Chapter 8

A PREDICTION—OGARYOV’S ARREST—A FIRE—A MOSCOW LIBERAL—M. F. ORLOV—THE GRAVEYARD

One day in the spring of 1834, I arrived at Vadim’s in the morning and found neither him nor any of his brothers and sisters at home. I went upstairs to his little room and sat down to write.

The door softly opened and Vadim’s mother came in; her footsteps were barely audible; looking weary and ill she went up to an armchair and said to me, as she sat down: ‘Go on writing, go on writing, I came to see whether Vadya had come in; the children have gone for a walk and downstairs it is so empty, I felt sad and frightened. I’ll stay here a little, I won’t hinder you, go on with your work.’

Her face was pensive and I could see in it even more clearly than usual the imprint of what she had suffered in the past and of that suspicious apprehensiveness in regard to the future, that distrust of life, which is always left after great and prolonged misfortunes.

We began to talk. She told me something about Siberia: ‘I have had very many troubles to bear and I have more to see yet,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘my heart bodes nothing good.’

I thought how sometimes, after hearing our bold talk and demagogic conversation, she would turn pale, sigh softly, go out of the room and for a long time not utter a word.

‘You and your friends,’ she went on, ‘you are going the sure road to ruin. You will ruin Vadya, yourself, and all of them; I love you, too, you know, like a son.’ A tear ran down her wasted cheek.

I did not speak. She took my hand and, trying to smile, added: ‘Don’t be angry, my nerves are overwrought; I understand it all, you go your path, there is no other for you, and, if there were, you would none of you be the same. I know that, but I cannot get over my alarm; I have been through so many troubles that I have no strength to face fresh ones. Mind you don’t say a word to Vadya about this, he would be distressed, he would talk to me.... Here he is,’ she added, hurriedly wiping away her tears and once more asking me with her eyes to say nothing.

Poor mother! Noble, great-hearted woman! It is as fine as Corneille’s ‘qu’il mourût!’

Her prediction was soon fulfilled; happily this time the storm passed over the heads of her family, but it brought the poor woman much sorrow and alarm.

‘Taken? What do you mean?’ I asked, jumping out of bed and feeling my head to make sure that I was awake.

‘The police-master came in the night with the district policeman and Cossacks, about two hours after you left, seized all the papers and took Nikolay Platonovitch.’ It was Ogaryov’s valet speaking. I could not imagine what pretext the police had invented; of late everything had been quiet. Ogaryov had only arrived a day or two before ... and why had they taken him and not me?

It was impossible to remain doing nothing; I dressed and went out of the house with no definite aim. It was the first trouble that had befallen me. I felt sick, I was tortured by my impotence.

As I wandered about the streets, I thought, at last, of a friend V—— whose social position made it possible for him to find out what was the matter and, perhaps, to help. He lived a terrible distance away in a summer villa beyond the Vorontsov Field; I got into the first cab I came across and galloped off to him. It was before seven in the morning.

I had made the acquaintance of V—— about a year and a half before; he was in his way a lion in Moscow. He had been educated in Paris, was wealthy, intelligent, cultured, witty, free-thinking, had been clapped into the Peter-Paul fortress over the affair of the Fourteenth of December and was among those afterwards acquitted; he had had no experience of exile, but the glory of the affair clung to him. He was in the government service and had great influence with the governor-general, Prince Golitsyn, who was fond of men of a free way of thinking, particularly if they expressed their views fluently in French. The prince was not strong in Russian.

V—— was ten years older than we, and surprised us by his practical remarks, his knowledge of political affairs, his French eloquence and the ardour of his Liberalism. He knew so much and in such detail, talked so charmingly and so easily; his opinions were so clearly defined; he had answers, good advice, explanations for everything. He had read everything, all the new novels, treatises, magazines, and poetry, was moreover a devoted student of zoology, wrote out schemes of reform for Prince Golitsyn and drew out plans for children’s books. His Liberalism was of the purest, trebly-distilled essence, of the left wing between that of Mauguin and of General Lamarque.

His study was hung with portraits of all the revolutionary celebrities from Hampden and Bailly[120] to Fieschi[121] and Armand Carrel. A whole library of prohibited books was to be found under this revolutionary shrine.

A skeleton, a few stuffed birds, some dried amphibians, and insides of animals preserved in spirit, gave a serious tone of study and reflection to the over-impetuous character of the room.

We used to look with envy at his experience and knowledge of men; his refined ironical manner of arguing had a great influence on us. We looked upon him as a capable revolutionary, as a statesman _in spe_.

I did not find V—— at home, he had gone to town overnight for an interview with Prince Golitsyn. His valet told me he would certainly be home within an hour and a half. I waited.

V——’s summer villa was a splendid one. The study in which I sat waiting was a lofty, spacious room, and an immense door led to the verandah and into the garden. It was a hot day, the fragrance of trees and flowers came in from the garden, children were playing in front of the house with ringing laughter. Wealth, abundance, space, sunshine and shadow, flowers and greenery ... while in prison it is cramped, stifling, dark. I do not know how long I had been sitting there absorbed in bitter thoughts, when suddenly the valet called me from the verandah with a peculiar animation.

‘What is it?’ I inquired.

‘Oh, come here and look.’

I went out to the verandah, not to wound him by refusal, and stood petrified. A whole semi-circle of houses were blazing away, as though they had been set fire to at the same moment. The fire was spreading with incredible rapidity.

I remained on the verandah; the valet gazed with a sort of nervous pleasure at the fire, saying: ‘It’s going finely—look, that house on the right is beginning to burn, it’s certainly beginning to burn.’

A fire has something revolutionary about it; it laughs at property and levels fortunes. The valet understood that instinctively.

Half an hour later half the horizon was covered with smoke, red behind and greyish-black above. That day Lefortovo was burned down. It was the first of a series of cases of incendiarism, which went on for five months, and we shall speak of them again.

At last V—— arrived. He was at his best, charming and cordial; he told me about the fire by which he had driven and about the general belief that it was a case of arson, and added, half in jest: ‘It’s Pugatchovism. You’ll see, we shan’t escape, they will put us on a stake.’

‘Before they put us on a stake,’ I answered, ‘I am afraid they will put us on a chain. Do you know that last night the police seized Ogaryov?’

‘The police—what are you saying?’

‘That’s what I have come to you about. Something must be done; go to Prince Golitsyn, find out what’s the matter and ask permission for me to see him.’

Receiving no answer, I glanced at V——, but where he had been, it seemed as though an elder brother were sitting with a livid face and sunken features; he was moaning and moving uneasily.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘There, I told you; I always said what it would lead to.... Yes, yes, we might have expected it. Oh dear, oh dear!... I am not to blame in thought nor in act, but very likely they will put me in prison too, and that is no joking matter; I know what the fortress is like.’

‘Will you go to the prince?’

‘Upon my word, whatever for? I advise you as a friend, don’t even speak of Ogaryov; keep as quiet as you can, or it will be bad for you. You don’t know how dangerous these things are; my sincere advice is, keep out of it, do your utmost and you won’t help Ogaryov, but you will ruin yourself. That’s what autocracy means—no rights, no defence; are the lawyers and judges any use?’

On this occasion I was not disposed to listen to his bold opinions and startling criticisms. I took my hat and went away.

At home I found everything in agitation. Already my father was angry with me on account of Ogaryov’s arrest. Already the Senator was on the spot, rummaging among my books, taking away what he thought dangerous, and in a very bad humour.

On the table I found a note from M. F. Orlov inviting me to dinner. Could he not do something for us? I was beginning to be discouraged by experience: still there was no harm in trying.

Mihail Fyodorovitch Orlov was one of the founders of the celebrated League of Welfare,[122] and that he had not reached Siberia was not his own fault, but was due to his brother, who enjoyed the special favour of Nicholas and had been the first to gallop with his Horse Guards to the defence of the Winter Palace on December the Fourteenth. Orlov was sent to his estate in the country, and a few years later was allowed to live in Moscow. During his solitary life in the country he studied political economy and chemistry. The first time I met him he talked of his new system of nomenclature in chemistry. All energetic people who begin studying a subject late in life show an inclination to move the furniture about and rearrange it to suit themselves. His nomenclature was more complicated than the received French system. I wanted to attract his attention, and by way of gaining his favour began proving to him that his system was good, but the old one was better.

Orlov contested the point and then agreed.

My effort to please succeeded: from that time we were on intimate terms. He saw in me a rising possibility; I saw in him a veteran of our views, a friend of our heroes, a noble figure in our lives.

Poor Orlov was like a lion in a cage. Everywhere he knocked himself against the bars, he had neither space to move nor work to do and was consumed by a thirst for activity.

After the fall of France, I more than once met people of the same sort, people who were disintegrated by the craving for public activity and incapable of occupying themselves within the four walls of their study or in home life. They do not know how to be alone; in solitude they are attacked with ennui, they become whimsical, quarrel with their last friends, see intrigues against them on all hands, and themselves intrigue to find out all these non-existent plots.

A stage and spectators are as necessary to them as the air they breathe; in the public view they really are heroes and will endure the unendurable. They must have noise, clamour, applause, they want to make speeches, to hear their enemies’ replies, they crave the stimulus of struggle, the fever of danger, and without these tonics they are miserable, they pine, let themselves go and grow heavy, break out and make mistakes. Such is Ledru-Rollin, who, by the way, has a look of Orlov in the face, particularly since he has grown moustaches.

Orlov was very handsome; his tall figure, fine carriage, handsome, manly features and completely bare skull, altogether gave an indescribable attractiveness to his appearance. His bust would make a good contrast to the bust of A. P. Yermolov, whose frowning, quadrangular brow, thick thatch of grey hair, and eyes piercing the distance gave him that beauty of the warrior chieftain, grown old in battles, which won Maria Kotcheby’s heart in Mazeppa.

Orlov was so bored that he did not know what to begin upon. He tried founding a glass factory, in which mediæval stained glass was made, costing him more than he sold it for; and began writing a book ‘on credit’—no, that was not the way his heart yearned to go, and yet it was the only way open to him. The lion was condemned to wander idly between Arbat and Basmanny Street, not even daring to let his tongue move freely.

It was terribly pitiful to see Orlov trying to become a learned man, a theorist. His intelligence was clear and brilliant, but not at all speculative, and he got entangled at once among newly invented systems in long-familiar subjects—like his chemical nomenclature for instance. He was a complete failure in everything abstract, but with intense exasperation applied himself to metaphysics.

Careless and incontinent of speech, he was continually making mistakes; carried away by his first impression, which was always chivalrously lofty, he would suddenly remember his position and turn back half way. He was an even greater failure in these diplomatic countermarches than in metaphysics and nomenclature; and, having got into one difficulty, he would get into two or three more in trying to right himself. He was blamed for this; people are so superficial and inattentive that they look more to words than to acts, and attach more weight to separate mistakes than to the drift of the whole character. What is the use of blaming a man from the point of view of Roman virtue, one must blame the melancholy surroundings in which any noble feeling must be communicated by contraband, underground, and behind locked doors; and, if one says a word aloud, one is wondering all day how soon the police will come....

There was a large party at the dinner. I happened to sit beside General Raevsky, the brother of Orlov’s wife. He too had been under a ban since the Fourteenth of December; the son of the celebrated N. N. Raevsky, he had as a boy of fourteen been with his brother at Borodino by his father’s side; later on, he died of wounds in the Caucasus. I told him about Ogaryov, and asked him whether Orlov could do anything and whether he would care to do it.

A cloud came over Raevsky’s face, but it was not the look of tearful cowardice which I had seen in the morning, but a mixture of bitter memories and repulsion.

‘There is no question of caring or not caring,’ he answered, ‘only I doubt whether Orlov can do much; after dinner go to the study and I will bring him to you. So then,’ he added after a pause, ‘your turn has come; all are dragged down to that black pit.’

After questioning me, Orlov wrote a letter to Prince Golitsyn asking for an interview.

‘The prince,’ he told me, ‘is a very decent man; if he won’t do anything, he will at least tell us the truth.’

Next day I went for an answer. Prince Golitsyn said that Ogaryov had been arrested by order of the Tsar, that a committee of inquiry had been appointed, and that the material evidence was some supper on the 24th June, at which seditious songs had been sung. I could make nothing of it. That day was my father’s name-day; I had spent the whole day at home and Ogaryov had been with us.

It was with a heavy heart that I left Orlov; he, too, was troubled; when I gave him my hand he stood up, embraced me, pressed me warmly to his broad chest and kissed me.

It was as though he felt that we were parting for long years.

I only saw him once afterwards, six years later. He was smouldering out. The look of illness on his face, the melancholy and a sort of new angularity in it struck me; he was gloomy, was conscious that he was breaking up, knew things were all going wrong—and saw no way of salvation. Two months later, he died, the blood curdled in his veins.

... There is a wonderful monument in Lucerne; carved by Thorwaldsen in natural rock. A dying lion is lying in a hollow; he is wounded to death, the blood is streaming from a wound, in which the fragment of an arrow is sticking; he has laid his gallant head upon his paw, he is moaning, there is a look in his eyes of unbearable pain; around there is a wilderness, with a pond below, all shut in by mountains, trees, and greenery; people pass by without seeing that here a royal beast is dying.

Once after sitting some time on the seat facing the stone agony, I was suddenly reminded of my last visit to Orlov.

Driving home from Orlov, I passed the house of the chief police-master, and the idea occurred to me to ask him openly for permission to see Ogaryov.

I had never in my life been in the house of a police official. I was kept waiting a long time; at last the head police-master came out. My request surprised him.

‘What grounds have you for asking this permission?’

‘Ogaryov is my cousin.’

‘Your cousin?’ he asked, looking straight into my face. I did not answer, but I, too, looked straight into his Excellency’s face.

‘I cannot give you permission,’ he said; ‘your cousin is _au secret_. I am very sorry!’

Uncertainty and inactivity were killing me. I had hardly a friend in town, I could find out absolutely nothing. It seemed as though the police had forgotten or overlooked me. It was very, very dreary. But just when the whole sky was overcast with grey storm-clouds and the long night of exile and prison was approaching, a ray of light came to me.

A few words of deep sympathy uttered by a girl of seventeen whom I had looked upon as a child raised me up again.

For the first time in my story a woman’s figure appears ... and precisely one woman’s figure appears throughout all my life.

The passing fancies of youth and spring that had stirred my soul paled and vanished before it, like pictures in the mist; and no fresh ones came.

We met in a graveyard. She stood leaning against a tombstone and spoke of Ogaryov, and my grief was comforted.

‘Till to-morrow,’ she said and gave me her hand, smiling through her tears.

‘Till to-morrow,’ I answered ... and stood a long time looking after her retreating figure.

That was on the nineteenth of July 1834.