'Thank God I ' he said : 'This is the fourth time I have walked past, hoping to hail you, if only from a distance; but you never saw me.'
My eyes were full of tears as I thanked him : I was deeply touched by this proof of tender womanly attachment. But this was the only reason why I was so sorry to leave Perm.
10
O n the second day o f our journey, heavy rain began a t dawn and went on all day without stopping, as it often does in wooded country; at two o'clock we came to a miserable village of natives.
There was no post-house; the native Votyaks, who could neither read nor write, opened my passport and ascertained whether there were two seals or one, shouted out 'All right I ' and harnessed the fresh horses. A Russian post-master would have kept us twice as long. On getting near this village, I had proposed to my keeper that we should rest there two hours : I wished to get dry and warm and have something to eat. But when I entered the smoky,
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stifling hut and found that n o food was procurable, and that there was not even a public-house within five versts, I repented of my purpose and intended to go on.
While I was still hesitating, a soldier came in and brought me an invitation to drink a cup of tea from an officer on detachment.
'With all my heart. Where is your officer ? '
'In a hut close by, Your Honour' - and the soldier made a left turn and disappeared. I followed him.
CHAPTER VII
Vyatka - The Office and Dinner-table of His Excellency - Tyufyayev 1
WHEN I called on the Governor of Vyatka, he sent a message that I was to call again at ten next morning.
When I returned, I found four men in the drawing-room, the inspectors of the town and country police, and two office clerks.
They were all standing up, talking in whispers, and looking uneasily at the door. The door opened, and an elderly man of middle height and broad-shouldered entered the room. The set of his head was like that of a bulldog, and the large jaws with a kind of carnivorous grin increased the canine resemblance; the senile and yet animal expression of the features, the small, restless grey eyes, and thin lank hair made an impression which was repulsive beyond belief.
He began by roughly reproving the country inspector for the state of a road by which His Excellency had travelled on the previous day. The inspector stood with his head bent, in sign of respect and submission, and said from time to time, like servants in former days, 'Very good, Your Excellency.'
Having done with the inspector he turned to me. With an insolent look he said :
'I think you have taken your degree at Moscow University ?'
'I have.'
'Did you enter the public service afterwards ?'
'I was employed in the Kremlin offices.'
'Ha I Ha ! Much they do there ! Not too busy there to attend parties and sing songs, eh ?' Then he called out, 'Alenitsyn I '
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20 1
A young man of consumptive appearance carhe in. 'Hark ye, my friend. Here is a graduate of Moscow University who probably knows everything except the business of administration, and His Majesty desires that we should teach it to him. Give him occupation in your office, and let me have special reports about him. You, Sir, will come to the office at nine tomorrow morning.'
You can go now. By the way, I forgot to ask how you write.'
I was puzzled at first. 'I mean your handwriting,' he added.
I said I had none of my own writing on me.
'Bring paper and a pen,' and Alenitsyn handed me a pen.
'What shall I write ?'
'What you please,' said the clerk; 'write, "Upon investigation it turned out".'
The Governor looked at the writing and said with a sarcastic smile. 'Well, we shan't ask you to correspond with the Tsar.'
2
While I was still at Perm, I had heard much about Tyufyayev, but the reality far surpassed all my expectations.
There is no person or thing too monstrous for the conditions of Russian life to produce.
He was born at Tobolsk. His father was, I believe, an exile and belonged to the lowest and poorest class of free Russians. At thirteen he joined a band of strolling players, who wandered from fair to fair, dancing on the tight rope, turning somersaults, and so on. With them he went all the way from Tobolsk to the Polish provinces, making mirth for the lieges.• He was arrested there on some charge unknown to me, and then, because he had no passport, sent back on foot to Tobolsk as a vagabond, together with a gang of convicts. His mother was now a widow and living in extreme poverty ; he rebuilt the stove in her house with his own hands, when it came to pieces. He had to seek a trade of some kind ; the boy learned to read and write and got employment as a clerk in the town office. Naturally quick-witted, he had profited by the variety of his experience ; he had learned much from the troupe of acrobats, and as much from the gang of convicts in whose company he had tramped from one end of Russia to the other. He soon became a sharp man of business.
At the beginning of Alexander's reign a Government Inspector was sent to Tobolsk, and Tyufyayev was recommended to him as a
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competent clerk. H e did his work s o well that the Inspector offered to take him back to Petersburg. Hitherto, as he said himself, his ambition had not aspired beyond a clerkship in some provincial court ; but now he set a different value on himself, and resolved with an iron strength of will to climb to the top of the tree.
And he did. Ten years later we find him acting as secretary to the Controller of the Navy, and then chief of a department in the office of Count Arakcheyev,l which governed the whole Empire.
When Paris was occupied by the Allied Armies in 1815, the Count took his secretary there with him. During the whole time of the occupation, Tyufyayev literally never saw a single street in Paris ; he sat all day and all night in the office, drawing up or copying documents.
Arakcheyev's office was like those copper-mines where the workmen are kept only for a few months, because, if they stay longer, they die. In this manufactory of edicts and ordinances, mandates and instructions, even Tyufyayev grew tired at last and asked for an easier place. He was, of course, a man after Arakcheyev's own heart - a man without pretensions or distractions or opinions of his own, conventionally honest, eaten up by ambition, and ranking obedience as the highest of human virtues.
Arakcheyev rewarded him with the place of a Vice-Governor, and a few years later made him Governor of Perm. The province, which Tyufyayev had passed through as acrobat and convict, first dancing on a rope and then bound by a rope, now lay at his feet.
A Governor's power increases by arithmetical progression with the distance from Petersburg, but increases by geometrical progression in provinces like Perm or Vyatka or Siberia, where there is no resident nobility. That was just the kind of province that Tyufyayev needed.
He was a Persian satrap, with this difference - that he was active, restless, always busy and interfering in everything. He would have been a savage agent of the French Convention in 1794, something in the way of Carrier.2
1. Arakcheyev (1769-1835) was Minister and favourite of Emperor Alexander I : he has been called 'the assassin of the Russian people'.