CHAPTER VII

Vyatka—The Office and Dinner-table of His Excellency—Tufáyev.

WHEN I called on the Governor of Vyatka, he sent a message that I was to call again at ten next morning.

When I returned, I found four men in the drawing-room, the inspectors of the town and country police, and two office clerks. They were all standing up, talking in whispers, and looking uneasily at the door. The door opened, and an elderly man of middle height and broad-shouldered entered the room. The set of his head was like that of a bulldog, and the large jaws with a kind of carnivorous grin increased the canine resemblance; the senile and yet animal expression of the features, the small, restless grey eyes, and thin lank hair made an impression which was repulsive beyond belief.

He began by roughly reproving the country inspector for the state of a road by which His Excellency had travelled on the previous day. The inspector stood with his head bent, in sign of respect and submission, and said from time to time, like servants in former days, “Very good, Your Excellency.”

Having done with the inspector he turned to me. With an insolent look he said:

“I think you have taken your degree at Moscow University?”

“I have.”

“Did you enter the public service afterwards?”

“I was employed in the Kremlin offices.”

“Ha! Ha! Much they do there! Not too busy there to attend parties and sing songs, eh?” Then he called out, “Alenitsin!”

A young man of consumptive appearance came in. “Hark ye, my friend. Here is a graduate of Moscow University who probably knows everything except the business of administration, and His Majesty desires that we should teach it to him. Give him occupation in your office, and let me have special reports about him. You, Sir, will come to the office at nine to-morrow morning. You can go now. By the way, I forgot to ask how you write.”

I was puzzled at first. “I mean your handwriting,” he added.

I said I had none of my own writing on me.

“Bring paper and a pen,” and Alenitsin handed me a pen.

“What shall I write?”

“What you please,” said the clerk; “write,Upon investigation it turned out.”

The Governor looked at the writing and said with a sarcastic smile, “Well, we shan’t ask you to correspond with the Tsar.”

While I was still at Perm, I had heard much aboutTufáyev, but the reality far surpassed all my expectations.

There is no person or thing too monstrous for the conditions of Russian life to produce.

He was born at Tobolsk. His father was, I believe, an exile and belonged to the lowest and poorest class of free Russians. At thirteen he joined a band of strolling players, who wandered from fair to fair, dancing on the tight rope, turning somersaults, and so on. With them he went all the way from Tobolsk to the Polish provinces, making mirth for the lieges. He was arrested there on some charge unknown to me, and then, because he had no passport, sent back on foot to Tobolsk as a vagabond, together with a gang of convicts. His mother was now a widow and living in extreme poverty; he rebuilt the stove in her house with his own hands, when it came to pieces. He had to seek a trade of some kind; the boy learned to read and write and got employment as a clerk in the town office. Naturally quick-witted, he had profited by the variety of his experience; he had learned much from the troupe of acrobats, and as much from the gang of convicts in whose company he had tramped from one end of Russia to the other. He soon became a sharp man of business.

At the beginning of Alexander’s reign a Government Inspector was sent to Tobolsk, and Tufáyev was recommended to him as a competent clerk. He did his work so well that the Inspector offered to take him back to Petersburg. Hitherto, as he said himself, his ambition had not aspired beyond a clerkship in some provincial court; but now he set a different value on himself, and resolved with an iron strength of will to climb to the top of the tree.

And he did it. Ten years later we find him acting assecretary to the Controller of the Navy, and then chief of a department in the office of Count Arakchéyev,[88]which governed the whole Empire. When Paris was occupied by the Allied Armies in 1815, the Count took his secretary there with him. During the whole time of the occupation, Tufáyev literally never saw a single street in Paris; he sat all day and all night in the office, drawing up or copying documents.

88.Arakchéyev (1769-1835) was Minister and favourite of Emperor Alexander I; he has been called “the assassin of the Russian people.”

Arakchéyev’s office was like those copper-mines where the workmen are kept only for a few months, because, if they stay longer, they die. In this manufactory of edicts and ordinances, mandates and instructions, even Tufáyev grew tired at last and asked for an easier place. He was of course, a man after Arakchéyev’s own heart—a man without pretensions or distractions or opinions of his own, conventionally honest, eaten up by ambition, and ranking obedience as the highest of human virtues. Arakchéyev rewarded him with the place of a Vice-Governor, and a few years later made him Governor of Perm. The province, which Tufáyev had passed through as acrobat and convict, first dancing on a rope and then bound by a rope, now lay at his feet.

A Governor’s power increases by arithmetical progression with the distance from Petersburg, but increases by geometrical progression in provinces like Perm or Vyatka or Siberia, where there is no resident nobility. That was just the kind of province that Tufáyev needed.

He was a Persian satrap, with this difference—that he was active, restless, always busy and interfering in everything. He would have been a savage agent of the FrenchConvention in 1794, something in the way of Carrier.[89]

89.Infamous for hisnoyadesat Nantes; guillotined in 1794.

Profligate in his life, naturally coarse, impatient of all opposition, his influence was extremely harmful. He did not take bribes; and yet, as appeared after his death, he amassed a considerable fortune. He was strict with his subordinates and punished severely those whom he detected in dishonesty; but they stole more under his rule than ever before or since. He carried the misuse of influence to an extraordinary pitch; for instance, when despatching an official to hold an enquiry, he would say, if he had a personal interest in the matter, “You will probably find out so-and-so to be the case,” and woe to the official if he did not find out what the Governor foretold.

Perm, when I was there, was still full of Tufáyev’s glory, and his partisans were hostile to his successor, who, as a matter of course, surrounded himself with supporters of his own.

But on the other hand, there were people at Perm who hated him. One of these was Chebotarev, a doctor employed at one of the factories and a remarkable product of Russian life. He warned me specially against Tufáyev. He was a clever and very excitable man, who had made an unfortunate marriage soon after taking his degree; then he had drifted to Ekaterinburg[90]and sank with no experience into the slough of provincial life. Though his position here was fairly independent, his career was wrecked, and his chief employment was to mock at the Government officials. He jeered at them in their presence andsaid the most insulting things to their faces. But, as he spared nobody, nobody felt particular resentment at his flouts and jeers. His bitter tongue assured him a certain ascendancy over a society where fixed principles were rare, and he forced them to submit to the lash which he was never weary of applying.

90.A town in the Ural district, now polluted by a horrible crime.

I was told beforehand that, though he was a good doctor, he was crack-brained and excessively rude.

But his way of talking and jesting seemed to me neither offensive nor trivial; on the contrary, it was full of humour and concentrated bile. This was the poetry of his life, his revenge, his cry of resentment and, perhaps, in part, of despair also. Both as a student of human nature and as a physician, he had placed these officials under his microscope; he knew all their petty hidden vices; and, encouraged by their dulness and cowardice, he observed no limits in his way of addressing them.

He constantly repeated the same phrase—“It does not matter twopence,” or “It won’t cost you twopence.” I once laughed at him for this, and he said: “What are you surprised at? The object of all speech is to persuade, and I only add to my statements the strongest proof that exists in the world. Once convince a man that it won’t cost him twopence to kill his own father and he’ll kill him sure enough.”

He was always willing to lend moderate sums, as much as a hundred or two hundredroubles. Whenever he was appealed to for a loan, he pulled out his pocket-book and asked for a date by which the money would be repaid.

“Now,” he said, “I will bet aroublethat you will not pay the money on that day.”

“My dear Sir, who do you take me for?” the borrower would say.

“My opinion of you does not matter twopence,” was the reply; “but the fact is that I have kept an account for six years, and not a single debtor has ever paid me on the day, and very few after it.”

When the time had expired, the doctor asked with a grave face for the payment of his bet.

A rich merchant at Perm had a travelling carriage for sale. The doctor called on him and delivered the following speech all in a breath. “You are selling a carriage, I need one. Because you are rich and a millionaire, everyone respects you, and I have come to testify my respect for the same reason. Owing to your wealth, it does not matter twopence to you whether you sell the carriage or not; but I need it, and I am poor. You will want to squeeze me and take advantage of my necessity; therefore you will ask 1,500roublesfor it. I shall offer 700roubles; I shall come every day to haggle over the price, and after a week you will let me have it for 750 or 800. Might we not as well begin at once at that point? I am prepared to pay that sum.” The merchant was so astonished that he let the doctor have the carriage at his own figure.

But there was no end to the stories of Chebotarev’s eccentricity. I shall add two more.

I was present once when a lady, a rather clever and cultivated woman, asked him if he believed in mesmerism. “What do you mean by mesmerism?” he asked. The lady talked the usual nonsense in reply. “It does not mattertwopence to you,” he said, “to know whether I believe in mesmerism or not; but if you like, I will tell you what I have seen in that way.” “Please do.” “Yes; but you must listen attentively,” and then he began to describe some experiments made by a friend of his, a doctor at Khárkov; his description was very lively, clever, and interesting.

While he was talking, a servant brought in some refreshments on a tray, and was leaving the room when the lady said, “You have forgotten the mustard.” Chebotarev stopped dead. “Go on, go on,” said the lady, a little frightened already. “I’m listening to you.” “Pray, Madam, has he remembered the salt?” “I see you are angry with me,” said the lady, blushing. “Not in the least, I assure you. I know that you were listening attentively; but I also know that no woman, however intelligent she may be and whatever may be the subject under discussion, can ever soar higher than the kitchen. How then could I venture to be angry with you in particular?”

Another story about him. Being employed as a doctor at the factories of a Countess Pollier, he took a fancy to a boy he saw there, and wished to have him for a servant. The boy was willing, but the steward said that the consent of the Countess must first be obtained. The doctor wrote to her, and she replied that he might have the boy, on condition of paying down a sum equal to the payments due to her from the boy during the next five years. The doctor wrote at once to express his willingness, but he asked her to answer this question. “As Encke’s comet may be expected to pass through the orbit of the earth in three years and a half from now, who will be responsible for repaying the money I have advanced, in case the comet drives the earth out of its orbit?”

§5

On the day I left for Vyatka, the doctor turned up at my house early in the morning. He began with this witticism. “You are like Horace: he sang once and people have been translating him ever since, and so you are translated[91]from place to place for that song you sang.” Then he pulled out his purse and asked if I needed money for the journey. I thanked him and declined his offer. “Why don’t you take it? It won’t cost you twopence.” “I have money.” “A bad sign,” he said; “the end of the world is coming.” Then he opened his notebook and made this entry. “For the first time in fifteen years’ practice I have met a man who refused money, and that man was on the eve of departure.”

91.The same Russian verb means ‘to translate’ and ‘to transfer.’

Having had his jest, he sat down on my bed and said seriously: “That’s a terrible man you are going to. Keep out of his way as much as ever you can. If he takes a fancy to you, that says little in your favour; but if he dislikes you, he will certainly ruin you; what weapon he will use, false accusation or not, I don’t know, but ruin you he will; he won’t care twopence.”

Thereupon he told me a strange story, which I was able to verify at a later date by means of papers preserved in the Home Office at Petersburg.

Tufáyev had a mistress at Perm, the sister of a humble official named Petrovski. The fact was notorious, and the brother was laughed at. Wishing therefore to break off this connexion, he threatened to write to Petersburg and lay information, and, in short, made such a noise andcommotion that the police arrested him one day as insane and brought him up to be examined before the administration of the province. The judges and the inspector of public health—he was an old German, much beloved by the poor, and I knew him personally—all agreed that Petrovski was insane.

But Chebotarev knew Petrovski and had been his doctor. He told the inspector that Petrovski was not mad at all, and urged a fresh examination; otherwise, he would feel bound to carry the matter further. The administration raised no difficulties; but unfortunately Petrovski died in the mad-house before the day fixed for the second examination, though he was a young man and enjoyed good health.

News of the affair now reached Petersburg. The sister was arrested (Tufáyev ought to have been) and a secret enquiry began. Tufáyev dictated the replies of the witnesses. He surpassed himself in this business. He devised a means to stifle it for ever and to save himself from a second involuntary journey to Siberia. He actually induced the sister to say that her youth and inexperience had been taken advantage of by the late Tsar Alexander when he passed through Perm, and that the quarrel with her brother dated from that event.

Was her story true? Well,la regina ne aveva molto,[92]says the story-teller in Púshkin’sEgyptian Nights.

92.The reference in Púshkin is to Cleopatra’s lovers.

Such was the man who now undertook to teach me the business of administration, a worthy pupil of Arakchéyev, acrobat, tramp, clerk, secretary, Governor, a tender-hearted,unselfish being, who shut up sane men in mad-houses and made away with them there.

I was entirely at his mercy. He had only to write some nonsense to the Minister at Petersburg, and I should be packed off to Irkutsk. Indeed, writing was unnecessary; he had the right to transfer me to some savage place like Kai or Tsarevo-Sanchursk, where there were no resources and no means of communication. He sent one young Pole to Glazov, because the ladies had the bad taste to prefer him as a partner in the mazurka to His Excellency. In this way Prince Dolgorúkov was transferred from Perm to Verchoturye, a place in the Government of Perm, buried in mountains and snow-drifts, with as bad a climate as Beryózov and even less society.

Prince Dolgorúkov belonged to a type which is becoming rarer with us; he was a sprig of nobility, of the wrong sort, whose escapades were notorious at Petersburg, Moscow, and Paris. His whole life was spent in folly; he was a spoilt, insolent, offensive practical joker, a mixture of buffoon and fine gentleman. When his pranks exceeded all bounds, he was banished to Perm.

He arrived there with two carriages; the first was occupied by himself and his dog, a Great Dane, the second by his French cook and his parrots. The arrival of this wealthy visitor gave much pleasure, and before long all the town was rubbing shoulders in his dining-room. He soon took up with a young lady of Perm; and this young lady, suspecting that he was unfaithful, turned up unexpectedly at his house one morning, and found him with a maid-servant. A scene followed, and at last the faithlesslover took his riding-whip down from its peg; when the lady perceived his intention, she made off; simply attired in a dressing-gown and nothing else, he made after her, and caught her up on the small parade-ground where the troops were exercised. When he had given the jealous lady a few blows with his whip, he strolled home, quite content with his performance.

But these pleasant little ways brought upon him the persecution of his former friends, and the authorities decided to send this madcap of forty on to Verchoturye. The day before he left, he gave a grand dinner, and all the local officials, in spite of the strained relations, came to the feast; for Dolgorúkov had promised them a new and remarkable pie. The pie was in fact excellent and vanished with extraordinary rapidity. When nothing but the crust was left, Dolgorúkov said to his guests with an air of emotion: “It never can be said that I spared anything to make our last meeting a success. I had my dog killed yesterday, to make this pie.”

The officials looked first with horror at one another and then round the room for the Great Dane whom they all knew perfectly; but he was not there. The Prince ordered a servant to bring in the mortal remains of his favourite; the skin was all there was to show; the rest was in the stomachs of the people of Perm. Half the town took to their beds in consequence.

Dolgorúkov meanwhile, pleased by the success of the practical joke he had played on his friends, was travelling in triumph to Verchoturye. To his train he had now added a third vehicle containing a hen-house and its inhabitants. At several of the post-houses on his way he carried off the official registers, mixed them up, and altered thefigures; the posting-department, who, even with the registers, found it difficult enough to get the returns right, almost went mad in consequence.

The oppressive emptiness and dumbness of Russian life, when misallied to a strong and even violent temperament, are apt to produce monstrosities of all kinds.

Not only in Dolgorúkov’s pie, but in Suvórov’s crowing like a cock, in the savage outbursts of Ismailov, in the semi-voluntary insanity of Mamonov,[93]and in the wild extravagances of Tolstoi, nicknamed “The American,” everywhere I catch a national note which is familiar to us all, though in most of us it is weakened by education or turned in some different direction.

93.Suvórov, the famous general (1729-1800), was very eccentric in his personal habits. Ismailov, a rich landowner at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was infamous for his cruelties. Mamonov (1758-1803) was one of Catherine’s favourites.

Tolstoi I knew personally, just at the time when he lost his daughter, Sara, a remarkable girl with a high poetic gift. He was old then; but one look at his athletic figure, his flashing eyes, and the grey curls that clustered on his forehead, was enough to show how great was his natural strength and activity. But he had developed only stormy passions and vicious propensities. And this is not surprising: in Russia all that is vicious is allowed to grow for long unchecked, while men are sent to a fortress or to Siberia at the first sign of a humane passion. For twenty years Tolstoi rioted and gambled, used his fists to mutilate his enemies, and reduced whole families to beggary, till at last he was banished to Siberia. He made hisway through Kamchatka to America and, while there, obtained permission to return to Russia. The Tsar pardoned him, and he resumed his old life the very day after his return. He married a gipsy woman, a famous singer who belonged to a gipsy tribe at Moscow, and turned his house into a gambling-hell. His nights were spent at the card-table, and all his time in excesses; wild scenes of cupidity and intoxication went on round the cradle of his daughter. It is said that he once ordered his wife to stand on the table, and sent a bullet through the heel of her shoe, in order to prove the accuracy of his aim.

His last exploit very nearly sent him back to Siberia. He contrived to entrap in his house at Moscow a tradesman against whom he had an old grudge, bound him hand and foot, and pulled out one of his teeth. It is hardly credible that this should have happened only ten or twelve years ago. The man lodged a complaint. But Tolstoi bribed the police and the judges, and the victim was lodged in prison for false witness. It happened that a well-known man of letters was then serving on the prison committee and took up the affair, on learning the facts from the tradesman. Tolstoi was seriously alarmed; it was clear that he was likely to be condemned. But anything is possible in Russia. Count Orlóv sent secret instructions that the affair must be hushed up, to deprive the lower classes of a direct triumph over the aristocracy, and he also advised that the man of letters should be removed from the committee. This is almost more incredible than the incident of the tooth. But I was in Moscow then myself and well acquainted with the imprudent man of letters. But I must go back to Vyatka.

§10

The office there was incomparably worse than my prison. The actual work was not hard; but the mephitic atmosphere—the place was like a second Grotto del Cane[94]—and the monstrous and absurd waste of time made the life unbearable. Alenitsin did not treat me badly. He was even more polite than I expected; having been educated at the grammar school of Kazán, he had some respect for a graduate of Moscow University.

94.The grotto near Naples where dogs were held over the sulphurous vapour till they became insensible.

Twenty clerks were employed in the office. The majority of them were entirely destitute of either intellectual culture or moral sense, sons of clerks, who had learned from their cradles to look upon the public service as a means of livelihood and the cultivators of the land as the source of their income. They sold official papers, pocketed small sums whenever they could get them, broke their word for a glass of spirits, and stuck at nothing, however base and ignominious. My own valet stopped playing billiards at the public rooms, because, as he said, the officials cheated shamefully and he could not give them a lesson because of their rank in society.

With these men, whose position alone made them safe from my servant’s fists, I had to sit every day from nine till two and again from five till eight.

Alenitsin was head of the whole office, and the desk at which I sat had a chief also, not a bad-hearted man, but drunken and illiterate. There were four other clerks at my desk; and I had to be on speaking terms with them, and with all the rest as well. Apart from the fact that these people would sooner or later have paid me out forany airs of exclusiveness, it is simply impossible not to get to know people in whose company you spend several hours every day. It must also be remembered how people in the country hang on to a stranger, especially if he comes from the capital, and still more if he has been mixed up in some exciting scandal.

When I had tugged at the oar all day in this galley, I used sometimes to go home quite stupefied and fall on my sofa, worn out and humiliated, and incapable of any work or occupation. I heartily regretted my prison cell with its foul air and black beetles, its locked door and turnkey behind the lock. There I was free and did what I liked without interference; there I enjoyed dead silence and unbroken leisure; I had exchanged these for trivial talk, dirty companions, low ideas, and coarse feelings. When I remembered that I must go back there in the afternoon, and back again to-morrow, I sometimes fell into such fits of rage and despair that I drank wine and spirits for consolation.

Nor was that all. One of my desk-fellows would perhaps look in, for want of something to do; and there he would sit and chatter till the appointed hour recalled us to the office.

After a few months, however, the office life became somewhat less oppressive.

It is not in the Russian character to keep up a steady system of persecution, unless where personal or avaricious motives are involved; and this fact is due to our Russian carelessness and indifference. Those in authority in Russia are generally unlicked and insolent, and it is very easy,when dealing with them, to come in for the rough side of their tongue; but a war of pin-pricks is not in their way—they have not the patience for it, perhaps because it brings in no profit.

In the heat of the moment, in order to display their power or prove their zeal, they are capable of anything, however absurd and unnecessary; but then by degrees they cease to trouble you.

I found this to be the case in my office. It so happened that the Ministry of the Interior had just been seized with a fit of statistics. Orders were issued that committees should be appointed all over the country, and information was required from these committees which could hardly have been supplied in such countries as Belgium and Switzerland. There were also ingenious tables of all kinds for figures, to show a maximum and minimum as well as averages, and conclusions based on a comparison of ten years (for nine of which, if you please, no statistics at all had been recorded); the morality of the inhabitants and even the weather were to be included in the report. For the committee and for the collection of facts not a penny was allotted; the work had to be done from pure love of statistics; the rural police were to collect the facts and the Governor’s office to put them in order. The office was overburdened with work already, and the rural police preferred to use their fists rather than their brains; both looked on the statistics committee as a mere superfluity, an official joke; nevertheless, a report had to be presented, including tables of figures and conclusions based thereon.

To all our office the job seemed excessively difficult. It was, indeed, simply impossible; but to that nobody paidany attention; their sole object was to escape a reprimand. I promised Alenitsin that I would write the introduction and first part of the report, with specimen tables, introducing plenty of eloquent phrases, foreign words, apt quotations, and impressive conclusions, if he would allow me to perform this difficult task at my house instead of at the office. He talked it over with the Governor and gave permission.

The beginning of the report dealt with the committee’s activity; and here, as there was nothing to show at present, I dwelt upon hopes and intentions for the future. This composition moved Alenitsin to the depth of his heart and was considered a masterpiece even by the Governor. That was the end of my labours in the department of statistics, but I was made chairman of the committee. Thus I was delivered from the slavery of copying office papers, and my drunken chief became something like my subordinate. Alenitsin only asked, from some idea of keeping up appearances, that I should just look in every day at the office.

To show how utterly impossible it was to draw up serious tables, I shall quote some information received from the town of Kai. There were many absurdities, and this was one.

Under the heading “Extraordinary Events” the following tragedy was chronicled: “So-and-so, having injured hisbrain with spirituous liquors, hanged himself.” Under the heading “Morality of the Inhabitants” this was entered: “No Jews were found in the town of Kai.” There was a question whether any funds had been allotted to the building of a church, or exchange, or hospital. The answer was: “Money allotted to the building of an exchange was not allotted.”

Statistics saved me from office work, but they had one bad result—they brought me into personal relations with the Governor.

There was a time when I hated this man, but that time has long passed away, and the man has passed away himself—he died about 1845 near Kazán, where he had an estate. I think of him now without anger; I regard him as a strange beast encountered in some primeval forest, which deserves study, but, just because it is a beast, cannot excite anger. But then it was impossible not to fight him; any decent man must have done so. He might have damaged me seriously, but accident preserved me; and to resent the harm which he failed to do me would be absurd and pitiable.

The Governor was separated from his wife, and the wife of his cook occupied her place. The cook was banished from the town, his only guilt being his marriage; and the cook’s wife, by an arrangement whose awkwardness seemed intentional, was concealed in the back part of the Governor’s residence. Though she was not formally recognised, yet the cook’s wife had a little court, formed out of those officials who were especially devoted to the Governor—in other words, those whose conduct could least stand investigation; and their wives anddaughters, though rather bashful about it, paid her stolen visits after dark. This lady possessed the tact which distinguished one of her most famous male predecessors—Catherine’s favourite, Potemkin. Knowing her consort’s way and anxious not to lose her place, she herself procured for him rivals from whom she had nothing to fear. Grateful for this indulgence, he repaid her with his affection, and the pair lived together in harmony.

The Governor spent the whole morning working in his office. The poetry of his life began at three o’clock. He loved his dinner, and he liked to have company while eating. Twelve covers were laid every day; if the party was less than six, he was annoyed; if it fell to two, he was distressed; and if he had no guest, he was almost desperate and went off to the apartments of his Dulcinea, to dine there. It is not a difficult business to get people together, in order to feed them to excess; but his official position, and the fear his subordinates felt for him, prevented them from availing themselves freely of his hospitality, and him from turning his house into an inn. He had therefore to content himself with heads of departments—though with half of them he was on bad terms—occasional strangers, rich merchants, spirit-distillers, and “curiosities.” These last may be compared with thecapacités, who were to be introduced into the Chamber of Deputies under Louis Philippe. I need hardly say that I was a “curiosity” of the first water at Vyatka.

People banished for their opinions to remote parts of Russia are a little feared but by no means confounded with ordinary mortals. For the provincial mind “dangerous people”have that kind of attraction which notorious Don Juans have for women, and notorious courtesans for men. The officials of Petersburg and grandees of Moscow are much more shy of “dangerous” people than the dwellers in the provinces and especially in Siberia.

The exiled Decembrists were immensely respected. Yushnevski’s widow was treated as a lady of the first consequence in Siberia; the official figures of the Siberian census were corrected by means of statistics supplied by the exiles; and Minich, in his prison, managed the affairs of the province of Tobolsk, the Governors themselves resorting to him for advice in matters of importance.

The common people are even more friendly to the exiles; they always take the side of men who have been punished. Near the Siberian frontier, the word “exile” disappears, and the word “unfortunate” is used instead. In the eyes of the Russian people, the sentence of a court leaves no stain. In the Government of Perm, the peasants along the road to Tobolsk often put outkvassor milk and bread on the window-sill, for the use of some “unfortunate” who may be trying to escape from Siberia.

In this place I may say something about the Polish exiles. There are some as far west as Nizhni, and after Kazán the number rapidly increases; there were forty of them at Perm and at least as many at Vyatka; and each of the smaller towns contained a few.

They kept entirely apart and avoided all communication with the Russian inhabitants; among themselves they lived like brothers, and the rich shared their wealth with the poor.

I never noticed any special hatred or any liking for them on the part of the Russians. They were simply considered as outsiders; and hardly any of the Poles knew Russian.

I remember one of the exiles who got permission in 1837 to return to his estates in Lithuania. He was a tough old cavalry officer who had served under Poniatovski in several of Napoleon’s campaigns. The day before he left, he invited some Poles to dinner, and me as well. After dinner he came up to me with his glass in his hand, embraced me, and said with a soldier’s frankness, “Oh, why are you a Russian?” I made no answer, but his question made a strong impression on me. I realised that it was impossible for the present generation to give freedom to Poland. But, since Konarsky’s[95]time, Poles have begun to think quite differently of Russians.

95.A Polish revolutionary; born in 1808, he was shot in February, 1839.

In general, the exiled Poles are not badly treated; but those of them who have no means of their own are shockingly ill off. Such men receive from Government fifteenroublesa month, to pay for lodgings, clothing, food, and fuel. In the larger towns, such as Kazán or Tobolsk, they can eke out a living by giving lessons or concerts, by playing at balls or painting portraits or teaching children to dance; but at Perm and Vyatka even these resources did not exist. In spite of that, they never asked Russians for assistance in any form.

The Governor’s invitations to dine on the luxuries of Siberia were a real infliction to me. His dining-room was merely the office over again, in a different shape, cleanerindeed, but more objectionable, because there was not the same appearance of compulsion about it.

He knew his guests thoroughly and despised them. Sometimes he showed his claws, but he generally treated them as a man treats his dogs, either with excessive familiarity or with a roughness beyond all bounds. But all the same he continued to invite them, and they came in a flutter of joy, prostrating themselves before him, currying favour by tales against others, all smiles and bows and complaisance.

I blushed for them and felt ashamed.

Our intimacy did not last long: the Governor soon perceived that I was unfit to move in the highest circles of Vyatka.

After three months he was dissatisfied with me, and after six months he hated me. I ceased to attend his dinners, and never even called at his house. As we shall see later, it was a visit to Vyatka from the Crown Prince[96]that saved me from his persecution.

96.Afterwards Alexander II.

In this connexion it is necessary to add that I did nothing whatever to deserve either his attentions and invitations at first, or his anger and ill-usage afterwards. He could not endure in me an attitude which, though not at all rude, was independent; my behaviour was perfectly correct, but he demanded servility.

He was greedily jealous of the power which he had worked hard to gain, and he sought not merely obedience but the appearance of unquestioning subordination. Unfortunately, in this respect he was a true Russian.

The gentleman says to his servant: “Hold your tongue! I will not allow you to answer me back.”

The head of an office says to any subordinate who ventures on a protest: “You forget yourself. Do you know to whom you are speaking?”

Tufáyev cherished a secret but intense hatred for everything aristocratic, and it was the result of bitter experience. For him the penal servitude of Arakchéyev’s office was a harbour of refuge and freedom, such as he had never enjoyed before. In earlier days his employers, when they gave him small jobs to do, never offered him a chair; when he served in the Controller’s office, he was treated with military roughness by the soldiers and once horse-whipped by a colonel in the streets of Vilna. The clerk stored all this up in his heart and brooded over it; and now he was Governor, and it was his turn to play the tyrant, to keep a man standing, to address people familiarly, to speak unnecessarily loudly, and at times to commit long-descended nobles for trial.

From Perm he was promoted to Tver. But the nobles, however deferential and subservient, could not stand Tufáyev. They petitioned for his removal, and he was sent to Vyatka.

There he was in his element once more. Officials and distillers, factory-owners and officials,—what more could the heart of man desire? Everyone trembled before him and got up when he approached; everyone gave him dinners, offered him wine, and sought to anticipate his wishes; at every wedding or birthday party the first toast proposed was “His Excellency the Governor!”

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