CHAPTER V

CHAPTER V

The Enquiry—Golitsyn Senior—Golitsyn Junior—General Staal—The Sentence—Sokolovski.

BUT meanwhile what about the charge against us? and what about the Commission of Enquiry?

The new Commission made just as great a mess of it as its predecessor. The police had been on our track for a long time, but their zeal and impatience prevented them from waiting for a decent pretext, and they did a silly thing. They employed a retired officer called Skaryatka to draw us on till we were committed; and he made acquaintance with nearly all of our set. But we very soon made out what he was and kept him at a distance. Some other young men, chiefly students, were less cautious, but these others had no relations of any importance with us.

One of the latter, on taking his degree, entertained his friends on June 24, 1834. Not one of us was present at the entertainment; not one of us was even invited. The students drank toasts, and danced and played the fool; and one thing they did was to sing in chorus Sokolovski’s well-known song abusing the Tsar.

Skaryatka was present and suddenly remembered thatthe day was his birthday. He told a story of selling a horse at a profit and invited the whole party to supper at his rooms, promising a dozen of champagne. They all accepted. The champagne duly appeared, and their host, who had begun to stagger, proposed that Sokolovski’s song should be sung over again. In the middle of the song the door opened, and Tsinski appeared with his myrmidons. It was a stupid and clumsy proceeding, and a failure as well.

The police wanted to catch us and were looking out for some tangible pretext, in order to trap the five or six victims whom they had marked down; what they actually did was to arrest a score of innocent persons.

But the police are not easily abashed, and they arrested us a fortnight later, as concerned in the affair of the students’ party. They found a number of letters—letters of Satin’s at Sokolovski’s rooms, of Ogaryóv’s at Satin’s, and of mine at Ogaryóv’s; but nothing of importance was discovered. The first Commission of Enquiry was a failure; and in order that the second might succeed better, the Tsar sent from Petersburg the Grand Inquisitor, Prince A. F. Golitsyn.

The breed to which he belonged is rare with us; it included Mordvínov, the notorious chief of the Third Section, Pelikan, the Rector of Vilna University, with a few officials from the Baltic provinces and renegade Poles.

But it was unfortunate for the Inquisition that Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, was the first member appointedto it. Staal was a brave old soldier and an honest man; he looked into the matter, and found that two quite distinct incidents were involved: the first was the students’ party, which the police were bound to punish; the second was the mysterious arrest of some men, whose whole visible fault was limited to some half-expressed opinions, and whom it would be difficult and absurd to try on that charge alone.

Prince A. F. Golitsyn disapproved of Staal’s view, and their dispute took a heated turn. The old soldier grew furiously angry; he dashed his sword on the floor and said: “Instead of destroying these young men, you would do better to have all the schools and universities closed, and that would be a warning to other unfortunates. Do as you please, only I shall take no part in it: I shall not set foot again in this place.” Having spoken thus, the old man left the room at once.

This was reported to the Tsar that very day; and when the Commandant presented his report next morning, the Tsar asked why he refused to attend the Commission, and Staal told him the reason.

“What nonsense!” said Nicholas; “I wonder you are not ashamed to quarrel with Golitsyn, and I hope you will continue to attend.”

“Sir,” replied Staal, “spare my grey hairs! I have lived till now without the smallest stain on my honour. My loyalty is known to Your Majesty; my life, what remains of it, is at your service. But this matter touches my honour, and my conscience protests against the proceedings of that Commission.”

The Tsar frowned; Staal bowed himself out and never afterwards attended a single meeting.

§4

The Commission now consisted of foes only. The President was Prince S. M. Golitsyn, a simple old gentleman, who, after sitting for nine months, knew just as little about the business as he did nine months before he took the chair. He preserved a dignified silence and seldom spoke; whenever an examination was finished, he asked, “May he be dismissed?” “Yes,” said Golitsyn junior, and then Golitsyn senior signified in a stately manner to the accused, “You may go.”

My first examination lasted four hours. The questions asked were of two kinds. The object of the first was to discover a trend of thought “opposed to the spirit of the Russian government, and ideas that were either revolutionary or impregnated with the pestilent doctrine of Saint-Simonianism”—this is a quotation from Golitsyn junior and Oranski, the paymaster.

Such questions were simple, but they were not really questions at all. The confiscated papers and letters were clear enough evidence of opinions; the questions could only turn on the essential fact, whether the letters were or were not written by the accused; but the Commissioners thought it necessary to add to each expression they had copied out, “In what sense do you explain the following passage in your letter?”

Of course there was nothing to explain, and I wrote meaningless and evasive answers to all the questions. Oranski discovered the following statement in one of my letters: “No written constitution leads to anything: they are all mere contracts between a master and his slaves;the problem is not to improve the condition of the slaves but to eliminate them altogether.” When called upon to explain this statement, I remarked that I saw no necessity to defend constitutional government, and that, if I had done so, I might have been prosecuted.

“There are two sides from which constitutional government can be attacked,” said Golitsyn junior, in his excitable, sibilant voice, “and you don’t attack it from the point of view of autocracy, or else you would not have spoken of ‘slaves.’”

“In that respect I am as guilty as the Empress Catherine, who forbade her subjects to call themselves slaves.”

Golitsyn junior was furious at my sarcasm.

“Do you suppose,” he said, “that we meet here to carry on academic discussion, and that you are defending a thesis in the lecture-room?”

“Why then do you ask for explanations?”

“Do you pretend not to understand what is wanted of you?”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“How obstinate they are, every one of them!” said the chairman, Golitsyn senior, as he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Colonel Shubenski, of the police. I smiled. “Ogaryóv over again,” sighed the worthy old gentleman, letting the cat quite out of the bag.

A pause followed this indiscretion. The meetings were all held in the Prince’s library, and I turned towards the shelves and examined the books; they included an edition in many volumes of theMemoirsof the Duc de Saint-Simon.[74]

74.The author of the famousMemoirs(1675-1755) was an ancestor of the preacher of socialism (1760-1825).

74.The author of the famousMemoirs(1675-1755) was an ancestor of the preacher of socialism (1760-1825).

74.The author of the famousMemoirs(1675-1755) was an ancestor of the preacher of socialism (1760-1825).

I turned to the chairman. “There!” I said, “what an injustice! You are trying me for Saint-Simonianism, and you, Prince, have on your shelves twenty volumes of his works.”

The worthy man had never read a book in his life, and was at loss for a reply. But Golitsyn junior darted a furious glance at me and asked, “Don’t you see that these are the works of the Duc de Saint-Simon who lived in the reign of Louis XIV?”

The chairman smiled and conveyed to me by a nod his impression that I had made a slip this time; then he said, “You may go.”

When I had reached the door, the chairman asked, “Was it he who wrote the article about Peter the Great which you showed me?”

“Yes,” answered Shubenski.

I stopped short.

“He has ability,” remarked the chairman.

“So much the worse: poison is more dangerous in skilful hands,” added the Inquisitor; “a very dangerous young man and quite incorrigible.”

These words contained my condemnation.

Here is a parallel to the Saint-Simon incident. When the police-officer was going through books and papers at Ogaryóv’s house, he put aside a volume of Thiers’sHistory of the French Revolution; when he found a second volume, a third, an eighth, he lost patience. “What a collection of revolutionary works! And here’s another!” he added, handing to his subordinate Cuvier’s speechSur les révolutions du globe terrestre!

§6

There were other questions of a more complicated kind, in which various traps and tricks, familiar to the police and boards of enquiry, were made use of, in order to confuse me and involve me in contradictions. Hints that others had confessed, and moral torture of various kinds, came into play here. They are not worth repeating; it is enough to say that the tricks all failed to make me or my three friends betray one another.

When the last question had been handed out to me, I was sitting alone in the small room where we wrote our replies. Suddenly the door opened, and Golitsyn junior came in, wearing a pained and anxious expression.

“I have come,” he said, “to have a talk with you before the end of your replies to our questions. The long friendship between my late father and yours makes me feel a special interest in you. You are young and may have a distinguished career yet; but you must first clear yourself of this business, and that fortunately depends on yourself alone. Your father has taken your arrest very much to heart; his one hope now is that you will be released. The President and I were discussing it just now, and we are sincerely ready to make large concessions; but you must make it possible for us to help you.”

I saw what he was driving at. The blood rushed to my head, and I bit my pen with rage.

He went on: “You are on the road that leads straight to service in the ranks or imprisonment, and on the way you will kill your father: he will not survive the day when he sees you in the grey overcoat of a private soldier.”

I tried to speak, but he stopped me. “I know what you want to say. Have patience a moment. That you had designsagainst the Government is perfectly clear; and we must have proofs of your repentance, if you are to be an object of the Tsar’s clemency. You deny everything; you give evasive answers; from a false feeling of honour you protect people of whom we know more than you do, and who are by no means as scrupulous as you are; you won’t help them, but they will drag you over the precipice in their fall. Now write a letter to the Board; say simply and frankly that you are conscious of your guilt, and that you were led away by the thoughtlessness of youth; and name the persons whose unhappy errors led you astray. Are you willing to pay this small price, in order to redeem your whole future and to save your father’s life?”

“I know nothing, and will add nothing to my previous disclosures,” I replied.

Golitsyn got up and said in a dry voice: “Very well! As you refuse, we are not to blame.” That was the end of my examination.

I made my last appearance before the Commission in January or February of 1835. I was summoned there to read through my answers, make any additions I wished, and sign my name. Shubenski was the only Commissioner present. When I had done reading, I said:

“I should like to know what charge can be based on these questions and these answers. Which article of the code applies to my case?”

“The code of law is intended for crimes of a different kind,” answered the colonel in blue.

“That is another matter. But when I read over all these literary exercises, I cannot believe that the charge,on which I have spent six months in prison, is really contained there.”

“Do you really imagine,” returned Shubenski, “that we accepted your statement that you were not forming a secret society?”

“Where is it, then?” I asked.

“It is lucky for you that we could not find the proofs, and that you were cut short. We stopped you in time; indeed, it may be said that we saved you.”

Gógol’s story, in fact, over again, of the carpenter Poshlepkin and his wife, inThe Revizor.[75]

75.Gógol,The Revizor, Act IV, Scene ii.

75.Gógol,The Revizor, Act IV, Scene ii.

75.Gógol,The Revizor, Act IV, Scene ii.

After I had signed my name, Shubenski rang and ordered the priest to be summoned. The priest appeared and added his signature, testifying that all my admissions had been made voluntarily and without compulsion of any kind. Of course, he had never been present while I was examined; and he had not the assurance to ask my account of the proceedings. I thought of the unprejudiced witness who stopped outside our house while the police arrested me.

When the enquiry was over, the conditions of my imprisonment were relaxed to some extent, and near relations could obtain permission for interviews. In this way two more months passed by.

In the middle of March our sentence was confirmed. What it was nobody knew: some said we should be banished to the Caucasus, while others hoped we should all be released. The latter was Staal’s proposal, which he submitted separately to the Tsar; he held that we had been sufficiently punished by our imprisonment.

At last, on the twentieth of March, we were all brought to Prince Golitsyn’s house, to hear our sentence. It was a very great occasion: for we had never met since we were arrested.

A cordon of police and officers of the garrison stood round us, while we embraced and shook hands with one another. The sight of friends gave life to all of us, and we made plenty of noise; we asked questions and told our adventures indefatigably.

Sokolovski was present, rather pale and thin, but as humorous as ever.

Sokolovski, the author ofCreationand other meritorious poems, had a strong natural gift for poetry; but this gift was neither improved by cultivation nor original enough to dispense with it. He was not a politician at all, he lived the life of a poet. He was very amusing and amiable, a cheerful companion in cheerful hours, abon-vivant, who enjoyed a gay party as well as the rest of us, and perhaps a little better. He was now over thirty.

When suddenly torn from this life and thrown into prison, he bore himself nobly: imprisonment strengthened his character.

He was arrested in Petersburg and then conveyed to Moscow, without being told where he was going. Useless tricks of this kind are constantly played by the Russian police; in fact, it is the poetry of their lives; there is no calling in the world, however prosaic and repulsive, that does not possess its own artistic refinements and mere superfluous adornments. Sokolovski was taken straight to prison and lodged in a kind of dark store-room. Why should he be confined in prison and we in barracks?

He took nothing there with him but a couple of shirts. In England, every convict is forced to take a bath as soon as he enters prison; in Russia, precautionary measures are taken against cleanliness.

Sokolovski would have been in a horrible state had not Dr. Haas sent him a parcel of his own linen.

This Dr. Haas, who was often called a fool and a lunatic, was a very remarkable man. His memory ought not to be buried in the jungle of official obituaries—that record of virtues that never showed themselves until their possessors were mouldering in the grave.

He was a little old man with a face like wax; in his black tail-coat, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes with buckles, he looked as if he had just stepped out of some play of the eighteenth century. In this costume, suitable for a wedding or a funeral, and in the agreeable climate of the 59th degree of north latitude, he used to drive once a week to the Sparrow Hills when the convicts were starting for the first stage of their long march. He had access to them in his capacity of a prison-doctor, and went there to pass them in review; and he always took with him a basketful of odds and ends—eatables and dainties of different kinds for the women, such as walnuts, gingerbread, apples, and oranges. This generosity excited the wrath and displeasure of the ‘charitable’ ladies, who were afraid of giving pleasure by their charity, and afraid of being more charitable than was absolutely necessary to save the convicts from being starved or frozen.

But Haas was obstinate. When reproached for the foolishindulgence he showed to the women, he would listen meekly, rub his hands, and reply: “Please observe, my dear lady; they can get a crust of bread from anyone, but they won’t see sweets or oranges again for a long time, because no one gives them such things—your own words prove that. And therefore I give them this little pleasure, because they won’t get it soon again.”

Haas lived in a hospital. One morning a patient came to consult him. Haas examined him and went to his study to write a prescription. When he returned, the invalid had disappeared, and so had the silver off the dinner-table. Haas called a porter and asked whether anyone else had entered the building. The porter realised the situation: he rushed out and returned immediately with the spoons and the patient, whom he had detained with the help of a sentry. The thief fell on his knees and begged for mercy. Haas was perplexed.

“Fetch a policeman,” he said to one of the porters. “And you summon a clerk here at once.”

The two porters, pleased with their part in detecting the criminal, rushed from the room; and Haas took advantage of their absence to address the thief. “You are a dishonest man; you deceived me and tried to rob me; God will judge you for it. But now run out at the back gate as fast as you can, before the sentries come back. And wait a moment—very likely you haven’t a penny; here is half aroublefor you. But you must try to mend your ways: you can’t escape God as easily as the policeman.”

His family told Haas he had gone too far this time. But the incorrigible doctor stated his view thus: “Theft is a serious vice; but I know the police, and how they flogpeople; it is a much worse vice to deliver up your neighbour to their tender mercies. And besides, who knows? My treatment may soften his heart.”

His family shook their heads and protested: and the charitable ladies said, “An excellent man but not quite all rightthere,” pointing to their foreheads; but Haas only rubbed his hands and went his own way.

Sokolovski had hardly got to an end of his narrative before others began to tell their story, several speaking at the same time. It was as if we had returned from a long journey—there was a running fire of questions and friendly chaff.

Satin had suffered more in body that the rest of us: he looked thin and had lost some of his hair. He was on his mother’s estate in the Government of Tambóv when he heard of our arrest, and started at once for Moscow, that his mother might not be terrified by a visit from the police. But he caught cold on the journey and was seriously ill when he reached Moscow. The police found him there in his bed. It being impossible to remove him, he was put under arrest in his own house: a sentry was posted inside his bedroom, and a male sister of mercy, in the shape of a policeman, sat by his pillow; hence, when he recovered from delirium, his eyes rested on the scrutinising looks of one attendant or the sodden face of the other.

When winter began he was transferred to a hospital. It turned out that there was no unoccupied room suitable for a prisoner; but that was a trifle which caused no difficulty. A secluded cornerwithout a stovewas discovered in the building, and here he was placed with asentry to guard him. Nothing like a balcony on the Riviera for an invalid! What the temperature in that stone box was like in winter, may be guessed: the sentry suffered so much that he used at night to go into the passage and warm himself at the stove, begging his prisoner not to tell the officer of the day.

But even the authorities of the hospital could not continue this open-air treatment in such close proximity to the North Pole, and they moved Satin to a room next to that in which people who were brought in frozen were rubbed till they regained consciousness.

Before we had nearly done telling our own experiences and listening to those of our friends, the adjutants began to bustle about, the garrison officers stood up straight, and the policemen came to attention; then the door opened solemnly, and little Prince Golitsyn entereden grande tenuewith his ribbon across his shoulder; Tsinski was in Household uniform; and even Oranski had put on something special for the joyful occasion—a light green costume, between uniform and mufti. Staal, of course, was not there.

The officers now divided us into three groups. Sokolovski, an artist called Ootkin, and Ibayev formed the first group; I and my friends came next, and then a miscellaneous assortment.

The first three, who were charged with treason, were sentenced to confinement at Schlüsselburg[76]for an unlimited term.

76.A prison-fortress on an island in the Neva, forty miles from Petersburg.

76.A prison-fortress on an island in the Neva, forty miles from Petersburg.

76.A prison-fortress on an island in the Neva, forty miles from Petersburg.

In order to show his easy, pleasant manners, Tsinski asked Sokolovski, after the sentence was read, “I think you have been at Schlüsselburg before?” “Yes, last year,” was the immediate answer; “I suppose I knew what was coming, for I drank a bottle of Madeira there.”

Two years later Ootkin died in the fortress. Sokolovski was released more dead than alive and sent to the Caucasus, where he died at Pyatigorsk. Of Ibayev it may be said in one sense that he died too; for he became a mystic.

Ootkin, “a free artist confined in prison,” as he signed himself in replying to the questions put to him, was a man of forty; he never took part in political intrigue of any kind, but his nature was proud and vehement, and he was uncontrolled in his language and disrespectful to the members of the Commission. For this they did him to death in a damp dungeon where the water trickled down the walls.

But for his officer’s uniform, Ibayev would never have been punished so severely. He happened to be present at a party where he probably drank too much and sang, but he certainly drank no more and sang no louder than the rest.

And now our turn came. Oranski rubbed his spectacles, cleared his throat, and gave utterance to the imperial edict. It was here set forth that the Tsar, having considered the report of the Commission and taking special account of the youth of the criminals, ordered that they should not be brought before a court of justice. On the contrary, the Tsar in his infinite clemency pardoned themajority of the offenders and allowed them to live at home under police supervision. But the ringleaders were to undergo corrective discipline, in the shape of banishment to distant Governments for an unlimited term; they were to serve in the administration, under the supervision of the local authorities.

This last class contained six names—Ogaryóv, Satin, Lakhtin, Sorokin, Obolenski, and myself. My destination was Perm. Lakhtin had never been arrested at all; when he was summoned to the Commission to hear the sentence, he supposed it was intended merely to give him a fright, that he might take thought when he saw the punishment of others. It was said that this little surprise was managed by a relation of Prince Golitsyn’s who was angry with Lakhtin’s wife. He had weak health and died after three years in exile.

When Oranski had done reading, Colonel Shubenski stepped forward. He explained to us in picked phrases and the style of Lomonossov,[77]that for the Tsar’s clemency we were obliged to the good offices of the distinguished nobleman who presided at the Commission. He expected that we should all express at once our gratitude to the great man, but he was disappointed.

77.I.e., an old-fashioned pompous style. Lomonossov (1711-1765) was the originator of Russian literature and Russian science.

77.I.e., an old-fashioned pompous style. Lomonossov (1711-1765) was the originator of Russian literature and Russian science.

77.I.e., an old-fashioned pompous style. Lomonossov (1711-1765) was the originator of Russian literature and Russian science.

Some of those who had been pardoned made a sign with their heads, but even they stole a glance at us as they did so.

Shubenski then turned to Ogaryóv and said: “You are going to Penza. Do you suppose that is a mere accident? Your father is lying paralysed at Penza; and the Prince asked the Emperor that you might be sent there, thatyour presence might to some extent lighten the blow he must suffer in your banishment. Do you too think you have no cause for gratitude?”

Ogaryóv bowed; and that was all they got for their pains.

But that good old gentleman, the President, was pleased, and for some reason called me up next. I stepped forward: whatever he or Shubenski might say, I vowed by all the gods that I would not thank them. Besides, my place of exile was the most distant and most disgusting of all.

“So you are going to Perm,” said the Prince.

I said nothing. The Prince was taken aback, but, in order to say something, he added, “I have an estate there.”

“Can I take any message to your bailiff?” I asked, smiling.

“I send no messages by people like you—merecarbonari,” said the Prince, by a sudden inspiration.

“What do you want of me then?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Well, I thought you called me forward.”

“You may go,” interrupted Shubenski.

“Permit me,” I said, “as I am here, to remind you that you, Colonel, said to me on my last appearance before the Commission, that no one charged me with complicity in the students’ party; but now the sentence says that I am one of those punished on that account. There is some mistake here.”

“Do you mean to protest against the imperial decision?” cried out Shubenski. “If you are not careful, young man, something worse may be substituted for Perm. I shall order your words to be taken down.”

“Just what I meant to ask. The sentence says ‘according to the report of the Commission’: well, my protest is not against the imperial edict but against your report. I call the Prince to witness, that I was never even questioned about the party or the songs sung there.”

Shubenski turned pale with rage. “You pretend not to know,” he said, “that your guilt is ten times greater than that of those who attended the party.” He pointed to one of the pardoned men: “There is a man who sang an objectionable song under the influence of drink; but he afterwards begged forgiveness on his knees with tears. You are still far enough from any repentance.”

“Excuse me,” I went on; “the depth of my guilt is not the question. But if I am a murderer, I don’t want to pass for a thief. I don’t want people to say, even by way of defence, that I did so-and-so under the influence of drink.”

“If my son, my own son, were as brazen as you, I should myself ask the Tsar to banish him to Siberia.”

At this point the Commissioner of Police struck in with some incoherent nonsense. It is a pity that Golitsyn junior was not present; he would have had a chance to air his rhetoric.

All this, as a matter of course, led to nothing.

We stayed in the room for another quarter of an hour, and spent the time, undeterred by the earnest representations of the police-officers, in warm embraces and a long farewell. I never saw any of them again, except Obolenski, before my return from Vyatka.

We had to face our departure. Prison was in a sense a continuation of our former life; but with our departurefor the wilds, it broke off short. Our little band of youthful friends was parting asunder. Our exile was sure to last for several years. Where and how, if ever, should we meet again? One felt regret for that past life—one had been forced to leave it so suddenly, without saying good-bye. Of a meeting with Ogaryóv I had no hope. Two of my intimate friends secured an interview with me towards the end, but I wanted something more.

I wished to see once more the girl who had cheered me before and to press her hand as I had pressed it in the churchyard nine months earlier. At that interview I intended to part with the past and greet the future.

We did meet for a few minutes on April 9, 1835, the day before my departure into exile.

Long did I keep that day sacred in memory; it is one of the red-letter days of my life.

But why does the recollection of that day and all the bright and happy days of my past life recall so much that is terrible? I see a grave, a wreath of dark-red roses, two children whom I am leading by the hand, torch-light, a band of exiles, the moon, a warm sea beneath a mountain; I hear words spoken which I cannot understand, and yet they tear my heart.[78]

78.Herzen’s wife, Natalie, died at Nice in 1852 and was buried there under the circumstances here described.

78.Herzen’s wife, Natalie, died at Nice in 1852 and was buried there under the circumstances here described.

78.Herzen’s wife, Natalie, died at Nice in 1852 and was buried there under the circumstances here described.

All, all, has passed away!

Back to IndexNext