When Staal had gone there were only enemies of the accused in the committee, presided over by a simple-hearted old man, Prince S. M. Golitsyn, who after nine months knew as little about the case as he had nine months before it began. He preserved a dignified silence, very rarely put in a word, and at the end of an examination invariably asked:
'May we let him go?'
'We may,' Golitsyn junior would answer, and the senior would say with dignity to the prisoner,
'You may go.'
My first examination lasted four hours.
The questions were of two kinds. The object of the first \vas to discover a manner of thinking 'not akin to the spirit of the government, revolutionary opinions, imbued with the pernicious doctrines of Saint-Simon,' as Golitsyn junior and the auditor Oransky expressed it.
These questions were easy, but they were hardly questions. I n the papers and letters that had been seized the opinions were fairly simply expressed ; the questions could properly only relate to the material fact of whether a man had or had not written the words in question. The committee thought it necessary to add to every written phrase, 'How do you explain the following passage in your letter?'
Of course it was useless to explain; I wrote evasive and empty phrases in reply. In one letter the auditor discovered the phrase:
'All constitutional charters lead to nothing: they are contracts between a master and his slaves; the task is not to make things better for the slaves, but that there should be no slaves.' When I had to explai n this phrase I observed that I saw no obligation to defend constitutional government, and that, if I had defended it, it would have been charged against me.
'A constitutional form of government may be attacked from two sides,' Golitsyn junior observed in his nervous, hissing voice ;
'you do not attack it from the monarchical point of view, or you would not talk about slaves.'
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'In that I Nr in company with the' Empress Catherine II, who onl!"red that her subjPcts should not be called slaves.'
Golitsyn, brPathll'ss with anger at this ironical rl'ply, said:
'You seem to imaginE" that we arC' assemblt>d here to conduct scholastic arguments, that you are defending a thesis in the university.'
'\Vith what object, then, do you ask for explanations?'
'You appPar not to understand what is \vanted of you.'
'I do not understand.'
'\Yhat obstinacy then• is in all of them,' Golitsyn senior, the pn•sidPnt. added, shmgging his shoulders and glancing at Shubinsky, the colorwl of gl'ndarmes. I smill'd.
'Just like Ogarc;v.' the' good-heartl'd prPsi<knt wound up.
A pause' follo\w<l. The commission was assembled in Golitsyn sPnior"s l ibrary, and I turned to tlw bookshelves and bPgnn C'Xamining the books. Among others there was an edition in many volume's of the memoirs of tlw Due dP Saint-Simon.
'1-lf'r<',' I said, turning to tlw presidC'nt, 'is it not unjust? I am
!wing trit>d on account of Saint-SimonisnL whi l e you. princt>, hm·e t\wnty volume's of his works.'
As the good old man had newr read anything in his life, he coqld not think what to ans\ver. But Golitsyn junior looked at me with the e:ws of a viper and asked :
'Don't vou SPe that those ar<' the memoirs of the Due de Saint
Simon at the time of Louis XIV?'
The presidC'nt with a smilP gave me a nod that signified,
'\VeiL my boy. a bit flashy, that remark of yours, wasn't it?' and said,
'You may go.'
\\"hilP I was in the <loorway thC' prPsidC'nt asked:
'Is he the one who wrote about Peter I, that thing you were showing me?'
'Yes.' answerC'd Shubinsky.
I stopped.
'll a drs moycns,' obsC'rved the president.
'So much the worsP. Poison in clev!'r hands IS all the more dangProus.' ndd!"d the inquisitor; 'a very pernicious and quite incorrigible' young man.'
J\fy sentence lav in those words.
A propos Saint�Simon. \Vhen the politsmc_ntcr seized Ogarev's hooks and pap<'rs. hP laid aside a ,-olume of Thiers' History of the Frrnch Rrvolution, then found a sPcond volume . . . a third
. . . an eighth. At last hP could bear it no longer, and said :
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'Good Lord ! what a number o f revolutionary books . . . and here is another,' he added, giving the policeman Cuvier's Discours sur les revolutions du globe terrcstre.
The second kind of quPstion was more confusing. In them various police traps and inquisitional tricks WPre made use of to confuse, entangle, and involve one in contradictions. Hints of information given by others and different moral torments were Pmployed . It is not vvorth-whilP to tell them: it is enough to suy that all their devices could not produce a single adequate confrontation among the four of us.4
After I had received my last question, I was sitting alone in the little room in which we \'\TOte. All at once the door opened and Golitsyn junior walked in with a gloomy and anxious face.
'I have come,' he said, 'to have a few words with you before your evidence is completed. My late father's long connection with yours makes me take a special interest in you. You are young and may still make a career; to do so you must clear yourself of this affair . . . and fortunately it depends on yourself. Your father has taken your arrest deeply to heart and is living now in the hope that you will be released: Prine!' Sergey Mikhaylovich and I have just been spPaking about it and we are genuinely ready to do all we can ; give us the means of assisting you.'
I saw the drift of his words; the blood rushed to my head; I gnawed my pen with vexation.
He went on:
'You are going straight under the white strap, or to the fortress; on the way you will kill your father; he will not survive the day when he set's you in the grey overcoat of a soldier.'
I tried to say something but he interrupted me:
'I know what you want to say. Have a little patience! That yot: had designs against the government is evident. To merit the mercy of the Monarch you must give proofs of your penitence.
You are obstinate, you give evasive answers and from a false sense of honour you spare men of whom we know more than you do and who have not been so discrN't as you,5 you will not help them, and they will drag you down with them to ruin. 'Write a letter to the commission, simply, frankly; say that you feel your guilt, that you were led away by your youth, name the unfortu-4 A. I. Herzen, N. P. Ogarev, N. l\1. Satin nnrl I. A. Obolensky. ( A .S.) 5 I need not say that this was a barefaced lie, a shameful police trap.
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nate, misguided men who have led you astray . . . . Are you willing at this easy price to redeem your future and your father's life?'
'I know nothing and have not a word to add to my evidence,' I replied.
Golitsyn got up and said coldly:
'Ah, so you won't: it is not our fault! '
With that the examination ended.
In th�> January or February of 1 835 I was before the commission for the last time. I was summon�>d to read through my answers, to add to them if I wished, and to sign them. Only Shubinsky was presf'nt. ·when I had finished reading th�>m over I said to him: