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Goethe, in which the latter paid him an extremely odd compliment, saying: 'There is no need for you to apologise for your style-you have succeeded in what I never could succeed i n doing-forgetting German grammar.'
�·
In August 1830 we went to Vasilevskoye, stopped, as we usually did, at the Radcliffian castle of Perkhushkovo and, after feeding ourseh·es and our horses, \\·ere preparing to continue our journey. Bakay, with a tov•el round his waist like a belt, had already shouted: 'Off ! ' whf'n a man galloped up on horseback, signalling to us to stop, and one of the Senator's postillions, covered with dust and sweat, leapt off his horse and handed my father an envelope. In the envelope was the ne\vs of the Revolution of July ' There Wf're two pages of the Journal des Debats which he had brought with the letter; I read them over a hundred times and got to know them by heart, and for the first time I found the country dull.
It was a glorious time; events came quickly. Scarcely had the meagre> figure of Charles X had time to disapprar into the mists of Holyrood. whcn Belgium flarrd up, thr throne of thf' Citizen King tottrrrd. and a hot, revolutionary brf'eze began to blow in drbates and literature. Novels, plays, porms, all once more brcame propaganda and conflict.
At that time we knew nothing of the artificial stage-setting of thf' rf'volution in France>. and \Yf' took it all fo1· honrst cash.
Anyone who cares to see how strongly the ne\vs of the July Revolution affectf'd thr younger generation should read Heine's description of how he heard in Hf'ligoland 'that the great pagan Pan was drad.' There was no sham ardour there: Heine at thirtv was o.s enthusiastic, as childishly excited, as we were at eighteeri..
\Ye followed stcp by step every word, every event, the bold questions and abrupt answers. the doings of Gf'nf'ral Lafayette.
and of Gf'neral Lamarque; we not only knew every detail concerning them but lovcd all the leading men (the Radicals, of coursP) and lf'pt thPir portraits.
In dw midst of this ff'rment all at once, like a bomb exploding closP hv. the news of tlw rising in \\'arsaw stunnPd us. This was not far away : this was at home, aml we looked at each other with t!'at·s in our <':V(''· repf'ating our favourite line: N cin ' rs sind keinr !cere Triiumc! 22
�� From J. "'· ,·an Goethe's 1/offnung. ( For l..cinr read nicht.) (A.S.)
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We rejoiced at every defeat of Dibich; refused to believe in the failures of the Poles, and I at once added to my ikonostasis the portrait of Thaddeus Kokiuszko.
It was just then that I saw Nicholas for the second time and his face was still more strongly engraved on my memory. The nobility and gentry \vere giving a ball in his honour. I was i n the gallery of the Assembly Hall and could stare at him t o my heart's content. He had not yet begun to wear a moustache. His face was still young, but I was struck by the change in it since the time of the coronation. He stood morosely by a column, staring coldly and grimly before him, without looking at anyone. He had grown thinner. In those features, in those pewtery eyes one distinctly could read the fate of Poland, and indeed of Russia as well. He was shaken, frightened; he doubted23 the securi ty of his throne and was ready to avenge himself for what he had suffered, for his fear and his doubts.
With the subjection of Poland all the restrained malignancy of the man was let loose. Soon we felt it, too.
The network of espionage cast about the university from the beginning of the reign began to be drawn tighter. In 1 832 a Pole who was a student in our faculty disappeared. Sent to the university as a government scholar, not at his own initiative, he had been put in our course; I made friends with him; he was discreet and melancholy in his behaviour; we never heard a bitter word from him, but we never heard a word of weakness either. One 23 Here i; what Denis Davydov• tells in his memoirs: 'The Tsar said one day to A. P. Yermolov: "I was once in a very terrible situation during the Polish 'Var. My wife was expecting her confinement; rebellion had broken out in Novgorod; I had only two squadrons of the Horse Guards left me; the news from the army was only reaching me through Kiinigsber�. I, �vas forced to surround myself with soldiers discharged from hospital.
The memoirs of this partisan leave no room for doubt that Nicholas, like Arakcheyev, like all cold-hearted, cruel and vindictive people was a coward. Here is what General Chechensky told Davydov: 'You know that I can appreciate manliness and so you will believe my words. I was near the Tsar on the 1 4th December. and I watched him all the time.
I can assure you on my honour that the Tsar, who was very pale all the time, had his heart in his boots.'
And Davydov himself tells us: 'During the riot in the Haymarket the Tsar only visited the capital on the second day, when order was restored.
The Tsar was at Peterhof, and himself once observed casually, "Volkon-
• Davydov (see Tolstoy's War and Peace) and Yerrnolov were both leaders of the partisan or guerilla warfare against the French in 1 8 1 2. ( Tr.)
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morning he was missing from the lectures; next day he was missing still. We began to make inquiries; the government scholars told us in secret that he had bee-n fetched away at night, that he had been summoned before the authorities, and then people had come for his papers and belongings and had ordered them not to speak of it. There the matter ended: we never heard anything of the fate of this unfortunate young man.
A few months passed when suddenly there was a rumour in the lecture-room that several students had been seized in the night; among them were Kostenetsky, Kohlreif, Antonovich and others; we knew them well : they were all excellent fellows.
Kohlreif, the son of a Protestant pastor, was an extremely gifted musician. A court-martial wa s appointed to try them; this meant in plain language that they \Vere doomed to perish. We were all in a fever of suspense to know what would happen to them,24
but from the first thev too vanished without trace. The storm that was crushing the sprouts was close at hand. We no longer had a foreboding of its approach: we heard it, we saw i t, and we huddl<'d closer and closer together.
The danger strung up our exasperated nerves even tighter, made our hearts beat faster and made us love each other with greater fervour. There were five of us at first25 and now we met Vadim Passek.
In Vadim there was a great deal that was new to us. With slight variations we had all developNl in similar ways: that is, we knew nothing but Moscow and our country estates, we had all lenrned out of the same books, had lessons from the same sky and I wen' standing il l! day on a mound in the garden, l istening for the sound of cilnnon-shot from the dirPction of Petersburg." Instead of anxiously l istPning in the garden. ilnrl continually sending couriers to Petersburg." Dm·ydov adds. 'he ought to have hastened there himself; anyone of the slightest manliness would haYe don!' so. On the following dily (when 1'\·ery thinr; was quiet) th<' Tsm· dmYe in h is carriage into the crowd which lill<>d the sr1uare. illl!l shouted to it. "On your knees!"