Chapter 12

THE INVESTIGATION—GOLITSYN SENIOR—GOLITSYN JUNIOR—GENERAL STAAL—SOKOLOVSKY—SENTENCE

But with all this what of our case, what of the investigation and the trial?

They were no more successful in the new committee than in the old. The police had been on our track for a long time, but in their zeal and impatience could not wait to find anything adequate, and did something silly. They had sent a retired officer called Skaryatka to lead us on and catch us; he made acquaintance with almost all of our circle, but we very soon guessed what he was and held aloof from him. Other young men, for the most part students, had not been so cautious, but these others had no serious connection with us.

One student, on completing his studies, gave a supper to his friends on 24th June 1834. Not one of us was at the festivity, indeed not one of us had been invited. The young men drank too much, played the fool, danced the mazurka, and among other things sang Sokolovsky’s well-known song on the accession of Nicholas:

‘The Emperor of Russia Has gone to realms above, The operating surgeon Slit his belly open.

‘The Government is weeping And all the people weep; There’s coming to rule over us Constantine the freak.

‘But to the King of Heaven, Almighty God above, Our Tsar of blessed memory Has handed a petition.

‘When He read the paper, Moved to pity, God Gave us Nicholas instead, The blackguard, the....’[127]

In the evening Skaryatka suddenly remembered that it was his name-day, told a tale of how advantageously he had sold a horse, and invited the students to his quarters, promising them a dozen of champagne. They all went, the champagne appeared, and the host, staggering, proposed that they should once more sing Sokolovsky’s song. In the middle of the singing the door opened and Tsinsky with the police walked in. All this was crude, stupid, clumsy, and at the same time unsuccessful.

The police wanted to catch us; they were looking for external evidence to involve in the case some five or six men whom they had already marked, and only succeeded in catching twenty innocent persons.

It is not easy, however, to disconcert the Russian police. Within a fortnight they arrested us as implicated in the supper case. In Sokolovsky’s possession they found letters from S——, in S——’s possession letters from Ogaryov, and in Ogaryov’s possession my letters. Nevertheless, nothing was discovered. The first investigation failed. To ensure the success of the second, the Tsar sent from Petersburg the choicest of the inquisitors, A. F. Golitsyn.

This kind of person is rare in Russia. It is represented among us by Mordvinov, the famous head of the Third Section, Pelikan, the rector of Vilna, and a few accommodating Letts and degraded Poles.[128] But unluckily for the inquisition, Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, was appointed the first member. Staal, a straightforward military man, a gallant old general, went into the case and found that it consisted of two circumstances that had no connection with each other: the affair of the supper party, for which the police ought to be punished, and the arrest for no apparent reason of persons whose only guilt, so far as could be seen, lay in certain half-expressed opinions, for which it would be both difficult and absurd to try them.

Staal’s opinion did not please Golitsyn junior. The dispute between them took a bitter character; the old warrior flared up, wrathfully struck the floor with his sabre and said: ‘Instead of ruining people, you had better draw up a report on the advisability of closing all the schools and universities; that would warn other unfortunate youths; however, you can do what you like, but you must do it without me. I won’t set foot in the committee again.’ With these words the old man hurriedly left the room.

The Tsar was informed of this the same day.

In the morning when the commandant appeared with his report, the Tsar asked him why he would not attend the committee; Staal told him why.

‘What nonsense!’ replied the Tsar, ‘to quarrel with Golitsyn, for shame! I trust you will attend the committee as before.’

‘Sire,’ answered Staal, ‘spare my grey hairs. I have lived to reach them without the slightest stain on my honour. My zeal is known to your Majesty, my blood, the remnant of my days are yours, but this is a question of my honour—my conscience revolts against what is being done in the committee.’

The Tsar frowned. Staal bowed himself out, and was not once in the committee afterwards.

This anecdote, the accuracy of which is not open to the slightest doubt, throws great light on the character of Nicholas. How was it that it did not enter his head that if a man whom he could not but respect, a brave warrior, an old man who had won his position, so obstinately besought him to spare his honour, the case could not be quite clean? He could not have done less than insist on Staal’s explaining the matter in the presence of Golitsyn. He did not do this, but gave orders that we should be confined more strictly.

When he had gone there were only enemies of the accused in the committee, presided over by a simple-hearted old man, Prince S. M. Golitsyn, who knew as little about the case nine months after it had begun as he did nine months before it began. He preserved a dignified silence, very rarely put in a word, and at the end of an examination invariably asked: ‘May we let him go?’ ‘We may,’ Golitsyn junior would answer, and the senior would say with dignity to the prisoner, ‘You may go.’

My first examination lasted four hours.

The questions were of two kinds. The object of the first was to discover a manner of thinking, ‘in opposition to the spirit of government, revolutionary opinions, imbued with the pernicious doctrines of Saint Simon,’ as Golitsyn junior and the auditor Oransky expressed it.

These questions were easy, but they were hardly questions. In the papers and letters that had been seized, the opinions were fairly simply expressed; the questions could in reality only relate to the substantial fact of whether a man had or had not written the words in question. The committee thought it necessary to add to every written phrase, ‘How do you explain the following passage in your letter?’

Of course it was useless to explain; I wrote evasive and empty phrases in reply. In one letter the auditor discovered the phrase: ‘All constitutional parties lead to nothing, they are contracts between a master and his slaves; the problem is not to make things better for the slaves, but to put an end to their being slaves.’ When I had to explain this phrase I observed that I saw no obligation to defend constitutional government, and that, if I had defended it, it would have been charged against me.

‘A constitutional form of government may be attacked from two sides,’ Golitsyn junior observed in his nervous hissing voice; ‘you do not attack it from the point of view of monarchy, or you would not talk about slaves.’

‘In that I err in company with the Empress Catherine II., who ordered that her subjects should not be called slaves.’

Golitsyn, breathless with anger at this ironical reply, said: ‘You seem to imagine that we are assembled here to conduct scholastic arguments, that you are defending a thesis in the university.’

‘With what object, then, do you ask for explanations?’

‘You appear not to understand what is wanted of you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What obstinacy there is in all of them,’ Golitsyn senior, the president, added, shrugging his shoulders and glancing at Shubensky, the colonel of gendarmes. I smiled. ‘Just like Ogaryov,’ the simple-hearted president observed.

A pause followed, the committee was assembled in Golitsyn senior’s library; I turned to the bookshelves and began examining the books. Among other things there was an edition in many volumes of the works of Saint Simon. ‘Here,’ I said, turning to the president, ‘is it not unjust? I am being tried on account of Saint-Simonism, while you, prince, have twenty volumes of his works.’

As the good-natured old man had never read anything in his life, he could not think what to answer. But Golitsyn junior looked at me with the eyes of a viper and asked: ‘Don’t you see that those are the memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon of the time of Louis XIV.?’

The president with a smile gave me a nod that signified, ‘Well, my boy, you put your foot in it, didn’t you?’ and said, ‘You can go.’

While I was in the doorway the president asked: ‘Is he the one who wrote about Peter the Great, that thing you were showing me?’

‘Yes,’ answered Shubensky.

I stopped.

‘_Il a des moyens_,’ observed the president.

‘So much the worse. Poison in clever hands is all the more dangerous,’ added the inquisitor; ‘a very pernicious and quite incorrigible young man.’

My sentence lay in those words.

Apropos of Saint Simon. When the police-master seized Ogaryov’s books and papers, he laid aside a volume of Thiers’ _History of the French Revolution_, then found a second volume, a third, up to an eighth. At last he could bear it no longer, and said: ‘Good Lord, what a number of revolutionary books ... and here is another,’ he added, giving the policeman Cuvier’s _Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe Terrestre_.’

The second kind of question was more complicated. In them all sorts of police traps and inquisitional tricks were made use of to confuse, entangle, and involve one in contradictions. Hints of evidence given by others and all sorts of moral tests were employed. It is not worth while to repeat them, it is enough to say that all their devices did not draw any of the four of us into conflicting statements.

After I had received my last question, I was sitting alone in the little room in which we wrote. All at once the door opened and Golitsyn junior walked in with a gloomy and anxious face. ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘to have a few words with you before your evidence is completed. My late father’s long connection with yours makes me take a special interest in you. You are young and may still make a career; to do so you must clear yourself of this affair ... and fortunately it depends on yourself. Your father has taken your arrest deeply to heart and is living now in the hope that you will be released: Prince Sergey Mihailovitch and I have just been speaking about it and we are genuinely ready to do all we can; give us the means of assisting you.’

I saw the drift of his words, the blood rushed to my head, I gnawed my pen with vexation. He went on: ‘You are going straight under the white strap, or to the fortress, on the way you will kill your father; he will not survive the day when he sees you in the grey overcoat of a soldier.’

I tried to say something but he interrupted me:

‘I know what you want to say. Have a little patience! That you had designs against the government is evident. To merit the mercy of the Most High you must give proofs of your penitence. You are obstinate, you give evasive answers and from a false sense of honour you spare men of whom we know more than you do and _who have not been so discreet as you_[129]; you will not help them, and they will drag you down with them to ruin. Write a letter to the committee, simply, frankly, say that you feel your guilt, that you were led away by your youth, name the unfortunate, misguided men who have led you astray.... Are you willing at this easy price to purchase your future and your father’s life?’

‘I know nothing and have not a word to add to my evidence,’ I replied.

Golitsyn got up and said coldly: ‘As you please, it is not our fault!’ With that the examination ended.

In the January or February of 1835 I was before the committee for the last time. I was summoned to read through my answers, to add to them if I wished, and to sign them.

Only Shubensky was present. When I had finished reading them over I said to him: ‘I should like to know what charge can be made against a man upon these questions and upon these answers? Under what article of the Code do you bring me?’

‘The Imperial Code is drawn up for criminals of a different kind,’ observed the light-blue colonel.

‘That’s a different point. After reading over all these literary exercises, I cannot believe that that makes up the whole charge on account of which I have been in prison over six months.’

‘But do you really imagine,’ replied Shubensky, ‘that we believe you that you have not formed a secret society?’

‘Where is the society?’

‘It is your luck that no traces have been found, that you have not succeeded in doing anything. We stopped you in time, that is, to speak plainly, we have saved you.’

It was the story of the locksmith’s wife and her husband in Gogol’s _Inspector General_ over again.

When I had signed, Shubensky rang the bell and told them to summon the priest. The priest came up and wrote below my signature that all the evidence had been given by me voluntarily and without any compulsion. I need hardly say that he had not been present at the examination, and that he had not even the decency to ask me how it had been. (It was my impartial witness outside the gate again!)

At the end of the investigation, prison conditions were somewhat relaxed. Members of our families could obtain permits for interviews. So passed another two months.

In the middle of March our sentence was ratified. No one knew what it was; some said we were being sent to the Caucasus, others that we should be taken to Bobruisk, others again hoped that we should all be released (this was the sentence which was proposed by Staal and sent separately by him to the Tsar; he advised that our imprisonment should be taken as equivalent to punishment).

At last, on 20th March, we were all assembled at Prince Golitsyn’s to hear our sentence. This was a gala day for us. We saw each other for the first time after our arrest.

Noisily, gaily embracing and shaking hands, we stood surrounded by a cordon of gendarmes and garrison officers. This meeting cheered us all up; there was no end to the questions and the anecdotes.

Sokolovsky was present, pale and somewhat thinner, but as brilliantly amusing as ever.

The author of _The Fabric of the World_ and of _Heveri_ and other rather good poems, had naturally great poetic talent, but was not wildly original enough to dispense with culture, nor sufficiently well-educated to develop his talent. A charming rake, a poet in life, he was not in the least a political man. He was amusing, charming, a merry companion in merry moments, a ‘bon vivant,’ fond of having a good time, as we all were, perhaps a little too much so.

Having dropped accidentally from a carousal into prison, Sokolovsky behaved extremely well, he grew up in confinement. The auditor of the committee, a pedant, a pietist, a detective, who had grown thin and grey-headed in envy and slander, not daring from religion and devotion to the throne to understand the last two verses of his poem in their grammatical sense, asked Sokolovsky ‘to whom do those rude words at the end of the song refer?’

‘Rest assured,’ said Sokolovsky, ‘not to the Tsar, and I would particularly draw your attention to that extenuating circumstance.’

The auditor shrugged his shoulders, turned up his eyes to the ceiling and after gazing a long time in silence at Sokolovsky took a pinch of snuff.

Sokolovsky was arrested in Petersburg and sent to Moscow without being told where he was being taken. The police often perpetrate these jests among us, and quite unnecessarily. It is the form their creative fancy takes. There is no occupation in the world so prosaic, so revolting that it has not its artistic yearnings, its craving for decoration and adornment. Sokolovsky was taken straight to prison and put into a dark cell. Why was he put in prison while we were kept in barracks?

He had two or three shirts with him and nothing else at all. In England every one on being brought into prison is at once put into a bath, but with us they take every precaution against cleanliness.

If Dr. Haas had not sent Sokolovsky a bundle of his own linen he would have been crusted with dirt.

Dr. Haas was a very original eccentric person. The memory of this ‘crazy and fanatical’ man ought not to be lost in the rubbish heap of official necrologies describing the virtues of persons of the first two grades which no one ever heard of before their death.

A thin little, waxen-looking old man, in a black, swallow-tail coat, short trousers, black silk stockings and shoes with buckles, he looked as though he had just come out of some drama of the eighteenth century. In this _grand gala_ of funerals and weddings, and in the agreeable climate of the northern latitude of fifty-nine degrees, Haas used every week to drive to the étape on the Sparrow Hills when a batch of convicts were being sent off. In the capacity of prison doctor he had access to them, he used to go to inspect them and always brought with him a basket full of all manner of things, provisions and dainties of all sorts—walnuts, cakes, oranges, and apples, for the women. This aroused the wrath and indignation of the benevolent ladies who were afraid of giving pleasure by philanthropy, and afraid of being more charitable than was necessary to save the convicts from dying of hunger and cold.

But Haas was not easy to move, and after listening mildly to reproaches for his ‘foolish spoiling of the female convicts,’ would rub his hands and say: ‘Be so kind to see, gracious madam, a bit of bread, a copper every one will give them, but a sweet or an orange for long they will see not, no one gives them, that I can from your words deduce; I do them this pleasure for that it will not a long time be repeated.’

Haas lived in the hospital. A patient came before dinner to consult him. Haas examined him and went into his study to write some prescription. On his return he found neither the patient nor the silver forks and spoons which had been lying on the table. Haas called the porter and asked him if any one had come in besides the patient. The porter grasped the position, rushed out and returned a minute later with the spoons and the patient, whom he had stopped with the help of another hospital porter. The rascal fell at the doctor’s feet and besought mercy. Haas was overcome with confusion.

‘Go for the police,’ he said to one of the porters, and to the other, ‘and you send the secretary here at once.’

The porters, pleased at the capture and at their share in the business altogether, ran off, and Haas, taking advantage of their absence, said to the thief, ‘You are a false man, you have deceived and tried to rob me. God will judge you ... and now run quickly to the back gates before the porters come back ... but stay, perhaps you have no money, here is half a rouble, but try to reform your soul; from God you will not escape as from the policeman.’

At this even the members of his own household protested. But the incorrigible doctor maintained his point: ‘Theft is a great vice; but I know the police, I know how they torment them—they will question him, they will flog him; to give up one’s neighbour to the lash is a far worse vice; besides, who can tell, perhaps what I have done may touch his heart!’

His friends shook their heads and said, ‘_Er hat einen raptus_’; the benevolent ladies said, ‘_C’est un brave homme mais ce n’est pas tout à fait en règle, cela_,’ and tapped their foreheads. And Haas rubbed his hands and went his own way.

... Sokolovsky had hardly finished his anecdotes, when several others speaking at once began to tell theirs; it was as though we had all returned from a long journey—there was no end to the questions, jokes, and witticisms.

Physically, S—— had suffered more than the rest; he was thin and had lost part of his hair. He had been at his mother’s in the country in the Tambov province when he heard that we had been arrested, and at once set off for Moscow, for fear that his mother should be alarmed by a visit of the gendarmes, but he caught cold on the way and reached home in a high fever. The police found him in bed, and it was impossible to move him to the police station. He was placed under arrest at home, a soldier of the police station was put on guard in the bedroom and the local police superintendent was told off to act as brother-of-mercy by the patient’s bedside, so that on recovering consciousness after delirium he met the attentive glance of the one, or the battered countenance of the other.

At the beginning of the winter he was moved to the Lefortovsky Hospital; it appeared there was not a single empty private room for a prisoner, but such trifles were not deemed worth considering; a corner screened off apart, with no stove, was found, the sick man was put in this southern verandah and a sentry told off to watch him. What the temperature in this hole was in winter may be judged from the fact that the sentry was so benumbed with cold at night that he would go into the corridor to warm himself at the stove, begging S—— not to tell of it. The hospital authorities themselves saw that such tropical quarters were impossible in a latitude so near the pole, and moved S—— to a room near the one in which frost-bitten patients were rubbed.

Before we had time to describe and listen to half our adventures, the adjutants began suddenly bustling about, the gendarmes’ officers drew themselves up, and the police set themselves to rights: the door opened solemnly and little Prince Sergey Mihailovitch Golitsyn walked in _en grande tenue_ with a ribbon across his shoulder; Tsinsky was in a uniform of the suite, even the auditor, Oransky, put on some sort of pale-green civil-military uniform for the joyful occasion. The commandant, of course, had not come.

Meanwhile the noise and laughter had risen to such a pitch that the auditor came fiercely into the room and observed that loud conversation and, above all, laughter seemed a flagrant disrespect to the will of the Most High, which we were about to hear.

The doors were opened. Officers divided us into three groups: in the first was Sokolovsky, the painter Utkin, and an officer called Ibaev; we were in the second; in the third, _tutti frutti_.

The sentence regarding the first category was read aloud. It was terrible; condemned for high treason, they were sent to the Schlüsselburg for an indefinite period. When Oransky, drawling to give himself dignity, read with emphasis that for ‘insulting the Majesty and Most August Family, _et cetera_,’ Sokolovsky observed: ‘Well, I never insulted the family.’

Among his papers besides this poem were found some resolutions written in jest as though by the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovitch, with intentional mistakes in spelling, and those orthographical errors helped to convict him.

Tsinsky, to show that he could be free and easy and affable, said to Sokolovsky after the sentence: ‘Hey, have you ever been in Schlüsselburg before?’ ‘Last year,’ Sokolovsky answered promptly, ‘as though I knew what was coming, I drank a bottle of Madeira there.’ Two years later Utkin died in the fortress. Sokolovsky, half dead, was released and sent to the Caucasus; he died at Pyatigorsk. Some remnant of shame and conscience led the government after the death of two to transfer the third to Perm. Ibaev only died in the spiritual sense: he became a mystic.

Utkin, ‘a free artist confined in prison,’ as he described himself at the examinations, was a man of forty; he had never taken part in any kind of political affair, but, being of a generous and impulsive temperament, he gave free rein to his tongue in the committee and was abrupt and rude in his answers. For this he was done to death in a damp cell, in which the water trickled down the walls.

Ibaev’s greater guilt lay in his epaulettes. Had he not been an officer, he would never have been so punished. The man had happened to be present at some supper party, had probably drunk too much and sung like all the rest, but certainly neither more nor louder than the others.

Our turn came. Oransky wiped his spectacles, cleared his throat, and began reverently announcing the will of the Most High. The Tsar, after examining the report of the committee and taking into special consideration the youth of the criminals, _commanded that we should not be brought to trial_, and informed us that by law we ought, as men guilty of high treason by singing seditious songs, to lose our lives or, alternatively, to be sentenced to penal servitude for life. Instead of this, the Tsar in his infinite mercy forgave the greater number of the guilty, leaving them in their present abode under the supervision of the police. The more guilty among them he commanded to be put under reformatory treatment, which consisted in being sent to civilian duty for an indefinite period to remote provinces, to live under the superintendence of the local police authorities.

It appeared that there were six of the ‘more guilty’: Ogaryov, S——, Lahtin, Obolensky, Sorokin, and I. I was to be sent to Perm. Among those condemned was Lahtin, who had not been arrested at all. When he was summoned to the committee to hear the sentence, he supposed that it was as a warning, to be punished by hearing how others were punished. The story was that some one of Prince Golitsyn’s circle, being angry with Lahtin’s wife, had prepared this agreeable surprise for him. A man of delicate health, he died three years later in exile.

When Oransky had finished reading, Colonel Shubensky stepped forward. In choice language and in the style of Lomonossov he informed us that it was due to the good offices of the noble gentleman who had presided at the committee that the Tsar had been so merciful.

Shubensky waited for all of us to thank Prince Golitsyn, but this did not come off.

Some of those who were pardoned nodded, stealing a stealthy glance at us as they did so.

We stood with folded arms, making not the slightest sign that our hearts were touched by the Imperial and princely mercy.

Then Shubensky thought of another dodge and, addressing Ogaryov, said: ‘You are going to Penza; do you imagine that that is by chance? Your father is lying paralysed at Penza and the prince besought the Tsar to fix that town, that your being near might to some extent alleviate the blow of your exile for him. Do you not think you have reason to thank the prince?’

There was no help for it, Ogaryov made a slight bow. This was what they were trying to get.

The good-natured old man was pleased at this, and next, I don’t know why, he summoned me. I stepped forward with the devout intention of not thanking him whatever he or Shubensky might say; besides, I was being sent farther away than any and to the nastiest town.

‘You are going to Perm,’ said Prince Golitsyn. I said nothing. He was disconcerted and, to say something, added, ‘I have an estate there.’

‘Would you care to send some commission through me to your steward?’ I asked with a smile.

‘I do not give commissions to people like you—Carbonari,’ added the resourceful old man.

‘Then what do you wish of me?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I thought you called me.’

‘You can go,’ Shubensky interposed.

‘Allow me,’ I replied, ‘since I am here to remind you that you told me, Colonel, last time I was before the committee, that no one accused me of being connected with the supper-party affair. Yet in the sentence it is stated that I was one of those guilty in connection with that affair. There is some mistake here.’

‘Do you wish to protest against the decision of the Most High?’ observed Shubensky. ‘You had better take care that Perm is not changed to something worse. I shall order your words to be taken down.’

‘I meant to ask you to do so. In the sentence the words occur “on the report of the committee.” I am protesting against your report and not against the will of the Most High. I appeal to the prince: there was no question in my case of a supper party or of songs, was there?’

‘As though you do not know,’ said Shubensky, beginning to turn pale with wrath, ‘that you are ten times more guilty than those who were at the supper party. He now’—he pointed to one of those who had been pardoned—‘in a state of intoxication sang some filthy song, but afterwards he begged forgiveness on his knees with tears. But you are still far from a sign of penitence.’

The gentleman at whom the colonel pointed said nothing, but hung his head and flushed crimson....

It was a good lesson, much good his meanness did him!...

‘Excuse me, it is not the point whether my guilt is greater or not,’ I went on, ‘but, if I am a murderer, I don’t want to be considered a thief. I don’t want it to be said of me, even in justification, that I did something in a “state of intoxication,” as you expressed it just now.’

‘If I had a son who showed such stubbornness I would myself beg the Tsar to send him to Siberia.’

At this point the chief police-master interposed some incoherent nonsense. It is a pity that Golitsyn junior was not present, it would have been an opportunity for his eloquence.

It all ended, of course, in nothing.

Lahtin went up to Prince Golitsyn and begged that his departure might be deferred. ‘My wife is with child,’ he said.

‘I am not responsible for that,’ answered Golitsyn.

A wild beast, a mad dog when it bites, looks grave and sticks up its tail, but this crazy aristocrat, though he had the reputation of a good-natured man, was not ashamed to make this vulgar joke.

We were left once more for a quarter of an hour in the room, and, in spite of the zealous upbraidings of the gendarmes and police officers, warmly embraced one another and took a long farewell. Except Obolensky I saw none of them again until I came back from Vyatka.

Departure was before us.

Prison had been a continuation of our past; but our departure into the wilds was a complete break with it.

Our youthful existence in our circle of friends was over.

Our exile would probably last several years. Where and how should we meet, and should we ever meet?...

I regretted my old life, and I had to leave it so abruptly ... without saying good-bye. I had no hope of seeing Ogaryov. Two of my friends had succeeded in seeing me during the last few days, but that was not enough for me.

If I could but once again see my youthful comforter and press her hand, as I had pressed it in the graveyard.... I longed both to take leave of my past and to greet my future in her person....

We did see each other for a few minutes on the 9th of April 1835, on the day before I was sent off into exile.

For years I kept that day sacred in my memory; it was one of the happiest moments in my life.

Why must the thought of that day and of all the bright days of my past bring back so much that is terrible?... The grave, the wreath of dark-red roses, two children holding my hand—torches, crowds of exiles, the moon, the warm sea under the mountain-side, the words that I did not understand and that wrung my heart....

All is over!