Of the Revolution they wanted to make their own republic, but it slipped between their fingers, just as the civilisation of antiquity slipped away from the barbarians-that is, with no place in real life, but with hope for instaurationem magnam.
The Reformation and the Revolution were both so frightened by the emptiness of the world which they had come into that they sought salvation in two forms of monasticism: the cold, dreary bigotry of Puritanism and the dry, artificial, civic morality of republican formalism. Both the Quaker3 and the Jacobin forms of intolerance \Yere based on the fear that the ground v.,·as not firm under their feet; they saw that they needed to take strong measures, to persuade one group of men that this was the church, and the other that this was freedom.
Such is the general atmosphere of European l ife. It is most oppressive and intolerable where the modern Western system is most developed, where it is most true to its principles, where it is most wealthy and most cultured-that is, most industrial. And that is why it is not so unendurably stifling to live in Italy or Spain as it is in England or France . . . . And that is why poor, mountainous, rustic Switzerland is the only corner of Europe into which one can retreat in peace.
3 Here Herzen ignorantly uses the word 'Quaker' as equivalent to 'Nonconformist,' or perhaps, 'Puritan.' It is need!"!ss to point out that tolerance is one of the most prominent principles of the Society of Friends. ( Tr.)
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l\1o11ey ct11d tlze Police
Ir-; THE DECEMBER of 1 849 I learnt that the authorisation for the mortgage of my estate sent from Paris and witnessed at the Embassy had been destroyed, and that after that a distraint had been laid on my mother's fortune. There was no time to be lost and I at once left Geneva and went to my mother's.
It would be stupid and hypocritical to affect to despise property in our time of financial disorder. Money is independence, power, a weapon; and no one flings away a weapon in time of
\var, though it may have come from the enemy and even be rusty. The slavery of poverty is frightful ; I have studied it in all its aspects, living for years with men who have escaped from political shipwrecks in the clothes they stood up in. I thought it right and necessary, therefore, to take every measure to extract what I could from the bear's paws of the Russian government.
Even so I was not far from losing everything. When I left Russia I had had no definite plan; I only wanted to stay abroad as long as possible. The revolution of 1 848 arrived and drew me into its vortex before I had done anything to secure my property.
\Vorthy persons have blamed me for thrO\ving myself headlong into political movements and leaving the future of my family to the will of the gods. Perhaps it was not altogether prudent; but if, when I was living in Rome in 1 848, I had sat at home considering ways and means of saving my property while an awakened Italy was seething before my windows, then I should probably not have remained in foreign countries, but have gone to Petersburg, entered the service once more, might have become a vice-governor, have sat at the head prosecutor's table, and should have addressed my secretary with insulting familiarity and my minister as 'Your Exalted Excellency.'
I had no such self-restraint and good sense, and I am infinitely thankful for it now. My heart and my memory would be the poorer if I had missed those shining moments of faith and enthusiasm ! \Vhat would have compensated me for the loss of them? Indeed, why speak of me? "What would have compensated her whose broken life was nothing afterwards but suffering that ended in the grave? How bitterly would my conscience have
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reproached me if, from over-prudence, I had robbed her of almost the last minutes of untroubled happiness! And after all I did do the important thing: I did save almost all our property except the Kostroma estate.
After the June days my situation became more dangerous. I made the acquaintance of Rothschild, and proposed that he should change for me two Moscow Savings Bank bonds. Business then was not flourishing, of course, and the exchange was very bad ; his terms were not good, but I accepted them at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing a faint smile of compassion on Rothschild's lips-he took me for one of the innumerable princes russes who had run into debt in Paris, and so fell to calling me Monsieur le Comte.
On the first bonds the money was paid promptly; but on the later ones for a much larger sum, although payment was made, Rothschild's agent informed him that a distraint had been laid on my capital-luckily I had withdrawn it all.
In this way I found myself in Paris with a large sum of money in very troubled times, without experience or knowledge what to do with it. Yet everything was settled fairly well. As a rule, the less impetuosity, alarm and uneasiness there is in financial matters, the better they succeed. Grasping money-grubbers and financial cowards are as often ruined as spendthrifts.
By Rothschild's advice I bought myself some American shares, a few French ones and a small house in the Rue Amsterdam which was let to the Havre Hotel.
One of my first revolutionary steps, which cut me off from Russia, plunged me into the respectable class of conservative idlers, brought me acquaintance with bankers and notaries, taught me to keep an eye on the Stock Exchange-in short, turned me into a Western European rentier. The rift between the modern man and the environment in which he lives brings a fearful confusion into private behaviour. We are in the very middle of two currents which are getting in each other's way; we are flung and shall continue to be flung first in one direction and then in the other, until one current or the other finally wins and the stream, still restless and turbulent but now flowing in one direction, makes things easier for the swimmer by carrying him along with it.
Happy the man who knows how to manoeuvre so that, adapting and balancing himsdf among the waves, he still swims on his own course!
On the purchase of the house I had the opportunity of looking more closely into the business and bourgeois world of France.
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The bureaucratic pedantry over completing a purchase is not inferior to ours in Russia. The old notary read me several documents, the statute concerning the reading of the main levee, then the actual statute itself-all this making up a complete folio volume. In our final negotiation concerning the price and the legal expenses, the owner of the house said that he would make a concession and take upon himself the very considerable expenses of the legal conveyance, if I would immediately pay the whole sum to him personally. I did not understand him, since from the very first I had openly stated that I was buying it for ready money. The notary explained to me that the money must remain in his hands for at least three months, during which a notice of sale would be published and all creditors V\'ho had any claims on the house would be called upon to state their case. The house was mortgaged for seventy thousand, but there might be further mortgages in other hands. In three months' time, after inquiries had been made, the purge hypothccaire would be handed to the purchaser and the former owner would receive the purchase money.