I wanted to tease the abbe about the republic, but I did not succeed. He was very glad that liberty had come without excesses, above all without bloodshed and fighting, and looked upon Lamartine as a great man, something in the style of Pericles.
'And of Sappho,' I added, without, however, entering upon an argument. I was grateful to him for not saying a word about religion. So talking we arrived at Avignon at eleven o'clock at night.
'Allow me,' I said to the abbe as I filled his glass at supper, 'to 1 " At the Rouen elections for the Constituent Assembly in April the Socialist candidates \H'fe hPa,·ilv ddt>ated ; the workmPn. suspectin" some fraurl. assembled. una rmed. hPfore the Hotel de Ville. to protest." They were attnchd bv soldiers nnd �ational Gunrds; ele,·en were killed and many \\·oumled . . ( Tr.)
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propose a rather unusual toast: "To the Republic, et pour les hommes d'eglise qui sont republicains." The abbe got up, and concluded some Ciceronian sentences with the words: "A la Republique future en Russie."
'A la Rcpublique univcrsellc!' shouted the guard of the diligence and three men who were sitting at the table. We clinked glasses.
A Catholic priest, two or three shopmen, the guard and some Russians-we might well drink to the universal republic!
But it really was very jolly.
'Where are you bound for?' I inquired of the abbe, as we took our seats in the diligence once more, and I asked his pastoral blessing on my smoking a cigar.
'For Paris,' he answered ; 'I have been elected to the National Assembly. I shall be delighted to see you if you will call; this is my address.' He was the Abbe Sibour, doyen of something or other and brother of the Archbishop of Paris.
A fortnight later there came the fifteenth of May, that sinister ritournelle which was followed by the fearful days of June. That all belongs not to my biography but to the biography of mankind . . . .
I have written a great deal about those days.
I might end here like the old captain in the old song: -
Te souvicns-tu? . . . mais ici ie m'arrete,
lei finit tout noble souvenir.
But with these accursed days the last part of my life begins.
1/Vestern EztrOJJC(I/1
Ar{lbesques, I
1 . T i l E D H E :\. \1
Do YOU REMEMBER, friends, how lovely was that winter day, bright and sunny, when six or seven sledges accompanied us to Chc:rnaya Gryaz, when for the last time we clinked glasses and parted, sobbing?
. . . Evening \vas coming on, the sledge crunched over the
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3 3 1
snow; you looked sadly after u s and d i d not divine that it was a funeral and a parting for ever. All were there but one, the dearest of all; he alone was far away, and by his absence seemed to wash his hands of my departure.1
That was the 1 9th January, 1 847.
Seven years have passed since then, and what years! Among them were 1848 and 1 852.
All sorts of things happened in those years, and everything was shattered-public and private: the European revolution and my home, the freedom of the world and my personal happiness.
Of the old life not one stone was left upon another. Then my powers had reached their fullest development; the previous years had given me pledges for the future. I left you boldly, with headlong self-reliance, with haughty confidence in life. I was i n haste t o tear myself away from the little group o f people who were so thoroughly accustomed to each other and had come so close, bound by a deep love and a common grief. I was beckoned to by distance, space, open conflict, a nd free speech. I was seeking an independent arena, I longed to try my powers in freedom . . . .
Now I no longer expect anything: after what I have seen and experienced nothing will move me to any particular wonder or to deep joy; joy and wonder are curbed by memories of the past and fear of the future. Almost everything has become a matter of indifference to me, and I desire as little to die to-morrow as to live long ; let the end come as casually and senselessly as the beginning.
And yet I have found all that I sought, even recognition from this old, complacent world-and along with this I experienced the loss of all my beliefs, all that was precious to me meeting with betrayal, treacherous blows from behind, and in general a moral corruption of which you have no conception.
It is hard for me, very hard, to begin this part of my story; I have avoided it while I wrote the preceding parts, but at last I am face to face with it. But away with weakness: he who could live through it must have the strength to remember.
From the middle of the year 1 848 I have nothing to tell of but agonising experiences, unavenged offences, undeserved blows.
My memory holds nothing but melancholy images, my own mistakes and other people's: mistakes of individuals, mistakes of 1 I.e .. N. P. Ogarev, then living on his Penza estate, Staroye Aksheno.
( A .S.)
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whole peoples. Where there was a possibility of salvation, death crossed the path . . . .
. . . The last days of our life in Rome conclude the bright part of my memories, that begin with the awakening of thought in childhood and our youthful vow on the Sparrow Hills.
Alarmed by the Paris of 1847, I had opened my eyes to the truth for a moment, but was carried away again by the events that seethed about me. All Italy was 'awakening' before my eyes! I saw the King of Naples tamed and the Pope humbly asking the alms of the people's love-the whirlwind which set everything in movement carried me, too, off my feet; all Europe took up its bed and walked-in a fit of somnambulism which we took for awakening. When I came to myself, it had all vanished ; la Sonnambula, frightened by the police, had fallen from the roof; friends were scattered or were furiously slaughtering one another . . . . And I found myself alone, utterly alone, among graves and cradles-their guardian, defender, avenger, and I coulrl do nothing because I tried to do more than was usual.
And now I sit in London where chance has flung me-and I stay here because I do not know what to make of myself. An alien race swarms confusedly about me, wrapped in the heavy breath of ocean ; a world dissolving into chaos, lost in a fog in which outlines are blurred, in which a lamp gives only murky glimmers of light.
. . . And that other land-washed by the dark-blue sea under the canopy of a dark-blue sky . . . it is the one shining region lclass="underline" 'ft until the far side of the grave.
0 Rome, how I love to return to your deceptions, how eagerly I run over day by day the time when I was intoxicated with you !
. . . A dark night. The Corso is filled with people, and here and there are torches. It is a month since a republic was proclaimed in Paris. :\'ews has come from Milan-there they are fighting, the people demand war,2 there is a rumour that Charles Albert is on the way \vith troops. The talk of the angry crowd is like the intermittent roar of a wave, which alternately comes noisily up the beach and then pauses to draw breath.