Chapter 31: My Father’s Death—my Heritage—the Partition—two Nephews

From the end of the year 1845, my father’s strength grew steadily less; he changed unmistakably after the loss of the Senator, whose death was completely in keeping with his whole life, taking place casually and almost in his carriage. In 1839 he spent one evening as usual with my father; he had come from some School of Agriculture, brought with him a model of some agricultural machine, the use of which I imagine could have very little interest for him, and at eleven o’clock in the evening he went home.

It was his habit to take a very light repast and to drink a glass of red wine on reaching home; that evening he declined to take anything and told my old friend Calot that he was rather tired and would go to bed. Calot helped him undress, put a candle by his bedside and went out; he had scarcely reached his room and taken off his coat when the Senator rang the bell; Calot ran, the old man was lying dead on the floor by the bed. This was a great shock to my father and very much alarmed him. His solitude was even more complete, his own turn was terribly near, his three elder brothers were in their graves; he was gloomier, and though, as his habit was, he concealed his feelings and maintained his frigid pose, yet his muscles failed him; I say muscles intentionally, for his brain and his nerves remained unchanged to the very end.

In April 1845, the old man’s face looked as though he were near his death, his eyes had lost their lustre; he was by now so thin that sometimes, showing me his hands, he would say:

‘The skeleton is quite ready, you have only to take off the skin.’

His voice was weaker, he spoke more slowly; but his mind, his memory, and his will were the same as ever, there was the same irony, the same continual dissatisfaction with every one.

‘Do you remember,’ one of his old friends asked ten days before his death, ‘who was our _chargé d’affaires_ in Turin after the war? You used to know him abroad.’

‘Syeverin,’ answered the old man after thinking a few seconds.

On the 3rd of May I found him in bed, his cheeks were flushed with fever, which had scarcely ever happened to him before; he was restless and said that he could not get up; then he ordered leeches to be applied and, as he lay in bed, continued his biting remarks during that operation.

‘So you are here,’ he said, as though I had only just come in; ‘you had much better go off somewhere and amuse yourself, my dear fellow, it is a very melancholy spectacle to watch a man’s dissolution, _cela donne des pensées noires_, but first give the lad ten kopecks for vodka.’

I fumbled in my pocket and found nothing less than a twenty-five-kopeck piece and would have given it, but the sick man saw it and said: ‘How tiresome you are, I said ten kopecks.’

‘I haven’t got it.’

‘Give me my purse out of the bureau,’ and after a long search he found a ten-kopeck piece.

Golohvastov, my father’s nephew, came in; the old man did not speak. In order to say something, Golohvastov observed that he had just come from the governor-general’s; at that word my father put his finger to his black velvet skull-cap, like a soldier saluting. I had studied all his gestures so thoroughly that I knew at once what was wrong; Golohvastov ought to have said: ‘From Shtcherbatov’s.’

‘Only fancy, how strange,’ the latter went on, ‘it turns out that he has gallstones.’

‘Why is it strange that the governor-general should have gallstones?’ the invalid asked slowly.

‘Well, _mon oncle_, he is over seventy, and it is the first time he has suffered in that way.’

‘Well, but here am I, though I am not governor-general, still it is just as strange; I am seventy-six and it is the first time I am dying.’

He was fully aware of his position and that gave his irony a _macabre_ character, which made one smile while petrified with horror. His valet, who always reported on small domestic matters to him in the evenings, told him that the bridle was in a very bad condition and that they would have to buy a new one.

‘What a queer fellow you are,’ my father answered; ‘a man is passing away and you talk to him about a bridle. Wait a day or two till you have put me on the drawing-room table, then tell him (pointing to me), he’ll bid you buy a saddle and reins as well, though they are not wanted.’

On the 5th of May his temperature was higher, his features were more sunken and began to look black, the old man was visibly wasting away from the burning fever. He spoke little but with perfect collectedness. In the morning he asked for coffee and for broth, and frequently drank some sort of tisane. In the dusk, he called me to him and said: ‘It is over,’ passing his hand over the quilt like a sword or a scythe as he spoke. I pressed his hand to my lips, it was burning. He tried to say something, was beginning ... and, without having said anything, ended: ‘But there, you know.’ And he turned to G—— I—— who was standing on the other side of the bed: ‘Very bad,’ he said to him and rested his weary eyes upon him.

G—— I——, an extremely honest man who at that time was managing my father’s business affairs and was more trusted by him than any one, bent down to him and said: ‘All the measures you have tried hitherto have been useless, allow me to advise you to resort to another remedy.’

‘What remedy?’ asked the sick man.

‘Won’t you send for the priest?’

‘Oh,’ said my father, turning to me, ‘I thought G—— I—— really had some remedy to advise.’

Soon afterwards he fell into a sleep which lasted till next morning; I suppose it must have been a state of unconsciousness. His illness made fearful progress during the night; the end was near, at nine o’clock I sent a horse messenger for Golohvastov.

At half-past ten my father asked to be dressed. He could not stand up nor hold anything securely in his hand, but he noticed at once that the silver buckle with which his trousers were fastened was missing and asked for it. When he was dressed he moved, supported by us, into his study. There was a big Voltairian armchair and a hard, narrow couch in the room; he bade us lay him down on the latter and at once uttered a few unintelligible and incoherent words, but five minutes later opened his eyes, and meeting Golohvastov’s gaze asked him: ‘Why have you come so early?’

‘I happened to be close by, uncle,’ answered Golohvastov, ‘so I looked in to ask how you are.’

The old man smiled as though he would say, ‘You don’t take me in, my dear fellow!’ Then he asked for his snuff-box. I handed it him and opened it, but, though he made great efforts, he could not control his fingers sufficiently to take a pinch; this seemed to strike him, he looked gloomily around him, and again his brain seemed clouded, he uttered a few inarticulate words, then asked: ‘What do you call those pipes that are smoked through water?’

‘Hookahs,’ observed Golohvastov.

‘Yes, yes ... my hookah’—and that was all.

Meanwhile Golohvastov outside the door was getting the priest ready with the sacrament. He asked the sick man in a loud voice whether he would receive him; my father opened his eyes and nodded. K—— opened the door and the priest walked in ... my father was unconscious again, but a few words intoned by the priest and still more the smell of the incense aroused him, and he crossed himself; the priest went up to him; we moved away.

After the ceremony my father saw Dr. Levental zealously writing a prescription.

‘What are you writing?’ he asked.

‘A prescription for you.’

‘What prescription, musk or something? You ought to be ashamed, you had better prescribe opium to help me off peacefully.... Lift me up, I want to sit in the armchair ...’ he added, turning to us. Those were almost the last coherent words he uttered. We lifted up the dying man and sat him in the chair. ‘Push me up to the table.’ We did so. He looked feebly at all. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, indicating M—— K——. I mentioned his name.

He wanted to rest his head on his hand, but his arm gave way and fell as though lifeless on the table; I put mine in its place. Twice he bent a weary sick glance on me as though asking for help, a more and more peaceful and serene expression came into his face ... there was a sigh—another sigh, and the head that was so heavy on my arm began to grow stiff.... Everything in the room preserved for some minutes a deathly silence.

This was on the 6th of May 1846, about three o’clock in the afternoon.

He was buried in the Dyevitchy Monastery with great pomp and ceremony; two families of peasants who had been set free by him came from Pokrovskoe to bear the coffin. We followed them, with torches, choristers, priests, archimandrites, bishops ... and the heart-rending ‘With thy Saints give rest,’ and then the grave and the heavy falling of the earth on the coffin lid, and with that was ended the long life of the old man who had so obstinately and powerfully maintained his authority over his household, who had so weighed on all who surrounded him; and now all at once his authority had vanished, his power was removed, he was gone, utterly gone!

Earth was scattered on the grave, the priests and monks were taken off to dinner. I did not join them, but went home. The carriages drove away, the beggars pressed round the monastery gates, the peasants stood in a group, wiping the sweat from their faces; I knew them all well, said good-bye to them, thanked them and drove away.

Before my father’s death we had almost entirely moved out of the little house into the big one in which he was living; and so it was natural that in the bustle of the first few days I had not had time to look round. But what I saw now on returning from the funeral sent a strange pang to my heart; in the courtyard and in the porch I was met by the servants, men and women, begging my favour and protection (why, I will explain at once). There was a smell of incense in the drawing-room. I went into the room in which my father’s bed used to stand, it had been carried out; the door, which had for so many years been approached with cautious steps, not only by the servants but even by myself, was wide open, and the maid was setting a small table in the corner. Every one turned to me for orders. My new position was detestable, revolting to me—this house and everything in it belonged to me because some one was dead, and that some one was my father. It seemed to me that in this coarse taking possession there was something unclean, as though I were robbing the dead man.

There is something profoundly immoral in inheritance; it distorts the legitimate grief at the loss of one near to us by entering into possession of his belongings. Fortunately we avoided other revolting consequences—the savage recriminations and hideous quarrelling of those who share the booty. The division of all the property was complete in a couple of hours, during which no one raised his voice or uttered a single cold word, and after which all present separated with increased respect for one another. This fact, the chief credit for which is due to Golohvastov, deserves a few words of explanation.

During the lifetime of the Senator, he and my father made wills bequeathing the ancestral estate to each other, on condition that the survivor would leave it to their nephew Golohvastov. Part of his own estate my father sold and assigned the sum he received from it to us. Afterwards he gave me a little estate in the province of Kostroma, doing so because Olga Alexandra Zherebtsov insisted upon it. The government sequestered this estate contrary to the law before any inquiry was made of me whether I intended to return. My father sold, after the Senator’s death, the latter’s Tver estate. So long as my father’s own estates covered what he sold of the property belonging to his brother, Golohvastov said nothing. But when the idea occurred to the old man to give me the estate in the Moscow province on condition that I should, in accordance with his instructions, pay a sum of money for it, partly to my brother and partly to other persons, then Golohvastov observed that this was inconsistent with the wishes of the Senator who had intended the estate to pass to him. The old man, who could not endure the slightest opposition, especially in plans which he had long cherished and therefore considered beyond all criticism, heaped sarcasms upon his nephew. Golohvastov refused to have anything to do with his affairs, above all to act as his executor. The misunderstanding was at first so acute that they broke off all relations.

This was a serious blow to my father. There were few people in the world that he really liked and Golohvastov was one of them. He had grown up before his eyes, the whole family was proud of him. My father put great trust in him, and always held him up to me as a model, and now, all of a sudden, ‘Mitya, sister Lizaveta’s son,’ was on bad terms with him, was refusing to carry out his arrangements, was putting his veto on his plans, and already he could see behind him the ironical eyes of ‘the Chemist,’ as with a smile he rubbed his nose with fingers burnt with acid.

As his habit was, my father showed not the faintest sign of his mortification; he avoided talking about Golohvastov, but became perceptibly more morose and uneasy and talked more often of ‘this awful age in which all ties of relationship have grown lax, and age no longer meets with the respect with which it was surrounded in happier days,’ I suppose when Catherine II. was the representative of all the domestic virtues!

At the beginning of the quarrel I was at Sokolovo and scarcely heard of it, but the day after my return to Moscow Golohvastov called upon me early in the morning. Being an extremely pedantic and formal person, he told me all about it at very great length and in fine and correct language, adding that he had made haste to come to me expressly to warn me what was wrong before I should hear anything of the quarrel.

‘I may well be called Alexander,’ I said jocosely, ‘I will cut the Gordian knot for you at once. Whatever happens, you must be reconciled, and, to remove all subject of dispute, I tell you plainly and directly that I refuse to accept Pokrovskoe; and the forest there alone will be enough to cover the loss of the Tver estate.’

Golohvastov was a little embarrassed and therefore proceeded to prove to me even more circumstantially all that I had thoroughly grasped from his first few words. We parted on the best of terms.

One evening a few days later my father began of his own accord speaking of Golohvastov. As his way was, when he was displeased with any one, he did not leave him a leg to stand on. The ideal which he had held up to me since I was ten years old, the model son, the exemplary brother, the best of nephews, and the man who dressed so well that the knot of his cravat was never too large or too small, appeared now, as though in some photographic negative, with all the hollow places prominent and all the white spots black.

The change to simple abuse would have been too abrupt and conspicuous without all sorts of fine shades, transitions, and connections. My father was too clever to be so inconsequent.

‘Oh, tell me, by the way, I keep forgetting to ask you, have you seen Dmitry Pavlovitch’ (he had always called him ‘Mitya’) ‘since you came back?’

‘Yes, once.’

‘Well, how is his Excellency?’

‘Oh, he is quite well.’

‘It’s quite right that you should see him; one ought to stick to such people. I like him and have always liked him and, indeed, he deserves to be liked. Of course he, too, has many absurd failings.... But God alone is without sin. Making his career so rapidly has turned his head.... Well, he is young for the Anna ribbon; besides he has such duties; he as curator goes to scold the schoolboys and so he has got into the way of talking to people as though they were inferiors ... he lectures and the pupils stand at attention and listen to him ... he imagines that he can talk in that tone to every one. I don’t know whether you have noticed it, but his voice even is different. I remember under the late Empress, Prince Prozorovsky used to give commands to his orderlies in just that harsh voice. Ridiculous as it seems, he came here to give me a lecture. I listened to him and thought, “What if my sister Lizaveta could have seen it!” I gave her away to Pavel Ivanovitch on their wedding day, and here was her son shouting: “Well, uncle, if that is how it is, you had better apply to Alexey Alexandrovitch, but I beg you to excuse me.” I have one foot in the grave, as you know, and no end of worries and infirmities; I am a long-suffering Job, in fact. And he shouts at me and gets crimson in the face.... _Quel siècle!_ I know that he is accustomed to _décastères_. Why, he never goes anywhere, but likes to sit at home giving orders to his elders and stable-boys, and then those wretched little clerks with “your Excellency this,” and “your Excellency that!” Why, it has turned his brain....’

In short, just as by slightly changing the features in the portrait of Louis Philippe you can finally get from a fine-looking old man to a rotten pear, so the model Mitya passed point by point into a Cartouche[117] or a Shemyaka.

When the last touches had been put in, I told him all my conversation with Golohvastov. The old man listened attentively, scowled, and then, after deliberately, carefully, methodically taking pinches of snuff, said to me:

‘Pray don’t imagine, my dear fellow, that you are troubling me by refusing Pokrovskoe.... I am not bowing down and begging any one to take my estate, and I am not going to beg you to. There are plenty who would be glad of it. Every one thwarts my plans; I am sick of it; I will give everything to a hospital—the patients will be glad to have it. As though Mitya were not enough, here are you teaching me what to do with my property, and it is only the other day that Vera was washing you in a tub. No, I am tired of it, it is time I was out of the way; I had better go to the hospital myself.’

So the conversation ended.

At eleven o’clock next morning my father sent his valet for me. This happened very rarely; as a rule, I went in to see him before dinner or, if I were not dining with him, went round to tea.

I found the old man at his writing-table with his spectacles on and some papers in front of him.

‘Come here and, if you can spare me an hour, help me to put some of these papers in order. I know you are busy, you are for ever writing your articles, you are a literary man.... I saw your article in the _Post of the Fatherland_, I couldn’t make anything of it. It is full of such learned expressions. I don’t know what literature is coming to.... In old days Derzhavin and Dmitriev used to write, but nowadays it is you ... and our cousin Ogaryov. Though, after all, it is better to stay at home and write nonsense than to be always driving about, going to Yar’s and drinking champagne.’

I listened and could not imagine what this _captatio benevolentiae_ was leading up to.

‘Sit down here, read this document and tell me your opinion.’

It was his will and a few codicils added to it. From his point of view this was the greatest mark of confidence he could have shown me.

A strange psychological fact. From what I read and from what he said I drew two conclusions: first, that he was longing to be reconciled to Golohvastov, and secondly, that he greatly appreciated my refusing to take the estate; and, indeed, from that time, that is, from October 1845 up to the time of his death, he not only put confidence in me in every case, but sometimes asked my advice and on two occasions even acted upon it.

Yet what would a man have thought who had overheard our conversation the day before? I have not altered one word of my father’s answer about Pokrovskoe, I remember it well.

The will in itself was clear and simple; he left all his real property to Golohvastov, all his personal belongings, money, and houses to my mother, my brother, and me, to be divided equally among us. On the other hand, the codicils, written on all sorts of scraps of paper and undated, were far from being simple. The responsibility he laid upon us, and especially upon Golohvastov, was extremely unpleasant. These codicils contradicted each other and had that character of indefiniteness which commonly leads to ugly quarrels and recriminations.

For instance, the following words occurred in one: ‘I set free all the house-serfs who have served me well and zealously and I charge you to give them rewards and money according to their deserts.’

In one the old brick house was left to G—— I——. In another the house was disposed of differently, and money was left to G—— I——, but it was nowhere stated that this money was to be instead of the house. In one codicil my father left a certain sum of ten thousand silver roubles to a cousin, while in another he left this cousin’s sister a small estate on condition that she paid her brother out of it this ten thousand roubles.

I must observe that I had heard beforehand from him of half of these arrangements, and not I alone. The old man had, for instance, spoken several times before me of leaving the house to G—— I——, and had even advised him to move into it.

I suggested to my father that he should invite Golohvastov and commission him and G—— I—— to put all these notes together into one codicil.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Mitya might be of use, but then he is very busy. You know these political gentlemen.... What does he care about his dying uncle? He is always inspecting seminaries.’

‘He’ll be sure to come,’ I observed, ‘it’s a matter of so much consequence for him.’

‘I am always glad to see him. Only my head is not always strong enough to talk business. Mitya, _il est très verbeux_—talks my head off, and my thoughts will be in a whirl directly; you had better take him all these papers and let him first make his comments on the margin.’

Two or three days later Golohvastov came himself; being extremely methodical, he was more alarmed by the confused state of the will than I was, and being a classical scholar he expressed his feelings thus: ‘_Mais, mon cher, c’est le testament d’Alexandre le Grand_.’

My father, as he always did in such circumstances, affected to be twice as ill as usual, aimed indirect shafts of sarcasm at Golohvastov, then embraced him, touched his cheek with his own, and the family Campo Formio[118] was concluded.

So far as we could, we persuaded the old man to revise his supplementary notes and to turn them into a single codicil. He meant to write this himself, and in six months had not finished it.

After the division of the property, the question naturally arose who were to receive their freedom and who not. As for the money gratuities, I had persuaded my father to fix a definite sum; after long discussions he had fixed three thousand silver roubles. Golohvastov told the servants that, not knowing which of them had served in the house and how they had served, he left the selection to me. I began by putting on the list all who were serving in the house. But when news of my list spread abroad, a perfect stream of serfs of past generations burst upon me from all parts—old men with grey unshaven chins and bald heads, clad in rags, with that tremulous shaking of the head and hands which is the fruit of twenty or thirty years of drunkenness; wrinkled old women wearing caps and huge flounces; and children to whom I had stood godfather by proxy though I had no conception of their existence. Some of these people I had never seen at all, others I remembered faintly as in a dream; finally some turned up who had, I knew for a fact, never served in our house, but had always lived away with a passport, and others who had once lived not in our house but in the Senator’s, or had spent all their days in the country. If these hobbling old men and old women, shrunken and blackened with age, had wanted freedom for themselves, they would have been no great loss; but on the contrary they were quite ready to end their days in the service of Dmitry Pavlovitch, but each of them had sons, daughters, grandchildren. I pondered and pondered, and in the end put down all their names. Golohvastov was perfectly aware that half of these strangers had never been in our service, but, seeing my list, he gave orders that deeds of freedom should be drawn up for all of them; as we signed them, he passed his finger through his hair and said to me, smiling: ‘I fancy we have set free several serfs belonging to other people.’

Golohvastov too was an original person in his own way, like all my father’s family.

My father’s younger sister had been married to Pavel Ivanovitch Golohvastov, an old, old-fashioned, and very wealthy Russian gentleman of ancient lineage. There are glimpses of Golohvastovs here and there in Russian history from the days of Ivan the Terrible; their names are met with in the days of the False Dmitri and in the Time of Trouble. Avraamy Palitsyn[119] brought upon himself first the anger of Dmitry Pavlovitch and afterwards a very long critical article through having incautiously referred to one of the latter’s ancestors in his account of the Siege of the Troitse-Sergievsky Monastery.

Pavel Ivanovitch was a morose and niggardly but extremely honest and business-like man. I have described already how he hindered my father from getting out of Moscow in 1812 and how he died afterwards in the country from a stroke.

He left two sons and a daughter. They lived with their mother in the very same big house on the Tversky Boulevard the fire in which had so astonished their old father. The rather strict, niggardly, and oppressive tone characteristic of the old father survived him.

An elaborate, solemn dullness and affectation of courteousness and benevolence always reigned in their house, together with a sense of their own dignity which, _à la longue_, was excessively boring. The spacious and well-kept rooms were too empty and silent. The daughter would sit in silence at her work; the mother, who preserved traces of great beauty and was still a youngish woman, forty-five or thereabouts, was in failing health and usually lay on the sofa; both spoke in a drawling, rather sing-song tone, as Moscow ladies generally did in those days. Dmitry Pavlovitch at eighteen was like a man of forty. The younger brother was livelier, but then he scarcely ever put in an appearance....

And all that has passed away ... while I still remember Dmitry Pavlovitch’s mother making a solemn presentation to him of a horse and droshky for his exclusive use. Their former tutor, Marshal, an excellent man, who served me as the model for Joseph in _Who is to Blame?_ used to give me lessons after Bouchôt left us.

However one may try to evade or disguise them, however cleverly one may settle these agitating questions of life and death and destiny, there is still no escaping them with their funeral crosses and with that smile on the grinning jaws of the dead face that seems so inappropriate!

Though indeed, on second thoughts, one sees that there is nothing for it but to smile. Take the fate of those two brothers, for instance—thinking about them leads one to strange reflections!

The difference between my father and the Senator pales before the sharp contrast between the Golohvastovs, though they grew up in the same room, had the same tutor, the same teachers, the same surroundings.

The elder brother had fair hair with a British shade of red in it, light grey eyes which he was fond of screwing up and which were suggestive of the steely imperturbability of his soul. With advancing years his figure became more and more expressive of a feeling of complete respect for himself and of a comfortable digestion in a spiritual sense. By that time he had begun not merely to screw up his eyes, but also his nostrils, which were of a peculiar, rather attractive cut. As he talked, he used to pass the third finger of his left hand through the hair on his temples, which was always curled and carefully arranged, while he kept his lips perpetually curved in a benevolent smile; the latter trick he inherited from his mother and from Lampi’s[120] portrait of Catherine II. His regular features together with his graceful and rather tall figure, his carefully rounded movements, and his neckerchief, the knot of which ‘was never too big nor too small,’ gave him the somewhat majestic comeliness of the man who gives the bride away at a wedding, of an honourable witness, of a man who has to distribute prizes to the best schoolboys, or at the very least of a man who has come to congratulate, to wish one a happy Christmas or New Year. But for the daily round, for workaday life, he was too elegant.

His whole life was a series of rewards for success and morality. He fully deserved them. Marshal, whose hair had been turned white by his younger brother, could not find words strong enough for Dmitry Pavlovitch’s merits and had absolute confidence in the impeccability of his French syntax. He did in fact speak French with that inapproachable correctness with which Frenchmen never speak the language (probably because the sense of the immense importance of knowing the French grammar is not so highly developed in them). At fourteen he not only took part in the management of the estate, but translated the whole of Heraskov’s _Rossiad_ into French prose by way of an exercise in style. Most likely his old father in the other world was more delighted at hearing of this than the ‘Swan on the waters of the Meander.’ But Golohvastov did not merely speak French and German correctly and know Latin well, he knew Russian and spoke it well and correctly.

Just as Marshal considered him his best pupil, so his mother considered him her best son, his uncles thought him their best nephew, and Prince Dmitry Vladimirovitch Golitsyn, whose department he entered, esteemed him the best of his subordinates. And what is still more important, all this really was true. Yet, strange to say ... one felt the absence of something in him. He was an intelligent, competent man, he had read and remembered a great deal—what more, one may say, could one ask?

I have since more than once met these characters, these ‘level’ minds, these brains so clearly comprehending—in a certain sphere and to a certain depth. They are so intelligent in their judgments, never deviating from their data; they are still more intelligent in their conduct, never stepping aside from the beaten track; they are the true contemporaries of their age, of their circle. Everything they say is true, but they might say something different; everything they do is good, but they might do something else. They are usually moral, but the evil spirit whispers in one’s ear: ‘But are they capable of being immoral?’ The Germans would call such people ‘reasonable’; you find them among the Whigs in England, of whom the genius and highest representative now is Macaulay and in old days was Sir Walter Scott, among the followers of the practical philosophy of the ‘hermit _de la Chausseé d’Antin_’[121] and of the philosophical disquisitions of Weiss.[122] Everything in these gentlemen is correct, decorous, distinguished, in place; they very properly love virtue and avoid vice; everything about them has the charm of a grey summer day—free from rain and sun; but something is lacking, a trifle, a nothing, as with the daughters of Tsar Nikita ... but

‘That was just what was missing,’

and without it all the rest is no use.

Golohvastov’s younger brother was born a cripple; this circumstance alone deprived him of the possibility of attaining the antique pose and Versailles deportment of his elder brother. Moreover he had black hair and big black eyes which he never screwed up. This vigorous and handsome exterior was all there was; within, rather unbalanced passions and confused ideas strayed at random. My father, who thought nothing of him, would say when he was particularly displeased with him: ‘_Quel jeu intéressant de la nature_ to see on Nikolasha’s shoulders’—and the old man shrugged his own—‘the head of the Shah of Persia!’

While his elder brother could never find a minute’s leisure and was continually doing something, Nikolay Pavlovitch did absolutely nothing all his life. In his youth he did not study; at twenty-three he was married, and in a very amusing fashion. He eloped with himself. Having fallen in love with a poor girl of no rank, who was like an extremely charming Greuze head or elegant Sèvres china doll, he asked permission to marry her, and at that I am not surprised. His mother, who was filled with aristocratic prejudices and imagined that no one less than a Rumyantsov or an Orlov would be a fitting bride for one of her sons—and even such a bride would have had to bring a whole population of the province of Voronezh or Ryazan as a dowry—of course refused her consent. But in spite of his brother’s persuasions and his uncles’ and aunts’ admonitions, the young girl’s bright eyes gained the upper hand. Our Werther, seeing that he could not alter the decision of his relations, one night let down from his bedroom-window a box, some linen, and his valet Alexandr, then let himself down, leaving his door locked on the inner side. By the time the door was opened at the dinner hour next day he was already married. His mother was so distressed at the secret marriage that she took to her bed and died, laying her life as a sacrifice on the altar of etiquette and decorum.

A deaf and grumbling old lady with a little moustache, the widow of an officer who had been in command of the fortress of Orsk in the time of the plague and of Pugatchov, lived in their house. She often used to tell me afterwards about the terrific incident of the elopement, and every time added: ‘My good sir, ever since he was a little boy I have seen that Nikolay Pavlovitch would never come to any good and would never be a comfort to Elizaveta Alexeyevna. He was twelve years old, you know, when he came running to me—I shall never forget it—laughing till the tears came into his eyes, and saying, “Nadyeshda Ivanovna, Nadyeshda Ivanovna, make haste, look out of the window and see what has happened to our cow!” I ran to the window and fairly groaned. Why, only fancy, sir, the dogs, I suppose it was, had torn her tail off, anyway the poor darling was left without a tail.... It was a Tyrolese cow.... I couldn’t help saying, “So this is how you laugh at your mamma’s cow, and your own property! Well, you will come to no good!” And I gave up all hope of him from that day.’

The prediction so strangely based upon a cow’s tail not being in its proper place was quickly fulfilled. The brothers divided the property and the younger one proceeded to waste his in riotous living.

Every one knows the series of sketches in which Hogarth represents side by side the lives of the industrious man and the idler. The industrious man yawns in church while the idler is playing knuckle-bones; the industrious man reads an edifying book in the family circle while the idler is drinking gin, and so on. Except for the difference in social position, the parallel was true of the two brothers. One of Hogarth’s heroes begins by stealing and ends on the gallows, while the other spends his whole life in dullness and lectures his friends to death. Thieving was a _hors-d’œuvre_, it was not the thief’s fault that his mother did not leave him two thousand souls in the Kaluga province and half a million of money, as Elizaveta Alexeyevna did her son. He would hardly in that case have put himself to so much trouble and effort, for thieving is far from a recreation, it is a very unpleasant and extremely risky pursuit.

On dividing the property, both brothers set zealously to work, one to improve his estate, the other to ruin his; I do not know whether Dmitry Pavlovitch added a hundred roubles to his fortune by his unflagging efforts, but within ten years Nikolay Pavlovitch had debts of more than a million.

Soon after his mother’s death Dmitry Pavlovitch, after establishing his sister, that is, marrying her off, went to Paris and London to see Europe; while Nikolay Pavlovitch set about showing himself to Moscow: balls, dinners, entertainments followed one another; his house was packed from morning to night with gourmands fond of a good dinner, connoisseurs of good wine, young people fond of dancing, interesting Frenchmen, officers of the Guards—wine flowed, bands played, and he even sometimes fêted local divinities of the first magnitude, such as Prince D. V. Golitsyn and Prince Yussupov.

Meanwhile Dmitry Pavlovitch, still unmarried, after duly inspecting Europe and learning English, returned, furnished with plans of Devonshire farms and Cornwall stud-stables and accompanied by an English groom and two immense thoroughbred Newfoundland dogs of incredible stupidity with long hair and shaggy paws. Sowing and winnowing machines, extraordinary ploughs, and models of all sorts of agricultural devices were brought by sea.

While Dmitry Pavlovitch was studiously introducing the four-field system of husbandry, which does not suit our soil, and sowing our orthodox meadows with clover, while he was giving English training to colts of Russian parentage and studying Thiers, Nikolay Pavlovitch—and this I consider the worst and silliest part of his conduct—managed to get tired of his wife and, as though he thought balls and dinner-parties not a sufficiently rapid means for reaching ruin, took as a mistress a stage-dancer who was certainly not worthy to tie his wife’s stay-lace. From that moment everything went like wildfire; an inventory was made of the estate, his wife pined and grieved over the fate of her children and herself, caught a cold and died after a few days’ illness—the family was ruined.

Seeing this, Dmitry Pavlovitch took vigorous measures to prevent his estate, too, going to his brother’s creditors—he made up his mind to get married. He carefully selected a sensible and careful wife, his marriage was not the fruit of unbridled passion; from dynastic considerations he desired direct heirs in order to secure the property of his ancestors.

His brother’s marriage bitterly chagrined Nikolay Pavlovitch. He had not expected such a surprise from him; they were destined, it seemed, to astonish each other by their matrimonial alliances. To console himself he was wilder than ever in his debauchery. Slow as such processes are with us, at last the day came when his estate was to be sold by auction. I do not imagine that Dmitry Pavlovitch would have been greatly concerned over his brother’s fate, but here again dynastic considerations came in and led him, with the assistance of his uncles, to attempt to save his brother. They began buying up all sorts of bills, paying forty kopecks in the rouble, that is practically threw a large sum of money into the fire, and only saw afterwards that it was quite useless, for the bills were so many. One episode in this story has remained in my memory. At the division of the family property Nikolay Pavlovitch had received his mother’s diamonds, and these too he had in the end pawned. To see the diamonds that had once decked the majestic form of Elizaveta Alexeyevna sold to some merchant’s wife was more than Dmitry Pavlovitch could stand; he represented to his brother all the iniquity of his conduct; the latter wept and swore that he was penitent; Dmitry Pavlovitch gave him an I O U and sent him to the pawnbroker’s to redeem the diamonds. Nikolay Pavlovitch asked his permission to bring the diamonds to him that he might keep them in safety as the sole heritage of his daughters. He did redeem the diamonds and was taking them to his brother, but probably changed his mind on the way; for instead of taking them to his brother, he went to another pawnbroker and pawned them again. The reader must imagine the amazement of the Senator, the annoyance of Dmitry Pavlovitch, and my father’s abundant reflections on the subject to understand how heartily I laughed over this extremely comic incident.

When all his resources were completely exhausted, when the estate was sold and the house was for sale, the servants scattered in all directions, and the diamonds not redeemed a second time, when Nikolay Pavlovitch had actually given orders for his garden to be cut down for firewood to heat his stove, the same kindly fate that had spoiled him all his life came to his help again. He drove over to his cousin’s summer villa and there went out for a walk, stopped in the middle of a conversation, put his hand to his head, fell down and died.

In those latter years the _diligent_[123] Dmitry Pavlovitch had left his plough like Cincinnatus and was administering the republic of learning in Moscow. This is how it came to pass. The Emperor Nicholas, assuming that Major-General Pissarev had cropped the students’ hair sufficiently and trained them to button up their uniforms, wished to replace the military rule of the university by civilian control. On the road between Moscow and Petersburg he appointed Prince Sergiey Mihailovitch Golitsyn director of the university—on what grounds it would be difficult to say, probably he could not have explained even to himself why he did it. Possibly he appointed him in order to prove that the post of director was altogether superfluous. Golitsyn, whom the Tsar had taken with him, half-dead already at being driven at break-neck speed, was so terrified at his new appointment that he tried to refuse it. But in these cases it was impossible to argue with Nicholas; his obstinacy was like the morbid persistence of pregnant women when they have a craving for something.

When Vrontchenko was made Minister of Finance he flung himself at the Tsar’s feet protesting his incapacity for the position. Nicholas made him the profound answer: ‘That’s all nonsense; I never governed an empire before, but here you see I have learned and you will learn too.’ And Vrontchenko willy-nilly remained Minister to the great delight of all the ‘protected females’[124] of Myestchansky Street, who illuminated their windows, saying, ‘Our Vassily Fyodorovitch has become a Minister!’

After galloping another hundred versts Golitsyn, still more crushed, determined to enter upon negotiations and announced that he would only accept the post if he should have a trustworthy colleague who could help him to shepherd the university flock. Fifty versts farther on the Tsar told him to find a colleague for himself; so they reached Petersburg without disaster.

After taking a month’s rest to recover from the journey, Golitsyn drove slowly to Moscow and set to work to find a colleague. He had an assistant in the university, Count A. Panin, the most exalted of mortals next to his own brother and the drum-major of the Preobrazhensky Regiment; but he was really too exalted for the little old gentleman to select him. After looking about him in Moscow, Golitsyn’s eye fell upon Dmitry Pavlovitch. From his own point of view he could have made no better choice. Dmitry Pavlovitch had all the qualities which those in power seek in a man of our day without the defects for which they persecute him—education, good family, wealth, knowledge of scientific agriculture, and a complete absence, not merely of ‘unsound ideas’ but any sort of incident in his life. Golohvastov had had no single love intrigue, had never fought a duel, had never played a game of cards in his life, and had never once been drunk, while on the other hand he frequently went to mass on Sundays—and not to mass just anywhere, but to mass in Prince Golitsyn’s private chapel. To this distinction must be added a masterly knowledge of the French language, polished manners, and only one passion, a perfectly innocent one—a passion for horses. No sooner had Golitsyn thought of him than Nicholas raced headlong to Moscow again. There Golitsyn caught him before he sped on to Tula and presented to him Dmitry Pavlovitch. The latter left the Tsar’s presence assistant director.

From that day Dmitry Pavlovitch began to grow perceptibly fatter, his deportment was still more expressive of dignity. He took to speaking through his nose more than ever and began to wear a more ample dress-coat, with no star as yet but with an unmistakable anticipation of one.

Until his university appointment we were as intimate as the difference of our years permitted (he was sixteen years older than I). At this point I almost quarrelled with him, at least for ten years we looked on each other with chilly hostility.

There was no private reason for this. His behaviour to me was always full of delicacy, equally free from unnecessary intimacy and mortifying aloofness. This deserves to be noted, since my father in his efforts to bring us together did everything that was calculated to make us dislike each other.

He was continually impressing upon me that the Senator and Dmitry Pavlovitch were my _natural protectors_, that I ought to _cling_ to them, that I ought to appreciate the kindness they showed me as relations. To this he would add that of course all their attentions were really for his sake and not for mine. As regards the old Senator, to whom I was almost as much used as to my father, with the difference that I was not afraid of him as of my father, these words had no effect upon me, but they did tend to make me avoid Golohvastov, and that they did not succeed in doing so was thanks to the tact with which Golohvastov always behaved.

My father used to say these things to me not in moments of vexation but when he was in his very best humour, and he said them because in the days of Catherine patronage was the regular thing; subordinates dared not resent familiarity from a superior, and every one in the world openly sought patrons and protectors.

When Dmitry Pavlovitch received his university appointment I thought, like Golitsyn, that it would be a very good thing for the university; it turned out quite the other way. If Golohvastov had become a governor or a chief prosecutor it may be presumed that he would have been better than many governors or many chief prosecutors. The post in the university was not at all the right one for him; his frigid formalism, his pedantry led him into making petty regulations and treating the students like schoolboys; there had not been so much interference in the life of the lecture-room and so much discontent even under Pissarev. And what made it worse was that Golohvastov was on the moral side what Panin and Pissarev had been only in regard to hair and buttons.

Till then, in spite of all his Toryism of the Russian provincial stamp, there had always been something cultured and liberal about him—a love for legality, an indignant resentment of arbitrary tyranny and official plundering. When he received his university post he ranged himself _ex officio_ on the side of every oppressive measure; he considered this inevitable in his position. My time as a student was the period of the greatest political enthusiasm; could I remain on good terms with so zealous a servant of Nicholas?

His pedantry and the everlasting ceremonial solemnity, the _mise en scène_ of himself, sometimes brought him into the most amusing situations from which, everlastingly occupied with keeping up his dignity and invariably self-satisfied, he could never extricate himself adroitly.

As president of the Moscow censorship committee he was, of course, an oppressive burden upon it and was the cause of books and articles being sent for censorship to Petersburg. There was an old fellow in Moscow called Myasnov, a great amateur of horseflesh, who had compiled some sort of genealogy of pedigree horses, and anxious to gain time asked leave to send to the censor the proofs instead of the manuscript, in which he wanted probably to make corrections. Golohvastov made difficulties, delivered a long speech in which he very verbosely expounded the arguments for and against granting permission, and ended by saying that he might, however, sanction the proofs being sent for censorship if the author would guarantee that there was nothing in his book opposed to the government, religion, or morality.

Myasnov, a choleric and irritable old man, got up and said with a grave face: ‘Since the responsibility rests upon me, I think it is essential to explain that there is of course not one word opposed to the government in my book, nor opposed to morality, but as regards religion I am not so certain.’

‘You don’t say so?’ said Golohvastov, surprised.

‘Well, you see, there is a text in the Book of Moral Precepts that says: “They that swear over earthen pots, they that plait their hair and that go to the coursing of steeds shall be accursed”; and since I say a very great deal in my book about the coursing of steeds, I really don’t know——’

‘That can be no obstacle,’ observed Golohvastov.

‘I humbly thank you for setting my mind at rest,’ said the sarcastic old man, bowing himself out.

When I came back from my second exile Golohvastov’s position in the university was not the same. The post that had been filled by Prince _Sergiey_ Mihailovitch Golitsyn was by then held by Count _Sergeyey_ Grigoryevitch Strogonov. Strogonov’s ideas, though confused and not clear, were still incomparably more cultured. He wanted to raise the significance of the university in the eyes of the Tsar, he defended its rights, protected the students from police raids, and was liberal so far as it was possible to be liberal while wearing the epaulettes of an adjutant-general on his shoulders and being the humble possessor of the Strogonov estates. In such cases one must not forget _la difficulté vaincue_.

‘What a terrible story that is of Gogol’s, _The Overcoat_,’ Strogonov said once to Yevgeny Korsh. ‘That ghost on the bridge, you know, simply pulls the greatcoat off the shoulders of nearly every one of us. Put yourself in my place and then look at that story.’

‘That’s v—very d—difficult for me,’ answered Yevgeny Korsh. ‘I am not used to looking at things from the point of view of a man who has thirty thousand souls.’

Indeed, with two such blind spots in the eye as the estates and the adjutant-general’s epaulettes it is hard to look clearly at the light of day, and Count Strogonov did sometimes step over the traces and behave like a regular adjutant-general, that is, with stupid coarseness, particularly when his liver was out of order; but he could not keep up the deportment of a general, and in that again the good side of his nature was apparent. To explain what I mean I will quote an example.

On one occasion a student from among those educated at government expense who had finished his studies very successfully and had afterwards received a post as a senior master in a provincial high school, hearing that there was a vacancy in one of the Moscow high schools for a junior master in his subject, came to beg the Count to transfer him. The young man’s object was to continue his studies, for which he had not the means in the provincial town; but unluckily Strogonov came out of his room as yellow as a church candle.

‘What right have you to this post?’ he asked.

‘I ask for the post, Count, because there is a vacancy.’

‘Yes, and there is another vacancy,’ the Count interrupted, ‘that of the Russian ambassador to Constantinople. Wouldn’t you like that?’

‘I did not know that it was in your Excellency’s gift,’ answered the young man. ‘I will accept the post of ambassador with genuine gratitude.’

The Count looked more jaundiced than ever but asked him civilly into his study.

My personal relations with him were very curious; our very first interview was not without the peculiar flavour typically Russian.

One evening in Vladimir I was sitting at home; all at once the German teacher at the high school, a doctor of the Jena University called Delitch, called upon me, wearing his uniform. He informed me that the director of the university, Count Strogonov, had arrived from Petersburg that morning, and had sent him to invite me to call upon him at ten o’clock next day.

‘It’s impossible; I don’t know him at all and you must have made a mistake.’

‘That is not possible. _Der Herr Graf geruhten aufs freundlichste sich bei mir zu beurkunden über ihre Lage hier._ You will go?’

Being a Russian, I went on arguing with Delitch, convinced myself still more thoroughly that it was quite unnecessary to go, and went next morning.

Alfieri, not being a Russian, acted differently when the French marshal who had taken Florence, and to whom he was a stranger, invited him. He wrote to him that if this was simply a private invitation he was very much obliged for it but begged to be excused, as he never visited persons with whom he was unacquainted; but if it were a command, then knowing the military position of the town he _se constituera prisonnier_ at eight o’clock in the evening without fail.

Strogonov invited me as a curiosity connected in the past with the university, as a reprobate graduate. He simply wanted to see me, and, moreover, such is the weakness of the heart of man even under the finery of a general, to boast to me of his reforms in the university.

He gave me a very good reception. He paid me a lot of compliments and quickly reached the point desired: ‘It is a pity you can’t be in Moscow, you would not recognise the university now; from the buildings and the lecture-rooms to the professors and the curriculum, everything is changed,’ and so on, and so on.

To show that I was listening attentively and that I was not a vulgar fool I very modestly observed that I supposed the curriculum was so changed because many new professors had returned from foreign parts.

‘No doubt,’ answered the Count, ‘but besides that, there is the spirit of the administration, the unity, you know, the moral unity....’

To give him his due, however, he did more good to the university with his ‘moral unity’ than Zemlyanika[125] to his hospital by ‘honesty and discipline.’ The university was very much indebted to him, but still one cannot but smile at the thought that he boasted of it to a man who was under police supervision for political offences. It is just as absurd that a man exiled for political offences should have gone with no sort of necessity at the summons of an adjutant-general. Oh, Russia!... It is no wonder that foreigners can make nothing of us!

I saw him for the second time in Petersburg, just at the moment when I was being exiled to Novgorod. Sergeyey Grigoryevitch was staying with his brother, the Minister of Home Affairs. I went into the drawing-room just as he was going out. He was in white breeches and in all his court finery, with a ribbon across his shoulder; he was going to the palace. Seeing me, he stopped and drawing me aside began questioning me about my case. His brother and he were revolted at the iniquity of my exile.

This was at the time of my wife’s illness, a few days after the birth of a baby who died. I suppose great indignation or irritability was apparent in my eyes and my words, for he suddenly began persuading me to bear my trials with Christian meekness.

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘it falls to the lot of every man to bear a cross.’

‘A good many sometimes indeed,’ I thought, looking at the crosses of all sorts and sizes that covered his breast, and I could not help smiling.

He divined my thought and flushed crimson.

‘I daresay you think,’ said he, ‘that it is very well for me to preach. Believe me that _tout est compensé_.’

Besides preaching to me he joined Zhukovsky in actively exerting himself on my behalf, but the jaws of the bulldog that had me in its grip would not readily loose their hold.

When I settled in Moscow in 1842 I visited Strogonov from time to time. He was well disposed to me but was sometimes sulky. I very much liked these ebbs and flows in him. When he was in a liberal frame of mind he used to talk of books and magazines, extol the university, and was continually comparing its present state with the pitiful condition in which it had been in my day. When he was in a conservative mood he reproached me for not being in the service and for having no religion, abused my articles, saying that I was corrupting the students, abused the young professors and declared that they were more and more set on forcing him to be false to his oath or to close their lecture-rooms.

‘I know what an outcry that would excite; you will be the first to call me a vandal.’

I bowed my head in assent and added: ‘You will never do that, and so I can thank you most sincerely for your good opinion of me.’

‘I certainly shall,’ muttered Strogonov, pulling his moustaches and turning yellower. ‘You will see.’

We all knew that he would never do anything of the sort and so could let him threaten it periodically, especially when we remembered his enormous estates, his rank, and his liver.

Once he was so carried away in talking to me that, abusing everything revolutionary, he told me how on the Fourteenth of December Trubetskoy left the square, ran distracted to his father’s house and, not knowing what to do, went to the windows and began drumming on the panes; and so spent some time. ‘A Frenchwoman who was governess in their family could not refrain from saying to him aloud, “For shame! Is this your place when the blood of your friends is flowing in the square? Is this how you understand your duty?” He snatched up his hat and went—where do you think?—to hide in the Austrian embassy.’

‘Of course he ought to have gone to the police and given information,’ I said.

‘What!’ cried Strogonov amazed, and he almost drew back in horror.

‘Why, do you think like the Frenchwoman,’ I said, ‘that it was his duty to go to the square and shoot at Nicholas?’

‘You see,’ observed Strogonov, shrugging his shoulders and looking instinctively towards the door, ‘what an unfortunate turn of mind you have.... I am only saying that with these people ... when there are no true moral principles based on faith, when they leave the straight path ... everything is in a tangle. You will see all that as you get older.’

That age I have not yet reached, but this lack of readiness in Strogonov at which Tchaadayev used often to mock maliciously is to my mind greatly to his credit.

They say that during the time when the spirit of our Saul of the Neva was completely darkened, after the February revolution, Strogonov too was carried away. He is said to have insisted in the new censorship committee on prohibiting everything written by me. I take that as a genuine sign of his goodwill to me; when I heard of it I set up a Russian printing press. But our Saul went much further. The reaction overtook and outstripped the Count, he would not take part in strangling the university and resigned his position as director. But that is not all. Two or three months after Strogonov’s resignation Golohvastov too resigned, horrified by a series of senseless measures dictated to him from Petersburg.

So ended the public career of Dmitry Pavlovitch, and having cast off the burden of state affairs he settled down to dignified repose like a true Muscovite, busying himself with looking after his land and surrounded by his family, his trotting horses, and his well-bound books.

In his private life all had gone well during the period of his curatorship, that is, children had come into the world in due season and had cut their teeth in due season. His estate was provided with lawful heirs. Moreover, the last ten years of his life were soothed and delighted by another personage. I mean Bytchok the trotter, who for speed, beauty, muscles, and hoofs was the champion not only of Moscow but of all Russia. Bytchok furnished the poetic side of Dmitry Pavlovitch’s serious existence. Several portraits of Bytchok in oils and in water-colours hung in his study. Just as Napoleon is represented first as a thin consul with long, damp locks; then as a fat emperor with a tuft of hair on his forehead and little short legs, sitting astride on a chair; then as an emperor retired from business, standing, his hands folded behind his back, on a rock in the midst of the splashing ocean—so Bytchok was represented at the various moments of his brilliant career: in the stall in which he spent his youth; in the fields, free, with only a little bridle on; and finally in light hardly visible harness with a minute box on runners and beside him a coachman in a velvet cap and a blue, full coat, with a beard combed as regularly as an Assyrian bull god—the very coachman who had won upon him I do not know how many goblets of Sazin workmanship which stood under glass cases in the drawing-room.

One would have thought that, free from the tedious cares of his university work, with an immense estate and an immense income, Dmitry Pavlovitch might well have lived and lived long. Fate decreed otherwise; soon after his retirement he, a strong, healthy man, a little over fifty, began to ail, got worse and worse, developed consumption of the throat, and after a painful illness died in 1849.

And here I cannot help pausing to reflect over those two graves, and the series of strange questions to which I have referred already rise up in my mind again.

Death brought the two unlike brothers to the same level. Which of them made the best use of his interval between the two mute and blank abysses? One wasted both himself and his property, but he had his brief time of honey of the best lime-flower flavour. Let us admit that he was a useless man, but he did no intentional harm to any one. He left his children in poverty; that was bad, but still they received an education and were bound to get something from their uncle. And how many men who have worked hard all their lives breathe their last with bitter tears in their eyes, looking at their children for whom they could secure neither education nor provision. Carlyle, to comfort people who are too much touched at the fate of the luckless son of Louis XV., tells them: ‘It is true that he was trained as a shoemaker, that is, he received the poor education which millions of children of poor villagers and workmen have received and are receiving now.’

The other brother did not live at all, he ‘served’ life just as priests serve the mass, that is, with extraordinary dignity performed an accustomed ritual, more ceremonial than profitable. He no more paused to consider why he was performing it than his brother. If from Dmitry Pavlovitch’s life two or three things, such as Bytchok, races, the goblets, and two or three entrances and exits—for instance when he entered the university with consciousness that he was in control of it, when he went out of the room for the first time wearing his star, when he was presented to his Imperial Majesty and when he led his Imperial Majesty through the lecture-rooms—all that is left is prose: nothing but a stiff and constrained official business morning. No doubt the thought of the importance of his share in the affairs of state afforded him satisfaction: etiquette is a poetry of a sort, an artistic gymnastic of a sort like parades and dances; but what a poor sort of poetry compared with the sumptuous feasts in which his brother spent his life after secretly marrying a pretty girl with enchanting eyes.

And to complete it all, Dmitry Pavlovitch’s regular life, his exemplary behaviour in the moral, the official, and the hygienic sphere, did not even win him health or length of years and he died as suddenly as his brother, only with far greater suffering.[126]

Well, and _all right_[127] too!