a time in a sort of bivouac or gypsy camp near the town. How many ruined
fortunes and privations have we seen in these camps!—that is the horrible
side behind the scenes of civil wars; usually concealed behind the big
framework and gay scene-painting of such events as the 2nd of December.

Here were simple peasants, gloomily pining for home, for their land, and
naïvely saying: ‘We are not rebels at all—and not “_partageux_”; we tried
to defend public order as good citizens: _ce sont ces coquins_ who called
us out’ (_i.e._ the officials, mayors, and gendarmes)—‘they were false
to their oath and their duty, and must we now die of hunger in a foreign
land or face a court-martial?... Where’s the justice in that?’

And indeed, a _coup d’état_ like the 2nd of December destroys more than
men: it destroys all morality, every conception of good and evil in a
whole population; it is a lesson of corruption which cannot pass without
effect. Among them were soldiers too, _troupiers_, in a permanent state
of wonder at finding themselves, contrary to all discipline and their
captains’ orders, on a different side from their flag and their regiment.
The number of these was not great, however. There were also simple
bourgeois of humble means, who never make the same repulsive impression
on me as the more pretentious—pitiful, narrow-minded people, they had
somehow, in the midst of the petty cheating of trade, laboriously
assimilated two or three notions or half-notions of their duties, and
they had risen in defence of them when they saw their holy things
trampled upon.

‘It is the triumph of egoism,’ they said; ‘yes, yes, of egoism, and where
there is egoism there is vice; every one ought to do his duty without
egoism.’

There were, too, of course, town workmen, the real genuine element of
revolution, striving to obtain _la sociale_ by decree—and to pay out the
bourgeois and the aristocrat as they paid them out.

Of course, among them there were wounded, terribly wounded, too. I
remember two middle-aged peasants who had crawled, leaving a track of
blood, from the frontier to a suburb where the inhabitants picked them up
half dead. A gendarme had been chasing them, and, seeing the frontier was
not far off, he fired at one and shattered his shoulder.... The wounded
man still ran on.... The gendarme fired once more, the wounded man fell;
then he galloped after the other and overtook him, first with a bullet
and then himself. The second wounded man surrendered; the gendarme tied
him in haste to his horse, and all at once missed the first man ...
he had crawled to a copse and started running.... To overtake him on
horseback was difficult, especially with the other wounded man; to leave
the horse behind impossible.... The gendarme shot his prisoner ‘_à bout
portant_’ from the top of his head downwards; the man fell unconscious:
the bullet tore open the whole right side of his face, splintering the
bones. When he came to himself there was no one there; he made his way
along familiar paths trodden by the smugglers as far as Var, and crossed
it and passed through it almost bleeding to death; there he found his
comrade utterly exhausted, and with him succeeded in _surviving_ as
far as the first houses of Ste. Hélène. There, as I have said, the
inhabitants took care of them. The first man said that after being shot
he had hidden in some bushes, that afterwards he had heard voices, that
the pursuing gendarmes had probably come upon others and so made off.

How zealous are the French police!

This example was followed by the zealous _maires_ and their deputies,
the _procureurs_ of the _republic_ and prefects; the zeal was displayed
in the elections and counting of votes: all this was typically French,
and familiar to everybody. I will only say that in remote parts the
steps taken for attaining an immense majority at the polls were of a
rustic simplicity. On the farther side of the Var, in the first village,
the _maire_ and brigadier of gendarmes sat beside the urns and looked
at every ballot-paper any one put in, saying on the spot that they
would make mince-meat of any rebel. The government voting-papers were
printed on special paper—so it worked out that there were in the whole
village only some five or six bold, unruly spirits who voted against the
plebiscite; the rest, and with them the whole of France, voted for the
Empire _in spe_.




_SECTION TWO_

RUSSIAN SHADOWS


I

N. I. SAZONOV

Sazonov, Bakunin, Paris. Those names, those men, that city, take me back
... back into the far-away past, to the days of youthful conspiracies, to
the days of the cult of philosophy and the worship of revolution.

My youth with each is too precious for me not to pause over it.... With
Sazonov, early in the ’thirties, I shared our boyish dreams of a plot _à
la_ Rienzi ... with Bakunin, ten years later, in the sweat of my brains,
I mastered Hegel.

Of Bakunin I have spoken already and shall have much more yet to say.
His striking personality, his eccentric and vigorous appearance,
everywhere—in the circle of Moscow youth, in the lecture-room of the
Berlin University, among Weitling’s communists, and Caussidière’s
Montagnards—his speeches in Prague, his leadership in Dresden, his trial,
imprisonment, sentence to death, torture in Austria, deportation to
Russia—where he vanished behind the terrible walls of the Alexeyevsky
Ravelin—make of him one of those individual figures which neither the
contemporary world nor history can overlook.

That man had within him the latent power of a colossal activity for
which there was no demand. Bakunin was capable of becoming an agitator,
a tribune, a preacher, the head of a party or of a sect, an arch heretic
or a fighter. Put him down anywhere you like, at any extreme point—an
Anabaptist, a Jacobin, a comrade of Anacharsis Cloots or a friend of
Gracchus Babeuf—and he would have won over the masses and shaken the
destinies of nations.

    ‘But here under the yoke of Tsars,’

a Columbus without an America or a ship, after against his will
serving two years in the artillery and two more in the ranks of Moscow
Hegelianism, he made haste to leave the country in which an idea is
persecuted as an evil intention, and an independent word as an offence
against social morality.

After tearing himself from Russia in 1840, he did not return there until
a picket of Austrian dragoons handed him over to a Russian officer of
gendarmes in 1849.

The worshippers of teleology, the charming fatalists of rationalism, are
still surprised at the provident appropriateness with which great talents
and leaders appear as soon as there is a need for them; forgetting
how many germs perish, are stifled without seeing the light, how many
faculties and powers waste away because they are not wanted.

Sazonov’s example is still more striking. Sazonov has passed without
leaving a trace, and his death has been as unnoticed as the whole of his
life. He died without carrying out one of the hopes that his friends
built upon him.

It is easy to say he was to blame for his fate; but how can we weigh
or appraise how much of the blame rests on the man and how much on his
environment?

The age of Nicholas was a soul-destroying age; it murdered not only with
labour in the mines and ‘white straps,’ but with its stifling, degrading
atmosphere, with its, so to say, negative blows.

To deliver the funeral oration over the submerged beings of that period,
worn out with striving to drag our ship off the sandbanks where it has
foundered so deeply, is my speciality. For them I play the part of
Domazhirov, the old retired orderly of Prozorovsky’s, now forgotten by
everybody, but at one time a familiar figure in Moscow. With a powdered
head, wearing a light green uniform of the days of Paul, he used to turn
up at all the funerals in which a bishop officiated, and, taking the
foremost place, led the procession, imagining that he was doing something
important.

... In our second year at the university—that is, in the autumn of
1831—in the lecture-room of the faculty of physics and mathematics,
Ogaryov and I met, among our new comrades, two with whom we became
particularly intimate.

Our likings, our sympathies and antipathies, were all derived from the
same source. We were fanatics and lads: learning, art, connections, home,
and social position, everything was subordinated to one idea and one
religion. Wherever there was an opening for appeal and propaganda, there
we were on the spot with all our heart and understanding, persistently,
indefatigably, devoting time, work, and even efforts to please.

We went into the lecture-room with the firm determination of founding
in it the nucleus of a society in the image and semblance of the
Decembrists, and so sought proselytes and followers. The first of our
comrades to understand this clearly was Sazonov; we found him completely
prepared, and at once made friends. He gave us his hand with full
understanding, and next day brought us another student.

Sazonov had conspicuous gifts and conspicuous pride. He was eighteen or
rather less, but in spite of that he had studied a great deal and had
read everything in the world. He tried to dominate his comrades, and put
no one on a level with himself. That was why he was more respected than
loved by them. His friend, as handsome and soft as a girl, seemed asking
sympathy and support; full of love and devotion, fresh from under his
mother’s wing, with noble impulses and half-childish dreams, he longed
for warmth and tenderness, he clung to us and gave himself up entirely to
us and our idea—his was the character of Vladimir Lensky, the character
of Venevitinov.

... The day on which we sat side by side on one of the benches of the
amphitheatre, glanced at each other with the full consciousness of our
dedication to our league, our secret, our readiness to face death, our
faith in the sacredness of our cause—and glanced with loving pride at the
multitude of handsome young heads about us, as at a band of brothers—was
a great day in our life. We gave each other our hands and _à la lettre_
went out to preach freedom and struggle in all the four quarters of our
youthful ‘universe,’ like the four deacons who go on Easter Day with the
Four Gospels in their hands.

We preached in every place at every time ... exactly what it was we
preached it is hard to say. Our ideas were vague: we preached the
Decembrists and the French Revolution, then advocated St. Simonism
and the same revolution; we advocated a constitution and a republic,
the reading of political works and the concentration of forces in one
society. Most of all we preached hatred for every form of violence, for
every sort of arbitrary tyranny practised by governments.

Our society in reality was never formed; but our propaganda sent down
deep roots in all the faculties, and extended far beyond the university
walls.

Since those days our propaganda has gone on uninterrupted, all our lives,
from university lecture-room to London printing-press. Our whole life has
been the carrying out of our boyish programme as far as lay in our power.
It is not hard to follow the connecting thread through the questions we
have touched upon, through the interests aroused by us, in journals,
in lectures, in literary circles.... Though it took different forms
and developed, our propaganda remained true to itself and retained its
individual character in every surrounding.

Punishment lifted us up and gave us the prestige of prison and exile. We
came back to Moscow, ‘authorities’ at five-and-twenty. We were joined by
Byelinsky, Granovsky, and Bakunin, while through our articles in _Notes
on the Fatherland_ we ourselves joined the Petersburg movement of the
Lyceum students and the young literary men. The Petrashev group were our
younger brothers as the Decembrists were our elder ones. To be silent
about the importance of our circle because I belonged to it would be
hypocritical and stupid. Quite the contrary: whenever in my memoirs I
come upon those days, on old friends of the ’thirties and the ’forties, I
purposely pause and speak regardless of repetition if only I can make the
younger generation better acquainted with them. It does not know them,
it has forgotten them, it does not care for them, and denounces them as
unpractical and unbusinesslike, as men who did not know so well where
they were going; it is angry with them, and rejects them wholesale as out
of date, as idle and superfluous men, as fantastic dreamers, forgetting
that the value of men of the past, their significance and the hall-mark
of them, depends less on the comparison of the sum of knowledge, and
the manner of formulating problems of the old period and of the new,
than on the energy and strength they brought to their solution. I have
a desperate longing to save the younger generation from the ingratitude
of history, and even from the mistakes of history. It is time for the
fathers to cease devouring their children like Saturn, but it is time
for the children, too, to cease following the example of the natives of
Kamschatka, who kill off their old people.

Boldly, and with full conviction, I say once more of our comrades of
those days ‘that they were a wonderful set of young men, that such a
circle of talented, pure-hearted, cultured, intelligent, and devoted men
I have never met,’ and I have wandered pretty widely about the world
among all classes, and especially the revolutionary ones. I am not only
speaking of my own circle of intimate friends; I am bound to say the same
thing as emphatically of Stankevitch’s circle and the Slavophils. Young
men, horror-stricken by the infamies of the life about them, surrounded
by gloom and oppressive misery, gave up all and went in search of a way
out. They sacrificed everything that others strive after—social position,
wealth, everything which the traditional life offered them, to which
environment and example drew them, to which their family urged them—for
the sake of their convictions, and they remained true to them. Such men
cannot be simply put on the archives and forgotten.

They are persecuted, arrested, put under police supervision,
exiled, dragged from place to place, overwhelmed with insults and
humiliations—they remain the same: ten years pass—they are still the
same: twenty, thirty years pass—they are still the same. I demand that a
recognition be accorded them and justice be done to them.

To this simple demand I have heard a strange objection, and more than
once, too: ‘You, and even more the Decembristi, were the dilettanti
of revolutionary ideas; interest in the cause was for you a luxury,
something romantic; you say yourselves that you all _sacrificed_ social
position; you had means, so for you the revolution was not a question
of bread and butter and of human existence, the question of life and
death....’

‘I imagine,’ I answered once, ‘that for those who were executed it
was....’

‘Anyway, they were not momentous, inevitable questions for you. You like
to be revolutionaries, and that of course is better than if you like to
be senators or governors; for us the struggle with the existing order is
not a matter of choice, it is due to _our_ social position. Between you
and us there is the difference between the man who has fallen into the
water and the man who is bathing; both have to swim, but one does it from
necessity and the other for pleasure.’

To refuse recognition to men because they have done from inner impulse
what others _are going_ to do from necessity is remarkably like the
monastic asceticism which only attaches value to duties the fulfilment of
which is very disgusting.

Extreme views of this sort easily take root among us; and though the
roots do not go deep, they are as hard to eradicate as horse-radish.

We are greatly given to theoretical pedantry and argumentativeness.
This German propensity is in us associated with a special national
element—which we might call the Araktcheyev element—a ruthlessness, a
passionate rigidity, and an eagerness to despatch our victims. To satisfy
his grenadier ideal, Araktcheyev flogged living peasants to death; we
flog to death ideas, arts, humanity, past leaders, anything you like. In
dauntless array we advance step by step to the limit and overshoot it,
never sinning against logic but only against _truth_; unaware, we go on
further and further, forgetting that real sense and real understanding of
life are shown precisely in stopping short before the extreme ... that
is the _halte_ of moderation, of truth, of beauty, that is the perfect
balance of the organism.

The oligarchic pretension of the have-nots to be the exclusive sufferers
from the social system and to possess a monopoly of the feeling of social
injustice is as unjust as all forms of exclusiveness and monopoly.
Neither through Christian mercy nor through democratic envy will you
ever get beyond charity and violent spoliation, the division of property
and universal poverty. In the Church it has remained a theme for rhetoric
and a sentimental exercise in compassion; in the ultra-democrats, as
Proudhon has observed, it is confined to the feeling of envy and hatred;
and in neither case has it gone on to any constructive ideas, to any
practical result.

In what way are men to blame who understood the pain of the sufferers
before they themselves did, and showed it them, and, what was more, the
way of escape too? It was not through starvation that St. Simon the
descendant of Charlemagne, and Robert Owen the manufacturer, either of
them became apostles of socialism.

This view will not persist; it lacks warmth, goodness, breadth. I should
not have referred to it if these critics had not included on their black
lists, not only our names, but those of the men who sowed the first seeds
of all that has come up and will come up—the Decembrists whom we so
deeply honour.

This digression is hardly in place here.

Sazonov was, in fact, an idle man, and wasted immense abilities;
frittering his life away in all sorts of trivialities abroad, he was lost
like a soldier taken prisoner in his first battle and never able to get
home again.

When we were arrested in 1834 and clapped into prison, Sazonov and
Ketscher were, by some miracle, untouched. They both lived almost
uninterruptedly in Moscow, and talked a great deal but wrote little, and
no letters of theirs were found in the possession of any of us. We were
sent into exile; Sazonov’s mother succeeded in getting a passport for him
to go to Italy. His going abroad and being separated from us may have
laid the foundation of all that followed in his life, which was that of a
star with no fixed orbit, falling and leaving no trace.

A year later he returned to Moscow; it was just at one of the most
stifling and oppressive periods of the last reign. In Moscow he was met
by a dead level calm, nowhere a shade of sympathy, nowhere a word of
life. We, in the _reserves_ of exile, were cherishing our past life, were
living in hope and memory, were working and learning something of the
coarse realities of provincial existence.

In Moscow everything reminded Sazonov of our absence. Of his old friends,
the only one on the spot was Ketscher, with whom Sazonov, a man of stiff
and aristocratic manners, was less able to be intimate than with any
of the rest. Ketscher, as we have said, was an intellectual savage—a
cultured one, a pioneer from Fenimore Cooper, returning intentionally to
the primeval state of the human race, rude on principle, slovenly through
theory, a student of five-and-thirty in the part of a Schilleresque
youth. Sazonov struggled on and on in Moscow—he was consumed by boredom,
he had no motive for work, for activity. He tried moving to Petersburg;
that was even worse: _à la longue_ he could not stand it, and went to
Paris with no definite plan. Those were the days when France and Paris
still had a spell of magic for us. Our tourists glided over the polished
surface of French life, knowing nothing of its rough side, and were in
raptures over everything—over the liberal speeches, over the songs of
Béranger and the caricatures of Philipon. It was the same with Sazonov.
But he found nothing to do there either. Noisy, lively idleness succeeded
to his life of dumbness and oppression. In Russia he had been bound hand
and foot, here he was a stranger to every one and everything. Another
long series of years of aimless excitement and over-stimulated nerves
began for him in Paris. He was incapable of concentrating, of devoting
himself to intellectual work without waiting for some impelling force
from outside; it was not in his character. The impersonal interest in
science was not strong enough in him; he was looking for some activity,
and would have been ready for any amount of work so long as it was
conspicuous, so long as it could be rapidly applied and realised in
practice—and it must have been, too, with noise and acclamation, amidst
applause and the outcry of his enemies. Not finding such work, he flung
himself into the dissipations of Paris.

... Yet his eyes, too, glowed and filled with tears at the memories of
our dreams as students. In the recesses of his deeply wounded vanity
there still was faith that the revolution in Russia was close at hand,
and that he was called to play a great part in it. It seemed as though
he were carousing only _meanwhile_, in the wearisome suspense of waiting
for the great work before him, and were convinced that one fine evening
he would be summoned from the table in the Café Anglais and borne off
to govern Russia.... He kept intent watch on what was being done, and
impatiently awaited the moment when he would have to take part in earnest
and utter the last decisive word.

After my first noisy days in Paris, more serious conversation began,
and at once it was evident that we were tuned to very different keys.
Sazonov and Bakunin were (like Wysocki and the members of the Polish
Central Committee later on) displeased that the news I brought was more
concerning the literary and university world than political spheres. They
were expecting to be told about parties, secret societies, ministerial
crises (under Nicholas!), the opposition (in 1847!), while I talked about
professorships, about Granovsky’s public lectures, about Byelinsky’s
articles, about the state of mind of the students and even of the
seminarists. They had been too long divorced from Russian life, and had
entered too thoroughly into the interests of the ‘all-world’ revolution
and French problems to remember that among us the appearance of _Dead
Souls_ was an event of far more consequence than the appointment of a
couple of Paskevitches as field-marshals and a couple of Filarets as
metropolitans. With no Russian books and papers and no regular means of
communication, they judged of everything in Russia theoretically and from
memory, which throws an artificial light on everything far away.

The difference of our views almost led to a breach between us. It
happened like this. On the day before Byelinsky left Paris we saw him
home in the evening, and went for a walk in the Champs-Élysées. I saw
with terrible clearness that all was over for Byelinsky, that I was
pressing his hand for the last time. The mighty, passionate fighter had
burnt himself out, death had laid its unmistakable imprint on his face,
wan with suffering; he was in acute consumption, but still full of holy
energy and holy indignation, still full of his agonising, angry love
for Russia. I had a lump in my throat and for a long time I walked in
silence, when the unlucky argument which had been ten times already _sur
le tapis_ was renewed once more.

‘It is a pity,’ observed Sazonov, ‘that Byelinsky has had no career but
journalistic work, and under the censorship, too.’

‘I think it is hard to reproach him, of all people, for doing little,’ I
answered.

‘Well, with abilities like his he might in other circumstances and in
another field have done rather more....’

I felt vexed and wounded. ‘But do tell me, please, you now, who are
not under the censorship, who are so full of faith in yourselves, so
full of strength and talent, what have you done? Or what are you doing?
Surely you don’t imagine that walking from one end of Paris to the other
every day to discuss the boundaries of Poland and Russia with Sluzalski
or Chotkewicz is doing something? Or that your talks in cafés and at
home, where five fools listen and understand nothing, while another five
understand nothing and talk, is doing something?’

‘Wait a bit, wait a bit,’ said Sazonov, by now considerably nettled: ‘you
forget our position.’

‘What position? You have been living here for years in freedom, in no
dire extremity: what more do you want? Positions are created. Strong men
make themselves acknowledged and force themselves in. Come, come: one
critical article of Byelinsky’s is of far more value for the younger
generation than playing at being conspirators and politicians. You are
living in a sort of delirium and somnambulism, in a perpetual optical
illusion with which you deceive your own eyes....’

I was particularly irritated at the time by the two different standards
which not only Sazonov but Russians in general applied in appreciating
people. Their severe criticism of their own people was transformed into
slavish worship before French celebrities. It was annoying to see our
friends kow-tow before those champion babblers, who flung them a word,
a phrase, a commonplace, uttered with _vitesse accélérée_; and the more
meekly the Russians behaved, the more they blushed and tried to conceal
their idols’ ignorance (as tender parents and sensitive husbands do),
the more the latter gave themselves airs and swaggered before their
hyperborean Anarchases.[90]

Sazonov even as a student in Russia had been fond of surrounding
himself with a retinue of all sorts of mediocrities, who listened to
him and followed his lead; and here, too, he was surrounded by all
sorts of _lazzarone_ of the literary haunts, feeble in mind and body,
penny-a-liners, journalistic scavengers such as the gaunt Jules Vécourt,
the half-crazy Tardif de Melot, the unknown but great poet Bouilhet;[91]
in his chorus, too, were the most narrow-minded Poles, followers of
Towjanski, and dull-witted German atheists. How it was they did not bore
him is his secret. He almost always brought one or two attendants from
his chorus even when he came to me, although I was always bored by them
and did not conceal the fact. It seemed particularly odd, too, that he
himself was in the position of a Jules Vécourt in his relation to the
Marrasts, the Ribeyrolles,[92] and even lesser celebrities.

All this is not quite intelligible for contemporary visitors to Paris. It
must not be forgotten that the present Paris is not the _real_ Paris, but
a new one.

Having become a sort of gathering-place for the whole world Paris has
ceased to be a pre-eminently French city. In old days all France was in
Paris, and nothing besides; now all Europe is there, and the two Americas
besides, but there is less of itself: it has become merged in its
function of a world-hotel, a caravanserai, and has lost its individual
personality, which once inspired ardent love and burning hate, boundless
respect and unlimited aversion.

I need hardly say that the attitude of foreigners to modern Paris has
changed. The Allied troops who bivouacked in the Place de la Révolution
knew that they had taken a foreign town. The tourist who puts up there
now regards Paris as his own; he buys it, he plays with it, and knows
very well that he is essential to Paris, and that the old Babylon has
rigged herself out, rouged and powdered, not for her own sake but for his.

In 1847 I found still the old Paris—moreover, Paris with a quickened
pulse, that had been singing Béranger’s songs, with the chorus ‘_Vive la
réforme!_’ changed unawares into ‘_Vive la République!_’

Russians still in those days lived in Paris with an ever-present sense of
thankfulness to Providence (and to the regular despatch of remittances)
that they were living in it, that they were strolling in the Palais
Royal and visiting French people. They frankly worshipped lions and
lionesses of every description—celebrated doctors and dancing-girls, the
dentist Désirabode and the mad Ma-Pa, and all the literary charlatans and
political jugglers of the day.

I hate the systematic, _prémédité_ insolence which is the fashion among
us. I recognise in it the family traits of the old bullying and arrogance
of our officers and landowners, adapted to the manners of Vassilyevsky
Island and its streets. But it must not be forgotten that our cringing
before West European authorities has come out of the same barracks, the
same government offices, the same antechambers, though it has come out
of the other door and is addressed to the grand gentleman, the office
chief or the commanding officer. In our lack of anything whatever to
which to do homage, except brute force and its symbols, stars and ranks
in the service, the craving for some table of grades of merit is easy
to understand; but, on the other hand, to what men have not the best of
our contemporaries bowed down with tender devotion! Even before Werder
and Ruge, those mighty dullards of Hegelianism. From this reverence for
Germans it may easily be gathered how far they went in their attitude
to Frenchmen, to men who are really remarkable—to Pierre Leroux, for
instance, or George Sand herself....

I am ashamed that I was at first carried away, and thought that to talk
in a café with the historian of the _Ten Years_,[93] or at Bakunin’s
with Proudhon, was something like a promotion, an honour; but in me all
attempts at idolatry and fetish-worship do not last long, and very soon
give way to complete scepticism.

Three months after I arrived in Paris I began strenuously attacking this
form of snobbery, and it was just when my opposition to it was at its
height that the argument about Byelinsky took place. Bakunin, with his
usual good-heartedness, half assented and laughed; but Sazonov resented
it, and continued to regard me as a profane outsider in questions of
practical politics. Shortly afterwards I confirmed him in this conviction.

The revolution of February was a complete triumph for him; his
journalistic friends received posts in the government, thrones were
tottering and leaning for support on poets and doctors. German
princelings were asking advice and help from professors and journalists,
who only the day before had been persecuted. The Liberals taught them how
to fit their narrow crowns on more firmly, that they might not be carried
off by the rising hurricane. Sazonov wrote to me in Rome, letter after
letter, urging me to come _home_, to Paris, to the one and indivisible
republic.

On my return from Italy I found Sazonov preoccupied. Bakunin was not
there; he had already gone off to stir up the Western Slavs.

‘You don’t mean to say,’ Sazonov said to me at our first interview, ‘that
you don’t see that our _time has come_?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The Russian Government is in an _impasse_.’

‘Why! what has happened? A republic has not been proclaimed in the
Peter-Paul Fortress, has it?’

‘_Entendons-nous_, I don’t imagine that we shall have a twenty-fourth
of February to-morrow in Russia. No, but the state of public opinion,
the torrent of liberal ideas, Austria broken to pieces, Prussia with
a constitution, will force the men about the Winter Palace to think a
little. They cannot do less than dole out some sort of constitution,
_un simulacre de charte_: well, and with that,’ he added with a certain
impressiveness, ‘they must have a liberal, cultured ministry who can
speak the language of to-day. Have you thought of that?’

‘No!’

‘You queer fellow! Where are they going to get cultured ministers?’

‘Oh, they’ll find them right enough if they want them; but I fancy they
won’t look for them.’

‘This scepticism is quite out of place now; _history is being made_, and
very rapidly too. Think a minute—the government will have no choice but
to appeal to _us_.’

I looked at him, trying to make out whether he was joking. His face was
quite serious, it looked a little flushed and nervous with excitement.

‘You mean literally to _us_?’

‘Whether to us personally or to our circle does not matter. But just
think again: to whom else can they turn?’

‘Which portfolio will you undertake?’

‘It’s silly of you to laugh. It’s our misfortune that we don’t know
how to take advantage of opportunities, _ni se faire valoir_. You keep
thinking about your little articles: articles are all very well, but
times are changed now; one day in power is worth more than a whole volume
of them.’

Sazonov looked with compassion on my unpracticalness, and at last found
less sceptical people who put faith in his approaching advent to power.
At the end of 1848, two or three German refugees were very regular
visitors at the little evening gatherings that were held at Sazonov’s.
Among them was an Austrian lieutenant who had distinguished himself as
a staff-officer under Messenhauser.[94] Once as he was going out at two
o’clock at night in a heavy downpour of rain, the officer complained of
his hard lot, reflecting on the considerable distance between the Rue
Blanche and the Quartier Latin.

‘Why were you forced to trudge all that way in such weather?’

‘Of course, I was not forced; but, you know, Herr von Sessanoff is vexed
if one does not turn up, and I believe that we ought to maintain good
relations with him. You know better than I do that with his talent and
intellect ... with the position he occupies in his party, what he may
rise to be in the coming revolution in Russia....’

‘Well, Sazonov,’ I said to him next day, ‘you have found Archimedes’
point; there is a man who believes in your future portfolio, and that man
is Lieutenant So-and-So.’

Time passed, the revolution in Russia did not come off, and no one sent
envoys to fetch us home. The sinister days of June had come; Sazonov
undertook to write a leading article for the _Epoch_. He spent a long
time working at it; read aloud a few fragments, made corrections and
alterations, and only just finished it by the winter. He thought it
essential ‘to explain the last revolution to Russia.’ ‘Do not expect
me,’ he wrote at the beginning, ‘to describe events; others will do that
better than I could. I am giving you the significance, the idea of the
revolution which has taken place.’ Humble work was not enough for him;
whenever he did take up the pen, he wanted to do something extraordinary,
something momentous; his mind was always haunted by Tchaadayev’s letter.
The article reached Petersburg, was read in friendly circles, and made no
impression.

In the summer of 1848, Sazonov founded an International Club. To it he
brought all his Tardifs, Germans, and Messianists. With a beaming face he
walked up and down the empty room in a dark blue dress-suit. He opened
the International Club with a speech addressed to five or six listeners
(of whom I was one[95]) by way of audience, the rest of the party being
on the platform in the capacity of committee. Sazonov was followed by
Tardif de Melot, a dishevelled figure looking half-asleep, who stood up
and boomed off a poem in honour of the Club.

Sazonov frowned, but it was too late to stop the poet.

    ‘_Worcel, Sassonoff, Elinski, Del Balzo, Léonard...._
    _Et vous tous...._’

Tardif de Melot bawled with a sort of ecstatic exasperation, unaware of
the laughter.

Two or three days afterwards Sazonov sent me one thousand copies of the
programme of the opening ceremony; with that the Club ended. Only later
on we heard that one of the representatives of humanity, who at that
congress represented Spain in particular, and delivered a speech in which
he called the executive power _potence ehécoutive_, supposing that was
French, narrowly escaped the gallows in England and was sentenced to
penal servitude for forging some document.

The failure to become a minister and the collapse of the Club were
followed by more modest but far more possible attempts as a journalist.
When _La Tribune des Peuples_ was established with Mickiewicz as chief
editor, Sazonov took a leading position on the paper, wrote two or three
very good articles ... and then ceased, and before the failure of the
_Tribune_—that is, before the 13th of June 1849—he was on bad terms
with all the staff. To him it all seemed petty and poor, _il se sentait
dérogé_, was vexed at it, finished nothing, dropped what he had begun and
flung aside what was half done.

In 1849 I suggested to Proudhon to give the post of foreign editor of the
_Voix du Peuple_ to Sazonov. With his knowledge of four languages, of
literature, of politics, of the history of all the European nations, and
his wide acquaintance with political parties, he might have done wonders
for the French with this part of the paper. Proudhon had nothing to do
with the internal arrangements of the foreign news department, it was
in my hands, but I could do nothing from Geneva. A month later Sazonov
handed the foreign editorship to Hoetsky and severed his connection with
the paper. ‘I have a great respect for Proudhon,’ he wrote to me in
Geneva, ‘but there is not room on one journal for two such personalities
as mine and his.’

A year later Sazonov joined _La Réforme_, then being revived by the
followers of Mazzini. Lamennais was the chief editor. But on that paper
also there was not room for two great men. Sazonov worked on it for three
months, and then threw up _La Réforme_. With Proudhon he had fortunately
parted peacefully, but he quarrelled with Lamennais. Sazonov charged the
niggardly old man with using the funds of the paper for his personal
ends. Lamennais, recalling the habits of his clerical youth, resorted
to what is the _ultima ratio_ in Western Europe, and spread concerning
Sazonov the suggestion that he might be an agent of the Russian
Government.

The last time I saw Sazonov was in Switzerland in 1851. He had been
deported from France, and was living in Geneva. This was at the very
greyest, most oppressive period; a brutal reaction was triumphant
everywhere. Sazonov’s faith in France and in the coming change in the
ministry in Petersburg was shaken. He was bored and worried by his
idle life, did not succeed with any work, caught at everything without
perseverance, lost his temper, and drank. Moreover, the life of petty
cares and the everlasting struggle with creditors, the effort to obtain
money, together with the talent for flinging it away and the incapacity
for ordering his life, brought a great deal of nervous irritability and
dismal prose into Sazonov’s daily existence; by then his life of reckless
gaiety was no longer an enjoyment but a habit, while in old days he
really had known how to enjoy himself.

A few words about his domestic life will not be out of place, especially
as it was distinguished by the same note of gay recklessness, and was not
without its striking contrasts in colour.

In the early years of his Parisian life Sazonov met a wealthy widow, and
his connection with her drew him still further into a life of luxury. She
went off to Russia, leaving him plenty of money and their daughter to
bring up. The widow had scarcely had time to reach Petersburg when her
place was filled by a buxom Italian with a voice at which the walls of
Jericho would have fallen once more.

Two or three years later the widow took it into her head to pay her
friend and her daughter a quite unexpected visit. She was struck by the
Italian woman.

‘What person is this?’ she asked, scanning her from head to foot.

‘Lili’s nurse, and a very good one.’

‘But how can she teach her to speak French with such an accent? That’s a
pity. I had better find a Parisian and you get rid of this one.’

‘_Mais, ma chère_....’

‘_Mais, mon cher_ ...’ and the widow took her daughter away.

This was not only an emotional but a financial crisis. Sazonov was
far from being poor; his sisters sent him twenty thousand francs a
year from the revenue of his estate. But, being accustomed to spend
it recklessly, he did not think of diminishing his establishment, but
resorted to borrowing. He borrowed right and left, got what he could from
Russia out of his sisters, borrowed from friends and enemies, borrowed
from money-lenders, from fools, from Russians and non-Russians. For a
long time he managed and kept afloat in this way, but at last got into
trouble, and was thrown into Clichy, as I have mentioned already.

It was during this period that his elder sister’s husband died. Hearing
that their brother was in prison, the two sisters came to get him out.
As is always the case, they knew nothing of the manner of life of their
Nikolinka. The two sisters adored him, regarded him as a genius, and were
impatiently awaiting the moment when he would appear to the world in all
his power and glory.

They were met by various disillusionments which surprised them the more
as they were so unexpected. On the morning after their arrival, taking
with them Count Chotkewicz, a friend of Sazonov’s, with them, they went
to buy him out as a surprise. Chotkewicz left them in the carriage and
went away promising to return in a minute with their brother. Hour after
hour passed, Nikolinka did not appear ... no doubt the formalities take
a long time, thought the ladies waiting wearily in the cab.... At last
Chotkewicz ran up alone, flushed in the face, and smelling strongly of
spirituous liquor. He announced that Sazonov would be with them directly;
that he was just giving a farewell lunch to his companions and treating
them to wine; that this was the usual thing. This was rather a stab to
the tender hearts of the fair travellers ... but ... but here at last
their Nikolinka, solid, stout, and perspiring, flung himself into their
arms, and they set off homewards satisfied and happy.

They had heard something ... about some Italian woman ... an ardent
daughter of Italy, unable to resist the genius from the hyperborean
north, who had been enchanted by her southern voice and the fire of her
eyes.... Blushing and abashed, they indicated the timid desire to make
her acquaintance. He agreed to everything, and went home. Two days later
the sisters planned a second surprise for their brother, which was even
less successful than the first.

At eleven o’clock one hot morning the sisters set off to have a look at
this Francesca da Rimini and her _ménage_ with Nikolinka. The younger
sister opened the door, and stopped short.... In the small drawing-room
Sazonov was sitting on the carpeted floor in extreme deshabille,
and beside him the stout Signora P., scantily veiled in a light
dressing-gown. The signora was laughing with the full force of her lusty
Italian lungs at something Nikolinka was telling her. Beside them stood a
pail of ice, and in it, tilted on one side, was a bottle of champagne.

What happened next I do not know, but the effect produced was strong and
lasting. The younger sister came to consult me about this incident, of
which she spoke with tears and sobs. I tried to comfort her by assurances
that the first days after Clichy were different from the average.

All this was followed by a prosaic move into smaller lodgings.... The
valet, who was a master at putting on a cravat of impenetrably solid silk
and adroitly sticking a pearl pin into it, was dismissed, and after him
the pin itself appeared in a shop window.

So passed another five years. Sazonov went to Paris from Switzerland, and
then went back again from Paris to Switzerland. To get rid of the buxom
Italian, he devised the most original plan—he married her and then left
her.

Something had come between us; he did not treat me openly in a matter
that was very dear to my heart. I could not get over it.

Meantime a new epoch was beginning for Russia, Sazonov was eager to take
part in it: wrote articles[96] that were unsuccessful, tried to return
to Russia and did not succeed, and finally left Paris. For a long while
nothing was heard of him.

One day a Russian who had just come from Switzerland to London said to
me: ‘An old friend of yours was buried the day before I left Geneva.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Sazonov; and only fancy, there was not one Russian at his funeral.’

And it sent a stab to my heart to think with remorse that I had abandoned
him for so long....

    (_Written in 1863._)


II

THE ENGELSONS

They are both dead. He was not more than thirty-five; she was younger.

He died ten years ago in Jersey: his coffin was followed to the grave by
his widow, his child, and a sturdily built, dishevelled-looking old man
with large, marked, rough features; in his face were mingled genius and
frenzy, fanaticism and irony, the intensity of an Old Testament prophet
and a Jacobin of the year 1793. That old man was Pierre Leroux.

She died at the beginning of 1865 in Spain. I heard of her death a few
months later.

I have not heard where the child is.

The man of whom I am speaking was once near and dear to me; he first
tended deep wounds when they were fresh; he was a brother, a sister to
me. She, scarcely knowing what she was doing, estranged him from me. He
became my enemy....

The news of her death brought them back to my memory again....

I took up the manuscript I had written about them in 1859, and read it
through by way of psalter over the dead.

For a long time I hesitated whether to print it or not, and only lately
decided to do so. My intention is good, and my story is true. I do not
want to cast reproaches on their grave, but together with the reader to
trace once again, in fresh instances, the intricate, morbid warping of
character in the last generation under Nicholas.

    CHÂTEAU BOISSIÈRE, _December 31, 1865_.


I

At the beginning of 1850 a Russian arrived in Nice with his wife. They
were pointed out to me on the parade. They both belonged to the class who
were waiting for the turn of the tide: he was thin, pale, consumptive,
with reddish fair hair; she was a beauty who had faded early, worn-out,
half-shattered, exhausted.

A doctor living in the household of a Russian lady told me that the fair
gentleman had been a Lyceum student, that he was reading _Vom andern
Ufer_, that he had been mixed up in the Petrashev case, and consequently
wished to make my acquaintance. I answered that I was always glad to meet
a good Russian, especially a Lyceum student, and one who had had a hand
in a case of which I knew little, but which had been for me like the
olive branch brought by the dove to Noah’s ark.

Some days passed without my seeing either the doctor or the new Russian.
Suddenly between nine and ten one evening a card was brought me; it was
he. Karl Vogt and I were sitting in the dining-room. I told the servant
to ask the visitor upstairs into the drawing-room, and went upstairs
before the rest. There I found him, pale, trembling, apparently in a
feverish condition. He could scarcely tell me his name; when he was a
little calmer, he jumped up from his chair, rushed at me, kissed me
effusively, and before I could quite recover myself, with the words, ‘So
at last I am really seeing you,’ he kissed my hand. ‘What are you about?
Upon my soul!’ I said, but by then he was in tears.

I looked at him in perplexity; was this nervous instability or simply
madness?

Apologising and showering compliments on me, he told me with
extraordinary rapidity and much gesticulation that I had saved his life,
and this was how. Desperate with acute depression in Petersburg, expelled
from the Lyceum for some nonsense or other, disgusted with a job in the
service which he had been obliged to accept, and seeing no solution
for himself personally, nor for things in general, he had made up his
mind to poison himself, and a few hours before carrying out his design
went wandering aimlessly about the streets: came to Izler’s and picked
up a volume of the _Notes of the Fatherland_. My article, ‘A propos of
a Drama,’ was in it. Reading it gradually absorbed his attention; he
felt better, he felt ashamed of having so weakly given in to sorrow and
despair when public interests were springing up on all sides and calling
for all who were young, for all who had strength, and instead of taking
poison Engelson asked for half a bottle of madeira, read the article over
again, and from that time became my ardent admirer.

He sat on till late at night, and went away asking leave to come again
soon. Through his tangled talk, continually interspersed with anecdotes
and digressions, one could see a richly endowed brain, unmistakable
dialectic ability, and, still more clearly, something warped and
distorted that flung him from one extreme to the other, from an
indignation intensified by sorrow, and made poignant by misfortune, to
ironical clowning, from tears to affectation.

He left me with a strange impression. At first I did not quite believe in
him, then I was tired by him—he seemed to affect one’s nerves too much;
but by degrees I grew used to his oddities, and was glad of an original
person to break the monotonous boredom induced by the vast majority of
Western Europeans.

Engelson had read a great deal and studied a great deal, he was a
linguist and a philologist, and brought into everything the scepticism
with which we are so familiar, and which exacts so high a price for the
pain it leaves. In old days they would have said of him that he had read
himself silly. His over-stimulated intellectual activity was too much for
the strength of his frail organism. Wine, with which he conquered fatigue
and stimulated himself, fanned his thoughts and imagination into long,
bright tongues of fire, that were rapidly consuming his sick body.

His disorderly living and drinking, his perpetual, irritable mental
activity, his conspicuous many-sidedness and his conspicuous futility,
his utter idleness, his extreme violence of feeling and extreme apathy,
vividly recalled the past to me, in spite of the immense difference
between all this and our old ways in Moscow. Again I heard the sounds not
only of my own language but of my own thought. He had been a witness of
the reign of terror in Petersburg after 1848, and he knew the literary
circles. Entirely cut off from Russia as I was at that time, I listened
greedily to his accounts.

We took to seeing each other often, nearly every evening.

His wife, too, was a strange creature. Her face, by nature handsome,
was racked by neuralgic pains and a sort of restless anxiety. She was a
Russified-Norwegian, and spoke Russian with a slight accent which suited
her. As a rule she was more silent and reserved than he. Their home life
was not cheerful: there was something nervous, _unheimlich_, strained,
about them; there was something lacking in their life, and something
superfluous in it, and one felt this continually like electricity, unseen
and menacing, in the air.

I often found them in the large room which served them as bedroom and
sitting-room in the hotel, in a state of utter prostration. She, with
tear-stained eyes, helpless in one corner; he pale as death, with white
lips, distraught, and silent in the other.... So they would sit at times
for whole hours, whole days together, and that a few yards from the dark
blue Mediterranean, from groves of orange-trees, to which everything—the
sapphire sky and the bright noisy gaiety of southern life—invited
one. They did not actually quarrel; it was not a case of jealousy nor
estrangement, nor any tangible cause, indeed.... He would suddenly get
up, go to her, fall on his knees and sometimes with sobs repeat: ‘I have
been your ruin, my child, your ruin!’ and she would weep and believe that
he had been her ruin. ‘When shall I die and leave him in freedom?’ she
used to say to me.

All this was new to me, and I felt so sorry for them that I wanted to cry
with them, and even more to say to them: ‘Oh, come, come, you are not
so miserable and not so bad, you are both splendid people; let us take
a boat and drown sorrow in the dark blue sea.’ I did do this sometimes,
and succeeded in drawing them out of themselves. But by next morning the
paroxysm would return.... They were somehow so on each other’s nerves,
and had reached such an hysterical _impasse_, that the slightest word
destroyed the harmony and, as it were, called up furies again from the
bottom of their hearts.

I sometimes fancied that, continually tearing open their wounds, they
found a sort of stinging enjoyment in the pain; that this gnawing at
each other had become necessary to them, like vodka or pickle. But
unfortunately the physique of both was unmistakably beginning to be
exhausted; they were on the high road to the lunatic asylum or the grave.

Her mind, by no means without talents, was undisciplined and at the same
time depraved; her character was far more complex, and in a certain
sense she had far more fortitude and strength than he had. Moreover, she
had not a shade of the unity, the consistency, that unhappy consistency
which he retained even in the most violent extremes and the sharpest
contradictions. In her, side by side with her despair, her desire to
die, her habit of moaning and groaning, there was a thirst for worldly
pleasures and a concealed coquetry, a love for dress and luxury, denied
as it were intentionally, to spite herself. She was always dressed
becomingly and with taste. She longed to be an emancipated woman
according to the ideas of the period, and the victim of an immense,
original, psychic unhappiness, like George Sand’s heroines ... but her
old accustomed, traditional life dragged her like a heavy weight towards
quite a different sphere.

What gave poetic charm to Engelson, and did much to make up for his
defects, and what served as a safety-valve for himself, she could
not understand. She could not follow his racing thought, his rapid
transitions from despair to wit and laughter, from candid mirth to
candid tears. She lagged behind, losing the thread, distracted.... His
caricatures of his own gloomy thoughts were beyond her comprehension.
When Engelson, after a perfect feast of puns and jokes, mockery and
teasing, getting more and more into the spirit of the thing, began acting
regular scenes at which one could only laugh helplessly, she would go out
of the room, exasperated; she was offended at ‘his unseemly behaviour
before outsiders.’ He usually noticed this, and as nothing could stop him
when once he was set going, he would play the fool more extravagantly
than ever, and then waltz round with her and ask her with glowing cheeks
and perspiring brows: ‘_Ach, mein lieber Gott, Alexandra Christianovna,
war es denn nicht respectabel?_’ She would weep more than ever, till he
suddenly changed, grew gloomy and morose, drank glass after glass of
brandy, and went home, or simply fell asleep upon the sofa.

Next day I had to reconcile them and make the peace, and he so earnestly
kissed her hands and so funnily asked to be forgiven his sins, that even
she could not restrain herself sometimes and laughed with us.

I must explain in what these performances, which were such a source of
woe to poor Alexandra Christianovna, consisted. Engelson’s comic talent
was unmistakable and immense; such biting satire was never equalled by
Levassor, hardly by Grasso at his best, and Gorbunov in some of his
stories. Moreover, half of it was improvised; he would bring in additions
and variations while preserving the same framework. If he had cared
to train and develop this gift, he would certainly have been in the
foremost ranks of _satirical_ comedians, but Engelson never trained nor
developed anything in himself. Talents shot up like vigorous wild plants
and were choked in his unstable soul, both by domestic cares which took
up half his time, and by his habit of catching at everything in the world
from philology and chemistry to political economy and philosophy. In
this respect Engelson was a typical Russian, although his father was of
Finnish extraction.

He acted everything in the world—officials and Russian gentlemen, priests
and police-constables; but the best of his performances were concerned
with Nicholas, for whom he had a profound, sincere, and active hatred.
He would take a chair _à la_ Napoleon, sit astride it, and sternly ride
up to a corps on parade ... epaulettes, hats, casques shaking all round
him ... it is Nicholas at a review; he is moved to wrath, and, turning
his horse, says to the commanding officer, ‘Bad’; the commanding officer
listens with reverent awe, looks after Nicholas, and then, dropping his
voice and gasping with fury, whispers to the general of the division:
‘You appear, your Excellency, to be busy about something else and not
your duties. What a wretched division! what regimental commanders! I’ll
teach them.’

The general of the division turns redder and redder, and pounces on the
first colonel he comes across, and so from one grade to the next, with
incredibly true, almost imperceptible nuances, the Imperial ‘bad’ passes
down to the sergeant, at whom the squadron commanding officer swears like
a trooper, and who, without answering, pokes the scabbard of his sword
with all his might into the ribs of the nearest soldier, who has done
nothing.

Engelson would portray with amazing fidelity, not only the
characteristics of each rank, but also each man’s movement as he tugged
at his horse in his fury and then raged at it for not standing still.

Another performance was of a more peaceful kind. The Emperor Nicholas
is dancing the French quadrille. _Vis-à-vis_ is a foreign diplomat, on
one side a general, stiff as on parade, on the other a civilian grandee.
This was a perfect _chef-d’œuvre_. Engelson would take one of us for his
partner. The flower of it all was Nicholas—playing the autocratic Tsar
over the quadrille, the conscious firmness of every step, the brilliant
perfection of each movement, together with the indulgent and gracious
glance at his partner, which is transformed at once into a command to the
general, and warning not to forget himself to the civilian gentleman.
To describe this in words is impossible. The general, who, rigidly
erect, with his elbows a little rounded, with strained attention walks
in time through the figures under the stern observation of his gracious
monarch, and the distracted civilian with his legs shaking under him from
terror, with a smile on his face and almost a tear in his eye—all this
was performed so that a man who had never seen Nicholas could thoroughly
grasp the agonising ordeal of an imperial quadrille, and the danger of
having the Most High as a _vis-à-vis_. I forgot to say that the foreign
diplomat was the only one who danced with studied negligence and great
finish, concealing the uncomfortable feeling of uneasiness of which the
most valiant is conscious when he has a lighted cigar close to a barrel
of gunpowder.

But although Engelson’s grimacing and foolery roused his wife’s
indignation, it does not follow that there was any more unison or harmony
about her; quite the contrary, there was an absolute chaos in her head,
that was destructive of all order, of all consistency, and made her
impossible to cope with. In her case I learnt for the first time how
little you can do with logic in discussion with a woman, especially
when the discussion relates to practical affairs. In Engelson the lack
of harmony was like the mental confusion after a fire, after a funeral,
after a crime perhaps; but in her case it was like an untidy room in
which everything is flung about higgledy-piggledy—children’s toys,
a wedding dress, a prayer-book, a novel of George Sand’s, slippers,
flowers, plates. In her half-conscious ideas and half-undermined beliefs,
in her claims to an impossible freedom and to independence of all
customary external bonds, there was something suggestive of a child of
eight, a girl of eighteen, and an old woman of eighty. Many times I told
her that. And, strange to say, even her face was prematurely faded; it
looked old from the absence of some of her teeth, and at the same time it
retained a childish expression.

Engelson was entirely to blame for the chaos in her mind.

His wife was the spoilt child of a mother who had adored her. An elderly,
phlegmatic official of Swedish origin sought her in marriage when she was
eighteen. In a moment of childish caprice and vexation with her mother,
she agreed to marry him. She wanted to be her own mistress and sit at the
head of the table.

When the honeymoon of freedom, visits, and fine clothes was over, the
bride was insufferably bored; although her husband behaved with strict
propriety, took her to the theatre and arranged evening tea-parties
for her, she had an aversion for him; she struggled with him for three
or four years, grew tired of it, and went back to her mother. They
were divorced. Her mother died, and she was left alone, suffering and
melancholy, with her health prematurely broken in the struggle with her
absurd marriage, with emptiness and hunger in her heart and an idle brain.

It was just at this time that Engelson was expelled from the Lyceum. He
was nervous, irritable, and, with a passionate yearning for love and a
morbid lack of confidence in himself, was consumed by _amour-propre_....
He had made her acquaintance while her mother was living, and they became
great friends after her death. It would have been strange if he had not
fallen in love with her. Whether the feeling were likely to be lasting or
not, he was bound to love her passionately; everything helped to bring
this about ... the fact that she was a woman without a husband, a widow
and not a widow, a bride and not a bride, and that she was pining for
something, was in love with another man, and made miserable by her love.
This other was an ‘energetic young fellow,’ an officer and a literary
man, but a desperate gambler. They quarrelled over this invincible
passion for play; later on, he shot himself.

Engelson never left her side; he comforted her, amused her, occupied her.
It was his first and last love. She wanted to study, or rather to learn
without studying; he undertook to be her Mentor—she asked for books.

The first book Engelson gave her was Feuerbach’s _Das Wesen des
Christenthums_. He took the place of commentator, and day by day he
pulled from under the feet of his Héloïse, who could not step on firm
ground for the Chinese shoes of her early Christian training, the prop by
means of which she might somehow have kept her balance.

Emancipation from the traditional morality, said Goethe, never leads to
good unless the mind has grown strong; indeed, only reason is worthy to
replace the religion of duty. Here was a woman sleeping the deep slumber
of moral security, lulled by traditions and full of the dreams natural
to a patriarchal soul, tinged with Christianity, tinged with romantic
and moral notions; and Engelson tried to educate her at one blow on the
method of English nurses, who, when the baby screams from stomach-ache,
pour a glass of gin into its mouth. He flung into her immature, childish
conceptions a rankling ferment with which men are rarely equal to coping,
which he himself could not cope with but only understand.

Overwhelmed by the overthrow of all her moral conceptions and all her
religious convictions, and finding in Engelson himself nothing but doubt,
nothing but irony and denial of the old, she lost the only compass, the
only guide she had left, and was like a boat adrift at sea, twisting and
turning without a rudder. The equilibrium arrived at by life itself,
resting—like the opposite weights of a pendulum—on absurdities which
exclude each other and are maintained by so doing, was broken.

She flung herself into reading with avidity, understanding and not
understanding, and mixing up the philosophy of her nurses with the
philosophy of Hegel, sentimental socialism with the economic conceptions
of conventional housekeeping. With all that, her health grew worse,
boredom and misery continued; she pined and grew thin, had a desperate
longing to go abroad, and was afraid of persecutions and enemies of some
sort.

After a prolonged struggle, Engelson, rallying all his forces, said to
her: ‘You want to travel; how can you go alone?... You will meet with all
sorts of unpleasantness, you will be lost without a friend, without a
protector with the right to protect you. You know that I would lay down
my life for you ... give me your hand—I will care for you, soothe you,
watch over you.... I will be your father, your mother, your nurse, and
your husband, but it must be legally. I will be with you, near you....’

This was said by a man under thirty, and passionately in love. She was
touched, and accepted him as her husband unconditionally. A short time
afterwards they went abroad.

Such was the past of my new acquaintances. When Engelson told me all
this, when he bitterly complained that this marriage had been the ruin
of them both, and I saw for myself how they were fretting away in a
sort of moral furnace which they intentionally fanned, I came to the
conviction that this unhappiness was due to their having known too little
of each other beforehand, their being too closely bound together now,
their having built their life too much on personal feeling, and their
putting too much faith in being husband and wife. If they could have
parted, each might have sighed in freedom, have grown calm, and perhaps
begun to blossom afresh. Time would have shown whether they were really
so necessary to each other; in any case, the delirium would have been
broken for a time without catastrophe. I did not conceal my opinion from
Engelson; he agreed with me. But all this was a _mirage_; in reality he
had not the strength to leave her, nor she to take the plunge.... They
secretly _wanted_ to hover on the brink of these resolutions without
carrying them into execution.

My view was too sane and simple to be correct in regard to such
intricately pathological characters and such sick nerves.


II

The type to which Engelson belonged was at that time rather new to me.
At the beginning of the ’forties I had seen such a type only in embryo.
It developed in Petersburg towards the end of Byelinsky’s career, and
was formed after I left and before Tchernyshevsky appeared. It was the
type of the Petrashev group and their friends. That group was made up of
young and gifted men, extremely intelligent and extremely cultured, but
nervous, morbid, and warped by their surroundings. Among them there was
no example of striking stupidity, no one who wrote ungrammatically—those
types belong to quite a different period; but in them there was something
degenerate, abnormal.

The followers of Petrashev made a bold and ardent dash into activity, and
astonished all Russia by the _Dictionary of Foreign Words_. The intense
mental activity of the ’forties was their heritage, and they passed
straight from German philosophy into Fourier’s phalanstery, into becoming
followers of Kant.

Surrounded by petty and worthless people, proud of the attentions of
the police, and conscious of their own superiority, from the very time
they left school they prized too highly their negative achievement, or
rather their possible achievement. This led to immoderate vanity—not that
youthful healthy vanity becoming in a lad who dreams of a great future,
becoming in a man in the fulness of his powers and in the fulness of
activity, not that which in old days has led men to perform miracles
of daring and to endure chains and death for the sake of glory, but,
on the contrary, a morbid vanity, hindering all work through its vast
pretensions, irritable, ready to take offence, conceited to the point of
rudeness, and at the same time diffident.

Between their pretensions and their appreciation by their neighbours the
distance was immeasurable. Society will not accept blank cheques for
the future, but insists on work being completed before giving personal
recognition. They had little power of hard work and perseverance;
they only had enough of each for understanding and assimilating what
had been worked out by others. They wanted to have harvests for the
intention of sowing, and to be rewarded for having their granaries full.
‘The insulting way in which they were overlooked by society’ worried
them, made them unjust to others, and reduced them to despair and
_Fratzenhaftigkeit_.

In the person of Engelson I studied the difference between that
generation and our own. Later on I met many men not so talented, not
so cultured, but with the same obviously morbid warp in all their
composition.

A terrible sin lies at the door of the government of Nicholas in this
moral destruction of a generation, in this spiritual depraving of its
children. The wonder is that the strong and healthy, though warped, still
survived. Every one knows the celebrated list of instructions to teachers
in the Cadet Corps. In the Lyceum things were better, but of late years
it, too, had incurred the hatred of Nicholas. The whole system of
government education lay in instilling the religion of obedience, leading
up to power as its reward. The feelings of the young, naturally radiant,
were coarsely driven inwards, and replaced by ambition and jealous,
envious rivalry. What did not perish came out sick, deranged.... Together
with burning pride, they were inoculated with a sort of spiritlessness,
a sense of impotence, of fatigue before beginning work. Young men
became hypochondriacal, suspicious, tired before they were twenty. They
were all tainted with the passion for introspection, self-analysis,
self-accusation; they scrupulously believed their psychic experiences,
and loved making endless confessions and giving descriptions of neurotic
incidents of their lives. In later years it happened to me several times
to receive the confessions not only of men but of women belonging to this
category. After watching with sympathy their remorse, their pathological
self-castigation, which approached gross calumny upon themselves, I at
last came to the conviction that this was only one of the forms of the
same vanity. One had but to cease protesting and sympathising and to
agree with the repentant sinners, to see how readily malignant and how
mercilessly vindictive these Magdalens—of both sexes—became. With them,
like the Christian priest before the mighty of this world, you are only
privileged solemnly to absolve their sins and to keep silent.

These nervous people, though excessively ready to take offence,
shuddering like a sensitive plant at the faintest rough handling,
are incredibly harsh in their own language. As a rule, when it came
to revenging themselves, there was no moderation in their language—a
terrible defect of taste, which betrays a profound contempt for the
person addressed and an insulting indulgence for self. This lack of
restraint among Russians comes from the homes of landowners, from
government offices and army barracks; but how is it that it has survived
and developed in the younger generation whilst skipping ours? That is a
psychological problem.

In our old student circles we scolded each other roundly, argued roughly
and emphatically, but in the most violent fray something remained
outside the pale.... For our nervous friends of Engelson’s generation
this limit did not exist, they did not think it necessary to restrain
themselves; for the sake of a vain and momentary vindictiveness, for the
sake of getting the upper hand in an argument, they spared nothing, and
I have often, with horror and amazement, seen them—including Engelson
himself—without a trace of pity, fling the most precious pearls into the
corrosive fluid of their bitterness, ‘and weep afterwards.’ With the
change of the nervous current, remorse would follow, and entreaties for
forgiveness from the outraged idol. They are not fastidious, and pour
filth into the very cup from which they drink.

Their repentances are sincere, but do not prevent repetitions of the
offence. Some spring regulating and controlling the action of the wheels
within them is broken; the wheels turn with tenfold swiftness, doing no
work, but injuring the machine; harmonious combination is broken, the
æsthetic mean is lost; there is no living with them, and there is no
living for them themselves.

Happiness does not exist for them, they are not able to take care of it.
The slightest cause provokes them to ruthless antagonism and makes them
behave rudely with every one near them. By irony they have ruined and
spoilt as much in life as the Germans have by mawkish sentimentality.
Strange to say, these people are greedily anxious to be loved, they seek
enjoyment, and when they lift the cup to their lips some evil spirit jogs
their arm, the wine is spilt upon the floor, and the cup, passionately
flung down, rolls in the mud.


III

The Engelsons soon went away to Rome and Naples; they meant to be away
for six months, and returned in six weeks. Seeing nothing, they trailed
their boredom about Italy, sorrowed in Rome and grieved in Naples, and at
last made up their minds to come back to Nice—‘to you for healing,’ he
wrote to me from Genoa.

Their gloomy depression had increased while they were away. In addition
to their nervous hysteria, there were now quarrels which assumed a more
and more exasperated and envenomed character. Engelson was to blame for
his unrestrained language and cruel words, but she always provoked them,
provoked them intentionally, with secret spite and peculiar success in
his most good-natured moments; he was never allowed to forget himself for
an instant.

Engelson was incapable of holding his tongue; talking to me was a comfort
to him, and so he used to tell me everything, even more than he ought,
which was awkward for me. I felt that I could not be so open with them as
they were with me. Talking came easy to him, complaining comforted him
for a time—it did not me.

One day, sitting in a little tavern with me, Engelson said that he was
being worn out in the daily struggle, that there was no way of escape
from it, that again the thought of cutting short his life seemed to him
the only salvation.... With his nervous impulsiveness it might well be
expected that if a pistol or a glass of poison did come in his way he
would sooner or later make an attempt with one or the other.

I was sorry for him. And both of them were to be pitied. She might have
been a happy woman if her husband had been a man of serene temper who
would have known how to develop her slowly, to be light-hearted in his
merriment, and in case of need to influence her, not merely by persuasion
but also by authority—grave authority, without irony. There are immature
natures which cannot guide themselves, just as there are persons of
lymphatic constitution who need a corset to escape curvature of the spine.

While I was thinking of that, Engelson, going on with his talk, came to
the same conclusion himself. ‘That woman does not love me,’ he said,
‘and cannot love me; what she does understand and looks for in me is
bad, and what is good in me is so much Chinese to her. She is corrupted
by bourgeois ideas, by her external _Respektabilität_, her petty
domesticity. We torment each other, we are tormenting each other to
death; I see that clearly.’

It seemed to me that if a man could talk in that way of the woman nearest
to him, the chief tie between them was broken. And so I admitted to him
that, having watched their life together for a long time past with deep
sympathy, I had often asked myself why they went on living together.
‘Your wife is pining for Petersburg, for her brothers and her old nurse;
why don’t you arrange for her to go home, and you to remain here?’

‘I’ve thought of it a thousand times; it’s the one thing I wish for. But
in the first place, she has no one to go with; and in the second, she
would be bored to death in Petersburg.’

‘Well, but she’s bored to death here. As for having no one to send her
with, that’s a relic of our old Russian notions. You can take your wife
to the steamer at Stettin, and the steamer will find its way by itself.
If you haven’t the money, I’ll lend it you.’

‘You’re right, and that’s what I shall certainly do. I am sorry for her,
my heart aches for her, all the love I have in me I have concentrated on
her. I sought in her not only a wife, but a creature whom I could develop
and educate after my own fancy. I thought that she would be my child—the
task was beyond my strength. But who could have guessed that I should
find such contradictions, such stubbornness?’—he paused, and then added:
‘To tell you all I think—she needs a different husband ... if a man
turned up worthy of her whom she could love, I would give her up to him,
and we should both recover—that would be better than Petersburg.’

I took all this _au pied de la lettre_. That he was sincere, there is no
doubt. That is just the difficulty with these impulsive, uncontrolled
creatures; they can, like good actors, enter so thoroughly into different
parts, and so identify themselves with them, that a cardboard dagger
seems to them the real thing, and they shed genuine tears over ‘Hecuba.’

We were then living together at Ste. Hélène. Two days after my
conversation with Engelson, Madame Engelson, with a tear-stained face,
came into the drawing-room late in the evening, a candle in her hand; she
set the candle on the table, and said she wanted to have a little talk
with me. We sat down ... after a brief and obscure prelude touching upon
the fate which pursued her, on Engelson’s unfortunate character and her
own, she announced that she had made up her mind to return to Petersburg,
and did not know how to do it. ‘You alone have influence over him;
persuade him to let me go really. I know that in moments of vexation he
is ready in words to put me in the posting-chaise at once, but all that
is only words. Persuade him, save us both, and give me your word to look
after him just at first, comfort him ... it will be hard for him, he is
ill and nervous.’ And again sobbing, she hid her face in her handkerchief.

I did not believe in the depth of her woe, but I saw very clearly what a
false move I had made by speaking openly to Engelson; it was evident to
me that he had repeated our conversation to her.

I had no choice left; I repeated my own words to her, softening them in
form. She got up, thanked me, and added that if she did not go she would
throw herself into the sea; that she had that evening been burning a
great many papers, and wished to put some others in a sealed packet in
my keeping. It was clear to me that she was by no means so passionately
anxious to go away, but through some self-indulgent caprice wanted to
drag on and pine away in melancholy. Moreover, I saw that, if she were
wavering without any settled plan, he was not wavering but distinctly
did not want her to go. She had great power over him; she knew this,
and, building upon it, allowed him to rage, to rear, to foam at the bit,
knowing that, however he might jib, things would go not as he willed but
as she willed.

She never forgave me for my advice; she feared my influence, though she
had unmistakable proof of my powerlessness.

For ten days there was no talk about going away. Then followed periodical
skirmishes. Once or twice a week she would come to me with tear-stained
eyes and announce that now all was over, and that next day she would get
ready to go to Petersburg or to the bottom of the sea. Engelson would
come out of his room, twitching convulsively, with a green face and
trembling hands; he would vanish for some ten hours, and would come back
covered with dust, exhausted and rather drunk, would take a passport to
be viséd, or obtain a permit for Genoa; then it would all subside again
and fall back into the everyday routine.

Externally, Madame Engelson was completely reconciled with me, but from
that time she began to conceive something like a hatred for me. Before
that she had disputed with me and been angry without concealing it ...
now she became extraordinarily amiable. She was annoyed that I had seen
through something; that I had not been touched by her tragic destiny or
taken her for an unhappy victim, but had looked on her as a capricious
invalid; that, far from shedding tears of platonic sympathy with her, I
doubted whether she did not find enjoyment rather than distress in tears,
heartrending scenes, explanations lasting several hours, and so on and so
on.

Time passed, and by degrees much was changed. With the rapidity which
only occurs in nervous invalids she regained her health, became more
lively, and even more careful of her dress. And although the most
nonsensical things would lead again to the old scenes between her and
Engelson, to a farewell _à la_ Socrates before the hemlock, and to a
readiness to follow in Sappho’s footsteps to the bottom of the sea, yet
on the whole things went better. The woman who had been for ever lying
down from weakness, for ever exhausted, drew herself up as erect as
Sixtus V., and began to grow so stout that one day poor Kolya, sitting at
dinner and looking at her full bosom, said, shaking his head: ‘_Sehr viel
Milch_.’

It was evident that some new interest was occupying her, that something
had awakened her from her morbid lethargy. From the time of my open
explanation with her, she had begun a persistent game, thinking over
every move, like the gamblers _du Café Régent_, and patiently correcting
her mistakes. Sometimes she betrayed herself and made a blunder, carried
too far in one direction or the other, but she steadily returned to her
original plan. This plan went now beyond the tightening of her grip
over Engelson, and beyond revenging herself on me; she aimed at nothing
less than getting us all, the whole household, in her power, and taking
advantage of Natalie’s being more and more seriously ill to control the
education of the children and our whole life—or, if she failed, breaking
off my relations with Engelson at all costs.

But before she could obtain complete success, there were many very
difficult moves to be taken, painful concessions, cat-like tactics, and
much patient waiting: she accomplished a great deal, but not everything.
Engelson’s incessant chatter hindered her as much as my open eyes.

She might have made a better use of the energy, the force and the
persistence which she wasted on her craftily interwoven schemes ... but
personal feeling and vanity intoxicate people, and, once entering upon
the dark game of intrigue, it is hard to stop and hard to see anything
clearly. As a rule, light is only brought into the room after the crime
has been committed; that is how it is that both the catastrophe and the
sting of conscience are irremediable.


IV

... Of the misfortunes that fell upon me in 1851 and 1852 I speak in
another place. Engelson brought me much comfort in my sorrow. I should
have stayed a long time with him near the graveyard, but the restless
vanity of his wife had no pity even on mourning.

Some weeks after the funeral, Engelson, agitated and melancholy, with
evident reluctance and evidently not of his own initiative, asked me
whether I were not thinking of entrusting the education of my children to
his wife.

I answered that the children, except the eldest, Sasha, were going to
Paris with Marya Kasparovna Reihel, and I openly admitted that I could
not accept his suggestion.

My answer wounded him, and it hurt me to wound him. ‘Tell me,’ I said,
‘speaking honestly, do you think your wife competent to educate children?’

‘No,’ Engelson answered, ‘but ... but perhaps it’s a _planche de salut_
for her; she is just as wretched as ever, and it would mean your trusting
her, and a new duty.’

‘Yes, but if the experiment didn’t answer?’

‘You are right; let us say no more about it; it is sad.’

Engelson really agreed with me, and said no more. But she had not
expected so simple an answer; on this question I would not give in, and
she would not, and, beside herself with vexation, she immediately made up
her mind to take Engelson away from Nice. Three days later he told me he
was going to Genoa.

‘What is the matter?’ I asked; ‘and why are you going so soon?’

‘Well, you see for yourself my wife does not get on with you, nor with
your friends, so I’ve made up my mind ... and perhaps it is for the best.’

And next day they went away.

Afterwards I left Nice. On my way through Genoa we met peaceably.
Surrounded by our friends, among whom were Medici, Pisacane, Cosenz, and
Mordini, she seemed calmer and better in health. Nevertheless, she could
not let slip any chance for having a spiteful dig at me. I moved away,
said nothing; that was no use. Even when I had gone to Lugano she kept
up her poisoned _petits points_, and this in the rare postscripts to her
husband’s letters, as though with his _visa_.

At last these pin-pricks, at a time when I was utterly crushed by grief
and distress, drove me out of all patience. I had done nothing to deserve
them, nothing to provoke them. On getting one of her spiteful postscripts
saying that Engelson would still have to pay dearly for his whole-hearted
devotion to friends who would do nothing for him, I wrote to Engelson
that it was time to put a stop to this.

‘I do not understand,’ I wrote, ‘why your wife has got a grudge against
me. If it is because I did not give my children into her keeping,
surely that is no justification for it?’ I reminded him of our last
conversation, and added: ‘We know that Saturn devoured his own children,
but for any one to show his gratitude to his friends for their sympathy
by bestowing his children’s education on them is something unheard of.’

She never forgave me that sally, but, what is far more remarkable, he
never forgave me for it either, though at first he showed no sign of
resenting it ... but he reproached me with those words a year later....

I went to London; Engelson settled for the winter in Genoa, and
afterwards moved to Paris.[97]


V

The proverb, ‘He who has not been in the sea has not prayed to God,’ may
be varied in this way: the woman who has not had children does not know
what disinterested devotion is, and this is particularly true of married
women; in them childlessness almost always develops a coarse egoism—if,
that is, some impersonal interest does not incidentally save them. The
old maid has some belated yearnings that soften her, she is still seeking
and still hoping: the childless woman with a husband has reached her
haven successfully; at first she instinctively grieves at having no
children, then she takes comfort and lives for her own pleasure, and,
if she is not successful in that, for _her own sorrow_, or for somebody
else’s displeasure, somebody else’s sorrow, if it is only her maid’s. The
birth of a child may save her. A child trains its mother in sacrifice, in
giving way, in eagerly spending her time not on herself, and trains her
to indifference to all external reward, recognition, gratitude. A mother
does not keep an account with a baby; she requires nothing from it but to
be well, to be hungry, to sleep—and to smile. Without drawing the woman
out of the home, the baby transforms her into a citizen.

It is quite a different thing when another woman’s child comes for
any reason whatever, and especially unavoidably, into the house of a
childless woman. She will perhaps dress it up and play with it, but only
when she cares to; she will spoil it when she is pleased to; at all other
times the child will knock in vain at the doors of the heart that has
grown hard or slothful from self-indulgence. In short, the child can
reckon upon all the spoiling and pampering which would be given to a dog
or a canary, but nothing more.

One of our friends had a daughter whose mother was a young widow. With a
view to the mother’s marrying again, an attempt was made to get the child
away, and she was kidnapped in the father’s absence. After a prolonged
search the little girl was found; but the father, having been turned out
of France, could not come to Paris to fetch her, and besides he had not
the money. Not knowing what to do with her, he asked Engelson to take
her for a little while. Engelson consented, but very quickly regretted
it. The child was naughty—indeed, considering the irregular way in which
she had been brought up, it is quite likely she was very naughty; but,
all the same, her naughtiness was that of a child of five years old,
and Engelson was too humane and understanding to be capable of turning
against a child for naughtiness. And indeed the trouble was not that she
was naughty; the child hindered, not him so much as his wife, though she
never did anything. Engelson, with a sort of exasperation, complained to
me in his letters of the child!

In regard to her father, Engelson wrote to me: ‘Is it not strange that
H., who once agreed with you that my wife was _not a suitable person to
bring up your children_, has entrusted his _own daughter to her_?’

He knew perfectly well that the father had not chosen Madame Engelson to
bring up his little girl, but had been forced by actual necessity to have
recourse to her assistance. There was something so cruel, so ungenerous
in this remark that it sent a pang to my heart. I could not get used to
this lack of mercy, this brutality of language which did not hesitate
at anything! Intensely malignant insinuations which may in a moment of
irritation occur to any one’s mind, but which we could not bring our lips
to utter, are spoken by people like Engelson with readiness and enjoyment
at the slightest tiff.

Giving full vent to his irritation, Engelson in his letter incidentally
attacked Tessier too, and other friends, and even Proudhon, for whom
he had a great respect. Together with Engelson’s letter came one from
Tessier, who was also in Paris; he made some friendly jests about
Engelson’s ‘tempers and tantrums,’ without suspecting that the latter had
been writing about him. I disliked the position of a sort of negative
treachery, and I wrote to Engelson that it was a shame to talk in that
abusive way of men with whom life itself has brought us into intimate
relations; that they were, any way, good people, as he knew himself.
In conclusion, I told him that it was a shame to exaggerate everything
so, and to be sighing and groaning and reduced to despair over the
naughtiness of a child of five.

This was enough. My ardent admirer, the friend who had kissed my hand in
his enthusiasm, who came to me to share every grief and offered to shed
his blood and lay down his life for me, not in word but in deed ... this
man, bound to me by his own confession and by my misfortunes, of which
he was the witness, by the coffin which we had followed together, forgot
everything. His vanity was wounded ... he wanted to revenge himself, and
he did revenge himself.

Four days later I received from him the following reply:—

                                              ‘_February 2nd, 1853._

    ‘There are rumours that you have decided to come here;—Marya
    Kasparovna is, I believe, recovering (last week, any way, she
    seemed in better spirits, got up for five minutes, and has an
    appetite). Concerning the commission you gave me in regard to
    T., all I have to tell you is that the things the General asks
    him to get ready are not at T.’s, but were left by them at
    Vogt’s in Geneva, and that Madame T. thinks your silence _peu
    gracieux_, and adds that a correspondence with you could not
    cause them any inconvenience.

    ‘In short, I need not have written before you come if it had
    not occurred to me that silence may often be taken as a sign of
    assent. I do not wish to mislead you or keep you in error in
    regard to me: I do not agree with what you said in your last
    letter to me of January 28th.

    ‘These were your words: “Come, now, is it worth while to get
    into such a state—‘and oh, the baby—and oh dear, oh dear—and
    good God, what am I to do?’ Just think; isn’t it beneath you?
    surely, it’s nothing new to you! You have seen life and know
    what people are. Every day I grow more indulgent and more aloof
    from others.”

    ‘To this I answer, without for the present going off into a
    dissertation on respectability in general, and without even
    congratulating you on your satisfaction with yourself, that of
    course a man is absurd who falls into a rage and a frenzy when
    he is bitten by gnats or bugs, but the man is even more absurd
    who under the same circumstances forces himself to assume an
    air of stoical indifference.

    ‘You perhaps do not agree with this, for you put playing a part
    above everything. Don’t be angry! Wait a minute! Let me finish.
    In the first chapter of your _Vom andern Ufer_ in the Russian
    and German versions these are your words: “Man likes to produce
    an effect, to play a part, especially a tragic one; to suffer
    is good and noble, it presupposes unhappiness; suffering is a
    distraction, a comfort ... yes, yes, it is a comfort.” As I
    have said to you already in Nice, I was at first inclined to
    take this _dictum_ of yours as a careless oversight, and not a
    happy one. At the time you answered that you did not remember
    the words.

    ‘Though by no means applying those words exclusively to
    you—that is, not assuming that you judged in this case of
    men in general by yourself—I had hitherto imagined that
    this _dictum_ of yours, like most of the _Réflexions de
    La Rochefoucauld_, which it greatly resembles, like the
    description of the talented men of our period, once drawn in
    a masterly fashion by Byelinsky, was an “hyperbole, a jest.”
    And so when I learnt that H. in Switzerland was indignant with
    the General for the way he behaved in your affair, I took his
    indignation, not for playing a part, but for real feeling, and
    wrote to you: “Yes, I see H. is a brother to me.” When T., in
    the presence of a witness, declared that he had been sentenced
    for life—plus two years, I believed him too, and even repeated
    this to several people. Yesterday Madame T. told me her husband
    had never been sentenced at all. _Ergo_, in the eyes of the
    persons to whom I repeated his lie I am just such a _blagueur_
    as he. I do not like it. Who is to blame? I am, of course,
    because I was “young and credulous”; but they are to blame too,
    because they told a lie. I have never in Russia, nor anywhere,
    met such _blagueurs_ as in Nice. In my letter to you of the
    19th of January I told you that I want without _esclandre_ to
    get away from these people; they are antipathetic to me. I
    wrote this to you because I wanted to be open with you. But
    _absorbed in yourself_ you could not grasp this very simple
    idea. Or you would hardly, I suppose, have given me a most
    trivial commission to T. You, too, say that you are holding
    yourself aloof from people, but at the same time you ask them
    to write to you. I do not understand that sort of aloofness.

    ‘Assuming that in serious matters to be frank is an essential
    condition of honesty, I have to tell you this, too, without
    loss of time. You write to me that when you have despatched the
    General to Australia, and dismissed every one else, you will
    be left with me and with your enemies—and that if, moreover,
    I were a little more stable, and less dependent upon my own
    and other people’s nervous caprices and agitations, you would
    be disposed to make _un bout de chemin_ with me. To this I am
    obliged to reply that, feeling in myself neither a taste nor
    a talent for playing parts, and especially tragic ones, I am
    ready to serve you with my advice, but not with my company.’

Of course, I had not supposed that a man who with tears and sobs had led
me on to confidences difficult to utter, a man who had come so near
to me and on whom I had leaned as on a brother in moments of weakness
and helplessness, when my pain was beyond human endurance, that the
eyewitness of all that had happened could regard my misery as stage
trappings and scenery, of which I should take advantage to play a tragic
part. In his ecstasies over my book he had been picking out stones in
it and laying them up in his bosom to fling them at me when the chance
might come. It was not enough for him to tear the present to pieces—he
defiled and vulgarised the past: breaking with me, he could not show it
the respect of dejected silence, but covered it with merciless abuse and
ironical jeering.

This letter wounded me, wounded me very much.

I answered him sadly, with suppressed tears; I said good-bye to him, and
asked him to break off our correspondence.

That was followed by complete silence between us....

With Engelson once more something seemed to have snapped within me. I was
even poorer, more isolated; there was coldness all about me, nothing near
me.... At times a hand seemed held out to me more warmly; some fanatic of
no understanding, not even seeing that we were not of the same religion,
would approach hurriedly, and as hurriedly turn away. Though indeed I did
not seek closer intimacy with any, I had grown accustomed to men coming
and going, to all sorts of nonentities of whom one expected nothing, and
to whom one gave nothing except a cigar, wine, and sometimes money. My
one salvation lay in work; I was writing _My Past and Thoughts_, and was
setting up a Russian printing-press in London.


VI

A year passed: the printing-press was in full swing, it was being noticed
in London and feared in Russia. In the spring of 1854 I received a short
manuscript from Marya Kasparovna. It was not difficult to guess it had
been written by Engelson. I published it at once.

Then came a letter from him asking me to put an end to our unhappy
misunderstanding and to let us meet again in common work. Of course, I
held out both hands to him.

Instead of an answer he arrived in London himself for a few days, and
stayed with me. Sobbing and laughing, he begged me to forget the past,
was lavish in words of affection, and again seized my hand and pressed it
to his lips. I embraced him, deeply touched, in the firm conviction that
the quarrel would not be renewed.

But only a few days later clouds foreboding little good appeared on the
horizon. The shade of fatalism, of Buonapartism, which had peeped out in
his letters from Geneva had developed. From hatred for Nicholas and the
rank and file of the French Revolution of 1848, he had passed over _armes
et bagages_ into the enemy’s camp. We argued; he was obstinate. Knowing
that he always rushed to extremes and came back as quickly, I waited for
the turn of the tide, but it did not come.

Unhappily, Engelson was busy at that time with an amazing project with
which he was passionately in love.

He had made a plan for an air battery—that is, a battery of balloons
loaded with explosives and at the same time with printed proclamations.
This was at the beginning of the Crimean War. Engelson proposed letting
off such balloons from ships on the coast of the Baltic. I greatly
disliked this scheme; what could one make of propaganda with projectiles?
Where was the sense in it for us Russians to burn Finnish villages
and help Napoleon and England? Moreover, Engelson had discovered no
new means of steering balloons. I made little opposition to his plan,
supposing he would drop this nonsense of himself.

But not at all. He went off with his plan to Mazzini and Worcell.
Mazzini said that things of that sort were not in his line, but that
he was ready through his friends to send his plans to the Minister of
War. The War Office gave an evasive reply, and put the project aside
without a definite refusal. He asked me to gather together two or three
of the military men among the refugees and put the balloon question to
them. All were against it, and I told him over and over again that I,
too, was against it; that our work, our strength, lay in propaganda,
nothing but propaganda; that we should lose in moral prestige by siding
with Napoleon, and should ruin ourselves in the eyes of Russia _faisant
cause commune_ with her enemies. Engelson lost his temper and was beside
himself. He had come to London confident of a triumph, and, meeting with
opposition even from me, imperceptibly returned to his hostile attitude.
Soon afterwards he went to fetch his wife, and brought her in May to
London. A complete transformation had taken place in their relations; she
was expecting to be a mother, and he was rapturously delighted at the
prospect of a child. Misunderstandings, quarrels, and explanations were
all a thing of the past. She with a sort of insane, half-mad mysticism
was turning tables and absorbed in spiritualism. The spirits told her
many things, and among others predicted my speedy demise. He was reading
Schopenhauer, and told me with a smile that he was doing all he could
to encourage her mystic tendencies, that this faith and exaltation was
bringing peace and calm into her soul.

With me she behaved affectionately, perhaps in expectation of my
approaching death; would come to me with her work, and make me read
aloud articles and chapters from _My Past and Thoughts_. When a
month later differences arose again over Engelson’s Buonapartism and
air-balloons, she took the part of the reconciler—came to me begging me
to spare a poor invalid, and assuring me that every spring Engelson was
attacked by a hypochondriacal condition in which he did not know himself
what he was doing.

Her serene gentleness was the gentleness of the conqueror, the mercy of
complete triumph. Engelson, imagining that he held her under control by
turning tables, lost sight of one thing—that she was not only twisting
tables with her fingers, but him round her finger, and that he always
gave the answers she wanted better than the tables did.

One evening Engelson began discussing his balloons again with a
Frenchman, and said all sorts of biting things to him; the latter replied
with irony, and of course that infuriated Engelson more than ever. He
snatched up his hat and ran away. In the morning I went round to have it
out with him on the subject.

I found him at his writing-table, his face still completely distorted
with fury, and a frenzied expression in his eyes. He told me that the
Frenchman (a refugee whom I had known for years and know still) was a
spy, that he would unmask him, would kill him; and he gave me a letter he
had only just written to a doctor of medicine in Paris; in the letter he
implicated persons living in Paris, and slandered the refugees in London.
I was dumbfoundered.

‘And do you mean to send that letter?’

‘At once.’

‘And by post?’

‘Yes, by post.’

‘That’s treachery,’ I said; and flung his scrawl on the table. ‘If you
send that letter....’

‘Well, what?’ he shouted, interrupting me in a wild, hoarse voice—‘what
are you trying to threaten me with? I’m not afraid of you nor of
your nasty friends.’ With this he leapt up, opened a big knife, and
brandishing it about, shouted gasping: ‘Come, come, show your mettle ...
I’ll teach you ... wouldn’t you like to try ... come on!’

I turned to his wife, and saying, ‘Has he gone quite out of his mind? You
had better get him away somewhere ...,’ went out of the house.

On this occasion, too, Madame Engelson played the part of peacemaker. She
came to me in the morning entreating me to forget what had passed the day
before. He had torn up the letter—was ill and gloomy. She took it all as
a calamity, as physical derangement, was afraid that he was seriously
ill, and shed tears. I yielded to her entreaties.

After that we moved to Richmond, and Engelson did the same. The birth of
a son and the first months of looking after him gave Engelson new life;
he was off his head with joy. When the baby was born he embraced and
kissed effusively first the maid and then his old landlady. Anxiety over
the baby’s health, the novelty of paternal feeling, the novelty of the
baby himself, occupied Engelson for some months, and all went well again.

All at once I got a big envelope from him, accompanied by a note asking
me to read the enclosed document and tell him my opinion candidly. It
was a letter to the French Minister of War. In it he again proposed
air-balloons, bombs, and manifestoes. I thought it all bad, from the
quarter to which he was appealing down to the language, which was lacking
in dignity, and I told him so.

Engelson answered by a rude note and began to sulk.

After that he gave me another manuscript to publish. I did not conceal
from him that it would produce a very bad effect on Russian readers,
and that I did not advise publishing it. Engelson reproached me with
wanting to set up a censorship, and said that he supposed I had founded
the printing-press exclusively to publish my own immortal works. I did
publish the manuscript, but my instinct had been right. It aroused
general indignation in Russia.

All this indicated that a new rupture was not far off. I must own that
this time I felt no great regret. I was weary of this fever varied by
paroxysms of friendship and hatred, of having my hands kissed and then
getting a moral box on the ears. Engelson had overpassed the limit
beyond which not even memories nor gratitude could save the situation. I
liked him less and less, and waited coolly for what was to come. At that
point an event occurred so important that for a time all quarrels and
dissensions were eclipsed by a single feeling of joy and expectation.

On the morning of the fourth of March I went as usual at eight o’clock
into my study, opened the _Times_, read a dozen times and did not
understand, did not dare to understand, the grammatical sense of the
words at the head of the news column: _The death of the Emperor of
Russia_.

Hardly knowing what I was doing, I rushed with the _Times_ in my hands
into the dining-room; I looked for the children and the servants to tell
them the great news, and with tears of joy in my eyes gave them the
newspaper.... I felt as though several years had rolled off my shoulders.
It was impossible to stay indoors. Engelson was at that time living in
Richmond. I hurriedly put on my coat and hat and was about to go to him,
but he anticipated me, and was already in the hall; we fell on each
other’s necks and could say nothing but: ‘Well, at last he is dead!’
Engelson, as his way was, capered about, kissed every one in the house,
sang and danced; and we had hardly recovered ourselves when a carriage
suddenly stopped at the front door and some one gave a violent tug at
the bell: three Poles had driven full speed from London to Twickenham,
without waiting for a train, to congratulate me.

I ordered champagne; no one reflected that it was only eleven o’clock
in the morning, or earlier. Then, quite aimlessly, we all went off to
London. In the streets, on the Exchange, in the restaurants, people were
talking of nothing but the death of Nicholas; I did not see one man who
did not breathe more easily from knowing that that sore was taken out of
the eye of humanity, and did not rejoice that that oppressive tyrant in
the big boots had at last returned to clay.

On Sunday my house was full all day; French and Polish refugees, Germans,
Italians, even English acquaintances kept coming and going with beaming
faces. It was a bright, warm day; after dinner we went out into the
garden.

Some lads were playing on the bank of the Thames. I called them up to
the railing and told them we were celebrating the death of their enemy,
and flung them a handful of small silver for beer and sweets. ‘Hurrah!
hurrah!’ shouted the lads. ‘Impernikel is dead! Impernikel is dead!’

My visitors too began flinging them sixpences and threepenny-bits; the
lads bought ale and tarts and cakes, got hold of a concertina, and
began dancing. After that, as long as I lived at Twickenham, the lads
used to take off their caps when they met me in the street, and shout:
‘Impernikel is dead! hurrah!’

The death of Nicholas multiplied our hopes and energies tenfold. I at
once wrote the letter to the Emperor Alexander, afterwards published, and
made up my mind to bring out the _Polar Star_ at once.

‘May reason prevail!’ broke involuntarily from my tongue at the head
of my programme. ‘The _Polar Star_[98] has been hidden behind the
storm-clouds of the reign of Nicholas; Nicholas has gone, and the _Polar
Star_ appears again on the day which is our Good Friday, the day on which
five gibbets became for us five crucifixes.’

It was a powerful, stimulating impetus; we set to work with redoubled
energy. I announced that I was bringing out the _Polar Star_; Engelson
at last took up his article on socialism about which he had been talking
in Italy. It might have been expected that we should go on working for a
couple of years or more ... but his irritable vanity made any work with
him insufferable. His wife encouraged his infatuation. ‘My husband’s
article,’ she used to say, ‘will be taken as a new epoch in the history
of Russian thought. If he writes nothing else, his place in history will
be assured.’

The article, ‘What is the State?’ was good, but its success did not
justify his wife’s anticipations. Moreover, it appeared at the wrong
moment. Awakening Russia demanded, just at that time, practical advice,
and not philosophical treatises _à la_ Proudhon and Schopenhauer.

The whole of the article had not yet been published, when a new quarrel
of a different character from all the preceding ones almost completely
severed all relations between us.

One day when I was with them I spoke jestingly of their having sent for
the third time for a doctor for their baby, who had a cold in its head
and a slight chill.

‘So because we are poor,’ said Madame Engelson, and all her old spiteful
hatred a hundred times intensified flamed in her face, ‘our little one is
to die without medical assistance? And you say that? You, a socialist
and the friend of my husband, who refuse him fifty pounds, and are
exploiting him over his lessons.’

I listened in amazement, and asked Engelson whether he shared this view
or not. He was embarrassed, his face flushed in patches, he besought her
to be silent.... She went on. I got up and, interrupting her, said: ‘You
are ill and are nursing your baby, I am not going to answer you, but I am
not going to listen either.... You will hardly think it strange that I
shall not set foot in your house again.’

Engelson, distraught and melancholy, caught up his hat and came out into
the street with me: ‘Don’t take _au pied de la lettre_ the unbridled
language of an hysterical woman....’ He went off into a muddle of
explanations. ‘I will come and give my lesson to-morrow,’ he said. I
shook hands with him and went home without a word.

All this calls for explanations, and the most painful ones, too, relating
not to opinions and public affairs but to the kitchen and account
books. Nevertheless, I will make an effort to clear up this side of our
relations too. Squeamishness, that sentimentalism of purity, is out of
place in pathological investigation.

The Engelsons were scarcely entitled to reckon themselves poor people.
They received ten thousand francs a year from Russia, and he could easily
earn another five thousand by translations, reviews, and school-books;
Engelson was a proficient linguist. Trübner’s, the booksellers, had
ordered a lexicon of Russian roots and a grammar from him; he could, like
Pierre Leroux, like Kinkel, like Esquiros, give lessons. But, like a
regular Russian, he took up everything—the dictionary, the translations,
and the lessons—never finished anything, never put himself out, and never
earned a farthing.

Neither husband nor wife was prudent or capable of managing their
affairs. The continual fever in which they lived prevented them from
thinking about household management. He had come from Russia with no
definite plan, and remained in Europe with no definite object. He had
taken no steps whatever to secure his property, and _un beau jour_,
panic-stricken, made a hasty arrangement of some sort by which he limited
his income to ten thousand francs, a sum which he did not receive quite
punctually, but always received sooner or later.

That Engelson would not make both ends meet with his ten thousand francs
was evident; that he would not know how to economise was equally clear;
all that was left for him was to work or to borrow. At first, after
coming to London, he borrowed about forty pounds from me ... a little
time afterwards he asked for money again.... I had a serious and friendly
talk with him about this, and told him I was ready to help him, but that
I absolutely refused to lend him more than ten pounds a month. Engelson
frowned. However, he did twice take a ten-pound note; then suddenly he
wrote to me that he needed fifty pounds, and, if I did not care to lend
it him or did not trust him, he begged me to get it for him by pawning
some diamonds. All this could hardly be taken seriously; if he had
really wanted to pawn the diamonds, he ought to have taken them to some
pawnbroker and not to me.... Knowing him and being sorry for him, I wrote
that I would pawn the diamonds for fifty pounds, if they would give that,
and would send him the money. Next day I sent a cheque, but the diamonds,
which he would certainly have sold or pawned, I put away to keep for him.
He took no notice of the fact that no interest was asked for the fifty
pounds, and believed that I had pawned the diamonds.

The second point relating to the lessons is even simpler. While I was in
London, S. gave Russian lessons to my children, charging four shillings
an hour. In Richmond, Engelson offered to take S.’s place. I asked him
about terms; he answered that it was difficult for him to talk of terms
with me, but that, as he had no money, he would take what I had paid S.

On reaching home I wrote a letter to Engelson: I reminded him that he had
himself fixed the terms for the lessons, but that I begged him to take
double the amount for all the lessons in the past. Then I wrote what had
led me to keep his diamonds, and sent them back to him.

He sent a confused answer, thanked me, expressed vexation, and came in
the evening himself, and went on coming as before. His wife I did not see
again.


VII

A month later, Zeno Swentoslawski, and with him Linton,[99] the English
republican, were dining with me. Engelson came in towards the end of
dinner. Swentoslawski, the purest-hearted and best of men, a fanatic who
at over fifty retained the reckless fire of a Pole and the impulsive
impetuosity of a boy of fifteen, was urging the necessity of our
returning to Russia and beginning a keen propaganda in print there. He
undertook to convey the type, and so on.

After listening to him, I said half in jest to Engelson: ‘I say, you
know, _on nous accusera de lâcheté_ if he goes alone.’

Engelson made a grimace and went away.

Next day I went up to London and did not come back till the evening;
my son, who was lying down with a feverish attack, told me, in great
excitement, that Engelson had come in my absence, that he had abused me
terribly, had said that he would pay me out, that he was not going to put
up with my authority any longer, and that he did not need me now _since
his article had been published_. I did not know what to think, whether
Sasha was delirious from fever or Engelson had come in dead drunk.

From Malwida von Meysenbug[100] I learnt more. She told me with horror
of his violence. ‘Herzen,’ he had shouted in a nervous, gasping voice,
‘called me _lâche_ yesterday in the presence of two strangers.’ Malwida
interrupted him, saying that I had not been talking about him at all,
that I had said ‘_on nous taxera de lâcheté_,’ speaking of all of us
generally. ‘If Herzen feels that he is doing something mean, let him
speak for himself, but I will not allow him to speak like that of me, and
in the presence of two blackguards too.’

My elder girl, then ten years old, had run in at the sound of his shouts.
Engelson had gone on: ‘No, this is the end of it, it is enough. I am not
accustomed to it, I will not allow myself to be trifled with, I will
show him whom he has to deal with ...,’ pulled a revolver out of his
pocket and went on shouting, ‘It is loaded, it is loaded, I will wait for
him....’

Malwida got up and told him that she insisted on his leaving her, that
she was not obliged to listen to his wild ravings, that she could only
put down his behaviour to illness. ‘I am going,’ he said; ‘don’t trouble;
but first I want to ask you to give Herzen this letter.’ He opened it
and began reading it aloud; the letter was a string of abuse.

Malwida von Meysenbug refused the commission, asking him why he expected
her to act as an intermediary in forwarding such a letter.

‘I will find means without your help,’ observed Engelson, and went away.

He did not send the letter, but a day later he sent me a note; in it,
without saying one word about what had passed, he wrote that he had an
attack of hæmorrhage, that he could not come to me, and begged me to send
the children to him.

I said that there was no answer, and again all diplomatic relations were
broken off; hostile relations remained. Engelson did not let slip a
chance of turning them to account.

From Richmond I moved in the autumn of 1855 to St. John’s Wood. Engelson
was forgotten for some months. Suddenly, in the spring of 1856, I
received a note, suggestive of a duel, from Orsini, whom I had seen two
days previously.

Coldly and courteously, he asked me to let him know whether it was the
truth that Saffi and I were spreading a rumour that he was an Austrian
spy. He asked me either to give an unqualified _démenti_, or to indicate
from whom I had heard this abominable calumny.

Orsini was justified; I should have done the same in his place. Perhaps
he ought to have had more confidence in Saffi and in me—but the insult
was terrific.

Any one who knew anything of Orsini’s character would understand that
such a man, attacked in the most holy of holies of his honour, could not
stop short at half measures. The affair could only be settled by our
_absolute_ innocence or by the death of some one.

From the first minute it was clear to me that the blow came from
Engelson. He no doubt reckoned on one side of Orsini’s character, but
fortunately there was another which he had overlooked. Orsini combined
with violent passions an intense power of self-control; he was cautious
among dangers, thought over every step he took, and never reached a
decision on the spur of the moment, because when once he had reached a
decision he wasted no time in criticism, in doubt, in reconsideration,
but carried it out. We saw this later in the Rue Lepelletier. He acted in
the same way now. He tried without haste to investigate the matter, to
find out who was guilty, and then, if he succeeded, to kill him.

Engelson’s second mistake lay in quite unnecessarily bringing in Saffi.

The facts were these. Six months before my rupture with Engelson I
happened to be one morning at the house of Mrs. Milner-Gibson (the wife
of the minister): there I found Saffi and Pianciani; they were saying
something to her about Orsini. As I went away I asked Saffi what they
had been talking about. ‘Only fancy,’ he answered: ‘Mrs. Milner-Gibson
had been told in Geneva that Orsini had been bribed in Austria....’ On
reaching home at Richmond I had repeated this to Engelson. We were both
then dissatisfied with Orsini. ‘The devil take him entirely!’ observed
Engelson, and nothing more was said on the subject. When Orsini made
his marvellous escape from Mantua we thought in our own circle of the
accusation heard by Mrs. Milner-Gibson. The arrival of Orsini himself,
his story, his wounded foot, entirely effaced this absurd suspicion.

I asked Orsini to give me an interview. He asked me to go the following
evening. In the morning I went to Saffi and showed him Orsini’s note. He
at once offered to go with me, as indeed I expected he would. Ogaryov,
who had only just arrived in London, was a witness of this interview.

Saffi described the conversation at Mrs. Milner-Gibson’s with the
simplicity and straightforwardness which are his distinguishing
characteristics. I filled in the rest of the story. Orsini thought a
minute, and then said: ‘Well, may I ask Mrs. Milner-Gibson about this?’

‘Of course,’ answered Saffi.

‘Yes, I believe I have been too hasty; but,’ he asked me, ‘tell me, why
did you speak of it to an outsider instead of warning me?’

‘You forget, Orsini, the time when it happened, and that the _outsider_
to whom I spoke was at that time not an outsider; you know better than
most people what he was then to me.’

‘I have mentioned no one....’

‘Let me finish. Why, do you suppose it is easy for a man to repeat such
things? If these rumours had spread, perhaps I ought to have warned
you—but who is speaking about it now? As for your having mentioned no
one’s name, you are making a great mistake there. Bring me face to face
with my accuser, then it will be still more evident what part each has
played in these slanders.’

Orsini smiled, got up, came to me, embraced me, embraced Saffi, and said:
‘_Amici_, we will end the matter; forgive me, let us forget all about it
and talk of something else.’

‘That’s all very well, and you were perfectly right to ask me for an
explanation, but why do you not name my accuser? In the first place, it
is useless to conceal it ... it was Engelson told you this.’

‘Give me your word that you will drop the matter?’

‘I will give you my word before two witnesses.’

‘Well, you have guessed right.’

I anticipated this confirmation, yet it sent a pang to my heart as though
I had still doubted it.

‘Remember what you have promised,’ Orsini added, after a brief silence.

‘You need not worry about that. But to make up to me and to Saffi you
might tell us how it happened; you see, we know all that matters.’

Orsini laughed. ‘What curiosity!’ he said. ‘You know Engelson. He
came to me the other day: I was in the dining-room’—(Orsini lived in
a boarding-house)—‘and having dinner alone. He had already dined. I
asked for a bottle of sherry for him; he drank it, and at once began
complaining of you—that you had ill-treated him, that you had broken off
all relations with him—and after gossiping about all sorts of things
asked how you had received me on my return. I answered that you had
given me a very friendly welcome, that I had dined with you, and that I
had been to you in the evening.... Engelson all at once began shouting:
“That’s just like them ... I know those gentry; it’s not long since he
and his friend and admirer Saffi were saying that you were an Austrian
spy, but now you’re famous again and in the fashion, and he is your
friend!” “Engelson,” I observed, “do you fully understand the gravity of
what you’ve just said?” “Fully, fully,” he repeated. “Will you be ready
under all circumstances to repeat your words?” “Under all circumstances!”

‘When he had gone I took a sheet of paper and wrote you a letter. That’s
the whole story.’

We all went out into the street. Orsini, as though guessing what was
passing within me, said by way of consolation, ‘He’s crazy.’

Soon afterwards Orsini went to Paris, and his beautiful classical head
rolled bleeding on to the platform of the guillotine.

The first news of Engelson was the news of his death in Jersey.

No word of reconciliation, no word of remorse reached me....

    (1858.)

_P.S._—In 1864 I received a strange letter from Naples. It spoke of the
apparition of my wife’s soul, and of her having appealed to me to turn to
religion and purify my soul with it, and to abandon worldly vanities....

The writer said that it was all written at the dictation of the spirit;
the tone of the letter was warm, friendly, and ecstatic.

The letter was unsigned; I recognised the handwriting; it was from Madame
Engelson.[101]




FOOTNOTES


[1] There is this now.—(_Author’s Note._)

[2] _Le Charivari_ was the French _Punch_ (earlier in date, however,
_Punch_ being called ‘The London Charivari’ as a sub-title), founded in
1831 by Charles Philipon, a caricaturist of great talent.

[3] The Comte d’Argout had much to do in bringing about the fall of
Charles X., and held several important ministerial appointments under
Louis-Philippe.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[4] I have heard this criticism a dozen times since.—(_Author’s Note._)

[5] The Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., was by the royalists
called Henri Cinq.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[6] The celebrated Victor Panin.—(_Author’s Note._)

[7] _I.e._ stabs with a dagger.

[8] At the Rouen elections for the Constituent Assembly in April, the
Socialist candidates were heavily defeated; the workmen, suspecting some
fraud, assembled, unarmed, before the Hôtel de Ville, to protest. They
were attacked by soldiers and National Guards; eleven were killed and
many wounded.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[9] Sibour, Marie Dominique Auguste (1792-1857), was appointed on 10th
of July 1848, by General Cavaignac, to the archi-episcopal see of
Paris to replace Affre, who died of wounds received in the June days.
He was himself assassinated in church by the Abbé Vergur, whom he had
interdicted.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[10] Written at the end of 1853.

[11] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[12] Cavaignac, Louis-Eugène (1802-1857), the youngest of the three
distinguished Frenchmen of that name, was commander-in-chief in 1848,
and an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Republic when
Louis-Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.) was elected on 10th December
1848.

[13] Lamoricière, Louis de (1806-1865), a prominent politician and
general, was exiled in December 1848, and afterwards took command of the
Papal troops.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[14] David (d’Angers), Pierre-Jean (1789-1856), must not be confounded
with the great painter Louis David. David d’Angers was a celebrated
sculptor of republican principles, who executed busts or medallions of
most of the eminent men of his day. He was a great friend of Hugo, who
wrote of him in _Les Rayons et les Ombres_: ‘La forme, ô grand sculpteur,
c’est tout et ce n’est rien. Ce n’est rien sans l’esprit, c’est tout avec
l’idée!’—(_Translator’s Note._)

[15] Barbès, Armand (1809-1870), called the ‘Bayard de la démocratie,’
was a people’s representative in 1848, imprisoned in 1849, and set free
in 1854.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[16] Ramon de la Sagra (1798-1871), a Spanish economist, took part in
the revolutionary movement of 1848 in France, and wrote advocating the
views of Proudhon. In 1854 he returned to Spain, and was several times
elected a member of the Cortes. He was, of course, not seventy, as Herzen
mistakenly assumes, but fifty, in 1848.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[17] A mountain chain of Old Castile, where the French defeated the
Spanish in 1808.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[18] Written in 1856.

[19] Rayer, P. F. O., was a distinguished French physician, and author of
numerous medical works.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[20] Delessert, Gabriel, born 1786, was prefect of police of the town of
Paris for twelve years from 1836.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[21] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[22] Arago, Emmanuel (1812-1896), the son of the more distinguished
F. D. Arago, who was one of the members of the Provisional Government
formed after the _coup d’état_ of 24th February 1848. The others were
Ledru-Rollin, Dupont de l’Eure, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine, Crémieux,
Marrast, Flocon, and Louis Blanc.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[23] Bastide, Jules (born 1800), a publicist and politician, was minister
for foreign affairs in 1848. He had had an eventful career, and for two
years took refuge in England after escaping from prison, where he was
thrown for taking part in the riots that followed the funeral of Lamarque
in 1832.

[24] Changarnier, Nicolas (1793-1877), a prominent politician and
general, was exiled at the _coup d’état_ of 1851, but lived to serve in
the Franco-German War of 1870.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[25] Guinard, Auguste-Joseph (born 1799), had been one of the first to
proclaim the republic in February 1848, and at the head of the 8th Legion
had occupied the Hôtel de Ville.

[26] Forestier, Henri-Joseph (born 1787), was a painter of merit. He was
colonel of the 8th Legion of the National Guard.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[27] Karl Blind (born 1826), a writer and revolutionist, was for the
part he took in the insurrections in South Germany sentenced to eight
years’ imprisonment, but was rescued by the mob. He settled in England,
where he continued journalistic and propaganda work up to the time of his
death.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[28] How well founded my apprehensions were was shown by a police raid on
my mother’s house at the Ville d’Avray. They seized all the papers, even
the correspondence of her maid with my cook. I thought it inopportune to
publish my account of the 13th of June at the time.—(_Author’s Note._)

[29] Oran, a province of Algeria in which the French carried on a
successful campaign against Abd-el-Kader in 1847.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[30] Pyat, Félix (1810-1889), a journalist, dramatic writer, and
communist leader, supported Ledru-Rollin’s appeal to the French people
in 1849, and on its failure escaped to Switzerland and then to London,
where he was a member of the ‘European Revolutionary Committee.’ He
returned to France at the amnesty of 1870, and was in 1871 one of the
leaders of the Commune, on the fall of which he again escaped to London.
He was condemned to death in his absence, but was again pardoned in
1880.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[31] Grandville, Jean-Ignace-Isidore (born 1802), was one of the most
celebrated book-illustrators of his time. Perhaps his most famous book
is _Les animaux peints par eux-mêmes_. He was deeply interested in
animals, insects, and fishes, and drew them wonderfully. He edited _La
Caricature_, in which all the most eminent people of his time in Paris
are depicted. He died, insane, in 1850.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[32] In 1848 there was an insurrection in Baden, headed by Struve and
Hecker, which aimed at establishing a republic. The troops sided with the
insurgents, the Grand Duke fled, and in May 1848 a Constituent Assembly
was called. After several battles the Grand Duke was by Prussian aid
reinstated in July of the same year.

[33] Görgei, Arthur (1818), was commander-in-chief of the Hungarian
forces in 1848, was victorious over the Austrians in the spring of
that year, but was defeated early in August by the Russian general
Paskevitch, and on the 13th of that month surrendered the Hungarian army
unconditionally to Rüdiger, another Russian general. He was accused of
treachery.

[34] Coblenz was one of the chief centres to which the _émigrés_ of the
great French revolution flocked from 1790 onwards.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[35] The Commission of Inquiry was presided over by Odilon Barrot;
the report, drawn up by one Bauchart, is described as a ‘_monument
impérissable de mauvaise foi et de basse fureur_.’

[36] Kapp, Friedrich (1820-1884), a German historian, after the
revolution of 1848 went to New York, but returned to Berlin in 1870,
became a Liberal member of the Reichstag.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[37] The more thoroughgoing of the followers of John Huss were called
Taborites, from their headquarters at Mt. Tabor in Bohemia.

[38] Heinzen, Karl Peter (1827-1880), wrote for the _Leipziger
Allgemeine Zeitung_ and the _Rheinische Zeitung_, and his articles led
to the suppression of these two papers. He published an attack on the
government, ‘Die prussische Bureaucratie,’ for which he was prosecuted.
In 1848 he was one of the leaders of the Baden revolution. Later on he
escaped to America, where he edited _The Pioneer_.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[39] Undergraduates in their first year were called ‘foxes’ in German
universities.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[40] See Vol. II. Chapter 27.

[41] The ‘Bolognese insurrection’ began on 2nd February 1831 at the house
of Ciro Menotti at Modena. There thirty-one conspirators surprised by the
ducal troops held the soldiers at bay for hours.

[42] Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, two young Venetians, lieutenants in the
Austrian navy, attempted an insurrection in 1843. On its failure they
escaped to Corfu; but, misled by false information, landed in Calabria
with twenty companions, were caught and shot at Cosenza in July of the
same year. Their letters to Mazzini in London had been opened by the
English authorities, who then resealed them and sent the information so
gained to the Austrian Government. Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen
were principally responsible.

[43] Babeuf, François-Émile, nicknamed Gracchus (1760-1797), conspired
against the Directoire, was condemned to death, but stabbed himself. He
advocated a form of communism called _babouvisme_.

[44] The reference is to Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III. on
14th January 1858.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[45] ‘In 1857 Pisacane seized the _Cagliari_ steamer, freed the political
prisoners in the island of Ponza, and with a small force effected a
landing on the Neapolitan coast at Sapri, hoping to join others of the
republican party. Met by overwhelming numbers, he fell at the head of his
men, most of them falling with him.’

[46] The ‘wild boar’ meant is, of course, Ferdinand II. of Naples,
nicknamed Bomba because of the cruel bombardment of Naples and other
cities during the suppression of the insurrection.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[47] Here is a poor prose translation of these wonderful lines, which
have passed into a popular legend:—

‘They gathered with weapons in their hands, but they did not war with
us; they threw themselves on the earth and kissed it, the tear quivered
in their eyes, and all wore a smile. We were told they were robbers who
had come out of their dens; but they took nothing, not even a crust of
bread, and we heard from them one cry only: “We have come to die for our
country!” They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they
are dead!

‘At their head came a young leader with golden hair and blue eyes....
I made so bold I took him by the hand and asked: “Whither goest thou,
splendid leader?” He looked at me and said: “My sister, I go to die for
my country!” and my heart ached; I had not strength to say: “God be thy
help!”

‘They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they are dead!’

And I knew the _bel capitano_, and more than once talked with him of the
fortunes of his distressful country.—(_Author’s Note._)

[48] Napoleon, so the newspapers wrote, ordered Orsini’s head to be
steeped in sulphuric acid that it might be impossible to take a death
mask from it. What progress in humanity and chemistry since the days when
the head of John the Baptist was given on a golden dish to the daughter
of Herod!—(_Author’s Note._)

[49] Pope Pius VII. signed the Concordat of 15th July 1801 with Napoleon,
was forced by the latter to come to Paris to consecrate him as Emperor in
1804, was later on kept prisoner in Fontainebleau, and only returned to
Rome in 1814.

[50] The Cristinos were the supporters of the Spanish Queen Regent
Cristina against the Carlists.

[51] Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, elected Pope in 1846, known as Pius
IX.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[52] Cosenz (born 1820) was an Italian general who defended Venice
against the Austrians in 1848, joined Garibaldi in 1859, was minister
of war under the latter’s dictatorship in Naples, later on was several
times elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and was a senator after
1872.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[53] Barbier, Henri-Auguste (1805-1882), a French poet, was the author of
a volume of verses called _Iambes_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[54] All this has greatly changed since the Crimean War
(1866).—(_Author’s Note._)

[55] _The Times_, two years ago, reckoned that on an average in every
police district in London (there are ten) there were two hundred cases
of assaults on women and children per annum; and how many assaults never
lead to proceedings?—(_Author’s Note._)

[56] The _Sonderbund_ was the alliance of the seven Catholic cantons of
Switzerland, which aimed at separation from the Federal Government. It
was dissolved after a brief civil war.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[57] Weitling, Wilhelm (born 1808), got into touch with communists in
Paris and Switzerland during his wanderings as a journeyman tailor, was
prosecuted for propaganda of his ideas in Germany, escaped to America,
where he became the head of a communist colony in the state of Iowa,
wrote _Das Evangelium des armen Sünders_, _Garantien der Harmonie und
Freiheit_ (1842), and _Die Menschheit wie sie ist und wie sie sein
sollte_ (1845).—(_Translator’s Note._)

[58] Périer, Casimir-Pierre (1777-1832), was a wealthy banker who
supported the Liberal opposition under Charles X., and after the Paris
revolution of 1830 became Minister of the Interior under Louis-Philippe,
in which capacity he vigorously suppressed risings in Paris and Lyons.

[59] Laffitte, Jacques (1767-1844), was a French financier who took
an active part in bringing about the revolution of 1830, and was at
first the most influential minister of Louis-Philippe’s government. He
was dismissed by the king because he wished the French to go to the
assistance of Italy in her effort to throw off the Austrian yoke, and was
succeeded by Périer.

[60] Cavaignac, Godefroy (1801-1845), the eldest son of J. B. Cavaignac,
the member of the Convention, took a leading part in the July revolution
of 1830, was tried and acquitted, again arrested in 1834, and escaped to
England. In 1841 he returned to France and became one of the most active
editors of _La Réforme_. His popularity greatly favoured the rise of his
brother, Louis-Eugène, the general, who, though he put down the June
rising in 1848, remained under a cloud under Napoleon III. because he
refused to take the oath of allegiance.

[61] Marrast, Armand (1801-1852), a journalist, was a member of the
Provisional Government of 1848, and then mayor of Paris and president of
the National Assembly.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[62] Drouey (1799-1855) led the revolution in his canton in 1845, in
1849 was elected vice-president of the Swiss Federal Union, and in 1850
president.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[63] Blenker, Ludwig (born 1812), served in 1832 in Greece in the
Bavarian legion of King Otto, and was afterwards a wine merchant in
Worms. In 1848 he became a prominent figure of the revolutionary party
in Rheingessen, and as a leader of the insurgents took Worms and stormed
Landau. When the Baden rising was suppressed he escaped to Switzerland,
whence he was expelled, and then went to America, where during the Civil
War in 1861 he collected a troop of German _Jäger_ and saved Washington
from the enemy, became a general, but afterwards for some negligence in
the commissariat was forcibly retired with M’Clellan, and spent the rest
of his days peacefully on his farm.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[64] Here I seem to have justified the famous ‘I hear the silence!’ of
the Moscow police-master.

[65] As a matter of fact, _our_ scepticism was not known in the last
century; England and Diderot alone are the exceptions. In England
scepticism has been at home for long ages, and Byron follows naturally on
Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Hume.—(_Author’s Note._)

[66] Here Herzen ignorantly uses the word ‘Quaker’ as equivalent to
‘Nonconformist,’ or perhaps ‘Puritan.’ It is needless to point out that
tolerance is one of the most prominent principles of the Society of
Friends.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[67] These fragments, printed in vol. iv. of _The Polar Star_, ended with
the following dedication, written before the arrival of Ogaryov in London
and before the death of Granovsky:

‘... Accept this skull—it belongs to you by right’ (_Pushkin_).

Here for the time we will stop. Some day I shall publish the chapters I
have omitted and shall write others, without which my narrative remains
unintelligible, incomplete, perhaps useless, and in any case will not be
what I meant. But all that must be later, much later....

Now let us part; and one word at leave-taking, to you friends of my youth.

When everything had been buried, when even the clamour partly provoked by
me, partly spontaneous, had subsided about me, and people had dispersed
to their homes, I lifted up my head and looked around me; I had nothing
living, nothing akin to me but my children. Wandering among strangers,
watching them more closely, I gave up seeking _friends_ and held
aloof—not from men but from intimacy with them.

It is true, at times it seems that I have still feelings in my heart,
words which it is a pity not to utter, which might do good or at
least bring comfort to the listener, and one is sorry that it must
all be smothered and lost in the soul, as the eye loses itself in the
empty distance ... but that is the rapidly fading glow of sunset, the
reflection of the retreating past.

It is to that that I have turned back. I have left the world alien to
me and have come back to you; and again we have been living together as
in old times, are meeting every day, and nothing is changed, no one has
grown older, no one is dead—and I am as at home with you, and it is as
clear that I have no other standpoint than ours, no vocation but that to
which I dedicated myself from childhood.

My story of the past is, maybe, dull and feeble, but you, friends, will
give it a warm reception; this work has helped me to live through a
terrible period, it has lifted me out of the idle despair in which I was
perishing, it has brought me back to you. With it I enter upon my winter,
not _gaily_ but _calmly_ (in the words of the poet whom I love beyond
measure):—

‘_Lieta no ... ma sicura!_’ said Leopardi of death in his _Ruysch e le
sui mummie_.

So all unwittingly you have saved me: accept this skull—it belongs to you
by right.

    ISLE OF WIGHT, VENTNOR, _October 1, 1855_.

[68] This endorsement is done for security in sending cheques in order
that no one else should be able to receive the money.

[69] This was not P. D. Kisselyov, who was in Paris later, the well-known
minister of crown property, a very decent man; but the other one,
afterwards transferred to Rome.—(_Author’s Notes._)

[70] I translate it word for word.—(_Author’s Note._)

[71] Mlle. Le Normand (1772-1843) was a well-known fortune-teller of the
period.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[72] Later on Professor Tchitcherin preached a doctrine somewhat similar
in the Moscow University.—(_Author’s Note._)

[73] Pestel was the leader of the Union of the South, and Ryleyev of
the Union of the North, which combined in the attempt to overthrow the
autocracy and establish constitutional government in Russia on December
14, 1825.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[74] A French revolutionist, one of the founders of the _culte de la
raison_, beheaded in 1794.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[75] I cannot forbear adding that I had to correct this very page at
Freiburg, and in the same Zöringer Hof. And the host was still the same,
looking like a regular innkeeper, and the dining-room in which I sat with
Sazonov in 1851 was the same, and the room in which a year later I wrote
my will, making Karl Vogt my executor: and this page brings back to me so
many details.

Fifteen years!

Unconsciously, unaccountably, one is seized with terror....

    _14th October 1866._—(_Author’s Note._)

[76] Frappoli, Ludovico (1815-1878), an Italian politician who took part
in the revolutionary movement of 1848, was a partisan of Garibaldi’s, and
always on the extreme left in the Italian Parliament. He reintroduced
Freemasonry into Italy.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[77] Leroux, Pierre (1797-1871), a prominent follower of St. Simon.

[78] Considérant, Victor (1808-1893), a philosopher and political
economist, advocate of Fourierism.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[79] In Stuart Mill’s new book _On Liberty_, he uses an excellent
expression in regard to these truths settled once and for ever: ‘the deep
slumber of a decided opinion.’—(_Author’s Note._)

[80] _Histoire de la Révolution Française._

[81] I had then published _Vom andern Ufer_.—(_Author’s Note._)

[82] My answer to the speech of Donozo Cortes, of which fifty thousand
copies were printed, was all sold out; and when two or three days later
I asked for a few copies for myself, they had to be bought through the
bookshops.—(_Author’s Note._)

[83] After this was written I met him again in Brussels.—(_Author’s
Note._)

[84] I have to some extent modified my opinion of this work of Proudhon
(1866).—(_Author’s Note._)

[85] Proudhon himself said: ‘_Rien ne ressemble plus à la préméditation
que la logique des faits._’

[86] As I was correcting the proofs of this, I came upon a French
newspaper with an extremely characteristic incident in it. Near Paris
a student had a liaison with a girl, which was discovered. The girl’s
father went to the student and on his knees besought him, with tears, to
vindicate his daughter’s honour and marry her; the student refused with
contumely. The kneeling father gave him a slap in the face, the student
challenged him, they shot at each other; during the duel the old man had
a paralytic stroke. The student was disconcerted, and ‘decided to marry,’
and the girl was grieved, and also decided to marry. The newspaper
adds that this happy _dénouement_ will no doubt do much to promote the
old father’s recovery. Can this have happened outside a madhouse? Can
China or India, at whose grotesque absurdities we mock so much, furnish
anything uglier or sillier than this story? I will not say more immoral.
This Parisian romance is a hundredfold more wicked than the burning of
a widow or the burying of a vestal virgin. In those cases there was
religious faith, removing all personal responsibility, but in this case
there is nothing but conventional, shadowy ideas of external honour, of
external reputation.... Is it not clear from this story what the student
was like? Why should the girl’s life be bound to his _à perpétuité_? Why
was she ruined to save her reputation? Oh, Bedlam! (1866.)—(_Author’s
Note._)

[87] Cambacérès, Jean-Jacques (1753-1824), one of the nearest advisers
of Napoleon, and compiler of the _Code Civil_. He attempted to dissuade
Napoleon from the invasion of Russia.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[88] Leone Leoni is the hero, or rather villain, whose name supplies the
title of one of George Sand’s earlier novels.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[89] A character in the famous romance _Astrée_ by Victor d’Urfé
(1568-1626), adopted into the Russian language as the type of the
faithful and devoted swain.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[90] The reference is to the _Voyage du jeune Anarchasis_, by Barthélemy
(1779).—(_Translator’s Note._)

[91] Bouilhet, Louis, was a great friend of Flaubert, with whom he
collaborated. His own works include _Hélène Peyron_, and a very
successful drama, _La Conjuration d’Amboise_.

[92] Ribeyrolles, a talented writer on _La Réforme_, the organ of the
Extreme Left, of which Flocon was editor.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[93] Louis Blanc, author of _L’Histoire de Dix Ans_, one of the most
widely read books of the epoch.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[94] The real name of Messenhauser was Cæsar Wengel, a soldier and
writer, who took an active part in the rising of 1848, first in Lemberg
and then in Vienna. On the suppression of the rising he was sentenced to
be shot, and asked that as an officer he might give the word of command
to the soldiers who were to shoot him, and so conducted the business of
his own execution with remarkable composure.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[95] I was in those days what the Poles call a ‘passport man,’ and had
not yet cut off all possibility of return to Russia.—(_Author’s Note._)

[96] His article on ‘The Position of Russia in the All-World Exhibition’
was published in vol. ii. of the _Polar Star_.—(_Author’s Note._)

[97] A series of very remarkable letters of his, of which I propose to
publish a considerable number some day, date from this period.—(_Author’s
Note._)

[98] The _Polar Star_ is the name of the paper edited by Ryleyev, one of
the five Decembrists hanged by Nicholas in 1825. On the anniversary of
their execution Herzen brought out the first number of his paper of the
same name.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[99] W. J. Linton, a friend of Mazzini, and author of a series of
sketches of Italian, French, and Polish exiles, and of Herzen, called
_European Republicans_. His wife, Mrs. Lynn Linton, a prominent figure
some forty years ago, wrote several novels, and created a journalistic
sensation by an onslaught on ‘The Girl of the Period.’—(_Translator’s
Note._)

[100] Baroness Malwida von Meysenbug, authoress of _Memoirs of an
Idealist_, was a great friend of Wagner, and also of Nietzsche, whom she
cared for at times with motherly kindness. At this date she was living in
Herzen’s house as the governess of his children, the youngest of whom,
Olga, remained in her charge for many years.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[101] With this ends that part of _My Past and Thoughts_ which was
corrected by the author in its final form and published in four volumes.
The chapter which follows (in the next volume) is now published for the
first time, and is that for which, as Herzen himself more than once says,
he wrote all the rest.—(_Note to the Russian edition_, 1921.)



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