Count's services to the arts consisted. The President was at a loss and answered that Arakcheyev was the man who was closest to the Tsar.
'If that is surficient reason. then I propose his coachman. Ilya Baykov,'
observed the secretary; 'he not only is c lose to the Tsar, but sits in front of him.' Labzin was a mystic and the editor of the /11essrnger of Zion; Alexander himself was a mystic of the same sort, but with the fall of Golitsyn's ministry he handed over his former 'brethrl'n of Christ and of the inner man' to Arakcheyev to do with as he pleased. Labzin was banished to Simbirsk.
:1 Victor Joseph Etienne de Jouy, a popular French writer ( 1 764-1 846) .
(Tr.)
4 The orficer, if I am not mistaken. Count Samoylov, had left the army and was living quietly in Moscow. Nicholas recognised him at the theatre, fancied that he was dressed with rather elaborate originality, and expressed the royal desire that such costumes should be ridiculed on the stage. The theatre director and patriot, Zagoskin, commissioned one of his actors to represent Samoylov in some vaudeville. The rumour of this was soon all over the town. \Vhen the performance was over. the real Samoylov went into the director's box and asked permission to say a few words to his double. The director was frightened but, afraid of a scene, summoned the actor. 'You have acted me very well,' the count said to him,
'and the only thing wanting to complete the likeness is this diamond which I always wear; al low me to hand it to you ; you will wear it next time you are ordered to represent me.' After this Samoylov calmly returned to his seat. The stupid jest at his expense fell as flat as the proclamation that Chaadayev was mad and other august pranks.
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
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The tone of society changed before one's eyes; the rapid deterioration in morals was a melancholy proof of how little the sense of personal dignity was developed among Russian aristocrats. Nobody (except women) dared utter a warm word about relations or friends, whose hands they had shaken only the day before they had been carried off at night by the police. On the contrary, there \vere savage fanatics for slavery, some from abjectness, others, worse still, from disinterested motives.
Women alone did not take part in this shameful abandonment of those who were near and dear . . . and women alone stood at the Cross too, and at the blood-stained guillotine there stood, first, Lucile Desmoulins,5 that Ophelia of the revolution, always beside the axe, waiting for her turn, and later, George Sand, who gave the hand of sympathy and friendship on the scaffold to the youthful fanatic Alibaud.6
The wives of men exiled to hard labour lost their civil rights, abandoned wealth and social position, and went to a lifetime of bondage in the terrible climate of Eastern Siberia, under the still more terrible oppression of the police there.i Sisters, who had not the right to go with their brothers, withdrew from court, and many left Russia ; almost all of them kept a feeling of love for the victims alive in their hearts; but there was no such love in the men: terror consumed it in their hearts, and not one of them dared mention the unfortunates.
The accounts of the rising and of the trial of the leaders, and the horror in Moscow, made a deep impression on me; a new world was revealed to me which became more and more the centre of my moral existence. I do not know how it came to pass, but, though I had no understanding, or only a very dim one, of what it all meant, I felt that I was not on the same side as the grape-shot and victory, prisons and chains. The execution of Pestel8 and his associates finally dissipated the childish dream of my soul.
5 "'ife of Camille Desmoulins. who at his execution appealed to the crowd, was arrested and also executed in 1 i9-k ( Tr. ) 6 Ali baud. Louis ( 1 8 1 0-36) , attempted to assassinate Louis Philippe in 1 836. ( Tr.)
i See' Russian Women ( 187 1-2) by Nikolay Alexeye,·ich Nekrasov ( 1 82 1 -78) . ( R. )
8 Peste!. Pavel hanoYich ( I 793-1 826 ) , leader of the officers in the Southern Army who supported the attempt to oYerthrow the autocracy and
Nursery and University
43
Everyone expected some mitigation of the sentence on the condemned men, since the coronation was about to take place.
Even my father, in spite of his caution and his scepticism, said that the death penalty would not be carried out, and that all this was done merely to impress people. But, like everyone else, he knew little of the youthful monarch. Nicholas left Petersburg, and, without visiting Moscow, stopped at the Petrovsky Palace .
. . . The inhabitants of Moscow could scarcely believe their eyes when they read in the Moscow News the terrible news of the fourteenth of July.
The Russian people had become unaccustomed to the death penalty; since the days of Mirovich,9 who was executed instead of Catherine II, and of Pugachev10 and his companions, there had been no executions; men had died under the knout, soldiers had run the gauntlet (contrary to the law) until they fell dead, but the death penalty de jure did not exist.ll The story is told that in the reign of Paul there was some partial rising of the Cossacks on the Don in which two officers were implicated. Paul ordered them to be tried by court-martial, and gave the hetman or general full authority. The court condemned them to death, establish constitutional government. The other four who were hanged were Ryleyev, Kakhovsky, Bestuzhev-Ryumin, and Muravev-Apostol.
(Tr.)
9 Mirovich, Vasily Yakovlevich ( 1 740-64) , in 1 762 tried to rescue from the Schliisselburg the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, known as Ivan VI, who perished in the attempt. It is said that Catherine had given orders that he was to be murdered if any attempt were made to release him. Mirovich was beheaded. ( Tr.)
lO Pugachev, Emelyan Ivanovich (c. 1 742-75) , tHe Cossack leader of the great rising of the serfs in 1 775. ( Tr.)
ll By an ukaz of Yelizaveta Petrovna of 30th September, 1 754, the death penalty (in case of the award of it) was commuted to another punishment (penal servitude, branding, etc. ) . Catherine II confirmed, by an ukaz of 6th April, 1 7 75, the legality of the ukaz of 1 754; but the ukaz o£
Yelizaveta Petrovna was interpreted as not being applicable to state (extraordinary) crimes (hence the executions of Mirovich and Pugachev ) .