they were diplomats, aristocrats, and Manfreds. It i s only a pity that Dashkov, the Minister, could not train these Childe Harolds not to stand at attention and bow even at the theatre, at church, and everywhere.
The PPtersburghers laugh at the costumes seen in Moscow; they a re outragPd by the caps and Hungarian jackets, the long hair and civilian moustaclws. Moscow certainly is an unmilitary city, rather dishevelled and unaccustomed to discipline, but whether that is a good quality or a ddect is a matter of opinion.
The harmony of uniformity ; the absence of variety, of what is personal, whimsical, and wayward ; the obligatory wearing of uniform, and outward good form-all develop to the h ighest degree in the most inhuman condition in which men live-in 1 Timofeyev, Alexey Vasill'virh ( 1 8 1 2-81 ) , a sixth-rate writer of forgotten poems. ( Tr.) 2 Kukol nik, 1\'cstor VasilPvich ( 1 809-68 ) , was a schoolfellow of Gogol's, and a vc>ry popular wri t<'r of stories and d ramas in the most extreme roman tic stylc-fc>arfully bombastic and unreal, and hyper-patriotic.
( Tr. )
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 255
barracks. Uniforms and uniformity are passionately loved by despotism. Nowhere are fashions so respectfully observed as in Petersburg, and that shows the immaturity of our civilisation; our clothes are alien. In Europe people dress, but we dress up, and so are frightened if a sleeve is too full, or a collar too narrow. In Paris all that people are afraid of is being dressed without taste; in London all that they are afraid of is catching cold; in Italy everyone dresses as he likes. If one were to show him the battalions of exactly similar, tightly buttoned frockcoats of the fops on the Nevsky Prospect, an Englishman would take them for a squad of 'policemen.'
I had to do violence to my feelings every time I went to the Ministry. The chief of the secretariat, K. K. von Paul, a Herrnhuter,3 and a virtuous and lymphatic native of the island of Dago, induced a kind of pious boredom into all his surroundings.
The heads of the sections ran anxiously about with portfolios and -..vere dissatisfied with the head-clerks of the tables; the latter wrote and wrote and certainly were overwhelmed with work, and had the prospect before them of dying at those tables, or, at any rate, if not particularly fortunate, of sitting there for twenty years. In the Registry there was a clerk who for thirtythree years had been keeping a record of the papers that v••ent out, and sealing the parcels.
My 'literary exercises' gained me some exemption here too ; after experience of my incapacity for anything else the head of the section entrusted me with the composition of a general report on the Ministry from the various provincial secretariats.
The foresight of the authorities had found it necessary to propound certain findings in advance. not leaving them to the mercy of facts and ligures. Thus, for instance, in the draft of the proposed report appeared the statement: 'From the examination of the number and nature of crimes' (neither their number nor their nature was yet known) 'Your Majesty may be graciously pleased to perceive the progress of national morality, and the increased zeal of the officials for its improvement.'
Fate and Count Benckendorf saved me from taking part in this spurious report. It happened in this way.
At nine o'clock one morning, early in December, Matvey told me that the superintendent of the local police station wished to 3 The Moravian Brethren, called Herrnhuter from the little town of Herrnhut in Saxony, where they settled in 1 722, are a Protestant sect who abjure military service, the taking of oaths, and all distinctions of rank. (Tr.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
256
see me. I could not guess what had brought him to me, and barle Matvey show him in. The superintendent showed me a scrap of paper on which was written that he invited me to be at the Third Division of His Majesty's Own Chancellery at ten o'clock that morning.
'Very well,' I answered. 'That is by Tsepnoy Bridge, isn't it?'
'Don't trouble yourself,' he answered. 'I have a sledge downstairs. I will go with you.'
It is a bad business, I thought, with a pang at my heart.
I went into the bedroom. My wife was sitting with the baby, who had only just begun to recover after a long i llness.
'What does he want?' she asked.
'I don't know, some nonsense. I shall have to go with him .
. . Don't worry.'
My wife looked at me and said nothing; she only turned pale as though a cloud had passed over her face, and handed me the child to say good-bye to it.
I felt at that moment how much heavier every blow is for a man with a wife and children; the blow does not strike him alone, he suffers for all, and involuntarily blames himself for their sufferings.
The feeling can be restrained, stifled, concealed, but one must recognise what it costs. I went out of the house in black misery.
Very different was my mood \vhen I had set off six years before with Miller, the politsmepter, to the Prechistensky police station.
We drove over the Tsepnoy Bridge and through the Summer Gard£-n and turned towards what had been Kochubey's house; in the lodge there the secular inquisition founded by Nicholas was installed: people who \Wnt in at its back gates, before which we stopped, did not always come out of them again, or if they did, it was perhaps to disappear in Siberia or perish in the Alexeyevsky fortress. Vle crossed all sorts of courtyards and little squares, and came nt last to the office. In spite of the presence of the commissar, the gendarme did not admit us, but summoned an official who, after r<>ading thP summons, left the policeman in the corridor and asked me to follow him. He took me to the Director's room. At a big tnblP n<>ar which stood sevPral arm-chairs n thin, grPy-headed old man, with a sinister fnce, was sitting quite alone. To maintain his importance he WPnt on reading a paper to the Pnd, and then got up and camP towards me. He had a star on his breast, from which I concluded that he was some sort of commanding offic<>r in the army of spies.
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod
25 7
'Have you seen General Dubelt?'4
'No.'
He paused. Then, frowning and knitting his brows, without looking me in the face, he asked me in a sort of threadbare voice (the voice reminded me horribly of the nervous, sibilant notes of Golitsyn junior at the Moscow commission of inquiry ) :
'I think you have not very long had permission t o visit Petersburg or Moscow?'
'I received it last year.'
The old man shook his head. 'And you have made a bad use of the Tsar's graciousness. I believe you'll have to go back again to Vyatka.'
I gazed at him in amazement.
'Yes,' he went on, 'you've chosen a fine way to show your gratitude to the government that permitted you to return.'
'I don't understand in the leas�,' I said, lost in surmises.
'You don't understand ? That's just what is bad, too ! What connections! What pursuits! Instead of showing your zeal from the first, effacing the stains left from your youthful errors, using your abilities to good effect-no ! not at alclass="underline" it's nothing but politics and tattling, and all to the detriment of the government.