Having had his jest, he sat down on my bed and said seriously :
'That's a terrible man you are going to. Keep out of his way as much as ever you can. If he takes a fancy to you, that says little in your favour; but if he dislikes you, he will certainly ruin you ; what weapon he will use, false accusation or not, I don't know, but ruin you he will ; he won't care twopence.'
Thereupon he told me a strange story, which I as able to verify at a later date by means of papers preserved in the Home Office at Petersburg.
6
Tyufyayev had a mistress at Perm, the sister of a humble official named Petrovsky. The fact was notorious, and the brother was laughed at. Wishing therefore to break off this connection, he threatened to write to Petersburg and lay information, and, in short, made such a noise and commotion that the police arrested him one day as insane and brought him up to be examined before the administration of the province. The judges and the inspector of public health - he was an old German, much beloved by the poor, and I knew him personally - all agreed that Petrovsky was insane.
But Chebotarev knew Petrovsky and had been his doctor. He told the inspector that Petrovsky was not mad at all, and urged a fresh examination; otherwise, he would feel bound to carry the matter further. The administration raised no difficulties; but· unfortunately Petrovsky died in the mad-house before the day fixed for the second examination, though he was a young man and enjoyed good health.
News of the affair now reached Petersburg. The sister was arrested (Tyufyayev ought to have been) and a secret enquiry began. Tyufyayev dictated the replies of the witnesses. He surpassed 4· The same Russian verb means 'to translate' and 'to transfer'.
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himself in this business. He devised a means to stifle it for ever and to save himself from a second involuntary journey to Siberia.
He actually induced the sister to say that her youth and inexperience had been taken advantage of by the late Tsar Alexander when he passed through Perm, and that the quarrel with her brother dated from that event.
Was her story true ? Well, la regina ne aveva mol to, 5 says the story-teller in Pushkin's Egyptian Nights.
7
Such was the man who now undertook to teach me the business of administration, a worthy pupil of Arakcheyev, acrobat, tramp, clerk, secretary, Governor, a tender-hearted, unselfish being, who shut up sane men in mad-houses and made away with them there.
I was entirely at his mercy. He had only to write some nonsense to the Minister at Petersburg, and I should be packed off to Irkutsk. Indeed, writing was unnecessary ; he had the right to transfer me to some savage place like Kay or Tsarevo-Sanchursk, where there were no resources and no means of communication.
He sent one young Pole to Glazov, because the ladies had the bad taste to prefer him as a partner in the mazurka to His Excellency.
In this way Prince Dolgoruky was transferred from Perm to Verkhoturye, a place in the Government of Perm, buried in mountains and snow-drifts, with as bad a climate as Berezov and even less society.
8
Prince Dolgoruky belonged to a type which is becoming rarer with us; he was a sprig of nobility, of the wrong sort, whose escapades were notorious at Petersburg, Moscow, and Paris. His whole life was spent in folly ; he was a spoilt, insolent, offensive practical joker, a mixture of buffoon and fine gentleman. When his pranks exceeded all bounds, he was banished to Perm.
He arrived there with two carriages ; the first was occupied by himself and his dog, a Great Dane, the second by his French cook and his parrots. The arrival of this wealthy visitor gave much pleasure, and before long all the town was rubbing shoulders in his dining-room. He soon took up with a young lady of Perm; 5· The reference in Pushk.in is to Cleopatra's lovers.
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and this young lady, suspecting that h e was unfaithful, turned up unexpectedly at his house one morning, and found him with a maid-servant. A scene followed, and at last the faithless lover took his riding-whip down from its peg ; when the lady perceived his intention, she made off ; simply attired in a dressing-gown and nothing else, he made after her, and caught her up on the small parade-ground where the troops were exercised. When he had given the jealous lady a few blows with his whip, he strolled home, quite content with his perfomance.
But these pleasant little ways brought upon him the persecution of his former friends, and the authorities decided to send this madcap of forty on to Verkhoturye. The day before he left, he gave a grand dinner, and all the local officials, in spite of the strained relations, came to the feast ; for Dolgoruky had promised them a new and remarkable pie. The pie was in fact excellent and vanished with extraordinary rapidity. When nothing but the crust was left, Dolgoruky said to his guests with an air of emotion : 'It never can be said that I spared anything to make our last meeting a success. I had my dog killed yesterday, to make this pie.'
The officials looked first with horror at one another and then round the room for the Great Dane whom they all knew perfectly ; but he was not there. The Prince ordered a servant to bring in the mortal remains of his favourite ; the skin was all there was to show ; the rest was in the stomachs of the people of Perm.
Half the town took to their bed.s in consequence.
Dolgoruky meanwhile, pleased by the success of the practical joke he had played on his friends, was travelling in triumph to Verkhoturye. To his train he had now added a third vehicle containing a hen-house and its inhabitants. At several of the posthouses on his way he carried off the official registers, mixed them up, and altered the figures ; the posting-department, who, even with the registers, found it difficult enough to get the returns right, almost went mad in consequence.
9
The oppressive emptiness and dumbness of Russian life, when misallied to a strong and even violent temperament, are apt to produce monstrosities of all kinds.
Not only in Dolgoruky's pie, but in Suvorov's crowing like a
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cock, in the strange outbursts of Izmaylov, in the semi-voluntary insanity of Mamonov,6 and in the wild extravagances of Tolstoy, nicknamed 'The American', everywhere I catch a national note which is familiar to us all, though in most of us it is weakened by education or turned in some different direction.
Tolstoy I knew personally, just at the time when he lost his daughter, Sara, a remarkable girl with a high poetic gift. He was old then ; but one look at his athletic figure, his flashing eyes, and the grey curls that clustered on his forehead, was enough to show how great was his natural strength and activity. But he had developed only stormy passions and vicious propensities. And this is not surprising : in Russia all that is vicious is allowed to grow for long unchecked, while men are sent to a fortress or to Siberia at the first sign of a humane passion. For twenty years Tolstoy rioted and gambled, used his fists to mutilate his enemies, and reduced whole families to beggary, till at last he was banished to Siberia.