Prison and Exile
1 3 1
. . . There i s a wonderful monument3 a t Lucerne ; carved by Thorwaldsen in the living rock. A dying lion is lying in a hollow: he is wounded to death; the blood is streaming from a wound in which the fragment of an arrow is sticking; he has laid his gallant head upon his paw, he is moaning, there is a look in his eyes of unbearable pain; all round it is empty, with a pond below, all this shut in by mountains, trees, and greenery; people pass by without seeing that here a royal beast is dying.
Once after sitting some time on a sPat facing the stone agony, I was suddenly reminded of my last visit to Orlov . . . .
Driving home from Orlov's, I passed the house of the oberpolitsmcpter,4 and the idea occurred to me of asking him openly for permission to see Ogarev.
I had never in my life been in the house of a police official.
I was kept waiting a long time; at last the oberpolitsmeyster came In.
My request surprised him.
'What grounds have you for asking this permission?'
'Ogarev is my kinsman.'
'Your kinsman?' he asked, looking straight into my face.
I did not answer, but I, too, looked straight into his Excellency's face.
'I cannot give you permission,' he said; 'your kinsman is au secret. Very sorry!'
UncE-rtainty and inactivity were killing me. Hardly any of my friends WE're in town ; I could find out absolutely nothing. It seemed as though the police had forgotten or overlooked me. It was very, very drE-ary. But just when the whole sky was overcast with grey storm-clouds and the long night of exile and prison was approaching, a ray of light shont: down on me.
A few words of deep sympathy, uttered by a girl of st:venteen whom I had looked upon as a child, brought me to life again.
For the first time in my story a woman's figure5 appears . . .
and properly one single woman's figure appears throughout my life.
The passing fancies of youth and spring that had troubled my soul 'paled and vanished before it, like pictures in the mist; and no fresh ones came.
3 The monument was raised in 1 82 1 to the nH'mory of the Swiss Guards who fell in the defence of the Tuileries in l i92. (A.S. ) 4 Oberpolits(ey) meptN (Oberpoli::eimcistrr) , the senior police-officer in Petersburg or Moscow. ( R.)
5 Natalya AlexandrO\·na Zakharin. Herzen's first cousin and wife. (R.)
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\Ve met in a graveyard. She stood leaning against a tombstune and spoke of Ogarcv, and my grief was put away.
'Till to-morrow,' she said and gave me her hand, smiling through her tears.
'Till to-morrow,' I answered . . . and stood a long time looking after her disappearing figure.
That \vas the nineteenth of July 1834.
J11r·
l/
Arrest
'TILL TO-i'IORRow,' I repeated, as J fell asleep . . . . I felt uncommonly light-hearted and happy.
Between one and two in the morning1 my father's valet woke me; he was not dressed and \vas frightened.
'An officer is asking for you.'
'\Vhat officer?'
'I don't kno\v.'
'\V£>ll, I do,' I told him and threw on my dressing-gown.
In the doorway of the great hall a figure was standing wrapped in a military greatcoat; by the window I saw a \Yhite plume, and th£>re were other persons behind-1 made out the cap of a Cossack.
It was the politsmentcr, Miller.
He told me tha t by an order of the military Governor-General, which he held in his hand, he must look through my papers.
Candles were brought. The politsmcyster took my keys; the district police superintendent and his lieutenant began rummaging among my books and my linen. Th� politsmeyster busied hims£>lf among my papers; everything s£>emed suspicious to him ; he laid everything on one side and suddenly turned to me and said:
'I must ask you to dress meanwhile ; you'll come along with me.'
'\\'h£>re to?' I asked.
'To tlw Prechi�tenskv police station,' answered the politsmcyster in a soothing voice.
'And then? '
1 O f 2 1 s t July. 1 83+. ( A .S.)
Prison and Exile
1 33
'There is nothing more in the Governor-General's order.'
I began to dress.
Meanwhile the frightened servants had woken my mother. She rushed out of her bedroom and was coming to my room, but was stopped by a Cossack at the doors between the drawing-room and the salon. She uttered a shriek: I shuddered and ran to her.
The politsmeyster left the papers and came with me to the salon.
He apologised to my mother, let her pass, swore at the Cossack, who was not to blame, and went back to the papers.
Then my father came up. He was pale but tried to maintain his studied indifference. The scene was becoming painful. My mother sat in the corner, weeping. My old father spoke of indifferent matters with the politsmeyster, but his voice shook. I was afraid that I could not stand this for long and did not want to afford the local police superintendent the satisfaction of seeing me in tears.
I pulled the politsmeyster by the sleeve,
'Let us go!'
'Let us go,' he said gladly.
My father went out of the room and returned a minute later.
He brought a l ittle ikon and put it round my neck, saying that his father had given it to him with his blessing on his deathbed.
I was touched: this religious gift showed me the degree of fear and shock in the old man's heart. I knelt down while he was putting it on; he helped me up, embraced me and blessed me.
The ikon was a picture in enamel of the head of John the Baptist on a charger. What this was-example, advice, or prophecy?-! do not know, but the significance of the ikon struck me.
My mother was almost unconscious.
All the servants accompanied me down the staircase weeping and rushing to kiss my cheek or my hands. I felt as though I were present at my own funeral. The politsmeyster scowled and hurried me on.
When we went out at the gate he collected his detachment; he had with him four Cossacks, two police superintendents and two ordinary policemen.
'Allov; me to go home,' a man with a beard who was sitting in front of the gate asked the politsmcyster.
'You can go,' said Miller.
'What man is that?' I asked, getting into the drozhki.
'The impartial witness; you know that without an impartial witness the police cannot enter a houso.'
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
1 34
'Then why did you leave him outside the gate?'
'It's a mere form ! It's simply keeping the man out of bed for nothing,' observed Miller.
vVe drove off accompanied by two Cossacks on horseback.
There was no special room for me in the police station. The politsmepter directed that I should be put in the office until morning. He took me there himself; he flung himself in an easychair and, yawning vvearily, muttered:
'It's a damnable service. I've been on the jump since three o'clock in the afternoon, and here I've been bothered with you till morning. I bet i t's past three already and to-morrow I must go with the report at nine.
'Good-bye,' he added a minute later, and \Vent out.
A non-commissioned officer locked me in, observing that if I needed anything I could knock a t the door.
I opened the \vindow. The day was already beginning and the morning wind was rising; I asked the non-commissioned officer for water and drank off a whole jugful. There was no thinking of sleep. Besides, there was nowhere to lie down; apart from the dirty leather chairs and one easy-chair, thPre was nothing in the office but a big table heaped up with papers and in the corner a little table with still more heaped up on it. A poor nightlight did not light the room, but made a flickering patch of light on the ceiling that grew paler and paler with the dawn.