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Shchepkin and Gedeonov I have told in another place-I could tell dozens of such stories .
. . . Gorchakov pointed with amazement to the account printed in The Bell of the secret session of the Council of State9
to consider the peasant business. 'Now who,' he said 'can have told him the details so accurately, except one of those present?'
The Council was disquieted and there was a secret conversation once between 'Butkov and the Tsar' about how to muzzle The Bell. The unmercenary Muravev advised that I should be bought off; Panin, the giraffe with the ribbon of St Andrew, preferred that I should be inveigled into the Civil Service.
Gorchakov, who played between these two 'dead souls' the part of Mizhuyev,10 had doubts about my venality and asked Panin:
'What position shall you offer him?'
'Assistant Secretary of State.'
'Well, he won't accept an assistant secretaryship of state,'
answered Gorchakov, and the fate of The Bell was left to the will of God.
But the will of God evinced itself plainly in the flood of letters and correspondence from all parts of Russia. Each one wrote whatever came into his head: one to blow off steam, another to convince himself that he was a dangerous fellow . . . but there were letters written in a burst of indignation, passionate cries that revealed the everyday abominations. Letters like this compensated for dozens of 'exercises,' just as one visit made up for any number of colonels rioos.
Altogether the bulk of the letters could be divided into letters with no facts in them but with an abundance of heart and eloquence, letters with magisterial approval or magisterial rebukes, and finally letters with important communications from the provinces.
1 8 6 2
Again it was striking ten o'clock in the morning, and again I heard the voice of a stranger, not a military voice this time, 9 The session was held on 28th January, 1 86 1 , and was reported in The Bell on 1 st March. (A.S.)
10 See N. V. Gogo!: Dead Souls, Part I, chapter 4.
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thick and stern, but a woman's, irritable, upset and sounding like tears:
'I must, I absolutely must see him . . . . I shan't go away till I have.'
And after that there came in a young Russian girl, or young lady, whom I had seen twice before.
She stopped in front of me and looked me steadily in the eyes: her features "vere sad, her cheeks on fire ; she hastily excused herself, and then:
'I have only just come back from Russia, from Moscow; friends of yours, people who are fond of you, have commissioned me to tell you . . . to ask you .
' Her voice failed her and she
stopped.
I understood none of this.
'Can it be true that you-you that we were so passionately fond of-you . . . ? '
'But what is the matter?'
'Tell me, for God's sake, yes or no--did you have anything to do with the Petersburg fire?'ll
'I?'
'Yes, yes, yes! They're accusing you . . . at any rate, they're saying you knew about the wicked scheme.'
'What madness! Can you take it seriously, this accusation?'
'Everyone's saying it!'
'Who's "everyone"? Some Nikolay Filippovich Pavlov?' (My imagination did not go any farther at that time ! )
'No: people you know well, people who love you dearly; you must clear yourself for their sakes; they're suffering, they're waiting . . .'
'And do you believe it yourself?'
'I don't know. That's why I came, because I don't know: I expect you to explain. . . .'
' Let's begin by you calming yourself, and sitting down and listening to me. If I had secretly participated in this incendiarism, what makes you think that I should tell you so-like that, the first time I'm asked? You've no reason, no basis for believing me. You'd do better to say where in all that I've writ-11 Great fires broke out in Petersbur� on 28th May, 1862, and burned for several days. The Tsarist government took a<h·antage of this to carry out a series of repressive measures against the revol utionary camp and endeavoured, by spreadin� rumours that the fires were the work of students incited hy Herzen and Chernyshevsky, to produce a wa,·e of hatred against the revolutionary young people and their leaders (A.S.)
The Free Russian Press and "The Bell"
5 3 7
ten there's anything, one single word, that could justify such a n absurd accusation. W e are not madmen, you know, t o try to commend ourselves to the people of Russia by setting fire to the Rag Market.'
'Why do you keep silent? Why don't you clear yourself publicly?' she asked, and in her eyes there was irresolution and doubt. 'Brand these wicked men in print, say you're horrified by them, that you're not with them, or . . . .'
'Or what? Now, that's enough,' I said to her with a smile, 'of playing Charlotte Corday; you've no dagger and I'm not sitting in my bath. It's shameful of you, and twice as shameful of my friends, to believe such rot; but it would be shameful for us to try to clear ourselves of it, all the more if we tried to U.o so by way of trampling on and doing great harm to people quite unknown to us \vho now are in the hands of the secret police and who very likely had as much to do with the fires as you and I.'
'So you're determined not to clear yourself?'
'No, I won't.'
'Then what shall I write to them?'
'Write what you and I have been saying.'
She took the latest issue of The Bell out of her pocket and read out: ' "Vv"hat fiery cup of suffering is passing us by? Is it the fire of senseless destruction, or punishmPnt that purifies by flame?
What has driven people to this, and what are these people?
What painful moments are they for the absent one when gazing where all his love lies, all that a man lives by, he sees only the dull glow of a conflagration." '
'Dark, frightening lines, that say nothing against you and nothing for rou. Believe me: clear yourself-or remew er iT''"
words: Your friends and supporters will abandon rou.'
Just as the colonel rioos had been the drum-major of our success, so the unmurderous Charlotte Corday was the prophetess of our collapse in public opinion-on both sides, too. At the same time as the reactionaries lifted their heads and called us monsters and incendiaries, some of the young people bade us farewell, as though we had fallen by the wayside. The former we despised, the latter we pitied, and we waited sadly for the rough waves of life to destroy those who had made too far out to sea, for we knew that only some of them would get back and make fast to the shore.