One day after dinner, my father proposed to take a drive into the country, and, as Nick was in the house, invited him and Sonnenberg to join us. These drives were no joke. Though the carriage was made by Joachim, most famous of coachmakers, it had been used, if not severely, for fifteen years till it had become old and ugly, and it weighed more than a siege mortar, so that we took an hour or more to get outside the city-gates. Our four horses, ill-matched both in size and colour, underworked and overfed, were covered with sweat and lather in a quarter of an hour ; and the coachman, knowing that this was forbidden, had to keep them at a walk. However hot it was, the windows were generally kept shut. To all this you must add the steady pressure of my father's eye and Sonnenberg's perpetual fussy interference ; and yet we boys were glad to endure it all, in order that we might be together.
We crossed the Moscow River by a ferry at the very place where the Cossack pulled Sonnenberg out of the water. My father walked along with gloomy aspect and stooping figure, as always, while Sonnenberg trotted at his side and tried to amuse him with scandal and gossip. We two walked on in front till we had got a good lead ; then we ran off to the site of Vitberg's cathedral 3 on the Sparrow Hills.
Panting and flushed, we stood there and wiped our brows. The sun was setting, the cupolas of Moscow glittered in his rays, the city at the foot of the hill spread beyond our vision, a fresh breeze fanned our cheeks. We stood there leaning against each other ; then suddenly we embraced and, as we looked down upon the great city, swore to devote our lives to the struggle we had undertaken.
Such an action may seem very affected and theatrical on our part ; but when I recall it, twenty-six years after, it affects me to tears. That it was absolutely sincere has been proved by the whole course of our lives. But all vows taken on that spot are evidently doomed to the same fate : the Emperor Alexander also acted 3· See part II, chapter IX.
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sincerely when h e laid the first stone o f the cathedral there, but the first stone was also the last.
We did not know the full power of our adversary, but still we threw down the glove. Power dealt us many a shrewd blow, but we never surrendered to it, and it was not power that crushed us. The scars inflicted by power are honourable; the strained thigh of Jacob was a sign that he had wrestled with God in the night.
From that day the Sparrow Hills became a place of pilgrimage for us : once or twice a year we walked there, and always by ourselves. There, five years later, Ogarev asked me with a modest diffidence whether I believed in his poetic gift. And in 1833 he wrote to me from the country :
'Since I left Moscow, I have felt sad, sadder than I ever was in my life. I am always thinking of the Sparrow Hills. I long kept my transports hidden in my heart ; shyness or some other feeling prevented me from speaking of them. But on the Sparrow Hills these transports were not lessened by solitude; you shared them with me, and these moments are unforgettable; like recollections of bygone happiness, they pursued me on my journey, though I passed no hills but only forests.'
'Tell the world', he ended, 'how our lives (yours and mine) took shape on the Sparrow Hills.'
Five more years passed, and I was far from those Hills, but their Prometheus, Alexander Vitberg, was near me, a sorrowful and gloomy figure. After my return to Moscow, I visited the place again in 1842 ; again I stood by the foundation-stone and surveyed the same scene; and a companion was with me - but it was not my friend.
3
After 1827 we two were inseparable. In every recollection of that time, whether detailed or general, he is always prominent, with the face of opening manhood, with his love for me. He was early marked with that sign of consecration which is given to few, and which, for weal or for woe, separates a man from the crowd. A large oil-painting of Ogarev was made about that time and long remained in his father's house. I often stopped in front of it and looked long at it. He was painted with a loose open collar : the artist had caught successfully the luxuriant chestnut
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hair, the fleeting beauty of youth on the irregular features, and the somewhat swarthy complexion. The canvas preserves the serious aspect which precedes hard intellectual work. The vague sorrow and extreme gentleness which shine from the large grey eyes, give promise of great power of sympathy ; and that promise was fulfilled. The portrait was given to me. A lady, not related to Ogarev, afterwards got hold of it; perhaps she will see these lines and restore it to me.
I do not know why people dwell exclusively on recollections of first love and say nothing about memories of youthful friendship. First love is so fragrant, just because it forgets difference of sex, because it is passionate friendship. Friendship between young men has all the fervour of love and all its characteristics - the same shy reluctance to profane its feeling by speech, the same diffidence and absolute devotion, the same pangs at parting, and the same exclusive desire to stand alone without a rival.
I had loved Nick long and passionately before I dared to call him 'friend' ; and, when we were apart in summer, I wrote in a postscript, 'whether I am your friend or not, I don't know yet'.
He was the first to use 'thou' in writing to me ; and he called me Damon before I called him Pythias.
Smile, if you please, but let it be a kindly smile, such as men smile when recalling their own fifteenth year. Perhaps it would be better to ask, 'Was I like that in my prime ? ' and to thank your stars, if you ever had a prime, and to thank them doubly, if you had a friend to share it.
The language of that time seems to us affected and bookish.
We have travelled far from its passing enthusiasms and onesided partisanships, which suddenly give place to feeble sentimentality or childish laughter. In a man of thirty it would be absurd, like the famous Bettina will schlafen ;4 but, in its own season, this language of adolescence, this jargon de Ia puberte, this breaking of the soul's voice - all this is quite sincere, and even its bookish flavour is natural to the age which knows theory and is ignorant of practice.
Schiller remained our favourite; the characters in his plays 4· This must refer to Bettina von Arnim's first interview with Goethe at Weimar in April 1807. She writes that she sprang into Goethe's arms and slept there. The poet was then fifty-eight, and Bettina had ceased to be a child.
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were real for us ; we discussed them and loved or hated them as living beings and not as people in a book. And more than that we identified ourselves with them. I was rather distressed that Nick was too fond of Fiesco, and wrote to say that behind every Fiesco stands a Verrina. My own ideal was Karl Moor, but I soon deserted him and adopted the Marquis Posa instead.
4
Thus it was that Ogarev and I entered upon life hand in hand.
We walked in confidence and pride ; without counting the cost, we answered every summons and surrendered ourselves sincerely to each generous impulse. The path we chose was not easy ; but we never once left it; wounded and broken, we still went on, and no one outstripped us on the way. I have reached, not our goal but the place where the road turns downhill, and I seek instinctively for your arm, my friend, that I may press it and say with a sad smile as we go down together, 'So this is all ! '