My father did not agree and said that he had grown to dislike everything military, and that he hoped in time to get me a post on some mission to a warm country, where he would go to end his days.
Bakhmetev, who had taken little part in the conversation, got up on his crutches and said :
'It seems to me that you ought to think very seriously over Petr Kirillovich's advice. If you don't want to put his name down at Orenburg, you might put him down here. We are old friends, and it's my habit to say openly what I think ; if you put him into the civil service and the university you will do no good to your roung man, nor to society either. He is quite obviously in a false position; only the military service can open a career for him and put him right. Before he gets command of a company, all dangerous ideas will have subsided. Military discipline is a grand schooling, and after that it all depends on him. You say that he has abilities, but you don't mean to say that none but fools go into the army, do you? What about us and all our set?
There's only one objection you can make-that he will have to serve longer before he gets a commission, but it's just over that that we can help you.'
This conversation had as much effect as the remarks of Madame Proveau and Vera Artamonovna. By that time I was thirtern1 and such lessons, turned over and over, and analysed from every point of view during weeks and months of complete solitude, bore their fruit. The result of this conversation was that, although I had till then, like all boys, dreamed of the army and a uniform, and had been ready to cry at my father's wanting me to go into the civil service, my enthusiasm for soldiering suddenly cooled, and my craving and weakness for epaulettes, aiguillettes and striped trousers, were by degrees completely 1 Herzen was not more than eight at this time. (A.S.)
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eradicated. My dying passion for a uniform had, however, one last flicker. A cousin of ours, who had been at a boarding-school in Moscow and used sometimes to spend a holiday with us, had entered the Yamburgsky regiment of Uhlans. In 1 825 he came to Moscow as an ensign and stayed a few days with us. My heart throbbed when I saw him with all his little cords and laces, with a sword, and a four-cornered shako worn a little on one side and fastened with a chin-strap. He was a boy of seventeen and short for his age. Next morning I dressed up in his uniform, put on his sword and shako and looked at myself in the glass. Goodness!
how handsome I thought myself in the short dark-blue jacket with red braid ' And the tassels and the pompon, and the pouch
. . . what were the yellow nankeen breeches and the short camlet jacket which I used to wear at home, in comparison with these?
The cousin's visit might have destroyed the effect of the generals' talk, but soon circumstances turned me against the army again, and this time for good.
The spiritual result of my meditations on my 'false position'
was much the same as that which I had deduced from the talk of my two nurses. I felt myself more independent of society, of which I knew absolutely nothing, felt that in reality I was thrown on my own resources, and with somewhat childish conceit thought I \vould show the old generals what I was made of.
With all this it may well be imagined how drearily and monotonously the time passed in the strange convent-like seclusion of my father's house. I had neither encouragement nor distraction ; my father had spoilt me until I was ten, and now he was almost always dissatisfied with me; I had no companions, my teachers called to give lessons and went away, and, seeing them out of the yard, I used to run off on the sly, to play with the house-serf boys, which was strictly forbidden. The rest of my time I spent wandering aimlessly about the big, dark rooms, which had their windows shut all day and were only dimly lit in the evening, doing nothing or reading anything that turned up.
The servants' ha I I and tllP rna ids' room provided the only keen enjoyment left me. ThPn' I had comp!Pte liberty; I took the side of onP party aga i nst anothPr, d iscuswd their businPss with my friPmls, ilnd gave my opinion upon thPm, knew all their intimate a ff il irs, and nPver d ropp(•d a word in the dmwing-room about the SP(TPts of thr sPrva nts' hall.
I must pause upon this subject. Indeed, I do not intend to
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avoid digressions and episodes ; that is part of every conversation ; indeed of life itself.
Children as a rule are fond of servants; their parents forbid them, especially in Russia, to associate with servants; the children do not obey them because in the drawing-room it is dull, while in the maids' room it is lively. In this case, as in thousands of others, parents do not know what they are about. I do not imagine that our hall was a less wholesome place for children than our 'tea-room' or 'sitting-room.' In the servants' hall children pick up coarse expressions and bad manners, that is true; but in the drawing-room they pick up coarse ideas and bad feelings.
The very orders to children to keep away from those with whom they are continually in contact is immoral.
A great deal is said among us about the complete depravity of servants, especially when they are serfs. They certainly are not distinguished by exemplary strictness of conduct, and their moral degradation can be seen from the fact that they put up with too much and are too rarely moved to indignation and resistance. But that is not the point. I should like to know what class in Russia is less depraved ? The nobility or the officials? The clergy, perhaps?
Why do you laugh?
The peasants, perhaps, are the only ones who could put up some kind of claim to be different. . . .
The difference between the nobleman and the serving man is very small. I hate the demagogues' flattery of the mob, particularly since the troubles of 1 848, but the aristocrats' slander of the people I hate even more. By picturing servants and slaves as degraded animals, the slave-owners throw dust in people's eyes and stifle the voice of conscience in themselves. We are not often better than the lower classes, but we express ourselves more gently and conceal our egoism and our passions more adroitly; our desires are not so coarse, and the ease with which thev are satisfied and our habit of not controlling them make the� less conspicuous; we are simply wealthier and better fed and consequently more fastidious. When Count Almaviva recited to the Barber of Seville the catalogue of the qualities he expected from a servant, Figaro observed with a sigh: 'If a servant must have all these virtues, are there many gentlemen fit to be lackeys? '
Dissoluteness i n Russia as a rule does not g o deep ; it is more savage and dirty, noisy and coarse, dishevelled and shameless than profound. The clergy, shut up at home, drink and overeat themselves with the merchants. The nobility get drunk in pub-
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lie, play cards until they are ruined, thrash their servants, seduce their housemaids, manage their business affairs badly and their family life still worse. The officials do the same, but in a dirtier way, and in addition are guilty of grovelling before their superiors and pilfering. As far as stealing in the literal sense goes, the nobility are less guilty: they take openly what belongs to others; besides, when it suits them they are just as grasping as other people.