6
My cousin's life was no bed of roses. She lost her mother in childhood ; her father was a passionate gambler, who, like all men who have gambling in their blood, was constantly rich and poor by turns and ended by ruining himself. What was left of his fortune he devoted to his stud, which now became the object of all his thoughts and desires. His only son, a good-natured cavalry
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officer, was taking the shortest road t o ruin : a t the age o f nineteen, he was a more desperate gambler than his father.
When the father was fifty, he married, for no obvious reason, an old maid who was a teacher in the Smolny Conven't. She was the most typical specimen of a Petersburg governess whom I had ever happened to meet : thin, blonde, and very shortsighted, she looked the teacher and the moralist all over. By no means stupid, she was full of an icy enthusiasm in her talk, she abounded in commonplaces about virtue and devotion, she knew history and geography by heart, spoke French with repulsive correctness, and concealed a high opinion of herself under an artificial and Jesuitical humility. These traits are common to all pedants in petticoats ; but she had others peculiar to the capital or the convent.
Thus she raised tearful eyes to heaven, when speaking of the visit of 'the mother of us all' (the Empress, Marya Fedorovna) ;5 she was in love with Tsar Alexander, and carried a locket or ring containing a fragment of a letter from the Empress Elizabeth 6 -
'il a repris son sourire de bienveillance ! '
It is easy to imagine the harmonious trio that made up this household : a card-playing father, passionately devoted to horses and racing and noisy carouses in disreputable company ; a daughter brought up in complete independence and accustomed to do as she pleased in the house ; and a middle-aged blue-stocking suddenly converted into a bride. As a matter of course, no love was lost between the stepmother and stepdaughter. In general, real friendship between a woman of thirty-five and a girl of seventeen is impossible, unless the former is sufficiently unselfish to renounce all claim to sex.
The common hostility between stepmothers and step-daughters does not surprise me in the least : it is natural and even moral. A new member of the household, who usurps their mother's place, provokes repulsion on the part of the children. To them the second marriage is a second funeral. The child's love is revealed in this feeling, and whispers to the orphan, 'Your father's wife is not your mother.' At one time the Church understood that a second marriage is inconsistent with the Christian conception of marriage and the Christian dogma of immortality ; but she made 5· The wife of Paul an d mother of Alexander I an d Nicholas.
6. Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, reigned from 1741 to 1762.
Probably 'il' refers to her father.
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constant concessions t o the world, and went too far, till she came up against the logic of facts - the simple heart of the child who revolts against the absurdity and refuses the name of mother to his father's second choice.
The woman too is in an awkward situation when she comes away from the altar to find a family of children ready-made : she has nothing to do with them, and has to force feelings which she cannot possess ; she is bound to convince herself and the world, tHat other people's children are just as attractive to her as her own.
Consequently, I don't blame either the convent-lady or my cousin for their mutual dislike ; but I understand how a young girl unaccustomed to control was eager to go wherever she could be free. Her father was now getting old and more submissive to his learned wife ; her brother, the officer, was behaving worse and worse ; in fact, the atmosphere at home was oppressive, and she finally induced her stepmother to let her go on a visit to us, for some months or possibly for a year.
7
The day after her arrival, my cousin turned my usual routine, with the exception of my lessons, upside down. With a high hand she fixed hours for us to read together, advised me to stop reading novels, and recommended Segur's General History and The Travels of Anacharsis.1 From the ascetic point of view she opposed my strong inclination to smoke on the sly - cigarettes were then unknown, and I rolled the tobacco in paper myself : in general, she liked to preach to me, and I listened meekly to her sermons, if I did not profit by them. Fortunately, she was not consistent : quite forgetting her own arrangements, she read with me for amusement rather than instructfon, and often sent out a secret messenger in the shape of a pantry-boy to buy buckwheat cakes in winter or gooseberries in summer.
I believe that her influence on me was very good. She brought into my monastic life an element of warmth, and this may have served to keep alive the enthusiasms that were beginning to stir in my mind, when they might easily have been smothered by my father's ironical tone. I learned to be attentive, to be nettled by a 7· Voyage du jeune Anacharsis, by the Abbe Barthelemy, published in 1 779. Segur was a French historian (1753-I83o).
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single word, to care for a friend, and to feel affection ; I learned also to talk about feelings. In her I found support for my political ideas ; she prophesied a remarkable future and reputation for me, and I, with a child's vanity, believed her when she said I would one day be a Brutus or Fabricius.
To me alone she confided the secret of her love for a cavalry officer in a black jacket and dolman. It was really a secret ; for the officer, as he rode at the head of his squadron, never suspected the pure little flame that burnt for him in the breast of this young lady of eighteen. Whether I envied him, I can't say ; probably I did, a little ; but I was proud of being chosen as her confidant, and I imagined (under the influence of Werther) that this was a tragic passion, fated to end in some great catastrophe involving suicide by poison or the dagger. I even thought at times of calling on the officer and telling him the whole story.
My cousin brought shuttlecocks with her from horne. One of them had a pin stuck into it, and she always used it in playing ; if anyone else happened to get hold of it, she took it away and said that no other suited her as well. But the demon of mischief, which was always whispering its temptations in my ear, tempted me to take out this pin and stick it into another shuttlecock. The trick was entirely successful : my cousin always chose the shuttlecock with the pin in it. After a fortnight I told her what I had done : she changed colour, burst out crying, and ran to her own room. I was frightened and distressed ; after waiting half an hour I went to find her. Her door was locked, and I asked her to open it. She refused, saying that she was not well, and that I was an unkind, heartless boy. Then I wrote a note in which I begged her to forgive me, and after tea we made it up : I kissed her hand, and she embraced me and explained the full importance of the incident. A year before, the officer had dined at their house and played battledore with her afterwards ; and the marked shuttlecock had been used by him. I felt very remorseful, as if I had committed a real act of sacrilege.