But the culprits were not discovered. The Russian is wonderfully good at holding his tongue.
Then, utterly infuriated, Arakcheyev appeared at Novgorod, where a crowd of martyrs was brought. With his face yellow and livid, with mad eyes, and still with the blood-stained kerchief round his neck, he began a new investigation, and here the affair assumes monstrous dimensions. Some eighty persons were seized once more. In the town people were arrested on the strength of one word, on the slightest suspicion, for a distant acquaintanceship vvith some lackey of Arakcheyev's, for an incautious word.
People passing through the town were seized and flung into prison. Merchants and clerks were kept waiting for weeks in the police station to be questioned . . . . The inhabitants hid in their houses and were afraid to go about the streets; the affair itself no one dared to refer to.
10 Sir James \Vylie ( I i68-1854) . a Scot who entered the Russ inn service.
He was suq�eon-in-ordinnry to Paul I whose houy he embalmed. certifying that he had died of apoplexy ; and physician-in-ordinary to Alexander I, whom he accompanied on his campaigns. He was knighted by the Prince Regent in 1 8 1 +, when Alexnnder visited England, and mnde a baronet later in the same yenr at the Tsnr's special request. He continued to enjoy the Imperial confidence under Nicholns I. (R.)
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Kleinmikhel, who served under Arakcheyev, took part in this investigation. . . .
The governor transformed his house into a torture chamber; people were tortured near his study from morning till night. The police-captain of Staraya Russa, a man accustomed to horrors, broke down a t last and, when he was ordered to question under the rods a young woman who was several months gone with child, he was not equal to the task. He went in to the governor (it took place in the time of old Popov, who told me about 'it) and told him that the woman could not be flogged, and it was clean against the law; the governor leapt up from his scat and, mad with fury, rushed at the police-captain brandishing his fist:
'I order you to be arrested a t once: I will have you tried: you are a traitor.' The police-captain was arrested and resigned his commission ; I am truly sorry I do not know his surname,11 but may his previous sins be forgiven him for the sake of that minute-! say it in all seriousness-of heroism; in dealing with these ruffians it \Yas no trifling matter to show human feeling.
The woman was tortured; she knew nothing about the crime
. . . but she died.l2
And Alexander 'of blessed memory' died too. Not knowing what was coming, these monsters made one last effort, and succeeded in tracing the culprit; he was condemned to the knout, of course. In the midst of this triumph for the investigators came an order from Nicholas that they should be tried and that the whole case should be stopped.
It was commanded that the governor13 should be tried by the Senate . . . even by them he could not be acquitted. Ni cholas issued a gracious manifesto after his coronation. The friends of Pestel and Muravcv did not come under it, but this scoundrel did. Two or three years later, the same man was tried at Tambov II The chief of the Novgorod rural police at this time was V_ Lyalin who, on the advice of A. F. Musin· Push kin, president of the Criminal Court, decided not to subject the thirty-year-old peasant woman, Darya Konstantinov, who was pregnant, to thP nin<'ty-five blows of the knout to which she had been sentenced. Both officials wen• relieved of their duties and arrested, and were suspectPd of interceding for the 'criminal woman' of malice prepense. (A.S. )
12 Darya Konstantinov, who was punished togetiH•r with five other
'ringleaders,' survived the torment and was to bP s!'nt to hard lahour-; three of those condemned diPd of their floggings_ ( A.S.) 13 I am extremely sorry that I have forgotten th<' Christian nanw of this worthy head of a province. I remember his surname was Zherebtsov.
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for the abuse of power on his own property. Yes, he came under Nicholas's manifesto: he was beneath it.
At the beginning of 1 842 I was hopelessly weary of provincial government and was trying to invent an excuse to get out of it.
While I was hesitating between one means and another, a quite extraneous incident decided in my favour.
One cold winter's morning as I reached the office I found a peasant woman of about thirty standing in the front hall ; seeing me in uniform she fell on her knees before me and bursting into tears besought my protection. Her master, Musin-Pushkin, was sending her with her husband to a settlement, while their son, a boy of ten, was to remain behind ; she begged to be allowed to take the child with her. While she was telling me this the military governor came in; I motioned her towards him and passed on her petition. The governor explained to her that children of ten or over are kept by the landowners. The mother, not understanding the stupid law, went on entreating him. He was bored; the woman, sobbing, clutched at his legs, and he pushed her away roughly, saying: 'What a fool you are; don't I tell you in plain Russian that I can do nothing? Why do you keep on so?' After this he went with a firm, resolute step to the corner, where he put his sword.
And I went too . . . I had had enough . . . . Did not that woman take me for one of them? It was high time to put an end to the farce.
'Are you unwell?' asked a councillor called Khlopin, who had been transferred from Siberia for some shortcomings or other.
'I am ill,' I answered, and I got up, took my leave and went away. The same day I sent in a declaration that I was i ll, and from that day never set foot in the office of the provincial government. Then I asked for my discharge on the ground 'of illness.' The Senate gave me my discharge accompanying it with promotion to the grade of Aulic Councillor; but Benckendorf at the same time informed the governor that I was forbidden to visit Petersburg or Moscow and was commanded to l ive at Novgorod.
When Ogarev returned from his first tour abroad, he did his utmost in Petersburg to procure permission for us to move to Moscow. I had little faith in the success of such a patron and was fearfully bored in the wretched little town with the great historical name. Meanwhile Ogarev managed our business for us.
On the 1 st of July, 1 842, the Empress, taking advantage of some family festivity, asked the Tsar to allow me to live in Moscow in
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consideration of my wife's illness and her desire to move there.
The Tsar agreed and three days later my wife received from Benckendorf a letter in which he informed her that I was permitted to accompany her to Moscow in consequence of the Tsaritsa 's intercession. He concluded the letter with the agreeable notification that I should remain under police supervision there also.
I felt no regret at leaving Novgorod and made haste to get away as soon as possible. Before I left it, however, there occurred almost the only pleasant event in my sojourn there.