'No,' he answered, still more through his nose; 'but that doesn't matter . . . you . . . see _ . . I am in what is called the central police service.'
I found this revelati<m even more unpleasant than the handmade nose_
The first person to whom I expressed my liberal opinions in Europe was a spy-but he was not the last.
Berlin, Cologne, Belgium-all flashed past before our eyes ; we looked at everything half absent-mindedly, in passing; we were in haste to arrive, and at last we did arrive.
. . . I opened the heavy, old-fashioned window in the Hotel du Rhin; before me stood a column:
. . . with a cast-iron doll,
With scowling face and hat on head,
And arms crossed tightly on his breast.3
And so I was really in Paris, not in a dream but in reality: this was the Vendome column and the Rue de Ia Paix.
In Paris-the word meant scarcely less to me than the word
'Moscow' ! Of that minute I had been dreaming since my childhood. If I might only see the Hotel de Ville, the Cafe Foy in the Palais Royal, "·here Camille Desmoulins picked a green leaf, stuck it on his hat for a cockade and shouted 'a la Bastille!'
I could not stay indoors; I dressed and went out to stroll about 3 From A. S. Pushkin's Yevgenr Onegin, VII, 1 9. (A.S.)
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at random . . . to look up Bakunin, Sazonov: here was Rue St
Honore, the Champs-Elysees-all those names to which I had felt akin for long years . . . and here was Bakunin himself. . . .
I met him at a street corner; he was walking with three friends and, just as in Moscow, discoursing to them, continually stopping and waving his cigarette. On this occasion the discourse remained unfinished ; I interrupted it and took him with me to find Sazonov and surprise him with my arrival.
I was beside myself with happiness!
And on that happiness I shall stop.
I am not going to describe Paris once more. My first acquaintance with European life, the triumphant tour of an Italy that had just leapt up from sleep, the revolution at the foot of Vesuvius, the revolution before St Peter's, and finally the newslike a flash of lightning-of the 24th of February-all that I have described in my Letters from France and Italy. I could not now with the same vividness reproduce impressions half effaced and overlaid by others. They make an essential part of my Notes
-for what are letters but notes of a brief period?
Tlze HoneJ111100Jl of
tile Repltblic
'ToMORROW WE ARE GOING to Paris; I am leaving Rome full of animation and excitt>ment. vVhat will come of it all? Can it last?
The sky is not free from clouds; at times there is a chilly blast from the sepulchral vaults bringing the smell of a corpse, the odour of the past; the historical tramontana is strong, but whatever happens I am grateful to Rome for the five months I have spent there. The feelings I have passed through remain in the soul, and the reaction will not extinguish quite everything.'
This is what I wrote at the end of April 1 848, sitting at a window in the Via del Corso and looking out into the People's Square, in which I had seen and felt so much.
I left Italy in love with her and sorry for her: there I had met not only great events but also the first people I had found nmpathiques-but still I went away. It would have seemed like a betrayal of all my convictions not to be in Paris when there
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was a republic there. Doubts are apparent in the lines I have quoted, but faith got the upper hand, and with inward pleasure I looked at the consul's seal on my visa at Civita on which were engraved the formidable words, 'Republique Frant;aise'-I did not reflect that the very fact that a visa was needed showed that France was not a republic.
We went by a mail steamer. There were a great many passengers on board, and as usual they were of all sorts: there were passengers from Alexandria, Smyrna, and Malta. One of the fearful winds common in spring blew up just after we passed Leghorn: it drove the ship along with incredible swiftness and with insufferable rolling; within two or three hours the deck was covered with sea-sick ladies; by degrees the men too succumbed, except a grey-headed old Frenchman, an Englishman from Canada in a fur-jacket and a fur-cap, and myself. The cabins, too, were full of sufferers, and the stuffiness and heat in them alone were enough to make one ill. At night we three sat on deck amidships on our portmanteaus, covered with our overcoats and railway rugs, amid the howling of the wind and the splashing of the waves, which at times broke over the fore-deck.
I knew the Englishman; the year before I had travelled in the same steamer with him from Genoa to Civita Vecchia. It happened we were the only two at dinner; he did not say a word all through the meal, but over the dessert, softened by the Marsala and seeing that I on my side had no intention of entering upon a conversation, he gave me a cigar and said that he had brought his cigars himself from Havana. Then we talked: he had been in South America and California, and told me that he had often intended to visit Petersburg and Moscow, but should not go until there were regular and direct communications between London and Petersburg.1
'Are you going to Rome?' I asked, as we approached Civita.
'I don't know,' he answered.
I said no more, supposing that he considered my question indiscreet, but he immediately added:
'That depends on whether I like the climate in Civita .'
'Then you are stopping here?'
'Yes; the steamer leaves to-morrow.'
At that time I knew very few Englishmen, and so I could hardly conceal my laughter, and was quite unable to do so when I met him next day, as I was strolling in front of the hotel, in 1 There is this now.
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the same fur-coat, carrying a portfolio, a field-glass, and a little dressing-case, followed by a servant laden with his portmanteau and various belongings.
'I am off to Naples,' he said as he came up to me.
'"\Yhy, don't you like the climate?'
'It's horrid.'
I forgot to mention that on our first journey together he occupied the berth which was directly over mine. On three occasions during the night he almost killed me, first with fright, and then with his feet; it was deadly hot in the cabin and he went several times to have a drink of brandy and \Vater and each time, climbing down or climbing up, he trod on me and shouted loudly in alarm: 'Oh-beg pardon-l'ai avais soif.'
'Pas de mal!'
So on this journey we met like old friends; he highly praised my immunity from sea-sickness, and offered me his Havana cigars. As was perfectly natural the conversation soon turned on the revolution of February. The Englishman, of course, looked upon revolution in Europe as an interesting spectacle, as a source of curious, new observations and experiences, and he described the revolution in the Republic of J\ew Colombia.2
The Frenchman took a d ifferent part in these matters . . .
within five minutes an argument had sprung up between him and me: he answered evasively, intelligently and with the utmost courtesy, conceding nothing, however. I defended the republic and revolution. Without directly attacking it, the old gentleman championed the traditional forms of government as the only ones durable, popular and capable of satisfying the just claims of progress and the necessity for settled security.