Of course my reading, too, took a different turn. Politics was now in the foreground, and above all the history of the Revolution, of which I knew nothing except from Madame Proveau's tales. In thf' l ibrary in thP basement I discovered a history of the
'nineties written by a Royalist. It was so partial that even at fourteen I did not believe it. I happened to hear from old Bouchot that he had been in Paris during the Revolution, and I longed to question him ; but Bouchot was a stern and forbidding man with an immense no�e and spectacles; he never indulged in superfluous conversation with me; he conjugated verbs, dictated copies, scolded me and went away, leaning on his thick gnarled stick.
'Why did they execute Louis XVI? ' I asked him in the middle of a lesson.
The old man looked at me, frowning with one grey eyebrow and lifting the other, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead like a visor, pulled out a large blue handkerchief and, wiping his nose with dignity. said:
'Puree qu'il a etc traitrc a Ia patric.'
1"' Gatchina \vas an !'stat!' which llild belong!'d to Grigory Orlov. CathPrine II bough t it from his exPrutors anrl presPnted it to Paul. He ran it like a barracks and drilled his battalions there, which wen' laraeh-
"
•
composed
of c riminals and runaways. ( R.)
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'If you had been one of the judges, would you have signed the death sentence?'
'With both hands.'
This lesson was of more value to me than all the subjunctives; it was enough for me; it was clear that the King had deserved to be executed.
Old Bouchot did not like me and thought me empty-headed and mischievous because I did not prepare my lessons properly, and he often used to say, 'You'll come to no good,' but when he noticed my sympathy with his regicide ideas, he began to be gracious instead of being cross, forgave my mistakes and used to tell me episodes of the year '93 and how he had left France, when 'the dissolute and the dishonest' got the upper hand. He would finish the lesson with the same dignity, without a smile, but now he would say indulgently:
'I really did think that you "·ere coming to no good, but your generous feelings will be your salvation.'
To this encouragement and sympathy from my teacher was soon added a warmer sympathy which had more influence on me.
The granddaughter17 of my father's eldest brother was living in a little town in the province of Tver. I had known her from my earliest childhood, but we rarely met; she used to come once a year for Christmas or for carnival to stay at Moscow with her aunt. Nevertheless, we became friends. She was five years older than I, but so small and young-looking that she might have been taken for the same age. ·what I particularly liked her for was that she was the first person who treated me as a human being, that is, did not continually express surprise at my having gro'l-vn, ask me what lessons I was doing, and ,vhether I was good at them, and whether I wanted to go into the army and into what regiment, but talked to me as people in general talk to each other-though she did retain that tone of authority which girls like to assume with boys who are a little younger than themselves.
We had been writing to each other since 1 82·1, and frequently, btu letters again mean pens and paper, again the schoolroom table with its blots and pictures carved with a penknife; I longed to see her, to talk to het· about my new ideas, and so it may be imagined with what joy I heard that my cousin was coming in l i Tatyana Kuchin. known in Russian litPrature under her married name, Passek. She wrote memoirs, which throw interesting sidelights on Herzen's narrative. ( Tr. )
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February ( 1 826), and would stay with us for some months. I scratched on my table the days of the month until her arrival and blotted them out as they passed, sometimes intentionally forgetting three days so as to have the pleasure of blotting out rather more at once, and yet the time dragged on very slowly; then the time fixed had passed and another was fixed, and that passed, as always happens.
I was sitting one evening 'vith my tutor Protopopov in my schoolroom, and he, as usual, taking a sip of fizzing kvas after every sentence, was talking of the hexameter, horribly chopping up, 'vith voice and hand, every line of Gnedich's Iliad into feet, when all of a sudden the snow in the yard crunched with a different sound from that made by town sledges, the tied-up bell gave the relic of a tinkle, there were voices in the courtyard . . .
I flushc>d crimson, I had no more thought for the wrath of
'Achilles. son of Peleus' ; I rushed headlong to the hall and my cousin from Tver, wrapped in fur coats, shawls, and scarves, wearing a hood and high. whit<> fur boots. flushed with the frost and, perhaps, with joy, rushed to kiss me.
People usually recall their early childhood, its griefs and joys,
\vith a smile of condescension, as though like Sofya Pavlovna in Woe from Wit,18 they would say. looking prim: 'Childishness! '
A s though they had grown better i n later years, as though their feelings were kec>ner or dc>c>per. \Vithin thrc>e vears children are ashamed of their plavthings-lc>t thc>m: they long to be grownup, they grow and chang-e so rapidly. they' sc>e that from their jackets and the pages of thPir schoolbooks. But one would have thought gro\m-up people might understand that childhood togethPr with two or thrN' years of youth is the fullest, most exquisite part of lif<>, th<' part that is most our own, and, indeed, almost the most important, for it imperceptibly shapes our future.
So long as a man is advancinf!; with swift footsteps without stopping or taking thought, so long as he does not come to a precipice or break his neck. he imagines that his life lies before him, looks down on the past and does not know how to appreciatf' th<' presc>nt. But whPn experience has crushed the flowers of spring and has chilled the glow on the cheeks of summer, when he begins to susp<'ct that life, prop<>rly speaking, is over, and what remains is its continuation, then he returns with different feelings to the bright, warm, lovely memories of early youth.
! 8 By A. S. G riboyedov. (Act I, scene 7.) (A.S.)
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Nature with her everlasting snares and economic devices gives man youth, but takes the formed man for herself; she draws him on, entangles him in a web of social and family relations, threefourths of which are independent of his will ; he, of course, gives his personal character to his actions but he belongs to himself far less than in youth; the lyrical element in the personality is feebler and therefore also his senses and his power of enjoyment-everything-is weaker, except the mind and the will.
My cousin's life was not a bed of roses. Her mother she lost when she was a child. Her father was a desperate gambler, and, like all who have gambling in their blood, he was a dozen times reduced to poverty and a dozen times rich again, and ended all the same by completely ruining himself. Les beaux restes of his property he devoted to a stud-farm on which he concentrated all his thoughts and feelings. His son, an ensign in the Uhlans, my cousin's only brother and a very good-natured youth, was going the straight road to ruin; at nineteen he was already a more passionate gambler than his father.