Nothing in the world can be more narrow-minded and more inhuman than wholesale condemnation of whole classes of 2 Of the Polish government formed at the time of the rising of 1 830-1.
(A.S.)
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1 52
people by a label, by a moral card-index, by the leading characteristics of their trade. Names are dreadful things. Jean-Paul Richter says with extraordinary certainty: 'If a child tells a lie, frighten him with his bad conduct, tell him he has told a lie, but don't tell him he is a liar. You destroy his moral confidence in himself by defining him as a liar. "That is a murderer," we are told, and at once we fancy a hidden dagger, a brutal expression, black designs, as though murder were a permanent employment, the trade of the man who has happened once in his life to kill someone. One cannot be a spy or trade in the vice of others and remain an honest man, but one may be an officer in the gendarmes without losing all human dignity; just as one may very often find womanliness, a tender heart and even nobility of character in the unhappy victims of "public incontinence." '
I have an aversion for people who cannot, or will not, or do not take the trouble to go beyond the name, to step over the barrier of crime, over n confused, false position, but either modestly turn aside, or harshly thrust it all mvay from them.
This is �sually done by dry, ab�tract natures, egoistic and revolting in their purity, or base, vulgar natures who hnve not yet managed, or have not needed, to exhibit themselves in practice.
In sympathy they are at home in the dirty depths into 'vhich others have sunk.
I nt'esti�·{ttioJt
{Lnd SeJtlence
Bl.:T WITH ALL THIS 'vhat of our case. what of the investigation and the trinl?
They were no more successful in thP new commission than in the old. ThP police had hPf'n on our track for a long time, but in their zeal and impatience could not wnit to find n sensible occasion, and did something silly. They had sent a retired officer callf'd Skaryatka to lPad us on and Pxposp us; he made ncquaintance with almost nil of our circle, but Wf' vpry soon guesse1l wha t hl' was and held nloof from him. Other young men, for the most part students, had not been so cautious, hut these others had no sf'rious connection with us.
One stll!lf'nt, on completing his studies, had given a lunch-
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153
party to his friends on Z4th June, 1 834. Not one of us was at the festivity: indeed none of us had been invited. The young men drank too much, played the fool, danced the mazurka, and among other things sang Sokolovsky's1 well-known song on the accession of Nicholas:
The Emperor of Russia
Has gone to realms above,
The operating surgeon
Slit his belly open.
The Government is weeping
And all the people weep;
There's coming to rule over us
Constantine the freak.
But to the King of Heaven,
Almighty God above,
Our Tsar of blessed memory
Has handed a petition.
When He read the paper,
Moved to pity, God
Gave us Nicholas instead,
The blackguard, the . . . 2
In the evening Skaryatka suddenlr remembered that it was his name-day, told a talc of how he had made a profit on the side of a horse, and invited the students to his quarters, promising them a dozen of champagne. They all went; the champagn<' app<'ared, and the host, staggering, proposed that they should once more sing Sokolovsky's song. In the middle of the singing the door opened and Tsynsky with the police walk!'d in. All this was crude, stupid, clumsy, and at the same time unsuccessful.
The police wanted to catch us; they were looking for external evidence to involve in the case some five or six men whom thcv had already marked, and only succeeded in catching twent�
innocent persons.
It is not easy, however, to disconcert the Russian police.
"Within a fortnight they arrested us as implicated in the supper case. In Sokolovsky's possession they found letters from Satin, in 1 It is probable that A. I. Polezhaye\" was the author of this song. ( A .S.) 2 The epithet in the last line is left to the imagination in Russian also.
( Tr.) The word is probably svoloch ('off-scourings,' 'scum· ; the Russian word is most opprobrious). (R.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
1 54
Satin's possession letters from Ogarcv, and in Ogarev's posses�ion my letters. Nevertheless, nothing was discovered. The first investigation failed. For the greater success of the second commission, the Tsar sent from Petersburg the choicest of the inquisitors, A. F. Golitsyn.
This breed of person is rare in Russia. It is represented among us by Mordvinov, the famous head of the Third Division, Pelikan, the rector of Vilna, and a few accommodating Baltic Germans and Poles3 who have ratted.
But unluckily for the inquisition Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, was appointed the first member. Staal, a straightfor
\vard military man, a gallant old general, went into the case and found that it consisted of two circumstances that had no connection with each other: the affair of the supper party, which ought to have been punished by law, and the arrest, God knew why, of persons whose only guilt, so far as could be seen, lay in certain half-expressed opinions, for which it \vould be both difficult and absurd to try them.
Staal's opinion did not please Golitsyn junior. The dispute between them became caustic; the old \varrior flared up, struck the floor with his sabre and said:
'Instead of ruining people, you had better draw up a report on the advisability of closing all the schools and universities; that would warn other unfortunates; however, you can do what you like, but you must do it without me. I shan't set foot in the commission again.'
·with these words the old gentleman hastened out of the room.
The Tsar \vas informed of this the same day.
In the morning when the commandant appeared with his report, the Tsar asked him why he would not attend the commission ; Staal told him why.
'What nonsense! ' replied the Tsar, 'to quarrel with Golitsyn, for shame! I trust you will attend the commission as before.'
'Sire,' answered Staal, 'spare my grey hairs. I have lived to reach them without the slightest stain on my honour. My zeal is known to Your Majesty, my blood, the remnant of my days are yours, but this is a question of my honour-my conscience revolts against what is being done in the commission.'
The Tsar frowned. Staal bowed himself out, and from that time was not once present in the commission.
3 Among those who have distinguished themselves in this line of late years is the famous Liprandi, who drew up a scheme for founding an Academy of Espionage ( 1 858) .
Prison and Exile
1 55
This anecdote, the truth of which is not open to the slightest doubt, throws great light on the character of Nicholas. How was it that it did not enter his head that if a man whom he could not but respect, a brave warrior, an old man full of merit, so obstinately besought him to spare his honour, the business could not be quite clean? He should have done no less than require Golitsyn to present himself and insist on Staal's explaining the matter before him. He did not do this, but gave orders that we should be confined more strictly.