CHAPTER VII

End of College Life—The “Schiller” Stage—Youth—The Artistic Life—Saint-Simonianism and N. Polevói—Polezháev.

THE storm had not yet burst over our heads when my college course came to an end. My experience of the final stage of education was exactly like that of everyone else—constant worry and sleepless nights for the sake of a painful and useless test of the memory, superficial cramming, and all real interest in learning crowded out by the nightmare of examination. I wrote an astronomical dissertation for the gold medal, and the silver medal was awarded me. I am sure that I should not be able now to understand what I wrote then, and that it was worth its weight—in silver.

I have sometimes dreamt since that I was a student preparing for examination; I thought with horror how much I had forgotten and how certain I was to fail, and then I woke up, to rejoice with all my heart that the sea and much else lay between me and my University, and that no one would ever examine me again or venture to place me at the bottom of the list. My professors wouldreally be astonished, if they could discover how much I have gone backward in the interval.

When the examinations were over, the professors shut themselves up to count the marks, and we walked up and down the passage and the vestibule, the prey of hopes and fears. Whenever anyone left the meeting, we rushed to him, eager to learn our fate; but the decision took a long time. At last Heiman came out and said to me, “I congratulate you; you have passed.” “Who else? who else?” I asked; and some names were mentioned. I felt both sad and pleased. As I walked out of the college gates, I felt that I was leaving the place otherwise than yesterday or ever before, and becoming a stranger to that great family party in which I had spent four years of youth and happiness. On the other hand, I was pleased by the feeling that I was now admittedly grown up, and also—I may as well confess it—by the fact that I had got my degree at the first time of asking.

I owe so much to myAlma Materand I continued so long after my degree to live her life and near her, that I cannot recall the place without love and reverence. She will not accuse me of ingratitude. In this case at least it is easy to be grateful; for gratitude is inseparable from love and bright memories of youthful development. Writing in a distant foreign land, I send her my blessing!

The year which we spent after leaving College formed a triumphant conclusion to the first period of our youth. It was one long festival of friendship, of high spirits, of inspiration and exchange of ideas.

We were a small group of college friends who kept togetherafter our course was over, and continued to share the same views and the same ideals. Not one of us thought of his future career or financial position. I should not praise this attitude in grown-up people, but I value it highly in a young man. Except where it is dried up by the corrupting influence of vulgar respectability, youth is everywhere unpractical, and is especially bound to be so in a young country which has many ideals and has realised few of them. Besides, the unpractical sphere is not always a fool’s paradise: every aspiration for the future involves some degree of imagination; and, but for unpractical people, practical life would never get beyond a tiresome repetition of the old routine.

Enthusiasm of some kind is a better safeguard against real degradation than any sermon. I can remember youthful follies, when high spirits carried us sometimes into excesses; but I do not remember a single disgraceful incident among our set, nothing that a man need be really ashamed of or seek to forget and cover up. Bad things are done in secret; and there was nothing secret in our way of life. Half our thoughts—more than half—were not directed towards that region where idle sensuality and morbid selfishness are concentrated on impure designs and make vice thrice as vicious.

I have a sincere pity for any nation where old heads grow on young shoulders; youth is a matter, not only of years, but of temperament. The German student, in the height of his eccentricity, is a hundred times better than the young Frenchman or Englishman with his dull grown-upairs; as to American boys who are men at fifteen—I find them simply repulsive.

In old France the young nobles were really young and fine; and later, such men as Saint Just and Hoche, Marceau and Desmoulins, heroic children reared on Rousseau’s dark gospel, were young too, in the true sense of the word. The Revolution was the work of young men: neither Danton nor Robespierre, nor Louis XVI himself survived his thirty-fifth year. Under Napoleon, the young men all became subalterns; the Restoration, the “resurrection of old age,” had no use for young men; and everybody became grown-up, business-like, and dull.

The last really young Frenchmen were the followers of Saint Simon.[54]A few exceptions only prove the fact that their young men have no liveliness or poetry in their disposition. Escousse and Lebras blew their brains out, just because they were young men in a society where all were old. Others struggled like fish jerked out of the water upon a muddy bank, till some of them got caught on the barricades and others on the Jesuits’ hook.

54.Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), founded at Paris a society which was called by his name. His views were socialistic.

Still youth must assert itself somehow, and therefore most young Frenchmen go through an “artistic” period: that is, those who have no money spend their time in humble cafés of the Latin quarter with humble grisettes, and those who have money resort to large cafés and more expensive ladies. They have no “Schiller” stage; but they have what may be called a “Paul de Kock” stage, which soon consumes in poor enough fashion all the strength and vigour of youth, and turns out a man quite fit to be a commercial traveller. The “artistic” stage leaves at thebottom of the soul one passion only—the thirst for money, which excludes all other interests and determines all the rest of life; these practical men laugh at abstract questions and despise women—this is the result of repeated conquests over those whose profession it is to be defeated. Most young men, when going through this stage, find a guide and philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct celebrity who lives by sponging on his young friends—an actor who has lost his voice, or an artist whose hand has begun to shake. Telemachus imitates his Mentor’s pronunciation and his drinks, and especially his contempt for social problems and profound knowledge of gastronomy.

In England this stage takes a different form. There young men go through a stormy period of amiable eccentricity, which consists in silly practical jokes, absurd extravagance, heavy pleasantries, systematic but carefully concealed profligacy, and useless expeditions to the ends of the earth. Then there are horses, dogs, races, dull dinners; next comes the wife with an incredible number of fat, red-cheeked babies, business in the City, theTimes, parliament, and old port which finally clips the Englishman’s wings.

We too did foolish things and were riotous at times, but the prevailing tone was different and the atmosphere purer. Folly and noise were never an object in themselves. We believed in our mission; and though we may have made mistakes, yet we respected ourselves and one another as the instruments of a common purpose.

But what were these revels of ours like? It would suddenlyoccur to one of us that this was the fourth of December and that the sixth was St. Nicholas’ Day. Many of us were named after the Saint, Ogaryóv himself and at least three more. “Well, who shall give a dinner on the day?” “I will—I will.” “I’ll give one on the seventh.” “Pooh! what’s the seventh? We must contribute and all give it together; and that will be a grand feed.”

“All right. Where shall we meet?”

“So-and-so is ill. Clearly we must go to him.”

Then followed plans and calculations which gave a surprising amount of occupation to both hosts and guests at the coming banquet. One Nikolai went off to a restaurant to order the supper, another elsewhere to order cheese and savouries; our wine invariably came from the famous shop of Deprez. We were no connoisseurs and never soared above champagne; indeed, our youthful palates deserted even champagne in favour of a brand calledRivesaltes Mousseux. I once noticed this name on the card of a Paris restaurant, and called for a bottle of it, in memory of 1833. But alas! not even sentiment could induce me to swallow more than one glass.

The wine had to be tasted before the feast, and as the samples evidently gave great satisfaction, it was necessary to send more than one mission for this purpose.

In this connexion I cannot refrain from recording something that happened to our friend Sokolovski. He could never keep money and spent at once whatever he got. A year before his arrest, he paid a visit to Moscow. As he had been successful in selling the manuscript of a poem, he determined to give a dinner and to ask not onlyus but such bigwigs as Polevói, Maximovitch, and others. On the day before, he went out with Polezháev, who was in Moscow with his regiment, to make his purchases; he bought all kinds of needless things, cups and even asamovár, and finally wine and eatables, such as stuffed turkeys, patties, and so on. Five of us went that evening to his rooms, and he proposed to open a single bottle for our benefit. A second followed, and at the end of the evening, or rather, at dawn of the next day, it appeared that the wine was all drunk and that Sokolovski had no more money. After paying some small debts, he had spent all his money on the dinner. He was much distressed, but, after long reflexion, plucked up courage and wrote to all the bigwigs that he was seriously ill and must put off his party.

For our “feast of the four birthdays” I wrote out a regular programme, which was honoured by the special attention of Golitsyn, one of the Commissioners at our trial, who asked me if the programme had been carried out exactly.

“À la lettre!” I replied. He shrugged his shoulders, as if his own life had been a succession of Good Fridays spent in a monastery.

Our suppers were generally followed by a lively discussion over a question of the first importance, which was this—how ought the punch to be made? Up to this point, the eating and drinking went on usually in perfect harmony, like a bill in parliament which is carriednem. con.But over the punch everyone had his own view; and the previous meal enlivened the discussion. Was thepunch to be set on fire now, or to be set on fire later? How was it to be set on fire? Was champagne or sauterne to be used to put it out? Was the pineapple to be put in while it was still alight, or not?

“While it’s burning, of course! Then all the flavour will pass into the punch.”

“Nonsense! The pineapple floats and will get burnt. That will simply spoil it.”

“That is all rubbish,” cries Ketcher, high above the rest; “but I’ll tell you what does matter—we must put out the candles.”

When the candles were out, all faces looked blue in the flickering light of the punch. The room was not large, and the burning rum soon raised the temperature to a tropical height. All were thirsty, but the punch was not ready. But Joseph, a French waiter sent from the restaurant, rose to the occasion: he brewed a kind of antithesis to the punch—an iced drink compounded of various wines with a foundation of brandy; and as he poured in the French wine, he explained, like a true son of thegrande nation, that the wine owed its excellence to having twice crossed the equator—“Oui, oui, messieurs, deux fois l’équateur, messieurs!”

Joseph’s cup was as cold as the North Pole. When it was finished, there was no need of any further liquid; but Ketcher now called out, “Time to put out the punch!” He was stirring a fiery lake in a soup-tureen, while the last lumps of sugar hissed and bubbled as they melted.

In goes the champagne, and the flame turns red and careers over the surface of the punch, looking somehow angry and menacing.

Then a desperate shout: “My good man, are you mad?The wax is dropping straight off the bottle into the punch!”

“Well, just you try yourself, in this heat, to hold the bottle so that the wax won’t melt!”

“You should knock it off first, of course,” continues the critic.

“The cups, the cups—have we enough to go round? How many are we—ten, twelve, fourteen? That’s right.”

“We’ve not got fourteen cups.”

“Then the rest must take glasses.”

“The glasses will crack.”

“Not a bit of it, if you put the spoon in.”

The candles are re-lit, the last little tongue of flame darts to the centre of the bowl, twirls round, and disappears.

And all admit that the punch is a success, a splendid success.

Next day I awake with a headache, clearly due to the punch. That comes of mixing liquors. Punch is poison; I vow never to touch it in future.

My servant, Peter, comes in. “You came in last night, Sir, wearing someone else’s hat, not so good a hat as your own.”

“The deuce take my hat!”

“Perhaps I had better go where you dined last night and enquire?”

“Do you suppose, my good man, that one of the party went home bare-headed?”

“It can do no harm—just in case.”

Now it dawns upon me that the hat is a pretext, andthat Peter has been invited to the scene of last night’s revelry.

“All right, you can go. But first tell the cook to send me up some pickled cabbage.”

“I suppose, Sir, the birthday party went off well last night?”

“I should rather think so! There never was such a party in all my time at College.”

“I suppose you won’t want me to go to the University with you to-day?”

I feel remorse and make no reply.

“Your papa asked me why you were not up yet. But I was a match for him. ‘He has a headache,’ I said, ‘and complained when I called him; so I left the blinds down.’ And your papa said I was right.”

“For goodness sake, let me go to sleep! You wanted to go, so be off with you!”

“In a minute, Sir; I’ll just order the cabbage first.”

Heavy sleep again seals my eyelids, and I wake in two hours’ time, feeling a good deal fresher. I wonder what my friends are doing. Ketcher and Ogaryóv were to spend the night where we dined. I must admit that the punch was very good; but its effect on the head is annoying. To drink it out of a tumbler is a mistake; I am quite determined in future to drink it always out of aliqueur-glass.

Meanwhile my father has read the papers and interviewed the cook as usual.

“Have you a headache to-day?” he asks.

“Yes, a bad one.”

“Perhaps you’ve been working too hard.”

But the way he asked the question showed he did not believe that.

“Oh, I forgot: you were dining with your friends last night, eh?”

“Yes, I was.”

“A birthday party? And they treated you handsomely, I’ve no doubt. Did you have soup made with Madeira? That sort of thing is not to my taste. I know one of your young friends is too often at the bottle; but I can’t imagine where he gets the taste from. His poor father used to give a dinner on his birthday, the twenty-ninth of June, and ask all his relations; but it was always a very modest, decent affair. But this modern fashion of champagne and sardinesà l’huile—I don’t like to see it. Your other friend, that unfortunate young Ogaryóv, is even worse. Here he is, left to himself in Moscow, with his pockets full of money. He is constantly sending his coachman, Jeremy, for wine; and the coachman has no objection, because the dealer gives him a present.”

“Well, I did have lunch with Ogaryóv. But I don’t think my headache can be due to that. I think I will take a turn in the open air; that always does me good.”

“By all means, but I hope you will dine at home.”

“Certainly; I shan’t be long.”

But I must explain the allusion to Madeira in the soup. A year or more before the grand birthday party, I went out for a walk with Ogaryóv one day in Easter week, and, in order to escape dinner at home, I said that I had been invited to dine at their house by Ogaryóv’s father.

My father did not care for my friends in general andused to call them by wrong names, though he always made the same mistake in addressing any of them; and Ogaryóv was less of a favourite than any, both because he wore his hair long and because he smoked without being asked to do so. But on the other hand, my father could hardly mutilate his own grandnephew’s surname; and also Ogaryóv’s father, both by birth and fortune, belonged to the select circle of people whom my father recognised. Hence he was pleased to see me going often to their house, but he would have been still better pleased if the house had contained no son.

He thought it proper therefore for me to accept the invitation. But Ogaryóv and I did not repair to his father’s respectable dining-room. We went first to Price’s place of entertainment. Price was an acrobat, whom I was delighted to meet later with his accomplished family in both Geneva and London. He had a little daughter, whom we admired greatly and had christened Mignon.[55]When we had seen Mignon perform and decided to come back for the evening performance, we went to dine at the best restaurant in Moscow. I had one gold piece in my pocket, and Ogaryóv had about the same sum. At that time we had no experience in ordering dinners. After long consultation we ordered fish-soup made with champagne, a bottle of Rhine wine, and a tiny portion of game. The result was that we paid a terrific bill and left the restaurant feeling exceedingly hungry. Then we went back to see Mignon a second time.

55.After the character in Goethe’sWilhelm Meister. The Prices were evidently English.

When I was saying good-night to my father, he said, “Surely you smell of wine.”

“That is probably because there was Madeira in the soup at dinner,” I replied.

“Madeira? That must be a notion of M. Ogaryóv’s son-in-law; no one but a guardsman would think of such a thing.”

And from that time until my banishment, whenever my father thought that I had been drinking wine and that my face was flushed, he invariably attributed it to Madeira in the soup I had taken.

On the present occasion, I hurried off to the scene of our revelry and found Ogaryóv and Ketcher still there. The latter looked rather the worse for wear; he was finding fault with some of last night’s arrangements and was severely critical. Ogaryóv was trying a hair of the dog that bit him, though there was little left to drink after the party, and that little was now diminished by the descent of my man Peter, who was by this time in full glory, singing a song and drumming on the kitchen table downstairs.

When I recall those days, I cannot remember a single incident among our set such as might weigh upon a man’s conscience and cause shame in recollection; and this is true of every one of the group without a single exception.

Of course, there were Platonic lovers among us, and disenchanted youths of sixteen. Vadim even wrote a play, in order to set forth the “terrible experience of a broken heart.” The play began thus—A garden, with a house in the distance; there are lights in the windows. The stage is empty. A storm is blowing. The garden gate clinks and bangs in the wind.

“Are the garden and the gate your onlydramatis personae?” I asked him. He was rather offended. “What nonsense you talk!” he said; “it is no joking matter but an actual experience. But if you take it so, I won’t read any more.” But he did, none the less.

There were also love affairs which were by no means Platonic, but there were none of those low intrigues which ruin the woman concerned and debase the man; there were no “kept mistresses”; that disgusting phrase did not even exist. Cool, safe, prosaic profligacy of the bourgeois fashion, profligacy by contract, was unknown to our group.

If it is said that I approve of the worst form of profligacy, in which a woman sells herself for the occasion, I say that it is you, not I, who approve of it—not you in particular but people in general. That custom rests so securely on the present constitution of society that it needs no patronage of mine.

Our interest in general questions and our social ideals saved us; and a keen interest in scientific and artistic matters helped us too. These preoccupations had a purifying effect, just as lighted paper makes grease-spots vanish. I have kept some of Ogaryóv’s letters written at that time; and they give a good idea of what was mostly in our minds. For example, he writes to me on June 7, 1833:

“I think we know one another well enough to speak frankly. You won’t show my letter to anyone. Well, for some time past I have been so filled—crushed, I might say—with feelings and ideas, that I think—but ‘think’ is too weak: I have an indelible impression—that I was born to be a poet, whether writer of verse or composer of music, never mind which. I feel it impossible to partfrom this belief; I have a kind of intuition that I am a poet. Granting that I still write badly, still this inward fire and this abundance of feeling make me hope that some day I shall write decently—please excuse the triviality of the phrase. Tell me, my dear friend, whether I can believe in my vocation. Perhaps you know better than I do myself, and you will not be misled.”

He writes again on August 18:

“So you answer that I am a poet, a true poet. Is it possible that you understand the full significance of your words? If you are right, my feelings do not deceive me, and the object and aspiration of my whole life is not a mere dream. Are you right, I wonder? I feel sure that I am not merely raving. No one knows me better than you do—of that I am sure. Yes! that high vocation is not mere raving, no mere illusion; it is too high for deception, it is real, I live by virtue of it and cannot imagine a different life for myself. If only I could compose, what a symphony would take wing from my brain just now! First a majesticadagio; but it has not power to express all; I need apresto, a wild stormypresto.Adagioandprestoare the two extremes. A fig for yourandanteandallegro moderato! They are mere mediocrities who can only lisp, incapable alike of strong speech or strong feeling.”

To us this strain of youthful enthusiasm sounds strange, from long disuse; but these few lines of a youth under twenty show clearly enough that the writer is insured against commonplace vice and commonplace virtue, and that, though he may stumble into the mire, he will come out of it undefiled.

There is no want of self-confidence in the letter; butthe believer has doubts and a passionate desire for confirmation and a word of sympathy, though that hardly needed to be spoken. It is the restlessness of creative activity, the uneasy looking about of a pregnant soul.

“As yet,” he writes in the same letter, “I can’t catch the sounds that my brain hears; a physical incapacity limits my fancy. But never mind! A poet I am, and poetry whispers to me truth which I could never have discovered by cold logic. Such is my theory of revelation.”

Thus ends the first part of our youth, and the second begins with prison. But before starting on that episode, I must record the ideas towards which we were tending when the prison-doors closed on us.

The period that followed the suppression of the Polish revolt in 1830 was a period of rapid enlightenment. We soon perceived with inward horror that things were going badly in Europe and especially in France—France to which we looked for a political creed and a banner; and we began to distrust our own theories.

The simple liberalism of 1826, which by degrees took, in France, the form sung by Béranger and preached by men like La Fayette and Benjamin Constant, lost its magic power over us after the destruction of Poland.

It was then that some young Russians, including Vadim, took refuge in the profound study of Russian history, while others took to German philosophy.

But Ogaryóv and I did not join either of these groups. Certain ideals had become so much a part of us that we could not lightly give them up. Our belief in the sort of dinner-table revolution dear to Béranger was shaken; butwe sought something different, which we could not find either in Nestor’sChronicle[56]or in the transcendentalism of Schelling.

56.The earliest piece of literature in Russian.

During this period of ferment and surmise and endeavour to understand the doubts that frightened us, there came into our hands the pamphlets and sermons of the Saint-Simonians, and the report of their trial. We were much impressed by them.

Superficial and unsuperficial critics alike have had their laugh atLe Père Enfantin[57]and his apostles; but a time is coming when a different reception will be given to those forerunners of socialism.

57.Barthèlemy Enfantin (1796-1864) carried on the work of Saint-Simon in Paris.

Though these young enthusiasts wore long beards and high waistcoats, yet their appearance in a prosaic world was both romantic and serious. They proclaimed a new belief, they had something to say—a principle by virtue of which they summoned before their judgement-seat the old order of things, which wished to try them by thecode Napoléonand the religion of the House of Orleans.

First, they proclaimed the emancipation of women—summoning them to a common task, giving them control of their own destiny, and making an alliance with them on terms of equality.

Their second dogma was the restoration of the body to credit—la réhabilitation de la chair.

These mighty watchwords comprise a whole world of new relations between human beings—a world of health and spirit and beauty, a world of natural and thereforepure morality. Many mocked at the “freedom of women” and the “recognition of the rights of the flesh,” attributing a low and unclean meaning to these phrases; for our minds, corrupted by monasticism, fear the flesh and fear women. A religion of life had come to replace the religion of death, a religion of beauty to replace the religion of penance and emaciation, of fasting and prayer. The crucified body had risen in its turn and was no longer abashed. Man had reached a harmonious unity: he had discovered that he is a single being, not made, like a pendulum, of two different metals that check each other; he realised that the foe in his members had ceased to exist.

It required no little courage to preach such a message to all France, and to attack those beliefs which are so strongly held by all Frenchmen and so entirely powerless to influence their conduct.

To the old world, mocked by Voltaire and shattered by the Revolution, and then patched and cobbled for their own use by the middle classes, this was an entirely new experience. It tried to judge these dissenters, but its own hypocritical pretences were brought to light by them in open court. When the Saint-Simonians were charged with religious apostasy, they pointed to the crucifix in the court which had been veiled since the revolution of 1830; and when they were accused of justifying sensuality, they asked their judge if he himself led a chaste life.

A new world was knocking at the door, and our hearts and minds flew open to welcome it. The socialism of Saint Simon became the foundation of our beliefs and has remained an essential part of them.

With the impressibility and frankness of youth, we were easily caught up by the mighty stream and earlypassed across that Jordan, before which whole armies of mankind stop short, fold their arms, and either march backwards or hunt about for a ford; but there is no ford over Jordan!

We did not all cross. Socialism and rationalism are to this day the touchstones of humanity, the rocks which lie in the course of revolution and science. Groups of swimmers, driven by reflexion or the waves of circumstance against these rocks, break up at once into two camps, which, under different disguises, remain the same throughout all history, and may be distinguished either in a great political party or in a group of a dozen young men. One represents logic; the other, history: one stands for dialectics; the other for evolution. Truth is the main object of the former, and feasibility of the latter. There is no question of choice between them: thought is harder to tame than any passion and pulls with irresistible force. Some may be able to put on the drag and stop themselves by means of feeling or dreams or fear of consequences; but not all can do this. If thought once masters a man, he ceases to discuss whether the thing is practicable, and whether the enterprise is hard or easy: he seeks truth alone and carries out his principles with inexorable impartiality, as the Saint-Simonians did in their day and as Proudhon[58]does still.

58.Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1863), a French publicist and socialist.

Our group grew smaller and smaller. As early as 1833, the “liberals” looked askance at us as backsliders. Just before we were imprisoned, Saint-Simonianism raised a barrier between me and Polevói. He had an extraordinarily active and adroit mind, which could rapidly assimilate any food; he was a born journalist, the very man tochronicle successes and discoveries and the battles of politicians or men of science. I made his acquaintance towards the end of my college course and saw a good deal of him and his brother, Xenophon. He was then at the height of his reputation; it was shortly before the suppression of his newspaper, theTelegraph.

To Polevói the latest discovery, the freshest novelty either of incident or theory, was the breath of his nostrils, and he was changeable as a chameleon. Yet, for all his lively intelligence, he could never understand the Saint-Simonian doctrine. What was to us a revelation was to him insanity, a mere Utopia and a hindrance to social progress. I might declaim and expound and argue as much as I pleased—Polevói was deaf, grew angry and even bitter. He especially resented opposition on the part of a student; for he valued his influence over the young, and these disputes showed him that it was slipping out of his grasp.

One day I was hurt by the absurdity of his criticisms and told him that he was just as benighted as the foes against whom he had been fighting all his life. Stung to the quick by my taunt he said, “Your time will come too, when, in recompense for a lifetime of labour and effort, some young man with a smile on his face will call you a back number and bid you get out of his way.” I felt sorry for him and ashamed of having hurt his feelings; and yet I felt also that this complaint, more suitable to a worn-out gladiator than a tough fighter, contained his own condemnation. I was sure then that he would never go forward, and also that his active mind would prevent him from remaining where he was, in a position of unstable equilibrium.

His subsequent history is well known: he wroteParasha, the Siberian Girl.

If a man cannot pass off the stage when his hour has struck and cannot adopt a new rôle, he had better die. That is what I felt when I looked at Polevói, and at Pius the Ninth, and at how many others!

To complete my chronicle of that sad time, I should record here some details about Polezháev.

Even at College he became known for his remarkable powers as a poet. One of his productions was a humorous poem calledSashka, a parody of Púshkin’sOnégin; he trod on many corns in the pretty and playful verse, and the poem, never intended for print, allowed itself the fullest liberty of expression.

When the Tsar Nicholas came to Moscow for his coronation in the autumn of 1826, the secret police furnished him with a copy of the poem.

So, at three one morning, Polezháev was wakened by the Vice-Chancellor and told to put on his uniform and appear at the office. The Visitor of the University was waiting for him there: he looked to see that Polezháev’s uniform had no button missing and no button too many, and then carried him off in his own carriage, without offering any explanation.

They drove to the house of the Minister of Education. The Minister of Education also gave Polezháev a seat in his carriage, and this time they drove to the Palace itself.

Prince Liven proceeded to an inner room, leaving Polezháev in a reception room, where, in spite of theearly hour—it was 6 a.m.—several courtiers and other high functionaries were waiting. They supposed that the young man had distinguished himself in some way and began a conversation with him at once; one of them proposed to engage him as tutor to his son.

He was soon sent for. The Tsar was standing, leaning on a desk and talking to Liven. He held a manuscript in his hand and darted an enquiring glance at Polezháev as he entered the room. “Did you write these verses?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Polezháev.

“Well, Prince,” the Tsar went on, “I shall give you a specimen of University education; I shall show you what the young men learn there.” Then he turned to Polezháev and added, “Read this manuscript aloud.”

Polezháev’s agitation was such that he could not read it; and he said so.

“Read it at once!”

The loud voice restored his strength to Polezháev, and he opened the manuscript. He said afterwards that he had never seenSashkaso well copied or on such fine paper.

At first he read with difficulty, but by degrees he took courage and read the poem to the end in a loud lively tone. At the most risky passages the Tsar waved his hand to the Minister and the Minister closed his eyes in horror.

“What do you say, Prince?” asked Nicholas, when the reading was over. “I mean to put a stop to this profligacy. These are surviving relics of the old mischief,[59]but I shall root them out. What character does he bear?”

59.I.e., the Decembrist conspiracy.

Of course the Minister knew nothing about his character;but some humane instinct awoke in him, and he said, “He bears an excellent character, Your Majesty.”

“You may be grateful for that testimony. But you must be punished as an example to others. Do you wish to enter the Army?”

Polezháev was silent.

“I offer you this means of purification. Will you take it?”

“I must obey when you command,” said Polezháev. The Tsar came close up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He said: “Your fate depends upon yourself. If I forget about you, you may write to me.” Then he kissed Polezháev on the forehead.

This last detail seemed to me so improbable that I made Polezháev repeat it a dozen times; he swore that it was true.

From the presence of the Tsar, Polezháev was taken to Count Diebitch, who had rooms in the Palace. Diebitch was roused out of his sleep and came in yawning. He read through the document and asked theaide-de-camp, “Is this the man?” “Yes,” was the reply.

“Well, good luck to you in the service! I was in it myself and worked my way up, as you see; perhaps you will be a field-marshal yourself some day.” That was Diebitch’s kiss—a stupid, ill-timed, German joke. Polezháev was taken to camp and made to serve with the colours.

When three years had passed, Polezháev recalled what the Tsar had said and wrote him a letter. No answer came. After a few months he wrote again with the same result. Feeling sure that his letters were not delivered, he deserted, his object being to present a petition in person. But he behaved foolishly: he hunted up some collegefriends in Moscow and was entertained by them, and of course further secrecy was impossible. He was arrested at Tver and sent back to his regiment as a deserter; he had to march all the way in fetters. A court-martial sentenced him to run the gauntlet, and the sentence was forwarded to the Tsar for confirmation.

Polezháev determined to commit suicide before the time of his punishment. For long he searched in the prison for some sharp instrument, and at last he confided in an old soldier who was attached to him. The soldier understood and sympathised with his wish; and when he heard that the reply had come, he brought a bayonet and said with tears in his eyes as he gave it to Polezháev, “I sharpened it with my own hands.”

But the Tsar ordered that Polezháev should not be flogged.

It was at this time that he wrote that excellent poem which begins—

“No consolationCame when I fell;In jubilationLaughed fiends of Hell.”

“No consolation

Came when I fell;

In jubilation

Laughed fiends of Hell.”

He was sent to the Caucasus, where he distinguished himself and was promoted corporal. Years passed, and the tedium and hopelessness of his position were too much for him. For him it was impossible to become a poet at the service of the police, and that was the only way to get rid of the knapsack.

There was, indeed, one other way, and he preferred it: he drank, in order to forget. There is one terrible poem of his—To Whiskey.

He got himself transferred to a regiment of carabineers quartered at Moscow. This was a material improvement in his circumstances, but cruel consumption had already fastened on his lungs. It was at this time I made his acquaintance, about 1833. He dragged on for four years more and died in the military hospital.

When one of his friends went to ask for the body, to bury it, no one knew where it was. The military hospital carries on a trade in dead bodies, selling them to the University and medical schools, manufacturing skeletons, and so on. Polezháev’s body was found at last in a cellar; there were other corpses on the top of it, and the rats had gnawed one of the feet.

His poems were published after his death, and it was intended to add a portrait of him in his private’s uniform. But the censor objected to this, and the unhappy victim appears with the epaulettes of an officer—he was promoted while in the hospital.

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