The countess's description of the "adepts" was as clever as the rest of her remarks, and absolutely accurate. One of them was at the house for a day or two. (I had seen them elsewhere as well.) He had evidently got himself a new blouse for the visit. It was of coarse blue and white cloth, checked, and so stiff with newness that, having a long slit and only one button, at the neck, I could see the whole of his hairy breast every time I looked at him from the left side. I sympathized with Prince K., who being next him at table turned his back on him and ignored him conversationally; which embarrassed the young man extremely. Apropos of his shirt, I never saw any one but the count himself wear a shirt that a real peasant would have worn; and I do not believe that even he had one of the characteristic red cotton garments which are the peasant's pride.
I found this adept interesting when he sat opposite me, and he incited the count to vivacity. He contributed a very good anecdote illustrative of the count's followers.
A man in one of the southern governments-which one is immaterial here-sent a quantity of lithographed copies of five or ten forbidden books (Tolstoy's and others) to a disciple of Tolstoy in one of the northern governments. In the village of this disciple, some young women students in the higher or university courses for women, and followers of Tolstoy, were living for the summer in peasant fashion, and working in the fields, "to the scornful pity of the peasants" (I italicize this phrase as remarkable on the lips of an adept.) These young women, having heard of the dispatch by post of the books, and being in the town, thought to do the count's disciple a favor by asking if they had arrived. Had they refrained, nothing would have happened and the books would have been delivered without a question. As it was, attention was attracted to the parcel by the inquiry of these girls of eccentric behavior. The fifty or sixty copies were confiscated; the girls' passports were taken from them. The disciple appealed to a relative in high official position in their behalf. The girls were informed, in consequence, that they might hire themselves out to work for this disciple of gentle birth as much as they liked; but they were forbidden to work for or among the peasants. The adventure was not ended when this story was told. Whether the students were satisfied with the permission to work I do not know. Probably not; their fellow-disciple would not have scorned them as the peasants did, and contradiction, that spice of life to enthusiastic worshipers of impracticable ideas, would have been lacking. In my opinion, the authorities committed an error in judgment. They should have shown more faith in the peasants, the toil, and the girls' unhardened frames. All three elements combined could have been trusted to effect a permanent cure of those disciples by the end of the harvest, had they been gently encouraged not only to work with the peasants but to prove that they were capable of toiling and enduring in precisely the same manner and measure.
Still the authorities very naturally looked upon the action of the girls as a case of idti v narod (going to the people), in the sense understood by the revolutionary propagandists. Their prohibition was based on this ground.
In some way we got upon the subject of English things and ways. The count's eyes flashed.
"The English are the most brutal nation on earth!" he exclaimed. "Along with the Zulus, that is to say. Both go naked: the Zulus all day long, the Englishwomen as soon as dinner is served. The English worship their muscle; they think of it, talk of it. If I had time, I should like to write a book on their ways. And then their executions, which they go to see as a pleasure!"
I asked which nation was a model, in his opinion.
"The French," he answered, which seemed to me inconsistent, when he told of the execution which he had witnessed in Paris, where a father had lifted up his little child that it might have a good view of the horrors of the guillotine.
"Defective as is Russian civilization in many respects," he said, "you will never find the Russian peasant like that. He abhors deliberate murder, like an execution."
"Yet he will himself commit murder," I objected. "There has been a perfect flood of murders reported in the newspapers this very spring. Those perpetrated in town were all by men of the peasant class; and most of them were by lads under twenty years of age."
He insisted that I must have misread the papers. So I proceeded to inquire, "What will a peasant do in case of an execution?"
"He will murder, but without premeditation. What he will do in case of an execution I can illustrate for you by something which occurred in this very neighborhood some years ago.
"The regimental secretary of a regiment stationed at Z. was persecuted by one of his officers, who found fault with him continually, and even placed him under arrest for days at a time, when the man had only obeyed his own orders. At last the secretary's patience failed him, and one day he struck the officer. A court-martial followed. I was chosen to defend him. He was sentenced to death. I appealed to the Emperor through Madame A.,-you know her. For some reason she spoke to one of the ministers. 'You have not stated the number of his regiment; that is indispensable,' was the reply. Evidently this was a subterfuge, that time might be consumed in correspondence, and the pardon might arrive too late. The reason for this was, in all probability, that just at this time a soldier had struck an officer in Moscow and had been condemned. If one were pardoned, in justice the other must be also. Otherwise discipline would suffer. This coincidence was awkward for the secretary, strong as his case was, and he was shot.
"The adjutant's hands trembled so with emotion that he could not apply the bandage to the prisoner's eyes. Others tried and gave it up. Well, as soon as that man was buried his grave was covered with flowers, crosses, and all sorts of things by the peasants, who came many versts from all directions, as to the grave of a martyr. Masses for the dead were ordered there, in uninterrupted succession, by these poor peasants. The feeling was so great and appeared to be spreading to such an extent that the authorities were forced not only to prohibit access to the grave, but even to level it off so that it could not be found. But an Englishman! If he were told to cut the throat of his own father and eat him, he would do it."
"Still, in spite of your very striking illustration, and your doubts as to my having read the papers correctly," I remarked, "I am sure that the Russian peasant does, occasionally, murder with premeditation. He is a fine-tempered, much-enduring, admirable fellow, I admit, but he is human. He cannot be so different in this respect from all other races of men. Moreover, I have the testimony of a celebrated Russian author on my side."
"What author? What testimony?"
"Have you ever read The 'Power of Darkness'? The amount of deliberation, of premeditation, in any murder is often a matter of opinion; but the murder of the child in the last act of that comedy is surely deliberate enough to admit of no difference of judgment. Don't you think that the author supports me?"
He gasped at my audacity in quoting his own writings against him, and retreated into the silence which was his resource when he could not or would not answer. Put him in a corner and he would refuse to come out.
Beggars used to come while we were eating out-of-doors; some called themselves "pilgrims." The count would give them a little money, and they would tramp off again. One day, when the birthday of an absent member of the family was being celebrated, and we were drinking healths in voditchka (a sort of effervescent water flavored with fruit juices), we had a distinguished visitor, "Prince Romanoff." This was the crazy Balakhin mentioned in "What to Do?" as having had his brain turned by the sight of the luxury in the lives of others. His rags and patches, or rather his conglomeration of patches, surpassed anything we had seen in that line. One of the lads jumped up and gave him a glass of raspberry voditchka, telling him that it was rare old wine. The man sipped it, looked through it, and pretended (I am sure that it was mere pretense) to believe that it was wine. He promised us all large estates when the Emperor should give him back his own, now wrongfully withheld from him.