CHAPTER VI

The Kremlin Offices—Moscow University—The Chemist—The Cholera—Philaret—Passek.

§1

IN spite of the ominous prognostications of the one-legged general, my father entered my name for service at the Government offices in the Kremlin, under Prince Yusúpov. I signed some document, and there the matter ended. I never heard anything more about my office, except once, three years later, when a man was sent to our house by Yusúpov, to inform me that I had gained the first step of official promotion; this messenger was the court architect, and he always shouted as if he were standing on the roof of a five-storeyed house and giving orders from there to workmen in the cellar. I may remark in passing, that all this hocus-pocus was useless: when I passed my final examination at the University, this gave me at once the promotion earned by service; and the loss of a year or two of seniority was not serious. On the other hand, this pretence of office-work nearly prevented me from matriculating; for, when the University authorities found that I was reckoned as a Government clerk, they refused me permission to take the examination.

For the clerks in public offices there were special afternoon lectures, of an elementary kind, which gave the right of admission to a special examination. Rich idlers, young gentlemen whose education had been neglected, men who wished to avoid military service and to get the rank of _assessor_ as soon as possible—such were the candidates for this examination; and it served as a kind of gold-mine to the senior professors, who gave private instruction at twenty _roubles_ a lesson.

To pass through these Caudine Forks to knowledge was entirely inconsistent with my views, and I told my father decidedly that unless he found some other method I should retire from the Civil Service.

He was angry: he said that my wilfulness prevented him from settling my future, and blamed my teachers for filling my head with this nonsense; but when he saw that all this had little effect upon me, he determined to wait on Prince Yusúpov.

The Prince settled the matter in no time; there was no shillyshallying about his methods. He sent for his secretary and told him to make out leave of absence for me—for three years. The secretary hummed and hawed and respectfully submitted to his chief that four months was the longest period for which leave could be granted without the imperial sanction.

“Rubbish, my friend!” said the Prince; “the thing is perfectly simple: if he can’t have leave of absence, then say that I order him to go through the University course and complete his studies.”

The secretary obeyed orders, and next day found me sitting in the lecture-theatre of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.

The University of Moscow and the High School of Tsárskoë Seló[41] play an important part in the history of Russian education and in the life of the last two generations.

Footnote 41:

Tsárskoë Seló = The Tsar’s Village, near Petersburg. Púshkin was at this school.

§2

After the year 1812, Moscow University and Moscow itself rose in importance. Degraded from her position as an imperial capital by Peter the Great, the city was promoted by Napoleon, partly by his wish but mainly against it, to be the capital of the Russian nation. The people discovered the ties of blood that bound them to Moscow by the pain they felt on hearing of her capture by the enemy. For her it was the beginning of a new epoch; and her University became more and more the centre of Russian education, uniting as it did everything to favour its development—historical importance and geographical position.

There was a vigorous outburst of intellectual activity in Petersburg after the death of the Emperor Paul; but this died away in the darkness that followed the fourteenth of December, 1825.

All was reversed, the blood flowed back to the heart, and all activity was forced to ferment and burrow underground. But Moscow University stood firm and was the first visible object to emerge from the universal fog.

The University soon grew in influence. All the youth and strength of Russia came together there in one common meeting-place, from all parts of the country and all sections of society; there they cast off the prejudices they had acquired at home, reached a common level, formed ties of brotherhood with one another, and then went back to every part of Russia and penetrated every class.

Down to 1848 the constitution of our universities was purely democratic. Their doors were open to everyone who could pass the examination, provided he was not a serf, or a peasant detained by the village community. The Emperor Nicholas limited the number of freshmen and increased the charges to pensioners, permitting poor nobles only to escape from this burden. But all this belongs to the class of measures that will disappear together with the passport system, religious intolerance, and so on.

A motley assemblage of young men, from high to low, from North and South, soon blended into a compact body united by ties of friendship. Among us social distinctions had none of that offensive influence which one sees in English schools and regiments—to say nothing of English universities which exist solely for the rich and well-born. If any student among us had begun to boast of his family or his money, he would have been tormented and sent to Coventry by the rest.

The external distinctions among us were not deep and proceeded from other sources. For instance, the Medical School was across the park and somewhat removed from the other faculties; besides, most of the medical students were Germans or came from theological seminaries. The Germans kept somewhat apart, and the bourgeois spirit of Western Europe was strong in them. The whole education of the divinity students and all their ideas were different from ours; we spoke different languages; they had grown up under the yoke of monastic control and been crammed with rhetoric and theology; they envied our freedom, and we resented their Christian humility.

Though I joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, I never had any great turn or much liking for mathematics. Niko and I were taught the subject by the same teacher, whom we liked because he told us stories; he was very entertaining, but I doubt if he could have developed a special passion in any pupil for his branch of science. He knew as far as Conic Sections, _i.e._, just what was required from schoolboys entering the University; a true philosopher, he had never had the curiosity to glance at the “University branches” of mathematics. It was specially remarkable that he taught for ten years continuously out of a single book—Francœur’s treatise—and always stopped at the same page, having no ambition to go beyond the required minimum.

I chose that Faculty, because it included the subject of natural science, in which I then took a specially strong interest; and this interest was due to a rather odd meeting.

§3

I have described already the remarkable division of the family property in 1822. When it was over, my oldest uncle went to live in Petersburg, and nothing was heard of him for a long time. At last a report got abroad that he intended to marry. He was then over sixty, and it was well known that he had other children as well as a grown-up son. He did, in fact, marry the mother of his eldest son and so made the son legitimate. He might as well have legitimised the other children; but the chief object of these proceedings was well known—he wished to disinherit his brothers; and he fully attained that object by the acknowledgement of his son. In the famous inundation of 1824, the water flooded the carriage in which he was driving. The old man caught cold, took to his bed, and died in the beginning of 1825.

About the son there were strange reports: it was said that he was unsociable and had no friends; he was interested in chemistry and spent his life over the microscope; he read even at meals and disliked women’s society.

His uncles transferred to him the grievance they had felt against his father. They always called him “The Chemist,” using this as a term of contempt, and giving it to be understood that chemistry was a quite impossible occupation for a gentleman.

He had suffered horrible treatment from his father, who kept a harem in the house and not only insulted him by the spectacle of shameless senile profligacy but was actually jealous of his son’s rivalry. From this dishonourable existence The Chemist tried to escape by means of laudanum; but a friend who worked at chemistry with him saved his life by a mere chance. This frightened the father, and he treated his son better afterwards.

When his father died, The Chemist set free the fair captives of the harem, reduced by half the heavy dues levied by his father on the peasants, forgave all arrears, and gave away for nothing the exemptions which his father used to sell, excusing household servants from service in the Army.

When he came to Moscow eighteen months later, I was anxious to see him; for I was inclined to like him for his treatment of his peasants, and also for the dislike which his uncles unjustly felt for him.

He called on my father one morning—a shortish man, with a large nose and half his hair gone; he wore gold spectacles, and his fingers were stained with chemicals. My father’s reception was cold and cutting, but the nephew gave just as good as he got; when they had taken each other’s measure, they talked on casual topics with a show of indifference and parted politely, but a strong feeling of dislike was concealed on both sides. My father saw that his antagonist would never give way.

They never came closer afterwards. The Chemist very rarely visited his uncles; the last time he and my father met was after the Senator’s death—he came to ask a loan of 30,000 _roubles_, in order to buy land. My father refused to lend it; The Chemist was angry, but he rubbed his nose and said with a smile: “What possible risk is there? My estate is entailed, and I want the money for improvements. I have no children, so that you are the heir to my land as I am to yours.”[42] My father, who was then seventy-five, never forgave his nephew this sally.

Footnote 42:

Herzen himself was excluded from succession by his birth.

§4

I began to visit him from time to time. His was a singular existence. He had a large house on the Tver Boulevard, where he lived in one very small room and used another as a laboratory. His old mother occupied another small room at the end of the passage; and the rest of the house was unused, and left exactly as it was when his father migrated to Petersburg. Tarnished chandeliers, valuable furniture, rarities of all kinds, grandfather’s clocks supposed to have been bought by Peter the Great in Amsterdam, armchairs supposed to have belonged to Stanislas Leshchinski,[43] empty frames, and pictures turned to the wall—all these, in complete disorder, filled three large drawing-rooms which were neither heated nor lighted. In the outer hall the servants were generally playing the banjo and smoking—in the very room where formerly they hardly dared to breathe or say their prayers. One of them lit a candle and escorted me through the long museum; and he never failed to advise me to keep on my overcoat, because it was very cold in the drawing-rooms. Thick layers of dust covered all the projections of the furniture, and the contents of the rooms were reflected in the carved mirrors and seemed to move with the candle; straw, left over from packing, lay comfortably here and there, together with scraps of paper and bits of string.

Footnote 43:

King of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV.

After passing through these rooms, you came at last to a curtained door which led into the study. The heat in this room was terrific; and here The Chemist was always to be found, wearing a stained dressing-gown trimmed with squirrel-fur, sitting behind a rampart of books, and surrounded by bottles, retorts, crucibles, and other apparatus. A few years earlier, this room had been the scene of shocking vice and cruelty; now it smelt of chlorine and was ruled by the microscope; and in this very room I was born! When my father returned from foreign parts, he had not yet quarrelled with his brother, and spent some months under his roof. Here too my wife was born in the year 1817. After two years The Chemist sold the house, and I spent many evenings there, arguing about Pan-Slavism and losing my temper with Homyakóv,[44] though nothing could make him lose his. The chief rooms were altered then, but the outside steps, front hall, and staircase were unchanged; and the little study was left as before.

Footnote 44:

Alexyéi Homyakóv (1804-1860), poet, theologian, and a leader of the Slavophile party.

The Chemist’s household arrangements, simple at all times, were even simpler when his mother went to the country in summer and took the cook with her. At four in the afternoon, his valet brought a coffee-pot, made some strong broth in it, and placed it by the fire of the chemical furnace, where all sorts of poisons were brewing; then he fetched half a chicken and a loaf from an eating-house; and that was his master’s dinner. When it was eaten, the valet washed the coffee-pot and restored it to its proper functions. The man came again in the evening: he removed from the sofa a heap of books and a tiger-skin which The Chemist had inherited from his father; and when he had spread out a sheet and fetched pillows and a coverlet, the study, which had served as kitchen and drawing-room, was converted just as easily into a bedroom.

§5

At the very beginning of our acquaintance, The Chemist perceived that I was no mere idler; and he urged me to give up literature and politics—the former was mere trifling and the latter not only fruitless but dangerous—and take to natural science. He gave me Cuvier’s _Essay on Geological Changes_ and _Candolle’s Botanical Geography_, and, seeing that I profited by the reading, he placed at my disposal his own excellent collections and preparations, and even offered to direct my studies himself. On his own ground he was very interesting—exceedingly learned, acute, and even amiable, within certain limits. As far as the monkeys, he was at your service: from the inorganic kingdom up to the orang-outang, nothing came amiss to him; but he did not willingly venture farther, and philosophy, in particular, he avoided as mere moonshine. He was no enemy to reform, nor Rip van Winkle: he simply disbelieved in human nature—he believed that selfishness is the one and only motive of our actions, and is limited only by stupidity in some cases and by ignorance in others.

His materialism shocked me. It was quite unlike the superficial and half-hearted scepticism of a previous generation. His views were deliberate, consistent, and definite—one thought of Lalande’s famous answer to Napoleon. “Kant accepts the hypothesis of a deity,” said Napoleon. “Sir,” answered the astronomer, “in the course of my studies I have never found it necessary to make use of that hypothesis.”

The Chemist’s scepticism did not refer merely to theology. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire he called a mystic, and Oken a mere lunatic. He felt for the works of natural philosophers the contempt my father had expressed for Karamzín—“They first invent spiritual forces and First Causes, and then they are surprised that they cannot prove them or understand them.” In fact, it was my father over again, but differently educated and belonging to a different generation.

His views on social questions were even more disquieting. He believed that men are no more responsible for their actions, good or bad, than beasts: it was all a matter of constitution and circumstances and depended mainly on the state of the nervous system, from which, as he said, people expect more than it is able to give. He disliked family life, spoke with horror of marriage, and confessed frankly that, at thirty years of age, he had never once been in love. This hard temperament had, however, one tender side which showed itself in his conduct towards his mother. Both had suffered much from his father, and common suffering had united them closely. It was touching to see how he did what he could to surround her solitary and sickly old age with security and attention.

He never tried to make converts to his views, except on chemistry: they came out casually or were elicited by my questions. He was even unwilling to answer the objections I urged from an idealistic point of view; his answers were brief, and he smiled as he spoke, showing the kind of considerateness that an old mastiff will show to a lapdog whom he allows to snap at him and only pushes gently from him with his paw. But I resented this more than anything else and returned unwearied to the attack, though I never gained a single inch of ground. In later years I often called to mind what The Chemist had said, just as I recalled my father’s utterances; and, of course, he was right in three-fourths of the points in dispute. But, all the same, I was right too. There are truths which, like political rights, cannot be conveyed from one man to another before a certain age.

§6

It was The Chemist’s influence that made me choose the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Perhaps I should have done better to take up medicine; but it did me no great harm to acquire a partial knowledge of differential and integral equations, and then to lose it absolutely.

Without a knowledge of natural science, there is no salvation for the modern man. This wholesome food, this strict training of the mind by facts, this proximity to the life that surrounds ours, and this acknowledgement of its independence—without these there lurks somewhere in the soul a monastic cell, and this contains a germ of mysticism which may cover like a dark cloud the whole intellect.

Before I had gone through College, The Chemist had moved to Petersburg, and I did not meet him again till my return from exile. A few months after my marriage I paid a half-secret visit of a few days to my father, who was living near Moscow. He was still displeased at my marriage, and the purpose of my journey was to make peace between us once for all. I broke my journey at the village of Perkhushkov, the place where we had so often stayed in my youth. The Chemist was expecting me there; he even had dinner ready for me, and two bottles of champagne. Four or five years had made no change in him, except that he looked a little older. Before dinner he said to me quite seriously: “Please tell me frankly how marriage and domestic life strike you. Do you find it to your taste, or only passable?” I laughed, and he went on: “I am astonished at your boldness; no man in a normal condition could ever decide on so awful a step. More than one good match has been suggested to me; but when I think that a woman would do as she liked in my room, arranging everything in what she thinks order, forbidding me to smoke possibly, making a noise and talking nonsense, I feel such terror of the prospect that I prefer to die in solitude.”

“Shall I stop the night here or go on to my father’s?” I asked him after dinner.

“There is room enough in the house,” he answered, “but for your own sake I advise you to go on; you will get there by ten o’clock. Of course you know he’s still angry with you. Well, old people’s nerves are generally less active at night, before they get to sleep, and you will probably get a much better reception to-night than to-morrow morning; by then his spurs will be sharp for the fray.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” I laughed, “there is my old instructor in physiology and materialism! You remind me of those blissful days, when I used to come to you, like Wagner in _Faust_, to bore you with my idealism and to suffer, with some impatience, the cold water you threw on it.”

He laughed too and replied, “You have lived long enough, since then, to find out that all human actions depend merely on the nerves and chemical combination.”

Later, we somehow drifted apart; probably we were both to blame. Nevertheless, he wrote me a letter in 1846. I had published the first part of _Whose Fault Is It?_[45] and was beginning to be the fashion. He wrote that he was sorry to see me wasting my powers on trivial objects. “I made it up with you because of your letters on the study of Nature, in which you made me understand (as far as it is intelligible to the mind of man) the German philosophy. But why, instead of going on with serious work, do you write fairy tales?” I sent a few friendly words in reply, and there our relations ended.

Footnote 45:

A novel.

If these lines happen to fall under The Chemist’s eyes, I beg that he will read them before going to bed, when the nerves are less active; and I am convinced that he will be able then to pardon this friendly gossip, and all the more because I cherish a real regard for him.

§7

And so, at last, the doors of my prison were opened, and I was free. The solitude of my smallish room and the quiet half-secret interviews with my one friend, Ogaryóv, were now exchanged for a noisy family of six hundred members. In a fortnight, I was more at home there than I had ever been, from the day I was born, in my father’s house.

But even here my father’s house pursued me, in the shape of a footman whom my father sent with me to the University, especially when I walked there. I spent a whole term in trying to dodge this escort, and was formally excused from it at last. I say “formally,” because my valet Peter, who was entrusted with this duty, very soon realised, first, that I disliked being escorted, and secondly, that he himself would be much better off in various places of amusement than in the entrance-hall of my lecture-room, where he had no occupation except to exchange gossip and pinches of snuff with the two porters. What was the motive of this precaution? Was it possible that Peter, who had been liable all his life to drinking-bouts that lasted for days, could keep me straight? I don’t suppose my father believed that; but, for his own peace of mind, he took measures—ineffective, indeed, but still measures—much in the way that freethinkers keep Lent. This is a characteristic feature of the old system of education in Russia. Till I was seven, I was not allowed to come downstairs alone—the flight was rather steep; and Vyéra Artamónovna went on bathing me till I was eleven. It was of a piece with this system that I should have a servant walking behind me to College, and should not be allowed, before I was twenty-one, to be out later than half-past ten. I was never really free and independent till I was banished; but for that incident, the system would probably have gone on till I was twenty-five or thirty-five.

§8

Like most energetic boys who have been brought up alone, I rushed into the arms of my companions with such frank eagerness, made proselytes with such sublime confidence, and was myself so fond of everyone, that I could not but kindle a corresponding warmth in my hearers, who were mostly of the same age as myself. I was then seventeen.

The process of making friends was hastened partly by the advice which worldly wisdom gave me—to be polite to all and intimate with none, to confide in nobody; and there was also the belief which we all took with us to College, the belief that here our dreams would be realised, that here we should sow the seed of a future harvest and lay the foundations of a permanent alliance.

The young men of my time were admirable. It was just the time when ideals were stirring more and more in Russia. The formalism of theological training and Polish indolence had alike disappeared, and had not yet given place to German utilitarianism, which applies culture to the mind, like manure to a field, in the hope of a heavier crop. The best students had ceased to consider learning as a tiresome but indispensable byway to official promotion; and the questions which we discussed had nothing to do with advancement in the Civil Service.

On the other hand, the pursuit of knowledge had not yet become divorced from realities, and did not distract our attention from the suffering humanity around us; and this sympathy heightened the _social_ morality of the students. My friends and I said openly in the lecture-room whatever came into our heads; copies of forbidden poems were freely circulated, and forbidden books were read aloud and commented on; and yet I cannot recall a single instance of information given by a traitor to the authorities. There were timid spirits who held aloof and shut their eyes; but even they held their tongues.

One foolish boy made some disclosures to his mother, when she questioned him, under threat of the rod, about the Málov affair. The fond mother—she was a Princess and a leader in society—rushed to the Rector and communicated her son’s disclosures, in order to prove his repentance. We found this out, and tormented him so, that he left before his time was up.

But this episode, which led to my confinement within the walls of the University prison, is worth telling.

§9

Málov, though a professor in the University, was a stupid, rude, ill-educated man, an object of contempt and derision to the students. One of them, when asked by a Visitor, how many professors there were in their department, replied that there were nine, not counting Málov.[46] And this man, who could be spoken of in this way, began to treat his class with more and more rudeness, till they determined to turn him out of the lecture-room. When their plan was made, they sent two spokesmen to our department, and invited me to bring reinforcements. I raised the fiery cross against the foe at once, and was joined by some adherents. When we entered Málov’s lecture-room, he was there and saw us.

Footnote 46:

There is here an untranslatable play on words.

One fear only was depicted on the faces of all the audience—that he might refrain for once from rude remarks. But that fear soon passed off. The tightly packed lecture-room was in a fever and gave vent to a low suppressed noise. Málov made some objection, and a scraping of feet began. “You are like horses, expressing your thoughts with your feet,” said the professor, imagining, I suppose, that horses think by gallop and trot. Then the storm broke, with hisses and yells. “Turn him out! turn him out! _Pereat!_” Málov turned white as a sheet and made a desperate effort to control the noise, but failed; the students jumped up on the benches. Málov slowly left his chair, hunched himself up, and made his way to the door. The students followed him through the court to the street outside, and threw his goloshes out after him. The last detail was important: if once it reached the street, the proceeding became much more serious; but what lads of seventeen or eighteen would ever take that into account?

The University Council took fright and induced the Visitor to represent the affair as settled, and, with that object, to consign the guilty persons or someone, at least, to the University prison. That was rather ingenious on their part. Otherwise, it was likely enough that the Emperor would send an _aide-de-camp_, and that the _aide-de-camp_, in order to earn a cross, would have magnified the affair into conspiracy and rebellion; then he would have advised penal servitude for all the offenders, and the Emperor, in his mercy, would have sent them to the colours instead. But seeing vice punished and virtue triumphant, the Emperor merely confirmed the action of the students by dismissing the professor. Though we drove Málov as far as the University gates, it was Nicholas who drove him out of them.

So the fat was in the fire. On the following afternoon, one of the porters hobbled up to me, a white-haired old man who was normally in a state more drunk than sober, and produced from the lining of his overcoat a note from the Rector for me: I was ordered to call on him at seven in the evening. The porter was soon followed by a student, a baron from the Baltic Provinces, who was one of the unfortunate victims enticed by me, and had received an invitation similar to mine. He looked pale and frightened and began by heaping reproaches on me; then he asked me what I advised him to say.

“Lie desperately,” I answered; “deny everything, except that there was a row and you were present.”

“But if the Rector asks why I was in the wrong lecture-room?”

“That’s easy. Say of course that our lecturer did not turn up, and that you, not wishing to waste your time, went to hear someone else.”

“He won’t believe me.”

“That’s his affair.”

When we entered the University yard, I looked at my baron: his plump cheeks were very pale, and he was obviously feeling uncomfortable. “Listen to me,” I said; “you may be sure that the Rector will deal with me first. Say what I say, with variations; you really took no special part in the affair. But remember one thing: for making a row and for telling lies about it, they will, at most, put you in the prison; but, if you are not careful and involve any other student, I shall tell the rest and we shall poison your existence.” The baron promised, and kept his word like a gentleman.

§10

The Rector at that time was Dvigubski, a survival and a typical specimen of the antediluvian professor—but, for flood I should substitute fire, the Great Fire of 1812.

They are extinct now: the patriarchal epoch of Moscow University ends with the appointment of Prince Obolenski as Visitor. In those days the Government left the University alone: the professors lectured or not, the students attended or not, just as they pleased, and the latter, instead of the kind of cavalry uniform they have now, wore mufti of varying degrees of eccentricity, and very small caps which would hardly stick on over their virgin locks. Of professors there were two classes or camps, which carried on a bloodless warfare against each other—one composed exclusively of Germans, the other of non-Germans. The Germans included some worthy and learned men, such as Loder, Fischer, Hildebrandt, and Heim; but they were distinguished as a rule for their ignorance and dislike of the Russian language, their want of sympathy with the students, their unlimited consumption of tobacco, and the large number of stars and orders which they always wore. The non-Germans, on their side, knew no modern language but Russian; they had the ill-breeding of the theological school and the servile temper of their nation; they were mostly overworked, and they made up for abstention from tobacco by an excessive indulgence in strong drinks. Most of the Germans came from Göttingen, and most of the non-Germans were sons of priests.

Dvigubski belonged to the latter class. He looked so much the ecclesiastic that one of the students—he had been brought up at a priests’ school—asked for his blessing and regularly addressed him as “Your Reverence” in the course of an examination. But he was also startlingly like an owl wearing the Order of St. Anne; and as such he was caricatured by another student who had come less under church influences. He came occasionally to our lecture-room, and brought with him the dean, Chumakov, or Kotelnitski, who had charge of a cupboard labelled _Materia Medica_, and kept, for some unknown reason, in the mathematical class-room; or Reiss, who had been imported from Germany because his uncle knew chemistry, and lectured in French with such a pronunciation that _poisson_ took the place of _poison_ in his mouth, and some quite innocent words sounded unprintable. When these old gentlemen appeared, we stared at them: to us they were a party of “dug-outs,” the Last of the Mohicans, representatives of a different age, quite remote from ours—of the time when Knyazhnín and Cheraskov were read, the time of good-natured Professor Dilthey, who had two dogs which he named _Babil_ and _Bijou_, because one never stopped barking and the other was always silent.

§11

But Dvigubski was by no means a good-natured professor: his reception of us was exceedingly abrupt and discourteous; I talked terrible nonsense and was rude, and the baron played second fiddle to me. Dvigubski was provoked and ordered us to appear before the Council next morning. The Council settled our business in half an hour: they questioned, condemned, and sentenced us, and referred the sentence, for confirmation, to Prince Golitsyn.

I had hardly had time to give half a dozen performances in the lecture-room, representing the proceedings of the University Court, when the beginning of the lecture was interrupted by the appearance of a party, consisting of our inspector, an army major, a French dancing-master, and a corporal, who carried an order for my arrest and incarceration. Some students escorted me, and there were many more in the court-yard, who waved their hands or caps. Clearly I was not the first victim. The University police tried in vain to push them back.

I found two captives already immured in the dirty cellar which served as a prison, and there were two more in another room; six was the total number of those who suffered for this affair. We were sentenced to a diet of bread and water, and, though we declined some soup which the Rector sent us, we did not suffer; for when the College emptied at nightfall, our friends brought us cheese, game, cigars, wine, and _liqueurs_. The sentry grumbled and scolded, but he took a small bribe, and introduced the supplies. After midnight, he moved to some distance and allowed several of our friends to join us. And so we spent our time, feasting by night and sleeping by day.

A certain Panin, a brother of the Minister of Justice and employed under our Visitor, mindful of Army traditions, took it into his head one night to go the rounds and inspect our cellar-prison. We had just lit a candle, keeping it under a chair to betray no light, and were attacking our midnight meal, when a knocking was heard at the outer door, not the meek sound that begs for admittance and fears to be heard more than not to be heard, but a knock of power and authority. The sentry turned rigid, we hid the bottles and our guests in a cupboard, blew out the light, and dropped on our pallet-beds. Panin came in. “You appear to be smoking,” he said—the smoke was so thick that Panin and the inspector who were carrying a lantern were hardly visible. “Where do they get a light from? From you?” he asked the sentry. The man swore he was innocent, and we said that we had got tinder of our own. The inspector promised to take it and our cigars away; and Panin went off, without ever noticing that there were twice as many caps in the room as heads.

On Saturday evening the inspector appeared and announced that I and one other might go home; the rest were to stay till Monday. I resented this proposal and asked him whether I might stay. He fell back a step, looked at me with that expression of dignified wrath which is worn by ballet-dancers when representing angry kings or heroes, and said, “By all means, if you want to!” Then he left us; and this sally on my part brought down more paternal wrath on me than any other part of the affair.

Thus the first nights which I spent away from home were spent in prison. I was soon to experience a prison of another kind, and there I spent, not eight days, but nine months; and when these had passed, instead of going home, I went into exile. But much happened before that.

From this time I was a popular hero in the lecture-room. Till then I was considered “all right” by the rest; but, after the Málov affair, I became, like the lady in Gógol, all right in the fullest sense of that term.

§12

But did we learn anything, meanwhile, and was study possible under such circumstances? I think we did. The instruction was more limited in quantity and scope than in the forties. But a university is not bound to complete scientific education: its business is rather to put a man in a position to walk by himself; it should raise problems and teach a man to ask questions. And this is exactly what was done by such professors as Pávlov and Kachenovsky, each in his own way. But the collision of young minds, the exchange of ideas, and the discussion of books—all this did more than professors or lectures to develop and ripen the student. Moscow University was a successful institution; and the professors who contributed by their lectures to the development of Lérmontov, Byelínski, Turgénev, Kavélin, and Pirógov, may play cards with an easy conscience, or, with a still easier conscience, rest in their graves.

And what astonishing people some of them were! There was Chumakov, who treated the formulae of Poinsot’s _Algebra_ like so many serfs—adding letters and subtracting them, mixing up square numbers and their roots, and treating x as the known quantity. There was Myágkov, who, in spite of his name,[47] lectured on the harshest of sciences, the science of tactics. The constant study of this noble subject had actually given a martial air to the professor; and as he stood there buttoned up to the throat and erect behind his stock, his lectures sounded more like words of command than mere conversation. “Gentlemen, artillery!” he would cry out. It sounded like the field of battle, but it only meant that this was the heading of his next discourse. And there was Reiss, who lectured on chemistry but never ventured further than hydrogen—Reiss, who was elected to the Chair for no knowledge of his own but because his uncle had once studied the science. The latter was invited to come to Russia towards the end of Catherine’s reign; but the old man did not want to move, and sent his nephew instead.

Footnote 47:

_Myágki_ is the Russian for “mild.”

My University course lasted four years, the additional year being due to the fact that a whole session was lost owing to the cholera. The most remarkable events of that time were the cholera itself, and the visits of Humboldt and Uvárov.

§13

When Humboldt[48] was on his way back from the Ural Mountains, he was welcomed to Moscow at a formal meeting of the Society for the Pursuit of Natural Science, most of whose members were state functionaries of some kind, not at all interested in science, either natural or unnatural. But the glory of Humboldt—a Privy Councillor of the Prussian King, a man on whom the Tsar had graciously conferred the Order of St. Anne, with instructions that the recipient was to be put to no expense in the matter—was a fact of which even they were not ignorant; and they were determined to show themselves to advantage before a man who had climbed Chimborazo and who lived at Sans-Souci.[49]

Footnote 48:

Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859), born at Berlin, a famous writer on natural science.

Footnote 49:

The Prussian palace, near Potsdam.

§14

Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning; they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite different political views in talking to different persons, without any ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of complaisance is highly developed in our skulls.

“Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,” said Lord Durham on one occasion, “is a true Whig, a Whig at heart.” Prince Golitsyn was a worthy Russian gentleman, but I do not understand in what sense he was a Whig. It is clear enough that the Prince in his old age wished to be polite to Lord Durham and put on the Whig for that purpose.

§15

Humboldt’s reception in Moscow and at the University was a tremendous affair. Everyone came to meet him—the Governor of the city, functionaries military and civil, and the judges of the Supreme Court; and the professors were there wearing full uniform and their Orders, looking most martial with swords and three-cornered hats tucked under their arms. Unaware of all this, Humboldt arrived in a blue coat with gilt buttons and was naturally taken aback. His way was barricaded at every point between the entrance and the great hall: first the Rector stopped him, then the Dean, now a budding professor, and now a veteran who was just ending his career and therefore spoke very slowly; each of them delivered a speech of welcome in Latin or German or French, and all this went on in those terrible stone funnels miscalled passages, where you stopped for a minute at the risk of catching cold for a month. Humboldt listened bare-headed to them all and replied to them all. I feel convinced that none of the savages, either red-skinned or copper-coloured, whom he had met in his travels, made him so uncomfortable as his reception at Moscow.

When he reached the hall at last and could sit down, he had to get up again. Our Visitor, Pisarev, thought it necessary to set forth in a few powerful Russian sentences the merits of His Excellency, the famous traveller; and then a poet, Glinka, in a deep hoarse voice recited a poem of his own which began—

“Humboldt, Prometheus of our time!”

What Humboldt wanted was to discuss his observations on the magnetic pole, and to compare the meteorological records he had taken in the Ural Mountains with those at Moscow; but the Rector preferred to show him some relic plaited out of the hair of Peter the Great. It was with difficulty that Ehrenberg and Rose found an opportunity to tell him something of their discoveries.[50]

Footnote 50:

Odd views were taken in Russia of Humboldt’s travels. There was a Cossack at Perm who liked describing how he escorted “a mad Prussian prince called Gumplot.” When asked what Gumplot did, he said: “He was quite childish, picking grasses and gazing at sand. At one place he told me through the interpreter to wade into a pool and fish out what was at the bottom—there was nothing but what there is at the bottom of every pool. Then he asked if the water at the bottom was very cold. You won’t catch me that way, thought I; so I saluted and said, ‘The rules of the service require it, Your Excellency.’” [Author’s Note.]

Even in unofficial circles, we don’t do things much better in Russia. Liszt was received in just the same way by Moscow society ten years ago. There was folly enough over him in Germany; but that was quite a different thing—old-maidish gush and sentimentality and strewing of roses, whereas in Russia there was servile acknowledgement of power and prim formality of a strictly official type. And Liszt’s reputation as a Don Juan was mixed up in an unpleasant way with it all: the ladies swarmed around him, just as boys in out-of-the-way places swarm round a traveller when he is changing horses and stare at him or his carriage or his hat. Every ear was turned to Liszt, every word and every reply was addressed to him alone. I remember one evening when Homyakóv, in his disgust with the company, appealed to me to start a dispute with him on any subject, that Liszt might discover there were some people in the room who were not exclusively taken up with him. I can only say one thing to console our ladies—that Englishwomen treated other celebrities, Kossuth, Garibaldi, and others, in just the same way, crowding and jostling round the object of worship; but woe to him who seeks to learn good manners from Englishwomen, or their husbands!

§16

Our other distinguished visitor was also “a Prometheus of our time” in a certain sense; only, instead of stealing fire from Zeus, he stole it from mankind. This Prometheus, whose fame was sung, not by Glinka but by Púshkin himself in his _Epistle to Lucullus_, was Uvárov, the Minister of Education.[51] He astonished us by the number of languages he spoke and by the amount of his miscellaneous knowledge; he was a real shopman behind the counter of learning and kept samples of all the sciences, the elements chiefly, in his head. In Alexander’s reign, he wrote reform pamphlets in French; then he had a German correspondence with Goethe on Greek matters. After becoming minister, he discoursed on Slavonic poetry of the fourth century, which made Kachenovsky remark to him that our ancestors were much busier in fighting bears than in hymning their gods and kings. As a kind of patent of nobility, he carried about in his pocket a letter from Goethe, in which Goethe paid him a very odd compliment: “You have no reason to apologise for your style: you have succeeded in doing what I could never do—forgetting German grammar.”

Footnote 51:

Serghéi Uvárov (1786-1855) was both Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences. He used his power to tighten the censorship and suppressed _The Moscow Telegraph_, edited by Polevoi, which was the most independent of Russian journals; in this way he “stole fire from mankind.” The reference to Púshkin is malicious: what Púshkin wrote about Uvárov in that poem was the reverse of complimentary. “Lucullus” was Count Sheremétyev and Uvárov was his heir.

This highly placed Admirable Crichton invented a new kind of torture for our benefit. He gave directions that the best students should be selected, and that each of them should deliver a lecture in his own department of study, in place of the professor. The Deans of course chose the readiest of the students to perform.

These lectures went on for a whole week. The students had to get up all the branches of their subject, and the Dean drew a lot to determine the theme and the speaker. Uvárov invited all the rank and fashion of Moscow. Ecclesiastics and judges, the Governor of the city, and the old poet, Dmítriev—everyone was there.

§17

It fell to me to lecture on a mineralogical subject. Our professor, Lovetski,—he is now dead,—was a tall man with a clumsy figure and awkward gait, a large mouth and a large and entirely expressionless face. He wore a pea-green overcoat, adorned in the fashion of the First Consulate with a variety of capes; and while taking off this garment in the passage outside the lecture-room, he always began in an even and wooden voice which seemed to suit his subject, “In our last lecture we dealt fully with silicon dioxide”—then he took his seat and went on, “We proceed to aluminium ...” In the definition of each metal, he followed an absolutely identical formula, so that some of them had to be defined by negatives, in this way: “Crystallisation: this metal does not crystallise”; “Use: this metal is never used”; “Service to man: this substance does nothing but harm to the human organism.”

Still he did not avoid poetical illustration or edifying comment: whenever he showed us counterfeit gems and explained how they were made, he never failed to add, “Gentlemen, this is dishonest.” When alluding to farming, he found _moral_ worth in a cock that was fond of crowing and courting his hens, and blue blood in a ram if he had “bald knees.” He had also a touching story about some flies which ran over the bark of a tree on a fine summer day till they were caught in the resin which had turned to amber; and this always ended with the words, “Gentlemen, these things are an allegory.”

When I was summoned forth by the Dean, the audience was somewhat weary: two lectures on mathematics had had a depressing effect upon hearers who did not understand a word of the subject. Uvárov called for something more lively and a speaker with a ready tongue; and I was chosen to meet the situation.

While I was mounting to the desk, Lovetski sat there motionless, with his hands on his knees, looking like Memnon or Osiris. I whispered to him, “Never fear! I shan’t give you away!”—and the worthy professor, without looking at me and hardly moving his lips, formed the words, “Boast not, when girding on thine armour!” I nearly laughed aloud, but when I looked in front of me, the whole room swam before my eyes, I felt that I was losing colour, and my mouth grew strangely dry. It was my first speech in public; the lecture-room was full of students, who relied upon me; at a table just below me sat the dignitaries and all the professors of our faculty. I took the paper and read out in a voice that sounded strange to myself, “Crystallisation: its conditions, laws, and forms.”

While I was considering how I should begin, a consoling thought came into my head—that, if I did make mistakes, the professors might perhaps detect them but would certainly not speak of them, while the rest of the audience would be quite in the dark, and the students would be quite satisfied if I managed not to break down; for I was a favourite with them. So I delivered my lecture and ended up with some speculative observations, addressing myself throughout to my companions and not to the minister. Students and professors shook me by the hand and expressed their thanks. Uvárov presented me to Prince Golitsyn, who said something, but I could not understand it, as the Prince used vowels only and no consonants. Uvárov promised me a book as a souvenir of the occasion; but I never got it.

My second and third appearances on a public stage were very different. In 1836 I took a chief part in amateur theatricals before the Governor and _beau monde_ of Vyatka. Though we had been rehearsing for a month, my heart beat furiously and my hands trembled; when the overture came to an end, dead silence followed, and the curtain slowly rose with an awful twitching. The leading lady and I were in the green-room; and she was so sorry for me, or so afraid that I would break down and spoil the piece, that she administered a full bumper of champagne; but even this was hardly able to restore me to my senses.

This preliminary experience saved me from all nervous symptoms and self-consciousness when I made my third public appearance, which was at a Polish meeting held in London and presided over by the ex-Minister Ledru-Rollin.

§18

But perhaps I have dwelt long enough on College memories. I fear it may be a sign of senility to linger so long over them; and I shall only add a few details on the cholera of 1831.

The word “cholera,” so familiar now in Europe and especially in Russia, was heard in the North for the first time in 1831. The dread contagion caused general terror, as it spread up the course of the Volga towards Moscow. Exaggerated rumours filled men’s minds with horror. The epidemic took a capricious course, sometimes pausing, and sometimes passing over a district; it was believed that it had gone round Moscow, when suddenly the terrible tidings spread like wildfire, “The cholera is in the city.”

A student who was taken ill one morning died in the University hospital on the evening of the next day. We went to look at the body. It was emaciated as if by long illness, the eyes were sunk in their sockets, and the features were distorted. Near him lay his attendant who had caught the infection during the night.

We were told that the University was to be closed. The notice was read in our faculty by Denísov, the professor of technology; he was depressed and perhaps frightened; before the end of the next day he too was dead.

All the students collected in the great court of the University. There was something touching in that crowd of young men forced asunder by the fear of infection. All were excited, and there were many pale faces; many were thinking of relations and friends; we said good-bye to the scholars who were to remain behind in quarantine, and dispersed in small groups to our homes. There we were greeted by the stench of chloride of lime and vinegar, and submitted to a diet which, of itself and without chloride or cholera, was quite enough to cause an illness.

It is a strange fact, but this sad time is more solemn than sad in my recollection of it.

The aspect of Moscow was entirely changed. The city was animated beyond its wont by the feeling of a common life. There were fewer carriages in the streets; crowds stood at the crossings and spoke darkly of poisoners; ambulances, conveying the sick, moved along at a footpace, escorted by police; and people turned aside as the hearses went by. Bulletins were published twice a day. The city was surrounded by troops, and an unfortunate beadle was shot while trying to cross the river. These measures caused much excitement, and fear of disease conquered the fear of authority; the inhabitants protested; and meanwhile tidings followed tidings—that so-and-so had sickened and so-and-so was dead.

The Archbishop, Philaret, ordained a Day of Humiliation. At the same hour on the same day all the priests went in procession with banners round their parishes, while the terrified inhabitants came out of their houses and fell on their knees, weeping and praying that their sins might be forgiven; even the priests were moved by the solemnity of the occasion. Some of them marched to the Kremlin, where the Archbishop, surrounded by clerical dignitaries, knelt in the open air and prayed, “May this cup pass from us!”

§19

Philaret carried on a kind of opposition to Government, but why he did so I never could understand, unless it was to assert his own personality. He was an able and learned man, and a perfect master of the Russian language, which he spoke with a happy flavouring of Church-Slavonic; but all this gave him no right to be in opposition. The people disliked him and called him a freemason, because he was intimate with Prince A. N. Golitsyn and preached in Petersburg just when the Bible Society was in vogue there. The Synod forbade the use of his Catechism in the schools. But the clergy who were under his rule trembled before him.

Philaret knew how to put down the secular powers with great ingenuity and dexterity; his sermons breathed that vague Christian socialism to which Lacordaire and other far-sighted Roman Catholics owed their reputation. From the height of his episcopal pulpit, Philaret used to say that no man could be legally the mere instrument of another, and that an exchange of services was the only proper relation between human beings; and this he said in a country where half the population were slaves.

Speaking to a body of convicts who were leaving Moscow on their way to Siberia, he said, “Human law has condemned you and driven you forth; but the Church will not let you go; she wishes to address you once more, to pray for you once again, and to bless you before your journey.” Then, to comfort them, he added, “You, by your punishment, have got rid of your past, and a new life awaits you; but, among others” (and there were probably no others present except officials) “there are even greater sinners than you”; and he spoke of the penitent thief at the Crucifixion as an example for them.

But Philaret’s sermon on the Day of Humiliation left all his previous utterances in the shade. He took as his text the passage where the angel suffered David to choose between war, famine, and pestilence as the punishment for his sin, and David chose the pestilence. The Tsar came to Moscow in a furious rage, and sent a high Court official to reprove the Archbishop; he even threatened to send him to Georgia to exercise his functions there. Philaret submitted meekly to the reproof; and then he sent round a new rescript to all the churches, explaining that it was a mistake to suppose that he had meant David to represent the Tsar: we ourselves were David, sunk like him in the mire of sin. In this way, the meaning of the original sermon was explained even to those who had failed to grasp its meaning at first.

Such was the way in which the Archbishop of Moscow played at opposition.

The Day of Humiliation was as ineffectual as the chloride of lime; and the plague grew worse and worse.

§20

I witnessed the whole course of the frightful epidemic of cholera at Paris in 1849. The violence of the disease was increased by the hot June weather; the poor died like flies; of the middle classes some fled to the country, and the rest locked themselves up in their houses. The Government, exclusively occupied by the struggle against the revolutionists, never thought of taking any active steps. Large private subscriptions failed to meet the requirements of the situation. The working class were left to take their chance; the hospitals could not supply all the beds, nor the police all the coffins, that were required; and corpses remained for forty-eight hours in living-rooms crowded with a number of different families.

In Moscow things were different.

Prince Dmitri Golitsyn was Governor of the city, not a strong man, but honourable, cultured, and highly respected. He gave the line to Moscow society, and everything was arranged by the citizens themselves without much interference on the part of Government. A committee was formed of the chief residents—rich landowners and merchants. Each member of the committee undertook one of the districts of Moscow. In a few days twenty hospitals were opened, all supported by voluntary contributions and not costing one penny to the State. The merchants supplied all that was required in the hospitals—bedding, linen, and warm clothing, and this last might be kept by convalescents. Young people acted gratuitously as inspectors in the hospitals, to see that the free-will offerings of the merchants were not stolen by the orderlies and nurses.

The University too played its part. The whole medical school, both teachers and students, put themselves at the disposal of the committee. They were distributed among the hospitals and worked there incessantly until the infection was over. For three or four months these young men did fine work in the hospitals, as assistant physicians, dressers, nurses, or clerks, and all this for no pecuniary reward and at a time when the fear of infection was intense. I remember one Little Russian student who was trying to get an _exeat_ on urgent private affairs when the cholera began. It was difficult to get an _exeat_ in term-time, but he got it at last and was just preparing to start when the other students were entering the hospitals. He put his _exeat_ in his pocket and joined them. When he left the hospital, his leave of absence had long expired, and he was the first to laugh heartily at the form his trip had taken.

Moscow has the appearance of being sleepy and slack, of caring for nothing but gossip and piety and fashionable intelligence; but she invariably wakes up and rises to the occasion when the hour strikes and when the thunder-storm breaks over Russia.

She was wedded to Russia in blood in 1612, and she was welded to Russia in the fire of 1812.

She bent her head before Peter, because he was the wild beast whose paw contained the whole future of Russia.

Frowning and pouting out his lips, Napoleon sat outside the gates, waiting for the keys of Moscow; impatiently he pulled at his bridle and twitched his glove. He was not accustomed to be alone when he entered foreign capitals.

“But other thoughts had Moscow mine,” as Púshkin wrote, and she set fire to herself.

The cholera appeared, and once again the people’s capital showed itself full of feeling and power!

§21

In August of 1830 we went to stay at Vasílevskoë, and broke our journey as usual at Perkhushkov, where our house looked like a castle in a novel of Mrs. Radcliffe’s. After taking a meal and feeding the horses, we were preparing to resume our journey, and Bakai, with a towel round his waist, was just calling out to the coachman, “All right!” when a mounted messenger signed to us to stop. This was a groom belonging to my uncle, the Senator. Covered with dust and sweat, he jumped off his horse and delivered a packet to my father. The packet contained the _Revolution of July_! Two pages of the _Journal des Débats_, which he brought with him as well as a letter, I read over a hundred times till I knew them by heart; and for the first time I found the country tiresome.

It was a glorious time and events moved quickly. The spare figure of Charles X had hardly disappeared into the fogs of Holyrood, when Belgium burst into flame and the throne of the citizen-king began to totter. The revolutionary spirit began to work in men’s mouths and in literature: novels, plays, and poetry entered the arena and preached the good cause.

We knew nothing then of the theatrical element which is part of all revolutionary movements in France, and we believed sincerely in all we heard.

If anyone wishes to know how powerfully the news of the July revolution worked on the rising generation, let him read what Heine wrote, when he heard in Heligoland that “the great Pan, the pagan god, was dead.” There is no sham enthusiasm there: Heine at thirty was just as much carried away, just as childishly excited, as we were at eighteen.

We followed every word and every incident with close attention—bold questions and sharp replies, General Lafayette and General Lamarque. Not only did we know all about the chief actors—on the radical side, of course—but we were warmly attached to them, and cherished their portraits, from Manuel and Benjamin Constant to Dupont de l’Eure and Armand Carrel.

§22

Our special group consisted of five to begin with, and then we fell in with a sixth, Vadim Passek.

There was much that was new to us in Vadim. We five had all been brought up in very much the same way: we knew no places but Moscow and the surrounding country; we had read the same books and taken lessons from the same teachers; we had been educated either at home or in the boarding-school connected with the University. But Vadim was born in Siberia, during his father’s exile, and had suffered poverty and privation. His father was his teacher, and he was one of a large family, who grew up familiar with want but free from all other restraints. Siberia has a stamp of its own, quite unlike the stamp of provincial Russia; those who bear it have more health and more elasticity. Compared to Vadim we were tame. His courage was of a different kind, heroic and at times overbearing; the high distinction of suffering had developed in him a special kind of pride, but he had also a generous warmth of heart. He was bold, and even imprudent to excess; but a man born in Siberia and belonging to a family of exiles has this advantage over others, that Siberia has for him no terrors.

As soon as we met, Vadim rushed into our arms. Very soon we became intimate. It should be said that there was nothing of the nature of ceremony or prudent precaution in our little coterie of those days.

“Would you like to know Ketcher, of whom you have heard so much?” Vadim once asked me.

“Of course I should.”

“Well, come at seven to-morrow evening, and don’t be late; he will be at our house.”

When I arrived, Vadim was out. A tall man with an expressive face was waiting for him and shot a glance, half good-natured and half formidable, at me from under his spectacles. I took up a book, and he followed my example.

“I say,” he began, as he opened the book, “are you Herzen?”

And so conversation began and soon grew fast and furious. Ketcher soon interrupted me with no ceremony: “Excuse me! I should be obliged if you would address me as ‘thou.’”

“By all means!” said I. And from that minute—perhaps it was the beginning of 1831—we were inseparable friends; and from that minute Ketcher’s friendly laugh or fierce shout became a part of my life at all its stages.

The acquaintance with Vadim brought a new and gentler element into our camp.

As before, our chief meeting-place was Ogaryóv’s house. His invalid father had gone to live in the country, and he lived alone on the ground-floor of their Moscow house, which was near the University and had a great attraction for us all. Ogaryóv had that magnetic power which forms the first point of crystallisation in any medley of disordered atoms, provided the necessary affinity exists. Though scattered in all directions, they become imperceptibly the heart of an organism. In his bright cheerful room with its red and gold wall-paper, amid the perpetual smell of tobacco and punch and other—I was going to say, eatables and drinkables, but now I remember that there was seldom anything to eat but cheese—we often spent the time from dark till dawn in heated argument and sometimes in noisy merriment. But, side by side with that hospitable students’ room, there grew more and more dear to us another house, in which we learned—I might say, for the first time—respect for family life.

Vadim often deserted our discussions and went off home: when he had not seen his mother and sisters for some time, he became restless. To us our little club was the centre of the world, and we thought it strange that he should prefer the society of his family; were not we a family too?

Then he introduced us to his family. They had lately returned from Siberia; they were ruined, yet they bore that stamp of dignity which calamity engraves, not on every sufferer, but on those who have borne misfortune with courage.

§23

Their father was arrested in Paul’s reign, having been informed against for revolutionary designs. He was thrown into prison at Schlüsselburg and then banished to Siberia. When Alexander restored thousands of his father’s exiles, Passek was _forgotten_. He was a nephew of the Passek who became Governor of Poland, and might have claimed a share of the fortune which had now passed into other hands.

While detained at Schlüsselburg, Passek had married the daughter of an officer of the garrison. The young girl knew that exile would be his fate, but she was not deterred by that prospect. In Siberia they made a shift at first to get on, by selling their last belongings, but the pressure of poverty grew steadily worse and worse, and the process was hastened by their increasing family. Yet neither destitution nor manual toil, nor the absence of warm clothing and sometimes of daily food—nothing prevented them from rearing a whole family of lion-cubs, who inherited from their father his dauntless pride and self-confidence. He educated them by his example, and they were taught by their mother’s self-sacrifice and bitter tears. The girls were not inferior to the boys in heroic constancy. Why shrink from using the right word?—they were a family of heroes. No one would believe what they endured and did for one another; and they held their heads high through it all.

When they were in Siberia, the three sisters had at one time a single pair of shoes between them; and they kept it to walk out in, in order to hide their need from the public eye.

At the beginning of the year 1826 Passek was permitted to return to Russia. It was winter weather, and it was a terrible business for so large a family to travel from Tobolsk without furs and without money; but exile becomes most unbearable when it is over, and they were longing to be gone. They contrived it somehow. The foster-mother of one of the children, a peasant woman, brought them her poor savings as a contribution, and only asked that they would take her too; the post-boys brought them as far as the Russian frontier for little payment or none at all; the children took turns in driving or walking; and so they completed the long winter journey from the Ural ridge to Moscow. Moscow was their dream and their hope; and at Moscow they found starvation waiting for them.

When the authorities pardoned Passek, they never thought of restoring to him any part of his property. On his arrival, worn out by exertions and privations, he fell ill; and the family did not know where they were to get to-morrow’s dinner.

The father could bear no more; he died. The widow and children got on as best they could from day to day. The greater the need, the harder the sons worked; three of them took their degree at the University with brilliant success. The two eldest, both excellent mathematicians, went to Petersburg; one served in the Navy and the other in the Engineers, and both contrived to give lessons in mathematics as well. They practised strict self-denial and sent home all the money they earned.

I have a vivid recollection of their old mother in her dark jacket and white cap. Her thin pale face was covered with wrinkles, and she looked much older than she was; the eyes alone still lived and revealed such a fund of gentleness and love, and such a past of anxiety and tears. She was in love with her children; they were wealth and distinction and youth to her; she used to read us their letters, and spoke of them with a sacred depth of feeling, while her feeble voice sometimes broke and trembled with unshed tears.

Sometimes there was a family gathering of them all at Moscow, and then the mother’s joy was beyond description. When they sat down to their modest meal, she would move round the table and arrange things, looking with such joy and pride at her young ones, and sometimes mutely appealing to me for sympathy and admiration. They were really, in point of good looks also, an exceptional family. At such times I longed to kiss her hand and fall upon her neck.

She was happy then; it would have been well if she had died at one of those meetings.

In the space of two years she lost her three eldest sons. Diomid died gloriously, honoured by the foe, in the arms of victory, though he laid down his life in a quarrel that was not his. As a young general, he was killed in action against Circassians. But laurels cannot mend a mother’s broken heart. The other two were less fortunate: the weight of Russian life lay heavy upon them and crushed them at last.

Alas! poor mother!

§24

Vadim died in February of 1843. I was present at his death; it was the first time I had witnessed the death of one dear to me, and I realised the unrelieved horror, the senseless irrationality, and the stupid injustice of the tragedy.

Ten years earlier Vadim had married my cousin Tatyana, and I was best man at the wedding. Family life and change of conditions parted us to some extent. He was happy in his quiet life, but outward circumstances were unfavourable and his enterprises were unsuccessful. Shortly before I and my friends were arrested, he went to Khárkov, where he had been promised a professor’s chair in the University. This trip saved him from prison; but his name had come to the ears of the police, and the University refused to appoint him. An official admitted to him that a document had been received forbidding his appointment, because the Government knew that he was connected with _disaffected persons_.

So Vadim remained without employment, _i.e._ without bread to eat. That was his form of punishment.

We were banished. Relations with us were dangerous. Black years of want began for him; for seven years he struggled to earn a bare living, suffering from contact with rough manners and hard hearts, and unable to exchange messages with his friends in their distant place of exile; and the struggle proved too hard even for his powerful frame.

“One day we had spent all our money to the last penny;”—his wife told me this story later—“I had tried to borrow ten _roubles_ the day before, but I failed, because I had borrowed already in every possible quarter. The shops refused to give us any further credit, and our one thought was—what will the children get to eat to-morrow? Vadim sat in sorrow near the window; then he got up, took his hat, and said he meant to take a walk. I saw that he was very low, and I felt frightened; and yet I was glad that he should have something to divert his thoughts. When he went out, I threw myself upon the bed and wept bitter tears, and then I began to think what was to be done. Everything of any value, rings and spoons, had been pawned long ago. I could see no resource but one—to go to our relations and beg their cold charity, their bitter alms. Meanwhile Vadim was walking aimlessly about the streets till he came to the Petrovsky Boulevard. As he passed a bookseller’s shop there, it occurred to him to ask whether a single copy of his book had been sold. Five days earlier he had enquired, with no result; and he was full of apprehension when he entered the shop. ‘Very glad to see you,’ said the man; ‘I have heard from my Petersburg agent that he has sold 300 _roubles’_ worth of your books. Would you like payment now?’ And the man there and then counted out fifteen gold pieces. Vadim’s joy was so great that he was bewildered. He hurried to the nearest eating-house, bought food, fruit, and a bottle of wine, hired a cab, and drove home in triumph. I was adding water to some remnants of soup, to feed the children, and I meant to give him a little, pretending that I had eaten something already; and then suddenly he came in, carrying his parcel and the bottle of wine, and looking as happy and cheerful as in times past.”

Then she burst out sobbing and could not utter another word.

After my return from banishment I saw him occasionally in Petersburg and found him much changed. He kept his old convictions, but he kept them as a warrior, feeling that he is mortally wounded, still grasps his sword. He was exhausted and depressed, and looked forward without hope. And such I found him in Moscow in 1842; his circumstances were improved to some extent, and his works were appreciated, but all this came too late.

Then consumption—that terrible disease which I was fated to watch once again[52]—declared itself in the autumn of 1842, and Vadim wasted away.

Footnote 52:

Herzen’s wife died of consumption at Nice in 1852.

A month before he died, I noticed with horror that his powers of mind were failing and growing dim like a flickering candle; the atmosphere of the sick-room grew darker steadily. Soon it cost him a laborious effort to find words for incoherent speech, and he confused words of similar sound; at last, he hardly spoke except to express anxiety about his medicines and the hours for taking them.

At three o’clock one February morning, his wife sent for me. The sick man was in distress and asking for me. I went up to his bed and touched his hand; his wife named me, and he looked long and wearily at me but failed to recognise me and shut his eyes again. Then the children were brought, and he looked at them, but I do not think he recognised them either. His breathing became more difficult; there were intervals of quiet followed by long gasps. Just then the bells of a neighbouring church rang out; Vadim listened and then said, “That’s for early Mass,” and those were his last words. His wife sobbed on her knees beside the body; a young college friend, who had shown them much kindness during the last illness, moved about the room, pushing away the table with the medicine-bottles and drawing up the blinds. I left the house; it was frosty and bright out of doors, and the rising sun glittered on the snow, just as if all was right with the world. My errand was to order a coffin.

When I returned, the silence of death reigned in the little house. In accordance with Russian custom, the dead man was lying on the table in the drawing-room, and an artist-friend, seated at a little distance, was drawing, through his tears, a portrait of the lifeless features. Near the body stood a tall female figure, with folded arms and an expression of infinite sorrow; she stood silent, and no sculptor could have carved a nobler or more impressive embodiment of grief. She was not young, but still retained the traces of a severe and stately beauty; wrapped up in a long mantle of black velvet trimmed with ermine, she stood there like a statue.

I remained standing at the door.

The silence went on for several minutes; but suddenly she bent forward, pressed a kiss on the cold forehead, and said, “Good-bye, good-bye, dear Vadim”; then she walked with a steady step into an inner room. The painter went on with his work; he nodded to me, and I sat down by the window in silence; we felt no wish to talk.

The lady was Mme. Chertkóv, the sister of Count Zachar Chernyshev, one of the exiled Decembrists.

Melchizedek, the Abbot of St. Peter’s Monastery, himself offered that Vadim should be buried within the convent walls. He knew Vadim and respected him for his researches into the history of Moscow. He had once been a simple carpenter and a furious dissenter; but he was converted to Orthodoxy, became a monk, and rose to be Prior and finally Abbot. Yet he always kept the broad shoulders, fine ruddy face, and simple heart of the carpenter.

When the body appeared before the monastery gates, Melchizedek and all his monks came out to meet the martyr’s poor coffin, and escorted it to the grave, singing the funeral music. Not far from his grave rests the dust of another who was dear to us, Venevitínov, and his epitaph runs—

“He knew life well but left it soon”—

and Vadim knew it as well.

But Fortune was not content even with his death. Why indeed did his mother live to be so old? When the period of exile came to an end, and when she had seen her children in their youth and beauty and fine promise for the future, life had nothing more to give her. Any man who values happiness should seek to die young. Permanent happiness is no more possible than ice that will not melt.

Vadim’s eldest brother died a few months after Diomid, the soldier, fell in Circassia: a neglected cold proved fatal to his enfeebled constitution. He was the oldest of the family, and he was hardly forty.

Long and black are the shadows thrown back by these three coffins of three dear friends; the last months of my youth are veiled from me by funeral crape and the incense of thuribles.

* * * * *

§25

After dragging on for a year, the affair of Sungurov and our other friends who had been arrested came to an end. The charge, as in our case and in that of Petrashev’s group, was that they _intended_ to form a secret society and had held treasonable conversations. Their punishment was to be sent to Orenburg, to join the colours.

And now our turn came. Our names were already entered on the black list of the secret police. The cat dealt her first playful blow at the mouse in the following way.

When our friends, after their sentence, were starting on their long march to Orenburg without warm enough clothing, Ogaryóv and Kiréevski each started a subscription for them, as none of them had money. Kiréevski took the proceeds to Staal, the commandant, a very kind-hearted old soldier, of whom more will be said hereafter. Staal promised to transmit the money, and then said:

“What papers are those you have?”

“The subscribers’ names,” said Kiréevski, “and a list of subscriptions.”

“Do you trust me to pay over the money?” the old man asked.

“Of course I do.”

“And I fancy the subscribers will trust you. Well, then, what’s the use of our keeping these names?” and Staal threw the list into the fire; and I need hardly say that was a very kind action.

Ogaryóv took the money he had collected to the prison himself, and no difficulty was raised. But the prisoners took it into their heads to send a message of thanks from Orenburg, and asked some functionary who was travelling to Moscow to take a letter which they dared not trust to the post. The functionary did not fail to profit by such an excellent opportunity of proving his loyalty to his country: he laid the letter before the head of the police at Moscow.

Volkov, who had held this office, had gone mad, his delusion being that the Poles wished to elect him as their king, and Lisovski had succeeded to the position. Lisovski was a Pole himself; he was not a cruel man or a bad man; but he had spent his fortune, thanks to gambling and a French actress, and, like a true philosopher, he preferred the situation of chief of the police at Moscow to a situation in the slums of that city.

He summoned Ogaryóv, Ketcher, Satin, Vadim, Obolenski, and others, and charged them with having relations with political prisoners. Ogaryóv replied that he had written to none of them and had received no letter; if one of them had written to him, he could not be responsible for that. Lisovski then said:

“You raised a subscription for them, which is even worse. The Tsar is merciful enough to pardon you for once; but I warn you, gentlemen, that you will be strictly watched, and you had better be careful.”

He looked meaningly at all the party and his eye fell on Ketcher, who was older and taller than the rest, and was lifting his eyebrows and looking rather fierce. He added, “I wonder that you, Sir, considering your position in society, are not ashamed to behave so.” Ketcher was only a country doctor; but, from Lisovski’s words, he might have been Chancellor of the imperial Orders of Knighthood.

I was not summoned; it is probable that the letter did not contain my name.

This threat we regarded as a promotion, a consecration, a powerful incentive. Lisovski’s warning was oil on the flames; and, as if to make it easier for the police, we all took to velvet caps of the Karl Sand[53] fashion and tricolor neckties.

Footnote 53:

The German student who shot Kotzebue.

Colonel Shubinski now climbed up with the velvet tread of a cat into Lisovski’s place, and soon marked his predecessor’s weakness in dealing with us: our business was to serve as one of the steps in his official career, and we did what was wanted.

§26

But first I shall add a few words about the fate of Sungurov and his companions.

Kolreif returned to Moscow, where he died in the arms of his grief-stricken father.

Kostenetski and Antonovitch both distinguished themselves as private soldiers in the Caucasus and received commissions.

The fate of the unhappy Sungurov was far more tragic. On reaching the first stage of their journey from Moscow, he asked permission of the officer, a young man of twenty, to leave the stifling cottage crammed with convicts for the fresh air. The officer walked out with him. Sungurov watched for an opportunity, sprang off the road, and disappeared. He must have known the district well, for he eluded the officer; but the police got upon his tracks next day. When he saw that escape was impossible, he cut his throat. He was carried back to Moscow, unconscious and bleeding profusely. The unlucky officer was deprived of his commission.

Sungurov did not die. He was tried again, not for a political offence but for trying to escape. Half his head was shaved; and to this outward ignominy the court added a _single stroke_ of the whip to be inflicted inside the prison. Whether this was actually carried out, I do not know. He was then sent off to work in the mines at Nerchinsk.

His name came to my ears just once again and then vanished for ever.

When I was at Vyatka, I happened to meet in the street a young doctor, a college friend; and we spoke about old times and common acquaintances.

“Good God!” said the doctor, “do you know whom I saw on my way here? I was waiting at a post-house for fresh horses. The weather was abominable. An officer in command of a party of convicts came in to warm himself. We began to talk; and hearing that I was a doctor, he asked me to take a look at one of the prisoners on march; I could tell him whether the man was shamming or really very bad. I consented: of course, I intended in any case to back up the convict. There were eighteen convicts, as well as women and children, in one smallish barrack-room; some of the men had their heads shaved, and some had not; but they were all fettered. They opened out to let the officer pass; and we saw a figure wrapped in a convict’s overcoat and lying on some straw in a corner of the dirty room.

“‘There’s your patient,’ said the officer. No fibs on my part were necessary: the man was in a high fever. He was a horrible sight: he was thin and worn out by prison and marching; half his head was shaved, and his beard was growing; he was rolling his eyes in delirium and constantly calling for water.

“‘Are you feeling bad, my man?’ I said to the patient, and then I told the officer that he was quite unable to march.

“The man fixed his eyes on me and then muttered, ‘Is that you?’ He addressed me by name and added, in a voice that went through me like a knife, ‘You won’t know me again.’

“‘Excuse me,’ I said; ‘I have forgotten your name,’ and I took his hot dry hand in my own.

“‘I am Sungurov,’ he answered. Poor fellow!” repeated the doctor, shaking his head.

“Well, did they leave him there?” I asked.

“No: a cart was got for him.”

After writing the preceding narrative, I learned that Sungurov died at Nerchinsk.

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