Chapter 1

MY NURSE AND THE _GRANDE ARMÉE_—THE FIRE OF MOSCOW—MY FATHER WITH NAPOLEON—GENERAL ILOVAISKY—TRAVELLING WITH THE FRENCH PRISONERS—THE PATRIOTISM OF C. CALOT—THE COMMON MANAGEMENT OF THE PROPERTY—DIVIDING IT—THE SENATOR

‘Vera Artamonovna, come tell me again how the French came to Moscow,’ I used to say, rolling myself up in the quilt and stretching in my crib, which was sewn round with linen that I might not fall out.

‘Oh! what’s the use of telling you, you’ve heard it so many times, besides it’s time to go to sleep; you had better get up a little earlier to-morrow,’ the old woman would usually answer, although she was as eager to repeat her favourite story as I was to hear it.

‘But do tell me a little bit. How did you find out, how did it begin?’

‘This was how it began. You know what your papa is—he is always putting things off; he was getting ready and getting ready, and much use it was! Every one was saying “It’s time to set off; it’s time to go; what is there to wait for, there’s no one left in the town.” But no, Pavel Ivanovitch[1] and he kept talking of how they would go together, and first one wasn’t ready and then the other. At last we were packed and the carriage was ready; the family sat down to lunch, when all at once our head cook ran into the dining-room as pale as a sheet, and announced: “The enemy has marched in at the Dragomilovsky Gate.” Our hearts did sink. “The power of the Cross be with us!” we cried. Everything was upside down. While we were bustling about, sighing and groaning, we looked and down the street came galloping dragoons in such helmets with horses’ tails streaming behind. The gates had all been closed, and here was your papa left behind for a treat and you with him; your wet nurse Darya still had you at the breast, you were so weak and delicate.’

And I smiled with pride, pleased that I had taken part in the war.

‘At the beginning we got along somehow, for the first few days, that is; it was only that two or three soldiers would come in and ask by signs whether there was something to drink; we would take them a glass each, to be sure, and they would go away and touch their caps to us, too. But then, you see, when fires began and kept getting worse and worse, there was such disorder, plundering and all sorts of horrors. At that time we were living in the lodge at the Princess Anna Borissovna’s and the house caught fire; then Pavel Ivanovitch said, “Come to me, my house is built of brick, it stands far back in the courtyard and the walls are thick.”

‘So we went, masters and servants all together, there was no difference made; we went out into the Tverskoy Boulevard and the trees were beginning to burn—we made our way at last to the Golohvastovs’ house and it was simply blazing, flames from every window. Pavel Ivanovitch was dumbfoundered, he could not believe his eyes. Behind the house there is a big garden, you know; we went into it thinking we should be safe there. We sat there on the seats grieving, when, all at once, a mob of drunken soldiers were upon us; one fell on Pavel Ivanovitch, trying to pull off his travelling coat; the old man would not give it up, the soldier pulled out his sword and struck him on the face with it so that he kept the scar to the end of his days; the others set upon us, one soldier tore you from your nurse, opened your baby-clothes to see if there were any money-notes or diamonds hidden among them, saw there was nothing there, and so the scamp purposely tore your clothes and flung them down. As soon as they had gone away, we were in trouble again. Do you remember our Platon who was sent for a soldier? He was dreadfully fond of drink and was very much exhilarated that day; he tied on a sabre and walked about like that. The day before the enemy entered, Count Rastoptchin[2] had distributed all sorts of weapons at the arsenal; so that was how he had got hold of a sabre. Towards the evening he saw a dragoon ride into the yard; there was a horse standing near the stable, the dragoon wanted to take it, but Platon rushed headlong at him and, catching hold of the bridle, said: “The horse is ours, I won’t give it you.” The dragoon threatened him with a pistol, but we could see it was not loaded; the master himself saw what was happening and shouted to Platon: “Let the horse alone, it’s not your business.” But not a bit of it! Platon pulled out his sabre and struck the man on the head, and he staggered, and Platon struck him again and again. “Well,” thought we, “now the hour of our death is come; when his comrades see him, it will be the end of us.” But when the dragoon fell off, Platon seized him by the feet and dragged him to a pit full of mortar and threw him in, poor fellow, although he was still alive; his horse stood there and did not stir from the place, but stamped its foot on the ground as though it understood; our servants shut it in the stable; it must have been burnt there. We all hurried out of the courtyard, the fire was more and more dreadful; worn out and with nothing to eat, we got into a house that was still untouched, and flung ourselves down to rest; in less than an hour, our people were shouting from the street: “Come out, come out! Fire! Fire!” Then I took a piece of green baize from the billiard table and wrapped you in it to keep you from the night air; and so we made our way as far as the Tverskoy Square. There the French were putting the fire out, because some great man of theirs was living in the governor’s house; we sat simply in the street; sentries were walking everywhere, others were riding by on horseback. And you were screaming, straining yourself with crying, your nurse had no more milk, no one had a bit of bread. Natalya Konstantinovna was with us then, a wench of spirit, you know; she saw that some soldiers were eating something in a corner, took you and went straight to them, showed you and said “_mangé_ for the little one”; at first they looked at her so sternly and said “_allez, allez_,” but she fell to scolding them. “Ah, you cursed brutes,” said she, “you this and that”; the soldiers did not understand a word, but they burst out laughing and gave her some bread soaked in water for you and a crust for herself. Early in the morning an officer came up and gathered together all the men and your papa with them, leaving only the women and Pavel Ivanovitch who was wounded, and took them to put out the fire in the houses near by, so we remained alone till evening; we sat and cried and that was all. When it was dusk, the master came back and with him an officer....’

Allow me to take the old woman’s place and continue her narrative. When my father had finished his duties as a fire-brigade man, he met by the Strastny monastery a squadron of Italian cavalry; he went up to their officer and told him in Italian the position in which his family was placed. When the Italian heard _la sua dolce favella_ he promised to speak to the duc de Trévise,[3] and as a preliminary measure to put a sentry to guard us and prevent barbarous scenes such as had taken place in the Golohvastovs’ garden. He sent an officer to accompany my father with these instructions. Hearing that the whole party had eaten nothing for two days, the officer led us all to a shop that had been broken into; the choicest tea and Levant coffee had been thrown about on the floor, together with a great number of dates, figs, and almonds; our servants stuffed their pockets full, and had plenty of dessert anyway. The sentry turned out to be of the greatest use to us: a dozen times gangs of soldiers began molesting the luckless group of women and servants encamped in the corner of Tverskoy Square, but they moved off immediately at his command.

Mortier remembered that he had known my father in Paris and informed Napoleon; Napoleon ordered him to present himself next morning. In a shabby, dark blue, short coat with bronze buttons, intended for sporting wear, without his wig, in high boots that had not been cleaned for several days, with dirty linen and unshaven chin, my father—who worshipped decorum and strict etiquette—made his appearance in the throne room of the Kremlin Palace at the summons of the Emperor of the French.

Their conversation which I have heard many times is fairly correctly given in Baron Fain’s[4] _History_ and in that of Mihailovsky-Danilevsky.

After the usual phrases, abrupt words and laconic remarks, to which a deep meaning was ascribed for thirty-five years, till men realised that their meaning was often quite trivial, Napoleon blamed Rastoptchin for the fire, said that it was Vandalism, declared as usual his invincible love of peace, maintained that his war was against England and not against Russia, boasted that he had set a guard on the Foundling Hospital and the Uspensky Cathedral, complained of Alexander, said that he was surrounded by bad advisers and that his (Napoleon’s) peaceful dispositions were not made known to the Emperor.

My father observed that it was rather for a conqueror to make offers of peace.

‘I have done what I could; I have sent to Kutuzov,[5] he will not enter into any negotiations and does not bring my offer to the cognizance of the Tsar. If they want war, it is not my fault—they shall have war.’

After all this comedy, my father asked him for a pass to leave Moscow.

‘I have ordered no passes to be given to any one; why are you going? What are you afraid of? I have ordered the markets to be opened.’

The Emperor of the French apparently forgot at that moment that, in addition to open markets, it is as well to have a closed house, and that life in the Tverskoy Square in the midst of enemy soldiers is anything but agreeable. My father pointed this out to him; Napoleon thought a moment and suddenly asked:

‘Will you undertake to convey a letter from me to the Emperor? On that condition I will command them to give you a permit to leave the town with all your household.’

‘I would accept your Majesty’s offer,’ my father observed, ‘but it is difficult for me to guarantee that it will reach him.’

‘Will you give me your word of honour that you will make every effort to deliver the letter in person?’

‘_Je m’engage sur mon honneur, Sire._’

‘That suffices. I will send for you. Are you in need of anything?’

‘Of a roof for my family while I am here. Nothing else.’

‘The duc de Trévise will do what he can.’

Mortier did, in fact, give us a room in the governor-general’s house, and gave orders that we should be furnished with provisions; his _maître d’hôtel_ even sent us wine. A few days passed in this way, after which Mortier sent an adjutant, at four o’clock one morning, to summon my father to the Kremlin.

The fire had attained terrific proportions during those days; the scorched air, murky with smoke, was insufferably hot. Napoleon was dressed and was walking about the room, looking careworn and out of temper; he was beginning to feel that his singed laurels would before long be frozen, and that there would be no escaping here with a jest, as in Egypt. The plan of the campaign was absurd; except Napoleon, everybody knew it: Ney, Narbonne, Berthier, and officers of lower rank; to all objections he had replied with the cabalistic word ‘Moscow’; in Moscow even he guessed the truth.

When my father went in, Napoleon took a sealed letter that was lying on the table, handed it to him and said, bowing him out: ‘I rely on your word of honour.’

On the envelope was written: ‘_A mon frère l’Empereur Alexandre_.’

The permit given to my father was still valid; it was signed by the duc de Trévise and countersigned by the head police-master Lesseps. A few outsiders, hearing of our permit, joined us, begging my father to take them in the guise of servants or relations. An open wagonette was given us for the wounded old man, my mother and my nurse; the others walked. A few Uhlans escorted us, on horseback, as far as the Russian rearguard, on sight of which they wished us a good journey and galloped back.

A minute later the Cossacks surrounded their strange visitors and led them to the headquarters of the rearguard. There Wintzengerode and Ilovaisky the Fourth were in command. Wintzengerode, hearing of the letter, told my father that he would send him on immediately, with two dragoons, to the Tsar in Petersburg.

‘What’s to be done with your people?’ asked the Cossack general, Ilovaisky, ‘it is impossible for them to stay here. They are not out of range of the guns, and something serious may be expected any day.’

My father begged that we should, if possible, be taken to his Yaroslav estate, but incidentally observed that he had not a kopeck with him.

‘We will settle up afterwards,’ said Ilovaisky, ‘and do not worry yourself, I give you my word to send them.’

My father was taken by couriers along a road made by laying faggots on the ground. For us Ilovaisky procured some sort of an old conveyance and sent us to the nearest town with a party of French prisoners and an escort of Cossacks; he provided us with money for our expenses until we reached Yaroslav, and altogether did everything he possibly could in the turmoil of wartime. Such was my first journey in Russia; my second was unaccompanied by French Uhlans, Cossacks from the Ural and prisoners of war—I was alone but for a drunken gendarme sitting by my side.

My father was taken straight to Count Araktcheyev[6] and detained in his house. The Count asked for the letter, my father told him he had given his word of honour to deliver it in person; Araktcheyev promised to ask the Tsar, and, next day, informed him by letter that the Tsar had charged him to take the letter and to deliver it immediately. He gave a receipt for the letter (which is still preserved). For a month my father remained under arrest in Araktcheyev’s house; no one was allowed to see him except S. S. Shishkov,[7] who came at the Tsar’s command to question him concerning the details of the fire, of the enemy’s entry into Moscow, and his interview with Napoleon; he was the first eye-witness to arrive in Petersburg. At last Araktcheyev informed my father that the Tsar had ordered his release, and did not hold him to blame for accepting a permit from the enemy in consideration of the extremity in which he was placed. On setting him free, Araktcheyev commanded him to leave Petersburg immediately without seeing anybody except his elder brother, to whom he was allowed to say good-bye.

On reaching at nightfall the little Yaroslav village my father found us in a peasants’ hut (he had no house on that estate). I was asleep on a bench under the window; the window did not close properly, the snow drifting through the crack, covered part of the bench and lay, not thawing, on the window-sill.

Every one was in great perturbation, especially my mother. A few days before my father’s arrival, the village elder and some of the house-serfs had run hastily in the morning into the hut where she was living, trying to explain something by gestures and insisting on her following them. At that time my mother did not speak a word of Russian; all she could make out was that the matter concerned Pavel Ivanovitch; she did not know what to think; the idea occurred to her that they had killed him, or that they meant to kill him and afterwards her. She took me in her arms, and trembling all over, more dead than alive, followed the elder. Golohvastov was in another hut, they went into it; the old man really was lying dead beside the table at which he had been about to shave; a sudden stroke of paralysis had cut short his life instantaneously.

My mother’s position may well be imagined (she was then seventeen), living in a little grimy hut, in the midst of these half-savage bearded men, dressed in bare sheepskins, and talking in a completely unknown language; and all this in November of the terrible winter of 1812. Her one support had been Golohvastov; she wept day and night after his death. And meanwhile these savages were pitying her from the bottom of their hearts, showing her all their warm hospitality and good-natured simplicity; and the village elder sent his son several times to the town to get raisins, cakes, apples, and bread rings for her.

Fifteen years later the elder was still living and used sometimes, grey as a kestrel and somewhat bald, to come to us in Moscow. My mother used specially to regale him with tea and to talk to him about the winter of 1812, saying how she had been so afraid of him and how, without understanding each other, they had made the arrangements for the funeral of Pavel Ivanovitch. The old man used still to call my mother—as he had then—Yuliza Ivanovna, instead of Luise, and used to tell how I was not at all afraid of his beard and would readily let him take me into his arms.

From the province of Yaroslav we moved to that of Tver, and at last, a year later, made our way back to Moscow. By that time my father’s brother, who had been ambassador to Westphalia and had afterwards gone on some commission to Bernadotte, had returned from Sweden; he settled in the same house with us.

I still remember, as in a dream, the traces of the fire, which remained until early in the ’twenties: great burnt-out houses without window frames or roofs, tumbledown walls, empty spaces fenced in, with remains of stoves and chimneys on them.

Tales of the fire of Moscow, of the battle of Borodino, of Beresina, of the taking of Paris were my cradle-songs, my nursery stories, my Iliad and my Odyssey. My mother and our servants, my father and Vera Artamonovna were continually going back to the terrible time which had impressed them so recently, so intimately, and so acutely. Then the returning generals and officers began to arrive in Moscow. My father’s old comrades of the Izmailovsky regiment, now the heroes of a bloody war scarcely ended, were often at our house. They found relief from their toils and anxieties in describing them. This was in reality the most brilliant moment of the Petersburg period; the consciousness of strength gave new life, all practical affairs and troubles seemed to be put off till the morrow when work would begin again, now all that was wanted was to revel in the joys of victory.

From these gentlemen I heard a great deal more about the war than from Vera Artamonovna. I was particularly fond of the stories told by Count Miloradovitch[8]; he spoke with the greatest vivacity, with lively mimicry, with roars of laughter, and more than once I fell asleep, on the sofa behind him, to the sounds of them.

Of course, in such surroundings, I was a desperate patriot and intended to go into the army; but an exclusive sentiment of nationality never leads to any good; it led me to the following incident. Among others who used to visit us was the Comte de Quinsonas, a French _émigré_ and lieutenant-general in the Russian service. A desperate royalist, he took part in the celebrated fête of Versailles, at which the King’s minions trampled underfoot the revolutionary cockade and at which Marie Antoinette drank to the destruction of the revolution. This French count, a tall, thin, graceful old man with grey hair, was the very model of politeness and elegant manners. There was a peerage awaiting him in Paris, where he had already been to congratulate Louis XVIII. on getting his berth. He had returned to Russia to dispose of his estate. Unluckily for me this most courteous of generals of all the Russian armies began speaking of the war in my presence.

‘But surely you must have been fighting against us?’ I remarked with extreme naïveté.

‘_Non, mon petit, non; j’étais dans l’armée russe._’

‘What?’ said I, ‘you, a Frenchman, and fighting in our army!’

My father glanced sternly at me and changed the conversation. The Count heroically set things right by saying to my father that ‘he liked such patriotic sentiments.’

My father did not like them, and after the Count had gone away he gave me a terrible scolding.

‘This is what comes of rushing headlong into conversation about all sorts of things you don’t understand and can’t understand; it was out of fidelity to _his_ king that the Count served under _our_ emperor.’

I certainly did not understand that.

My father had spent twelve years abroad and his brother still longer; they tried to arrange their life in the foreign style while avoiding great expense and retaining all Russian comforts. Their life never was so arranged, either because they did not know how to manage or because the nature of a Russian landowner was stronger in them than their foreign habits. The management of their land and house was in common, the estate was undivided, an immense crowd of house-serfs peopled the lower storeys, and consequently all the conditions conducive to disorder were present.

Two nurses looked after me, one Russian and one German. Vera Artamonovna and Madame Proveau were very kind women, but it bored me to watch them all day long knitting stockings and bickering together, and so on every favourable opportunity I ran away to the half of the house occupied by my uncle, the Senator (the one who had been an ambassador), to see my one friend, his valet Calot.

I have rarely met a kinder, gentler, milder man; utterly alone in Russia, parted from all his own people, with difficulty speaking broken Russian, his devotion to me was like a woman’s. I spent whole hours in his room, worried him, got in his way, did mischief, and he bore it all with a good-natured smile; cut all sorts of marvels out of cardboard for me and carved various trifles out of wood (and how I loved him for it!). In the evenings he used to bring me up picture-books from the library—the Travels of Gmelin[9] and of Pallas,[10] and a fat book of _The World in Pictures_, which I liked so much that I looked at it until the binding, although of leather, gave way; for a couple of hours at a time, Calot would show me the same pictures, repeating the same explanation for the thousandth time.

Before my birthday and my name-day Calot would lock himself up in his room, from which came the sounds of a hammer and other tools; often he would pass along the corridor with rapid steps, every time locking his door after him, sometimes carrying a little saucepan of glue, sometimes a parcel with things wrapped up. It may well be imagined how much I longed to know what he was making; I used to send the house-serf boys to try and find out, but Calot kept a sharp look out. We somehow discovered, on the staircase, a little crack which looked straight into his room, but it was of no help to us; all we could see was the upper part of the window and the portrait of Frederick II. with a huge nose and huge star, and the expression of an emaciated vulture. Two days before the event the noise would cease and the room would be opened—everything in it was as usual, except for scraps of coloured and gold paper here and there; I would flush crimson, devoured with curiosity, but Calot, with an air of strained gravity, refused to approach the delicate subject.

I lived in agonies until the momentous day; at five o’clock in the morning I was awake and thinking of Calot’s preparations; at eight o’clock he would himself appear in a white cravat, a white waistcoat, and a dark-blue tail coat—with empty hands. When would it end? Had he spoiled it? And time passed and the ordinary presents came, and Elizaveta Alexeyevna Golobvastov’s footman had already appeared with a costly toy, wrapped up in a napkin, and the Senator had already brought me some marvel, but the uneasy expectation of the surprise troubled my joy.

All at once, as it were casually, after dinner or after tea, Nurse would say to me: ‘Go downstairs just a minute; there is somebody asking for you.’ At last, I thought, and went down, sliding on my hands down the banisters of the staircase. The doors into the hall were thrown open noisily, music was playing. A transparency with my monogram was lighted up, serf boys dressed up as Turks offered me sweetmeats, then followed a puppet show or indoor fireworks. Calot, perspiring with his efforts, was with his own hands setting everything in motion.

What presents could be compared with such an entertainment! I have never been fond of things, the bump of ownership and acquisitiveness has never been developed in me at any age, and now, after the prolonged suspense, the numbers of candles, the tinsel and the smell of gunpowder! Only one thing was lacking—a comrade of my own age, but I spent all my childhood in solitude,[11] and certainly was not over-indulged in that respect.

My father and the Senator had another elder brother,[12] between whom and the two younger brothers there was an open feud, in spite of which they managed their estate in common or rather ruined it in common. The triple control and the quarrel together led to glaring disorganisation. My father and the Senator did everything to thwart the elder brother, who did the same by them. The village elders and peasants lost their heads; one brother was demanding wagons; another, hay; a third, firewood; each gave orders, each sent his authorised agents. The elder brother would appoint a village elder, the younger ones would remove him within a month, upon some nonsensical pretext, and appoint another whom their senior would not recognise. With all this, backbiting, slander, spies and favourites were naturally plentiful, and under it all the poor peasants, who found neither justice nor defence, were harassed on all sides and oppressed with the double burden of work and the impossibility of carrying out the capricious demands of their owners.

The first consequence of the feud between the brothers that made some impression upon them, was the loss of their great lawsuit with the Counts Devier, though justice was on their side. Though their interests were the same, they could never agree on a course of action; their opponents naturally profited by this. In addition to the loss of a large and fine estate, the Senate sentenced each of the brothers to pay costs and damages to the amount of 30,000 paper roubles. This lesson opened their eyes and they made up their minds to divide their property. The preliminary negotiations lasted for about a year, the estate was carved into three fairly equal parts and they were to decide by casting lots which was to come to which. The Senator and my father visited their elder brother, whom they had not seen for several years, to negotiate and be reconciled; then there was a rumour among us that he would visit us to complete the arrangements. The rumour of the visit of this elder brother excited horror and anxiety in our household.

He was one of those grotesquely original creatures who are only possible in Russia, where life is original to grotesqueness. He was a man gifted by nature, yet he spent his whole life in absurd actions, often almost crimes. He had received a fairly good education in the French style, was very well-read,—and spent his time in debauchery and empty idleness up to the day of his death. He, too, had served at first in the Izmailovsky regiment, had been something like an aide-de-camp in attendance on Potyomkin, then served on some mission, and returning to Petersburg was made chief prosecutor in the Synod. Neither diplomatic nor monastic surroundings could restrain his unbridled character. For his quarrels with the heads of the Church he was removed from his post; for a slap in the face, which he either tried to give, or gave to a gentleman at an official dinner at the governor-general’s, he was banished from Petersburg. He went to his Tambov estate; there the peasants nearly murdered him for his ferocity and amorous propensities; he was indebted to his coachman and horses for his life.

After that he settled in Moscow. Deserted by all his relations and also by his acquaintances, he lived in solitude in his big house in the Tverskoy Boulevard, oppressing his house-serfs and ruining his peasants. He amassed a great library of books and collected a regular harem of serf-girls, both of which he kept under lock and key. Deprived of every occupation and concealing a passionate vanity, often extremely naïve, he amused himself by buying unnecessary things, and making still more unnecessary demands on the peasants, which he exacted with ferocity. His lawsuit concerning an Amati violin lasted thirty years, and ended in his losing it. After another lawsuit he succeeded by extraordinary efforts in winning the wall between two houses, the possession of which was of no use to him whatever. Being himself on the retired list, he used, on reading in the newspapers of the promotions of his old colleagues, to buy such orders as had been given to them, and lay them on his table as a mournful reminder of the decorations he might have received!

His brothers and sisters were afraid of him and had nothing to do with him; our servants would go a long way round to avoid his house for fear of meeting him, and would turn pale at the sight of him; women went in terror of his impudent persecution, the house-serfs paid for special services of prayer that they might not come into his possession.

So this was the terrible man who was to visit us. Extraordinary excitement prevailed throughout the house from early morning; I had never seen this legendary ‘enemy-brother,’ though I was born in his house, where my father stayed when he came back from foreign parts; I longed to see him and at the same time I was frightened, I do not know why, but I was terribly frightened.

Two hours before his arrival, my father’s eldest nephew, two intimate acquaintances and a good-natured stout and flabby official who was in charge of the legal business arrived. They were all sitting in silent expectation, when suddenly the butler came in, and, in a voice unlike his own, announced that the brother ‘had graciously pleased to arrive.’ ‘Ask him up,’ said the Senator, with perceptible agitation, while my father took a pinch of snuff, the nephew straightened his cravat, and the official turned aside and coughed. I was ordered to go upstairs, but trembling all over, I stayed in the next room.

Slowly and majestically the ‘brother’ advanced, the Senator and my father rose to meet him. He was holding an ikon with both hands before his chest, as people do at weddings and funerals, and in a drawling voice, a little through his nose, he addressed his brothers in the following words:

‘With this ikon our father blessed me before his end, charging me and our late brother Pyotr to watch over you and to be a father to you in his place ... if our father knew of your conduct to your elder brother!...’

‘Come, _mon cher frère_,’ observed my father in his studiously indifferent voice, ‘well have you carried out our father’s last wish. It would be better to forget these memories, painful to you as well as to us.’

‘How? what?’ shouted the devout brother. ‘Is this what you have summoned me for ...’ and he flung down the ikon, so that the silver setting gave a metallic clink.

At this point the Senator shouted in a voice still more terrifying. I rushed headlong upstairs and only had time to see the official and the nephew, no less scared, retreating to the balcony.

What was done and how it was done, I cannot say; the frightened servants huddled into corners out of sight, no one knew anything of what happened, neither the Senator nor my father ever spoke of this scene before me. Little by little the noise subsided and the partition of the estate was carried out, whether then or on another day I do not remember.

My father received Vassilyevskoe, a big estate in the Ruzsky district, near Moscow. We spent the whole summer there the following year; meanwhile the Senator bought himself a house in Arbat, and we returned to live alone in our great house, deserted and deathlike. Soon afterwards, my father too bought a house in Old Konyushenny Street.

With the Senator, in the first place, and Calot in the second, all the lively elements of our household were withdrawn. The Senator alone had prevented the hypochondriacal disposition of my father from prevailing; now it had full sway. The new house was gloomy; it was suggestive of a prison or a hospital; the lower storey was built with pillars supporting the arched ceiling, the thick walls made the windows look like the embrasures of a fortress. The house was surrounded on all sides by a courtyard unnecessarily large.

To tell the truth, it is rather a wonder that the Senator managed to live so long under the same roof as my father than that they parted. I have rarely seen two men so complete a contrast as they were.

The Senator was of a kindly disposition, and fond of amusements; he spent his whole life in the world of artificial light and of official diplomacy, the world that surrounded the court, without a notion that there was another more serious world, although he had been not merely in contact with but intimately connected with all the great events from 1789 to 1815. Count Vorontsov had sent him to Lord Grenville[13] to find out what General Bonaparte was going to undertake after abandoning the Egyptian army. He had been in Paris at the coronation of Napoleon. In 1811 Napoleon had ordered him to be detained in Cassel, where he was ambassador ‘at the court of King Jeremiah,’[14] as my father used to say in moments of vexation. In fact, he took part in all the great events of his time, but in a queer way, irregularly.

Though a captain in the Life Guards of the Izmailovsky regiment, he was sent on a mission to London; Paul, seeing this in the correspondence, ordered him at once to return to Petersburg. The soldier-diplomat set off by the first ship and appeared before the Tsar. ‘Do you want to remain in London?’ Paul asked in his hoarse voice. ‘If it should please your Majesty to permit me,’ answered the captain-diplomat.

‘Go back without loss of time,’ said Paul in his hoarse voice, and he did go back, without even seeing his relations, who lived in Moscow.

While diplomatic questions were being settled by bayonets and grape-shot, he was an ambassador and concluded his diplomatic career at the time of the Congress of Vienna, that bright festival of all the diplomats.

Returning to Russia he was appointed court chamberlain in Moscow, where there is no Court. Though he knew nothing of Russian Law and legal procedure, he got into the Senate, became a member of the Council of Trustees, a director of the Mariinsky Hospital, and of the Alexandrinsky Institute, and he performed all his duties with a zeal that was hardly necessary, with a censoriousness that only did harm and with an honesty that no one noticed.

He was never at home, he tired out two teams of four strong horses in the course of the day, one set in the morning, the other after dinner. Besides the Senate, the sittings of which he never neglected, and the Council of Wardens, which he attended twice a week, besides the hospital and the institute, he hardly missed a single French play, and visited the English Club three times a week. He had no time to be bored, he was always busy and interested; he was always going somewhere, and his life rolled lightly on good springs through a world of official papers and pink tape.

Moreover, up to the age of seventy-five he was as strong as a young man, was present at all the great balls and dinners, took part in every ceremonial assembly and annual function, whether it were of an agricultural or medical or fire insurance society or of the Society of Scientific Research ... and, on the top of it all, perhaps because of it, preserved to old age some degree of human feeling and a certain warmth of heart.

No greater contrast to the sanguine Senator, who was always in movement and only occasionally visited his home, can possibly be imagined than my father, who hardly ever went out of his courtyard, hated the whole official world and was everlastingly ill-humoured and discontented. We also had eight horses (very poor ones), but our stable was something like an almshouse for broken-down nags; my father kept them partly for the sake of appearances and partly that the two coachmen and the two postillions should have something to do, besides fetching the _Moscow News_ and getting up cockfights, which they did very successfully between the coachhouse and the neighbours’ yard.

My father had scarcely been in the service at all; educated by a French tutor, in the house of a devout and highly respected aunt, he entered the Izmailovsky regiment as a sergeant at sixteen, served until the accession of Paul, and retired with the rank of captain in the Guards. In 1801 he went abroad and remained abroad until 1811, wandering from one country to another. He returned with my mother three months before my birth, and after the fire of Moscow he spent a year on his estate in the province of Tver, and then returned to live in Moscow, trying to order his life so as to be as solitary and dreary as possible. His brother’s liveliness hindered him in this.

After the Senator had left us, everything in the house began to assume a more and more gloomy aspect. The walls, the furniture, the servants, everything bore a look of displeasure and suspicion, and I need hardly say that my father himself was of all the most displeased. The unnatural stillness, the whispers and cautious footsteps of the servants, did not suggest attentive solicitude, but oppression and terror. Everything was immovable in the rooms; for five or six years the same books would lie in the very same places with the same markers in them. In my father’s bedroom and study the furniture was not moved nor the windows opened for years together. When he went away into the country he took the key of his room in his pocket, that they might not venture to scrub the floor or wash the walls in his absence.