'I have come at his request.'
'Your surname?'
I mentioned it.
'Ah,' he said, changing his tone <os though he had met an old acquaintance, 'won't you be pleased to sit down? The Count will be here in a quarter of an hour.'
It was horribly still and unheimlich in the room; the daylight hardly penetrated through the fog and frozen window-panes, and no one said a word. The adjutants ran quickly to and fro, and the gendarme standing at the door sometimes jingled his accoutrements as he shifted from foot to foot. Two more petitioners came in. A clerk on duty ran to ask each what he had come about. One of the adjutants went up to him and began telling him something in a half-whisper, assuming a desperately roguish air as he did so. No doubt it was something nasty, for they frequently interrupted their talk with noiseless, flunkeyish laughter, during which the worthy clerk, affecting to be quite helpless and ready to burst, repeated: 'Do stop, for God's sake stop, I can't bear it.'
Five minutes later Dubelt appeared, with his uniform unbuttoned as though he were off duty, cast a glance at the petitioners, at which they all bowed, and seeing me in the distance sai d :
'Bonjour, Monsieur Hcr::.en. Votre affaire va parfaitement bien
.
. . very well indeed.'
They would let me stay, perhaps! I was on the point of asking, but before I had time to utter a word Dubelt had disappeared.
Nrxt there walked into the room a general, scrubbed and decorated, tightly laced and stiffly erect, in white breeches and a
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scarf: I have never seen a finer general . If ever there is an exhibition of generals in London, like the Baby Exhibition at Cincinnati at this moment, I advise sending this very one from Petersburg. The general went up to the door from which Benckendorf was to enter and froze in stiff immobility ; with great curiosity I scrutinised this sergeant's ideal. He must have flogged soldiers in his day for the way they paraded. Where do these people come from? He was born for military rules and regulations and files on parade. He was attended by the most elegant cornet in the world, probably his adjutant, with incredibly long legs, fair-haired, with a tiny face like a squirrel's, and that good-natured expression which often persists in mamma's darlings who have never studied anything, or at any rate have never succeeded in learning anything. This honeysuckle in uniform stood at a respectful distance from the model general.
Dubelt darted in again, this time assuming an air of dignity, and with his buttons done up. He a t once addressed the general, and asked him what he could do for him. The general, with the correctness with which orderlies speak when reporting to their superior officers, announced:
'Yesterday I received through Prince Alexander Ivanovich His Majesty's command to join the active army in the Caucasus, and esteemed it my duty to rl'port to His Excl'llency before leaving.'
Dubelt listened with religious attention to this speech, and with a slight bow as a sign of respect went out and returned a minute later.
'The Count,' he said to the general, 'sincerely regrets that he has not time to receive Your Excellency. HI' thanks you and has commissioned me to wish you a good j�urney.' Upon- this Dubelt flung wide his arms, embraced the general, and t\vice touched his cheeks \vith his moustaches.
The general retreated at a solemn march, the youth with a squirrel's face and the legs of a crane set off after him. This scene compensated me for much of the bitterness of that day.
The general's standing at att£'ntion, the farewell by proxy, and finally the sly face of Reineke Fuchs as he kissed the brainless countenancl' of His F.xc<>llencv-all this was so ludicrous that I could only just contain myself I fancied that Dubelt noticed this and began to respect me from that time.
At last the doors Wl'r<' flung op1'11 a deux battants and B<>nckl'ndorf came in. There was nothing unpleasant in the exterior of thl' chief of the gl'ndarmPs; his appearance was rather typical of the Baltic barons and of the German aristocracy generally. His face looked creased and tired, he had the deceptively good-
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natured expression which is often found in evasive and apathetic people.
Possibly Benckendorf did not do all the harm he might have done, being the head of that terrible police, being outside the law and above the law, and having a right to meddle in everything. I am ready to believe it, especially when I recall the vapid expression of his face. But he did no good either; he had not enough will-power, energy, or heart for that. To shrink from saying a word in defence of the oppressed is as bad as any crime in the service of a man as cold and merciless as Nicholas.
How many innocent victims passed through Benckendorf's hands, how many perished through his lack of attention, through his absent-mindedness, or because he was engaged in gallantry-and how many dark images and painful memories may have haunted his mind and tormented him on the steamer on which, having prematurely collapsed and grown decrepit, he sailed off to seek, in betrayal of his own religion, the intercession of the Catholic Church with its all-forgiving indulgences . . . .
'It has come to the knowledge of His Imperial Majesty,' he said to me, 'that you take part in the diffusion of rumours injurious to the government. His Majesty, seeing how little you have reformed, deigned to order that you should be sent back to Vyatka ; but I, at the request of General Dubelt, and relying upon information collected about you, have reported to His Majesty about the illness of your wife, and His Majesty has been pleased to alter his decision. His Majesty forbids you to visit Petersburg and Moscow, and you will be under police supervision again, but it is left to the Ministry
. of Home Affairs to
appoint the place of your residence.'
'Allo\v me to tell you frankly that even at this moment I cannot believe that there has been no other reason for exiling me. In 1 835 I was exiled on account of a supper-party at which I was not present! Now I am being punished for a rumour about which the whole town was talking. It is a strange fate! '
Benckendorf shrugged his shoulders and, turning out the palms of his hands like a man who has exhausted all the resources of argument, interrupted me.
'I make known to you the Imperial \vill, and you answer me with criticisms. \Yhat good will come of all that you say to me, or that I say to you? It is a waste of words. Nothing can be changed now. ·what will happen later partly depends on you, and, since you have referred to your first trouble, I particularly recommend you not to let there be :J third. You will certainly not get off so easily a third time.'
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Benckendorf gave me a benevolent smile and turned to the petitioners. He said wry little to them ; he took their petition, glanced at it, and then handed it to Dubclt, interrupting the petitioners' observations \vith the same graciously condescending smile. For months together these people had been pondering and preparing themselves for this interview, upon which their honour, their fortune, their family depended; what labour, what effort had been employed before they were received; how many times they had knocked at the closed door and been turned away by a gendarme or porter. And how great, how poignant must the necessities haw been that brought them to the head of the secret police ; no doubt all legal channels had been exhausted first. And this man gets rid of them with commonplaces, and in all probability some Head of a Table proposed some decision, in order to pass the case on to some other secretariat. And what was he so absorbed in) \Yhere was he in a hurry to go to?