Before the festive day the wines would be tried, and so it would be necessary to send a messenger for more, for clearly the samples were liked.
For the celebration of the four name-days I wrote out a complete programme, which was deemed worthy of the special attention of the inquisitor Golitsyn, who asked me at the enquiry whether the programme had been carried out exactly.
'A Ia lettre,' I replied. He shrugged his shoulders as though he had spent his whole life in the Smolny Convent or keeping Good Friday.
After supper as a rule a vital question arose; a question that aroused controversy, i .e. how to prepare the punch. Other things were usually eaten and drunk in good faith, like the voting in Parliament, without dispute, but in this everyone must have a hand and, moreover, it was after supper.
'Light it-don't light it yet-light it how?-put it out with champagne or Sauternes?-put the fruit and pineapple in while it is burning or afterwards?'
'Obviously when it is burning, and then the whole aroma will go into the punch.'
'But, I say, pineapples float, the edges will be scorched, simply a calamity.'
'That's all nonsense,' Ketscher would shout louder than all,
'but what's not nonsense is that you must put out the candles.'
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The candles were put out; all the faces looked blue, and the features seemed to quiver with the movement of the flame. And meantime the temperature in the little room was becoming tropical from the hot rum. Everyone was thirsty and the punch was not ready. But Joseph, the Frenchman sent from the Yar, was ready; he had prepared something, the antithesis of punch, an iced beverage of various wines a la base de cognac. A genuine son of the 'grand peuple,' he explained to us, as he put in the French wine, that it was so good because it had twice passed the Equator. 'Oui oui, messieurs; deux fois l'equateur, messieurs!'
When the beverage, remarkable for its arctic iciness, had been finished and in fact there was no n('ed of more drink, Ketscher shouted, stirring the fiery lake in the soup-tureen and making the last lumps of sugar melt with a hiss and a wail,
'It's time to put it out! time to put it out ! '
The flame blushes from the champagne, and runs along the surface of the punch, with a kind of anguish and foreboding.
Then comes a voice of despair:
'But I say, old man, you're mad: don't you see the wax 1s melting right into the punch ?'
'Well, you try holding the bottle yourself in such heat so that the wax does not melt.'
'Well, something ought to be have been wrapped round it first,'
the distressed voice continues.
'Cups, cups, have you enough? How many are there of us?
Nine, ten, fourteen, yes, yes!'
'Where's one to find fourteen cups?'
'Well any one who hasn't got a cup must usc a glass.'
'The glasses will crack.'
'Never, never; you've only to put a spoon in them.'
Candles are brought, the last flicker of flame runs across the middle, makes a pirouette and vanishes.
'The punch is a success ! '
'It i s a great success ! ' i s said on all sides.
Next day my h('ad aches-1 feel sick. That's evidently from the punch, too mixed ! Am! on the spot I make a sincere resolution never to drink punch for the future ; it is a poison.
Petr Fedorovich comes in.
'You came home in somebody else's hat, sir: our hat is a better one.'
'The devil take it entirely.'
'Should I run to Nikolay. Mikhaylovich's Kuzma?'
'\Vhy, do you imagine someone went home without a hat?'
Nursery and University
1 1 3
'It won't hurt to go just in case.'
At this point I guess that the hat is only a pretext, and that Kuzma has invited Petr Fedorovich to the field of battle.
'You go and see Kuzma; only first ask the cook to let me have some sour cabbage.'
'So, Lexandr Ivanych, the gentlemen kept their name-days in fine style?'
'Yes, indeed: there hasn't been such a supper in our time.'
'So we shan't be going to the university to-day?'
My conscience pricks me and I make no answer.
'Your papa was asking me, "How is it," says he, "he is not up yet?" I was pretty smart. I said, "His honour's head aches; he complained of it from early morning, so I did not even pull up the blinds.'' "Well," said he, "you did right there." '
'But do let me go to sleep, for Christ's sake. You wanted to go and see Kuzma, so go.'
'This minute, this minute, sir; first I'll run for the cabbage.'
A heavy sleep closes my eyes again; two or three hours later I wake up much refreshed. vVhat can they be doing there?
Ketscher and Ogarev stayed the night. It's annoying that punch has such an effect on the head, for it must be owned it's very nice. It is a mistake to drink punch by the glass; henceforth and for ever I will certainly drink no more than a small cupful.
So ends the first part of our youth ; the second begins with prison. But before we enter upon it I must say something of the tendencies, of the ideas, with which it found us.
The period that followed the suppression of the Polish insurrection educated us rapidly. '\Ve were not tormented only by the fact that Nicholas had grown to his full stature and was firmly established in severity; we began with inward horror to perceive that in Europe, too, and especially in France, to which we looked for our political \vatchword and battle-cry, things were not going well ; we began to look upon our theories with suspicion.
The childish liberalism of 1 826, which gradually passed into the French political view preached by the Lafayettes and Benjamin Constant and sung by Beranger, lost its magic power over us after the ruin of Poland.
Then some of the young people, and Vadim among them, threw themselves into a profound, earnest study of Russian history.
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Others took to the study of German philosophy.
Ogarev and I belonged to neither of these sets. We had grown too closely attached to other ideas to part with them readily. Our faith in revolution of the festive Bcranger stamp was shaken, but we looked for something else which we could find neither in the Chronicle of Nestor8 nor in the transcendental idealism of Schelling.
In the midst of this ferment, in the midst of surmises, of confused efforts to understand the doubts which frightened us, the pamphlets of Saint-Simon and his followers, their tracts and their trial came into our hands. They impressed us.
Critics, superficial and not superficial, have laughed enough at Father Enfantin9 and his apostles; the time has now come for some recognition of these forerunners of socialism.
These enthusiastic youths with their terry waistcoats and their budding beards made a triumphant and poetic appearance in the midst of the petit bourgeois world. They heralded a new faith; they had something to say; they had something in the name of which to summon the old order of things before their court of judgment, fain to judge them by the Code Napoleon10
and the religion of Orleans.11
On the one hand came the emancipation of woman, the call to her to join in common labour. the giving of her destiny into her own hands, alliance ,..-ith her as with an equal.