Then she burst out sobbing and could not utter another word.
After my return from banishment I saw him occasionally in Petersburg and found him much changed. He kept his old convictions, but he kept them as a warrior, feeling that he is mortally wounded, still grasps his sword. He was exhausted and depressed, and looked forward without hope. And such I found him in Moscow in 1842 ; his circumstances were improved to some extent, and his works were appreciated, but all this came too late.
Then consumption - that terrible disease which I was fated to watch once again 12 - declared itself in the autumn of 1842, and Vadim wasted away.
A month before he died, I noticed with horror that his powers of mind were failing and growing dim like a flickering candle ; the atmosphere of the sick-room grew darker steadily. Soon it cost him a laborious effort to find words for incoherent speech, and he confused words of similar sound ; at last, he hardly spoke except to express anxiety about his medicines and the hours for taking them.
At three o'clock one February morning, his wife sent for me.
11. Herzen's wife died of consumption at Nice in
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The sick man was i n distress and asking for me. I went u p t o his bed and touched his hand ; his wife named me, and he looked long and wearily at me but failed to recognise me and shut his eyes again. Then the children were brou!Jht, and he looked at them, but I do not think he recognised them either. His breathing became more difficult; there were intervals of quiet followed by long gasps. Just then the bells of a neighbouring church rang out ; Vadim listened and then said, 'That's for early Mass,' and those were his last words. His wife sobbed on her knees beside the body ; a young college friend, who had shown them much kindness during the last illness, moved about the room, pushing away the table with the medicine-bottles and drawing up the blinds. I left the house ; it was frosty and bright out of doors, and the rising sun glittered on the snow, just as if all was right with the world. My errand was to order a coffin.
When I returned, the silence of death reigned in the little house. In accordance with Russian custom, the dead man was lying on the table in the drawing-room, and an artist-friend, seated at a little distance, was drawing, through his tears, a portrait of the lifeless features. Near the body stood a tall female figure, with folded arms and an expression of infinite sorrow ; she stood silent, and no sculptor could have carved a nobler or more impressive embodiment of grief. She was not young, but still retained the traces of a severe and stately beauty ; wrapped up in a long mantle of black velvet trimm.ed with ermine, she stood there like a statue.
I remained standing at the door.
The silence went on for several :ninutes ; but suddenly she bent forward, pressed a kiss on the cold forehead, and said, 'Goodbye, goodbye, dear Vadim' ; then she walked with a steady step into an inner room. The painter went on with his work; he nodded to me, and I sat down by the window in silence; we felt no wish to talk.
The lady was Mme Chertkov, the sister of Count Zakhar Chernyshev, one of the exiled Decembrists.
Melkhisedek, the Abbot of St Peter's Monastery, himself offered that Vadim should be buried within the convent walls. He knew Vadim and respected him for his researches into the history of Moscpw. He had once been a simple carpenter and a furious dissenter; but he was converted to Orthodoxy, became a monk,
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C H I L D H O O D, Y O U T H A N D E X I L E
and rose to b e Prior and finally Abbot. Yet h e always kept the broad shoulders, fine ruddy face, and simple heart of the car·
penter.
When the body appeared before the monastery gates, Melkhisedek and all his monks came out to meet the martyr's poor coffin, and escorted it to the grave, singing the funeral music.
Not far from his grave rests the dust of another who was dear to us, Venevitinov, and his epitaph runs : He knew life well but left it soon
and V a dim knew it as well.
But Fortune was not content even with his death. Why indeed did his mother live to be so old ? When the period of exile carne to an end, and when she had seen her children in their youth and beauty and fine promise for the future, life had nothing more to give her. Any man who values happiness should seek to die young. Permanent happiness is no more possible than ice that will not melt.
Vadirn's eldest brother died a few months after Diornid, the soldier, fell in Circassia : a neglected cold proved fatal to his en·
feebled constitution. He was the oldest of the family, and he was hardly forty.
Long and black are the shadows thrown back by these three coffins of three dear friends ; the last months of my youth are veiled from me by funeral crape and the incense of thuribles.
25
After dragging on for · a year, the affair of Sungurov and our other friends who had been arrested came to an end. The charge, as in our case and in that of Petrashev's group, was that they intended to form a secret society and had held treasonable con·
versations. Their punishment was to be sent to Orenburg, to join the colours.
And now our tum carne. Our names were already entered on the black list of the secret police. The cat dealt her :first playful blow at the mouse in the following way.
When our friends, after their sentence, were starting on their long march to Orenburg without warm enough clothing, Ogarev
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and Kireyevsky each started a subscription for them, as none of them had money. Kireyevsky took the proceeds to Staal, the commandant, a very kind-hearted old soldier, of whom more will be said hereafter. Staal promised to transmit the money, and then said :
'What papers are those you have ?'
'The subscribers' names,' said Kireyevsky, 'and a list of subscriptions.'
'Do you trust me to pay over the money ?' the old man asked.
'Of course I do.'
'And I fancy the subscribers will trust you. Well, then, what's the use of our keeping these names ?' and Staal threw the list into the fire; and I need hardly say that was a very kind action.
Ogarev took the money he had collected to the prison himself, and no difficulty was raised. But the prisoners took it into their heads to send a message of thanks from Orenburg, and asked some functionary who was travelling to Moscow to take a letter which they dared not trust to the post The functionary did not fail to profit by such an excellent opportunity of proving his loyalty to his country : he laid the letter before the head of the police at Moscow.
Volkov, who had held this office, had gone mad, his delusion being that the Poles wished to elect him as their king and Lesovsky had succeeded to the position. Lesovsky was a Pole himself; he was not a cruel man or a bad man ; but he had spent his fortune, thanks to gambling and a French actress, and, like a true philosopher, he preferred the situation of chief of the police at Moscow to a situation in the slums ofthat city.