There was something touching in that crowd of young men forced
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asunder by the fear of infection. All were excited, and there were many pale faces ; many were thinking of relations and friends ; we said goodbye to the scholars who were to remain behind in quarantine, and dispersed in small groups to our homes. There we were greeted by the stench of chloride of lime and vinegar, and submitted to a diet which, of itself and without chloride or cholera, was quite enough to cause an illness.
It is a strange fact, but this sad time is more solemn than sad in my recollection of it.
The aspect of Moscow was entirely changed. The city was animated beyond its wont by the feeling of a common life. There were fewer carriages in the streets ; crowds stood at the crossings and spoke darkly of poisoners ; ambulances, conveying the sick, moved along at a footpace, escorted by police ; and people turned aside as the hearses went by. Bulletins were published twice a day. The city was surrounded by troops, and an unfortunate beadle was shot while trying to cross the river. These measures caused much excitement, and fear of disease conquered the fear of authority ; the inhabitants protested ; and meanwhile tidings followed tidings - that so-and-so had sickened and so-and-so was dead.
The Archbishop, Filaret, ordained a Day of Humiliation. At the same hour on the same day all the priests went in procession with banners round their parishes, while the terrified inhabitants came out of their houses and fell on their knees, weeping and praying that their sins might be forgiven ; even the priests were moved by the solemnity of the occasion. Some of them marched to the Kremlin, where the Archbishop, surrounded by clerical dignitaries, knelt in the open air and prayed, 'May this cup pass from us I'
19
Filaret carried on a kind of opposition to Government, but why he did so I never could understand, unless it was to assert his own personality. He was an able and learned man, and a perfect master of the Russian language, which he spoke with a happy flavouring of Church-Slavonic ; but all this gave him no right to be in opposition. The people disliked him and called him a freemason, because he was intimate with Prince A. N. Golitsyn and preached in Petersburg just when the Bible Society was in vogue there. The Synod forbade the use of his Catechism in the schools. But the
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clergy who were under his rule trembled before him.
Filaret knew how to put down the secular powers with great ingenuity and dexterity ; his sermons breathed that vague Christian socialism to which Lacordaire and other far-sighted Roman Catholics owed their reputation. From the height of his episcopal pulpit, Filaret used to say that no man could be legally the mere instrument of another, and that an exchange of services was the only proper relation between human beings ; and this he said in a country where half the population were slaves.
Speaking to a body of convicts who were leaving Moscow on their way to Siberia, he said, 'Human law has condemned you and driven you forth ; but the Church will not let you go ; she wishes to address you once more, to pray for you once again, and to bless you before your journey.' Then, to comfort them, he added, 'You, by your punishment, have got rid of your past, and a new life awaits you ; but, among others' (and there were probably no others present except officials) 'there are even greater sinners than you' ; and he spoke of the penitent thief at the Crucifixion as an example for them.
But Filaret's sermon on the Day of Humiliation left all his previous utterances in the shade. He took as his text the passage where the angel suffered David to choose between war, famine, and pestilence as the punishment for his sin, and David chose the pestilence. The Tsar came to Moscow in a furious rage, and sent a high Court official to reprove the Archbishop ; he even threatened to send him to Georgia to exercise his functions there. Filaret submitted meekly to the reproof; and then he sent round a new rescript to all the churches, explaining that it was a mistake to suppose that he had meant David to represent the Tsar : we ourselves were David, sunk like him in the mire of sin. In this way, the meaning of the original sermon was explained even to those who had failed to grasp its meaning at first.
Such was the way in which the Archbishop of Moscow played at opposition.
The Day of Humiliation was as ineffectual as the chloride of lime; and the plague grew worse and worse.
20
I witnessed the whole course of the frightful epidemic of cholera at Paris in 1849. The violence of the disease was increased by the
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hot June weather ; the poor died like flies ; of the middle classes some fled the country, and the rest locked themselves up in their houses. The Government, exclusively occupied by the struggle against the revolutionaries, never thought of taking any active steps. Large private subscriptions failed to meet the requirements of the situation. The working class were left to take their chance ; the hospitals could not supply all the beds, nor the police all the coffins, that were required ; the corpses remained for forty-eight hours in living-rooms crowded with a number of different families.
In Moscow things were different.
Prince Dmitry Golitsyn was Governor of the city, not a strong man, but honourable, cultured, and highly respected. He gave the line to Moscow society, and everything was arranged by the citizens themselves without much interference on the part of Government. A committee was formed of the chief residents -
rich landowners and merchants. Each member of the committee undertook one of the districts of Moscow. In a few days twenty hospitals were opened, all supported by voluntary contributions and not costing one penny to the State. The merchants supplied all that was required in the hospitals - bedding, linen, and warm clothing, and this last might be kept by convalescents. Young people acted gratuitously as inspectors in the hospitals, to see that tbe freewill offerings of the merchants were not stolen by the orderlies and nurses.
The University too played its part. The whole medical school, both teachers and students, put themselves at the disposal of the committee. They were distributed among the hospitals and worked there incessantly until the infection was over. For three or four months these young men did fine work in the hospitals, as assistant physicians, dressers, nurses, or clerks, and all this for no pecuniary reward and at a time when the fear of infection was intense. I remember one Little Russian student who was trying to get an exeat on urgent private affairs when the cholera began. It was difficult to get an exeat in term-time, but he got it at last and was just preparing to start when the other students were entering the hospitals. He put his exeat in his pocket and joined them.
When he left the hospital, his leave of absence had long expired, and he was the first to laugh heartily at the form his trip had taken.
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Moscow had the appearance o f being sleepy and slack, of caring for nothing but gossip and piety and fashionable intelligence ; but she invariably wakes up and rises to the occasion when the hour strikes and when the thunder-storm breaks over Russia.