Chapter 42 (3)

‘In short, I need not have written before you come if it had
not occurred to me that silence may often be taken as a sign of
assent. I do not wish to mislead you or keep you in error in
regard to me: I do not agree with what you said in your last
letter to me of January 28th.

‘These were your words: “Come, now, is it worth while to get
into such a state—‘and oh, the baby—and oh dear, oh dear—and
good God, what am I to do?’ Just think; isn’t it beneath you?
surely, it’s nothing new to you! You have seen life and know
what people are. Every day I grow more indulgent and more aloof
from others.”

‘To this I answer, without for the present going off into a
dissertation on respectability in general, and without even
congratulating you on your satisfaction with yourself, that of
course a man is absurd who falls into a rage and a frenzy when
he is bitten by gnats or bugs, but the man is even more absurd
who under the same circumstances forces himself to assume an
air of stoical indifference.

‘You perhaps do not agree with this, for you put playing a part
above everything. Don’t be angry! Wait a minute! Let me finish.
In the first chapter of your _Vom andern Ufer_ in the Russian
and German versions these are your words: “Man likes to produce
an effect, to play a part, especially a tragic one; to suffer
is good and noble, it presupposes unhappiness; suffering is a
distraction, a comfort ... yes, yes, it is a comfort.” As I
have said to you already in Nice, I was at first inclined to
take this _dictum_ of yours as a careless oversight, and not a
happy one. At the time you answered that you did not remember
the words.

‘Though by no means applying those words exclusively to
you—that is, not assuming that you judged in this case of
men in general by yourself—I had hitherto imagined that
this _dictum_ of yours, like most of the _Réflexions de
La Rochefoucauld_, which it greatly resembles, like the
description of the talented men of our period, once drawn in
a masterly fashion by Byelinsky, was an “hyperbole, a jest.”
And so when I learnt that H. in Switzerland was indignant with
the General for the way he behaved in your affair, I took his
indignation, not for playing a part, but for real feeling, and
wrote to you: “Yes, I see H. is a brother to me.” When T., in
the presence of a witness, declared that he had been sentenced
for life—plus two years, I believed him too, and even repeated
this to several people. Yesterday Madame T. told me her husband
had never been sentenced at all. _Ergo_, in the eyes of the
persons to whom I repeated his lie I am just such a _blagueur_
as he. I do not like it. Who is to blame? I am, of course,
because I was “young and credulous”; but they are to blame too,
because they told a lie. I have never in Russia, nor anywhere,
met such _blagueurs_ as in Nice. In my letter to you of the
19th of January I told you that I want without _esclandre_ to
get away from these people; they are antipathetic to me. I
wrote this to you because I wanted to be open with you. But
_absorbed in yourself_ you could not grasp this very simple
idea. Or you would hardly, I suppose, have given me a most
trivial commission to T. You, too, say that you are holding
yourself aloof from people, but at the same time you ask them
to write to you. I do not understand that sort of aloofness.

‘Assuming that in serious matters to be frank is an essential
condition of honesty, I have to tell you this, too, without
loss of time. You write to me that when you have despatched the
General to Australia, and dismissed every one else, you will
be left with me and with your enemies—and that if, moreover,
I were a little more stable, and less dependent upon my own
and other people’s nervous caprices and agitations, you would
be disposed to make _un bout de chemin_ with me. To this I am
obliged to reply that, feeling in myself neither a taste nor
a talent for playing parts, and especially tragic ones, I am
ready to serve you with my advice, but not with my company.’

Of course, I had not supposed that a man who with tears and sobs had led me on to confidences difficult to utter, a man who had come so near to me and on whom I had leaned as on a brother in moments of weakness and helplessness, when my pain was beyond human endurance, that the eyewitness of all that had happened could regard my misery as stage trappings and scenery, of which I should take advantage to play a tragic part. In his ecstasies over my book he had been picking out stones in it and laying them up in his bosom to fling them at me when the chance might come. It was not enough for him to tear the present to pieces—he defiled and vulgarised the past: breaking with me, he could not show it the respect of dejected silence, but covered it with merciless abuse and ironical jeering.

This letter wounded me, wounded me very much.

I answered him sadly, with suppressed tears; I said good-bye to him, and asked him to break off our correspondence.

That was followed by complete silence between us....

With Engelson once more something seemed to have snapped within me. I was even poorer, more isolated; there was coldness all about me, nothing near me.... At times a hand seemed held out to me more warmly; some fanatic of no understanding, not even seeing that we were not of the same religion, would approach hurriedly, and as hurriedly turn away. Though indeed I did not seek closer intimacy with any, I had grown accustomed to men coming and going, to all sorts of nonentities of whom one expected nothing, and to whom one gave nothing except a cigar, wine, and sometimes money. My one salvation lay in work; I was writing _My Past and Thoughts_, and was setting up a Russian printing-press in London.

VI

A year passed: the printing-press was in full swing, it was being noticed in London and feared in Russia. In the spring of 1854 I received a short manuscript from Marya Kasparovna. It was not difficult to guess it had been written by Engelson. I published it at once.

Then came a letter from him asking me to put an end to our unhappy misunderstanding and to let us meet again in common work. Of course, I held out both hands to him.

Instead of an answer he arrived in London himself for a few days, and stayed with me. Sobbing and laughing, he begged me to forget the past, was lavish in words of affection, and again seized my hand and pressed it to his lips. I embraced him, deeply touched, in the firm conviction that the quarrel would not be renewed.

But only a few days later clouds foreboding little good appeared on the horizon. The shade of fatalism, of Buonapartism, which had peeped out in his letters from Geneva had developed. From hatred for Nicholas and the rank and file of the French Revolution of 1848, he had passed over _armes et bagages_ into the enemy’s camp. We argued; he was obstinate. Knowing that he always rushed to extremes and came back as quickly, I waited for the turn of the tide, but it did not come.

Unhappily, Engelson was busy at that time with an amazing project with which he was passionately in love.

He had made a plan for an air battery—that is, a battery of balloons loaded with explosives and at the same time with printed proclamations. This was at the beginning of the Crimean War. Engelson proposed letting off such balloons from ships on the coast of the Baltic. I greatly disliked this scheme; what could one make of propaganda with projectiles? Where was the sense in it for us Russians to burn Finnish villages and help Napoleon and England? Moreover, Engelson had discovered no new means of steering balloons. I made little opposition to his plan, supposing he would drop this nonsense of himself.

But not at all. He went off with his plan to Mazzini and Worcell. Mazzini said that things of that sort were not in his line, but that he was ready through his friends to send his plans to the Minister of War. The War Office gave an evasive reply, and put the project aside without a definite refusal. He asked me to gather together two or three of the military men among the refugees and put the balloon question to them. All were against it, and I told him over and over again that I, too, was against it; that our work, our strength, lay in propaganda, nothing but propaganda; that we should lose in moral prestige by siding with Napoleon, and should ruin ourselves in the eyes of Russia _faisant cause commune_ with her enemies. Engelson lost his temper and was beside himself. He had come to London confident of a triumph, and, meeting with opposition even from me, imperceptibly returned to his hostile attitude. Soon afterwards he went to fetch his wife, and brought her in May to London. A complete transformation had taken place in their relations; she was expecting to be a mother, and he was rapturously delighted at the prospect of a child. Misunderstandings, quarrels, and explanations were all a thing of the past. She with a sort of insane, half-mad mysticism was turning tables and absorbed in spiritualism. The spirits told her many things, and among others predicted my speedy demise. He was reading Schopenhauer, and told me with a smile that he was doing all he could to encourage her mystic tendencies, that this faith and exaltation was bringing peace and calm into her soul.

With me she behaved affectionately, perhaps in expectation of my approaching death; would come to me with her work, and make me read aloud articles and chapters from _My Past and Thoughts_. When a month later differences arose again over Engelson’s Buonapartism and air-balloons, she took the part of the reconciler—came to me begging me to spare a poor invalid, and assuring me that every spring Engelson was attacked by a hypochondriacal condition in which he did not know himself what he was doing.

Her serene gentleness was the gentleness of the conqueror, the mercy of complete triumph. Engelson, imagining that he held her under control by turning tables, lost sight of one thing—that she was not only twisting tables with her fingers, but him round her finger, and that he always gave the answers she wanted better than the tables did.

One evening Engelson began discussing his balloons again with a Frenchman, and said all sorts of biting things to him; the latter replied with irony, and of course that infuriated Engelson more than ever. He snatched up his hat and ran away. In the morning I went round to have it out with him on the subject.

I found him at his writing-table, his face still completely distorted with fury, and a frenzied expression in his eyes. He told me that the Frenchman (a refugee whom I had known for years and know still) was a spy, that he would unmask him, would kill him; and he gave me a letter he had only just written to a doctor of medicine in Paris; in the letter he implicated persons living in Paris, and slandered the refugees in London. I was dumbfoundered.

‘And do you mean to send that letter?’

‘At once.’

‘And by post?’

‘Yes, by post.’

‘That’s treachery,’ I said; and flung his scrawl on the table. ‘If you send that letter....’

‘Well, what?’ he shouted, interrupting me in a wild, hoarse voice—‘what are you trying to threaten me with? I’m not afraid of you nor of your nasty friends.’ With this he leapt up, opened a big knife, and brandishing it about, shouted gasping: ‘Come, come, show your mettle ... I’ll teach you ... wouldn’t you like to try ... come on!’

I turned to his wife, and saying, ‘Has he gone quite out of his mind? You had better get him away somewhere ...,’ went out of the house.

On this occasion, too, Madame Engelson played the part of peacemaker. She came to me in the morning entreating me to forget what had passed the day before. He had torn up the letter—was ill and gloomy. She took it all as a calamity, as physical derangement, was afraid that he was seriously ill, and shed tears. I yielded to her entreaties.

After that we moved to Richmond, and Engelson did the same. The birth of a son and the first months of looking after him gave Engelson new life; he was off his head with joy. When the baby was born he embraced and kissed effusively first the maid and then his old landlady. Anxiety over the baby’s health, the novelty of paternal feeling, the novelty of the baby himself, occupied Engelson for some months, and all went well again.

All at once I got a big envelope from him, accompanied by a note asking me to read the enclosed document and tell him my opinion candidly. It was a letter to the French Minister of War. In it he again proposed air-balloons, bombs, and manifestoes. I thought it all bad, from the quarter to which he was appealing down to the language, which was lacking in dignity, and I told him so.

Engelson answered by a rude note and began to sulk.

After that he gave me another manuscript to publish. I did not conceal from him that it would produce a very bad effect on Russian readers, and that I did not advise publishing it. Engelson reproached me with wanting to set up a censorship, and said that he supposed I had founded the printing-press exclusively to publish my own immortal works. I did publish the manuscript, but my instinct had been right. It aroused general indignation in Russia.

All this indicated that a new rupture was not far off. I must own that this time I felt no great regret. I was weary of this fever varied by paroxysms of friendship and hatred, of having my hands kissed and then getting a moral box on the ears. Engelson had overpassed the limit beyond which not even memories nor gratitude could save the situation. I liked him less and less, and waited coolly for what was to come. At that point an event occurred so important that for a time all quarrels and dissensions were eclipsed by a single feeling of joy and expectation.

On the morning of the fourth of March I went as usual at eight o’clock into my study, opened the _Times_, read a dozen times and did not understand, did not dare to understand, the grammatical sense of the words at the head of the news column: _The death of the Emperor of Russia_.

Hardly knowing what I was doing, I rushed with the _Times_ in my hands into the dining-room; I looked for the children and the servants to tell them the great news, and with tears of joy in my eyes gave them the newspaper.... I felt as though several years had rolled off my shoulders. It was impossible to stay indoors. Engelson was at that time living in Richmond. I hurriedly put on my coat and hat and was about to go to him, but he anticipated me, and was already in the hall; we fell on each other’s necks and could say nothing but: ‘Well, at last he is dead!’ Engelson, as his way was, capered about, kissed every one in the house, sang and danced; and we had hardly recovered ourselves when a carriage suddenly stopped at the front door and some one gave a violent tug at the bell: three Poles had driven full speed from London to Twickenham, without waiting for a train, to congratulate me.

I ordered champagne; no one reflected that it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, or earlier. Then, quite aimlessly, we all went off to London. In the streets, on the Exchange, in the restaurants, people were talking of nothing but the death of Nicholas; I did not see one man who did not breathe more easily from knowing that that sore was taken out of the eye of humanity, and did not rejoice that that oppressive tyrant in the big boots had at last returned to clay.

On Sunday my house was full all day; French and Polish refugees, Germans, Italians, even English acquaintances kept coming and going with beaming faces. It was a bright, warm day; after dinner we went out into the garden.

Some lads were playing on the bank of the Thames. I called them up to the railing and told them we were celebrating the death of their enemy, and flung them a handful of small silver for beer and sweets. ‘Hurrah! hurrah!’ shouted the lads. ‘Impernikel is dead! Impernikel is dead!’

My visitors too began flinging them sixpences and threepenny-bits; the lads bought ale and tarts and cakes, got hold of a concertina, and began dancing. After that, as long as I lived at Twickenham, the lads used to take off their caps when they met me in the street, and shout: ‘Impernikel is dead! hurrah!’

The death of Nicholas multiplied our hopes and energies tenfold. I at once wrote the letter to the Emperor Alexander, afterwards published, and made up my mind to bring out the _Polar Star_ at once.

‘May reason prevail!’ broke involuntarily from my tongue at the head of my programme. ‘The _Polar Star_[98] has been hidden behind the storm-clouds of the reign of Nicholas; Nicholas has gone, and the _Polar Star_ appears again on the day which is our Good Friday, the day on which five gibbets became for us five crucifixes.’

It was a powerful, stimulating impetus; we set to work with redoubled energy. I announced that I was bringing out the _Polar Star_; Engelson at last took up his article on socialism about which he had been talking in Italy. It might have been expected that we should go on working for a couple of years or more ... but his irritable vanity made any work with him insufferable. His wife encouraged his infatuation. ‘My husband’s article,’ she used to say, ‘will be taken as a new epoch in the history of Russian thought. If he writes nothing else, his place in history will be assured.’

The article, ‘What is the State?’ was good, but its success did not justify his wife’s anticipations. Moreover, it appeared at the wrong moment. Awakening Russia demanded, just at that time, practical advice, and not philosophical treatises _à la_ Proudhon and Schopenhauer.

The whole of the article had not yet been published, when a new quarrel of a different character from all the preceding ones almost completely severed all relations between us.

One day when I was with them I spoke jestingly of their having sent for the third time for a doctor for their baby, who had a cold in its head and a slight chill.

‘So because we are poor,’ said Madame Engelson, and all her old spiteful hatred a hundred times intensified flamed in her face, ‘our little one is to die without medical assistance? And you say that? You, a socialist and the friend of my husband, who refuse him fifty pounds, and are exploiting him over his lessons.’

I listened in amazement, and asked Engelson whether he shared this view or not. He was embarrassed, his face flushed in patches, he besought her to be silent.... She went on. I got up and, interrupting her, said: ‘You are ill and are nursing your baby, I am not going to answer you, but I am not going to listen either.... You will hardly think it strange that I shall not set foot in your house again.’

Engelson, distraught and melancholy, caught up his hat and came out into the street with me: ‘Don’t take _au pied de la lettre_ the unbridled language of an hysterical woman....’ He went off into a muddle of explanations. ‘I will come and give my lesson to-morrow,’ he said. I shook hands with him and went home without a word.

All this calls for explanations, and the most painful ones, too, relating not to opinions and public affairs but to the kitchen and account books. Nevertheless, I will make an effort to clear up this side of our relations too. Squeamishness, that sentimentalism of purity, is out of place in pathological investigation.

The Engelsons were scarcely entitled to reckon themselves poor people. They received ten thousand francs a year from Russia, and he could easily earn another five thousand by translations, reviews, and school-books; Engelson was a proficient linguist. Trübner’s, the booksellers, had ordered a lexicon of Russian roots and a grammar from him; he could, like Pierre Leroux, like Kinkel, like Esquiros, give lessons. But, like a regular Russian, he took up everything—the dictionary, the translations, and the lessons—never finished anything, never put himself out, and never earned a farthing.

Neither husband nor wife was prudent or capable of managing their affairs. The continual fever in which they lived prevented them from thinking about household management. He had come from Russia with no definite plan, and remained in Europe with no definite object. He had taken no steps whatever to secure his property, and _un beau jour_, panic-stricken, made a hasty arrangement of some sort by which he limited his income to ten thousand francs, a sum which he did not receive quite punctually, but always received sooner or later.

That Engelson would not make both ends meet with his ten thousand francs was evident; that he would not know how to economise was equally clear; all that was left for him was to work or to borrow. At first, after coming to London, he borrowed about forty pounds from me ... a little time afterwards he asked for money again.... I had a serious and friendly talk with him about this, and told him I was ready to help him, but that I absolutely refused to lend him more than ten pounds a month. Engelson frowned. However, he did twice take a ten-pound note; then suddenly he wrote to me that he needed fifty pounds, and, if I did not care to lend it him or did not trust him, he begged me to get it for him by pawning some diamonds. All this could hardly be taken seriously; if he had really wanted to pawn the diamonds, he ought to have taken them to some pawnbroker and not to me.... Knowing him and being sorry for him, I wrote that I would pawn the diamonds for fifty pounds, if they would give that, and would send him the money. Next day I sent a cheque, but the diamonds, which he would certainly have sold or pawned, I put away to keep for him. He took no notice of the fact that no interest was asked for the fifty pounds, and believed that I had pawned the diamonds.

The second point relating to the lessons is even simpler. While I was in London, S. gave Russian lessons to my children, charging four shillings an hour. In Richmond, Engelson offered to take S.’s place. I asked him about terms; he answered that it was difficult for him to talk of terms with me, but that, as he had no money, he would take what I had paid S.

On reaching home I wrote a letter to Engelson: I reminded him that he had himself fixed the terms for the lessons, but that I begged him to take double the amount for all the lessons in the past. Then I wrote what had led me to keep his diamonds, and sent them back to him.

He sent a confused answer, thanked me, expressed vexation, and came in the evening himself, and went on coming as before. His wife I did not see again.

VII

A month later, Zeno Swentoslawski, and with him Linton,[99] the English republican, were dining with me. Engelson came in towards the end of dinner. Swentoslawski, the purest-hearted and best of men, a fanatic who at over fifty retained the reckless fire of a Pole and the impulsive impetuosity of a boy of fifteen, was urging the necessity of our returning to Russia and beginning a keen propaganda in print there. He undertook to convey the type, and so on.

After listening to him, I said half in jest to Engelson: ‘I say, you know, _on nous accusera de lâcheté_ if he goes alone.’

Engelson made a grimace and went away.

Next day I went up to London and did not come back till the evening; my son, who was lying down with a feverish attack, told me, in great excitement, that Engelson had come in my absence, that he had abused me terribly, had said that he would pay me out, that he was not going to put up with my authority any longer, and that he did not need me now _since his article had been published_. I did not know what to think, whether Sasha was delirious from fever or Engelson had come in dead drunk.

From Malwida von Meysenbug[100] I learnt more. She told me with horror of his violence. ‘Herzen,’ he had shouted in a nervous, gasping voice, ‘called me _lâche_ yesterday in the presence of two strangers.’ Malwida interrupted him, saying that I had not been talking about him at all, that I had said ‘_on nous taxera de lâcheté_,’ speaking of all of us generally. ‘If Herzen feels that he is doing something mean, let him speak for himself, but I will not allow him to speak like that of me, and in the presence of two blackguards too.’

My elder girl, then ten years old, had run in at the sound of his shouts. Engelson had gone on: ‘No, this is the end of it, it is enough. I am not accustomed to it, I will not allow myself to be trifled with, I will show him whom he has to deal with ...,’ pulled a revolver out of his pocket and went on shouting, ‘It is loaded, it is loaded, I will wait for him....’

Malwida got up and told him that she insisted on his leaving her, that she was not obliged to listen to his wild ravings, that she could only put down his behaviour to illness. ‘I am going,’ he said; ‘don’t trouble; but first I want to ask you to give Herzen this letter.’ He opened it and began reading it aloud; the letter was a string of abuse.

Malwida von Meysenbug refused the commission, asking him why he expected her to act as an intermediary in forwarding such a letter.

‘I will find means without your help,’ observed Engelson, and went away.

He did not send the letter, but a day later he sent me a note; in it, without saying one word about what had passed, he wrote that he had an attack of hæmorrhage, that he could not come to me, and begged me to send the children to him.

I said that there was no answer, and again all diplomatic relations were broken off; hostile relations remained. Engelson did not let slip a chance of turning them to account.

From Richmond I moved in the autumn of 1855 to St. John’s Wood. Engelson was forgotten for some months. Suddenly, in the spring of 1856, I received a note, suggestive of a duel, from Orsini, whom I had seen two days previously.

Coldly and courteously, he asked me to let him know whether it was the truth that Saffi and I were spreading a rumour that he was an Austrian spy. He asked me either to give an unqualified _démenti_, or to indicate from whom I had heard this abominable calumny.

Orsini was justified; I should have done the same in his place. Perhaps he ought to have had more confidence in Saffi and in me—but the insult was terrific.

Any one who knew anything of Orsini’s character would understand that such a man, attacked in the most holy of holies of his honour, could not stop short at half measures. The affair could only be settled by our _absolute_ innocence or by the death of some one.

From the first minute it was clear to me that the blow came from Engelson. He no doubt reckoned on one side of Orsini’s character, but fortunately there was another which he had overlooked. Orsini combined with violent passions an intense power of self-control; he was cautious among dangers, thought over every step he took, and never reached a decision on the spur of the moment, because when once he had reached a decision he wasted no time in criticism, in doubt, in reconsideration, but carried it out. We saw this later in the Rue Lepelletier. He acted in the same way now. He tried without haste to investigate the matter, to find out who was guilty, and then, if he succeeded, to kill him.

Engelson’s second mistake lay in quite unnecessarily bringing in Saffi.

The facts were these. Six months before my rupture with Engelson I happened to be one morning at the house of Mrs. Milner-Gibson (the wife of the minister): there I found Saffi and Pianciani; they were saying something to her about Orsini. As I went away I asked Saffi what they had been talking about. ‘Only fancy,’ he answered: ‘Mrs. Milner-Gibson had been told in Geneva that Orsini had been bribed in Austria....’ On reaching home at Richmond I had repeated this to Engelson. We were both then dissatisfied with Orsini. ‘The devil take him entirely!’ observed Engelson, and nothing more was said on the subject. When Orsini made his marvellous escape from Mantua we thought in our own circle of the accusation heard by Mrs. Milner-Gibson. The arrival of Orsini himself, his story, his wounded foot, entirely effaced this absurd suspicion.

I asked Orsini to give me an interview. He asked me to go the following evening. In the morning I went to Saffi and showed him Orsini’s note. He at once offered to go with me, as indeed I expected he would. Ogaryov, who had only just arrived in London, was a witness of this interview.

Saffi described the conversation at Mrs. Milner-Gibson’s with the simplicity and straightforwardness which are his distinguishing characteristics. I filled in the rest of the story. Orsini thought a minute, and then said: ‘Well, may I ask Mrs. Milner-Gibson about this?’

‘Of course,’ answered Saffi.

‘Yes, I believe I have been too hasty; but,’ he asked me, ‘tell me, why did you speak of it to an outsider instead of warning me?’

‘You forget, Orsini, the time when it happened, and that the _outsider_ to whom I spoke was at that time not an outsider; you know better than most people what he was then to me.’

‘I have mentioned no one....’

‘Let me finish. Why, do you suppose it is easy for a man to repeat such things? If these rumours had spread, perhaps I ought to have warned you—but who is speaking about it now? As for your having mentioned no one’s name, you are making a great mistake there. Bring me face to face with my accuser, then it will be still more evident what part each has played in these slanders.’

Orsini smiled, got up, came to me, embraced me, embraced Saffi, and said: ‘_Amici_, we will end the matter; forgive me, let us forget all about it and talk of something else.’

‘That’s all very well, and you were perfectly right to ask me for an explanation, but why do you not name my accuser? In the first place, it is useless to conceal it ... it was Engelson told you this.’

‘Give me your word that you will drop the matter?’

‘I will give you my word before two witnesses.’

‘Well, you have guessed right.’

I anticipated this confirmation, yet it sent a pang to my heart as though I had still doubted it.

‘Remember what you have promised,’ Orsini added, after a brief silence.

‘You need not worry about that. But to make up to me and to Saffi you might tell us how it happened; you see, we know all that matters.’

Orsini laughed. ‘What curiosity!’ he said. ‘You know Engelson. He came to me the other day: I was in the dining-room’—(Orsini lived in a boarding-house)—‘and having dinner alone. He had already dined. I asked for a bottle of sherry for him; he drank it, and at once began complaining of you—that you had ill-treated him, that you had broken off all relations with him—and after gossiping about all sorts of things asked how you had received me on my return. I answered that you had given me a very friendly welcome, that I had dined with you, and that I had been to you in the evening.... Engelson all at once began shouting: “That’s just like them ... I know those gentry; it’s not long since he and his friend and admirer Saffi were saying that you were an Austrian spy, but now you’re famous again and in the fashion, and he is your friend!” “Engelson,” I observed, “do you fully understand the gravity of what you’ve just said?” “Fully, fully,” he repeated. “Will you be ready under all circumstances to repeat your words?” “Under all circumstances!”

‘When he had gone I took a sheet of paper and wrote you a letter. That’s the whole story.’

We all went out into the street. Orsini, as though guessing what was passing within me, said by way of consolation, ‘He’s crazy.’

Soon afterwards Orsini went to Paris, and his beautiful classical head rolled bleeding on to the platform of the guillotine.

The first news of Engelson was the news of his death in Jersey.

No word of reconciliation, no word of remorse reached me....

(1858.)

_P.S._—In 1864 I received a strange letter from Naples. It spoke of the apparition of my wife’s soul, and of her having appealed to me to turn to religion and purify my soul with it, and to abandon worldly vanities....

The writer said that it was all written at the dictation of the spirit; the tone of the letter was warm, friendly, and ecstatic.

The letter was unsigned; I recognised the handwriting; it was from Madame Engelson.[101]

FOOTNOTES

[1] There is this now.—(_Author’s Note._)

[2] _Le Charivari_ was the French _Punch_ (earlier in date, however, _Punch_ being called ‘The London Charivari’ as a sub-title), founded in 1831 by Charles Philipon, a caricaturist of great talent.

[3] The Comte d’Argout had much to do in bringing about the fall of Charles X., and held several important ministerial appointments under Louis-Philippe.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[4] I have heard this criticism a dozen times since.—(_Author’s Note._)

[5] The Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., was by the royalists called Henri Cinq.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[6] The celebrated Victor Panin.—(_Author’s Note._)

[7] _I.e._ stabs with a dagger.

[8] At the Rouen elections for the Constituent Assembly in April, the Socialist candidates were heavily defeated; the workmen, suspecting some fraud, assembled, unarmed, before the Hôtel de Ville, to protest. They were attacked by soldiers and National Guards; eleven were killed and many wounded.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[9] Sibour, Marie Dominique Auguste (1792-1857), was appointed on 10th of July 1848, by General Cavaignac, to the archi-episcopal see of Paris to replace Affre, who died of wounds received in the June days. He was himself assassinated in church by the Abbé Vergur, whom he had interdicted.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[10] Written at the end of 1853.

[11] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[12] Cavaignac, Louis-Eugène (1802-1857), the youngest of the three distinguished Frenchmen of that name, was commander-in-chief in 1848, and an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Republic when Louis-Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.) was elected on 10th December 1848.

[13] Lamoricière, Louis de (1806-1865), a prominent politician and general, was exiled in December 1848, and afterwards took command of the Papal troops.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[14] David (d’Angers), Pierre-Jean (1789-1856), must not be confounded with the great painter Louis David. David d’Angers was a celebrated sculptor of republican principles, who executed busts or medallions of most of the eminent men of his day. He was a great friend of Hugo, who wrote of him in _Les Rayons et les Ombres_: ‘La forme, ô grand sculpteur, c’est tout et ce n’est rien. Ce n’est rien sans l’esprit, c’est tout avec l’idée!’—(_Translator’s Note._)

[15] Barbès, Armand (1809-1870), called the ‘Bayard de la démocratie,’ was a people’s representative in 1848, imprisoned in 1849, and set free in 1854.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[16] Ramon de la Sagra (1798-1871), a Spanish economist, took part in the revolutionary movement of 1848 in France, and wrote advocating the views of Proudhon. In 1854 he returned to Spain, and was several times elected a member of the Cortes. He was, of course, not seventy, as Herzen mistakenly assumes, but fifty, in 1848.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[17] A mountain chain of Old Castile, where the French defeated the Spanish in 1808.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[18] Written in 1856.

[19] Rayer, P. F. O., was a distinguished French physician, and author of numerous medical works.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[20] Delessert, Gabriel, born 1786, was prefect of police of the town of Paris for twelve years from 1836.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[21] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[22] Arago, Emmanuel (1812-1896), the son of the more distinguished F. D. Arago, who was one of the members of the Provisional Government formed after the _coup d’état_ of 24th February 1848. The others were Ledru-Rollin, Dupont de l’Eure, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine, Crémieux, Marrast, Flocon, and Louis Blanc.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[23] Bastide, Jules (born 1800), a publicist and politician, was minister for foreign affairs in 1848. He had had an eventful career, and for two years took refuge in England after escaping from prison, where he was thrown for taking part in the riots that followed the funeral of Lamarque in 1832.

[24] Changarnier, Nicolas (1793-1877), a prominent politician and general, was exiled at the _coup d’état_ of 1851, but lived to serve in the Franco-German War of 1870.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[25] Guinard, Auguste-Joseph (born 1799), had been one of the first to proclaim the republic in February 1848, and at the head of the 8th Legion had occupied the Hôtel de Ville.

[26] Forestier, Henri-Joseph (born 1787), was a painter of merit. He was colonel of the 8th Legion of the National Guard.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[27] Karl Blind (born 1826), a writer and revolutionist, was for the part he took in the insurrections in South Germany sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, but was rescued by the mob. He settled in England, where he continued journalistic and propaganda work up to the time of his death.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[28] How well founded my apprehensions were was shown by a police raid on my mother’s house at the Ville d’Avray. They seized all the papers, even the correspondence of her maid with my cook. I thought it inopportune to publish my account of the 13th of June at the time.—(_Author’s Note._)

[29] Oran, a province of Algeria in which the French carried on a successful campaign against Abd-el-Kader in 1847.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[30] Pyat, Félix (1810-1889), a journalist, dramatic writer, and communist leader, supported Ledru-Rollin’s appeal to the French people in 1849, and on its failure escaped to Switzerland and then to London, where he was a member of the ‘European Revolutionary Committee.’ He returned to France at the amnesty of 1870, and was in 1871 one of the leaders of the Commune, on the fall of which he again escaped to London. He was condemned to death in his absence, but was again pardoned in 1880.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[31] Grandville, Jean-Ignace-Isidore (born 1802), was one of the most celebrated book-illustrators of his time. Perhaps his most famous book is _Les animaux peints par eux-mêmes_. He was deeply interested in animals, insects, and fishes, and drew them wonderfully. He edited _La Caricature_, in which all the most eminent people of his time in Paris are depicted. He died, insane, in 1850.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[32] In 1848 there was an insurrection in Baden, headed by Struve and Hecker, which aimed at establishing a republic. The troops sided with the insurgents, the Grand Duke fled, and in May 1848 a Constituent Assembly was called. After several battles the Grand Duke was by Prussian aid reinstated in July of the same year.

[33] Görgei, Arthur (1818), was commander-in-chief of the Hungarian forces in 1848, was victorious over the Austrians in the spring of that year, but was defeated early in August by the Russian general Paskevitch, and on the 13th of that month surrendered the Hungarian army unconditionally to Rüdiger, another Russian general. He was accused of treachery.

[34] Coblenz was one of the chief centres to which the _émigrés_ of the great French revolution flocked from 1790 onwards.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[35] The Commission of Inquiry was presided over by Odilon Barrot; the report, drawn up by one Bauchart, is described as a ‘_monument impérissable de mauvaise foi et de basse fureur_.’

[36] Kapp, Friedrich (1820-1884), a German historian, after the revolution of 1848 went to New York, but returned to Berlin in 1870, became a Liberal member of the Reichstag.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[37] The more thoroughgoing of the followers of John Huss were called Taborites, from their headquarters at Mt. Tabor in Bohemia.

[38] Heinzen, Karl Peter (1827-1880), wrote for the _Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung_ and the _Rheinische Zeitung_, and his articles led to the suppression of these two papers. He published an attack on the government, ‘Die prussische Bureaucratie,’ for which he was prosecuted. In 1848 he was one of the leaders of the Baden revolution. Later on he escaped to America, where he edited _The Pioneer_.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[39] Undergraduates in their first year were called ‘foxes’ in German universities.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[40] See Vol. II. Chapter 27.

[41] The ‘Bolognese insurrection’ began on 2nd February 1831 at the house of Ciro Menotti at Modena. There thirty-one conspirators surprised by the ducal troops held the soldiers at bay for hours.

[42] Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, two young Venetians, lieutenants in the Austrian navy, attempted an insurrection in 1843. On its failure they escaped to Corfu; but, misled by false information, landed in Calabria with twenty companions, were caught and shot at Cosenza in July of the same year. Their letters to Mazzini in London had been opened by the English authorities, who then resealed them and sent the information so gained to the Austrian Government. Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen were principally responsible.

[43] Babeuf, François-Émile, nicknamed Gracchus (1760-1797), conspired against the Directoire, was condemned to death, but stabbed himself. He advocated a form of communism called _babouvisme_.

[44] The reference is to Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III. on 14th January 1858.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[45] ‘In 1857 Pisacane seized the _Cagliari_ steamer, freed the political prisoners in the island of Ponza, and with a small force effected a landing on the Neapolitan coast at Sapri, hoping to join others of the republican party. Met by overwhelming numbers, he fell at the head of his men, most of them falling with him.’

[46] The ‘wild boar’ meant is, of course, Ferdinand II. of Naples, nicknamed Bomba because of the cruel bombardment of Naples and other cities during the suppression of the insurrection.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[47] Here is a poor prose translation of these wonderful lines, which have passed into a popular legend:—

‘They gathered with weapons in their hands, but they did not war with us; they threw themselves on the earth and kissed it, the tear quivered in their eyes, and all wore a smile. We were told they were robbers who had come out of their dens; but they took nothing, not even a crust of bread, and we heard from them one cry only: “We have come to die for our country!” They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they are dead!

‘At their head came a young leader with golden hair and blue eyes.... I made so bold I took him by the hand and asked: “Whither goest thou, splendid leader?” He looked at me and said: “My sister, I go to die for my country!” and my heart ached; I had not strength to say: “God be thy help!”

‘They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they are dead!’

And I knew the _bel capitano_, and more than once talked with him of the fortunes of his distressful country.—(_Author’s Note._)

[48] Napoleon, so the newspapers wrote, ordered Orsini’s head to be steeped in sulphuric acid that it might be impossible to take a death mask from it. What progress in humanity and chemistry since the days when the head of John the Baptist was given on a golden dish to the daughter of Herod!—(_Author’s Note._)

[49] Pope Pius VII. signed the Concordat of 15th July 1801 with Napoleon, was forced by the latter to come to Paris to consecrate him as Emperor in 1804, was later on kept prisoner in Fontainebleau, and only returned to Rome in 1814.

[50] The Cristinos were the supporters of the Spanish Queen Regent Cristina against the Carlists.

[51] Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, elected Pope in 1846, known as Pius IX.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[52] Cosenz (born 1820) was an Italian general who defended Venice against the Austrians in 1848, joined Garibaldi in 1859, was minister of war under the latter’s dictatorship in Naples, later on was several times elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and was a senator after 1872.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[53] Barbier, Henri-Auguste (1805-1882), a French poet, was the author of a volume of verses called _Iambes_.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[54] All this has greatly changed since the Crimean War (1866).—(_Author’s Note._)

[55] _The Times_, two years ago, reckoned that on an average in every police district in London (there are ten) there were two hundred cases of assaults on women and children per annum; and how many assaults never lead to proceedings?—(_Author’s Note._)

[56] The _Sonderbund_ was the alliance of the seven Catholic cantons of Switzerland, which aimed at separation from the Federal Government. It was dissolved after a brief civil war.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[57] Weitling, Wilhelm (born 1808), got into touch with communists in Paris and Switzerland during his wanderings as a journeyman tailor, was prosecuted for propaganda of his ideas in Germany, escaped to America, where he became the head of a communist colony in the state of Iowa, wrote _Das Evangelium des armen Sünders_, _Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit_ (1842), and _Die Menschheit wie sie ist und wie sie sein sollte_ (1845).—(_Translator’s Note._)

[58] Périer, Casimir-Pierre (1777-1832), was a wealthy banker who supported the Liberal opposition under Charles X., and after the Paris revolution of 1830 became Minister of the Interior under Louis-Philippe, in which capacity he vigorously suppressed risings in Paris and Lyons.

[59] Laffitte, Jacques (1767-1844), was a French financier who took an active part in bringing about the revolution of 1830, and was at first the most influential minister of Louis-Philippe’s government. He was dismissed by the king because he wished the French to go to the assistance of Italy in her effort to throw off the Austrian yoke, and was succeeded by Périer.

[60] Cavaignac, Godefroy (1801-1845), the eldest son of J. B. Cavaignac, the member of the Convention, took a leading part in the July revolution of 1830, was tried and acquitted, again arrested in 1834, and escaped to England. In 1841 he returned to France and became one of the most active editors of _La Réforme_. His popularity greatly favoured the rise of his brother, Louis-Eugène, the general, who, though he put down the June rising in 1848, remained under a cloud under Napoleon III. because he refused to take the oath of allegiance.

[61] Marrast, Armand (1801-1852), a journalist, was a member of the Provisional Government of 1848, and then mayor of Paris and president of the National Assembly.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[62] Drouey (1799-1855) led the revolution in his canton in 1845, in 1849 was elected vice-president of the Swiss Federal Union, and in 1850 president.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[63] Blenker, Ludwig (born 1812), served in 1832 in Greece in the Bavarian legion of King Otto, and was afterwards a wine merchant in Worms. In 1848 he became a prominent figure of the revolutionary party in Rheingessen, and as a leader of the insurgents took Worms and stormed Landau. When the Baden rising was suppressed he escaped to Switzerland, whence he was expelled, and then went to America, where during the Civil War in 1861 he collected a troop of German _Jäger_ and saved Washington from the enemy, became a general, but afterwards for some negligence in the commissariat was forcibly retired with M’Clellan, and spent the rest of his days peacefully on his farm.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[64] Here I seem to have justified the famous ‘I hear the silence!’ of the Moscow police-master.

[65] As a matter of fact, _our_ scepticism was not known in the last century; England and Diderot alone are the exceptions. In England scepticism has been at home for long ages, and Byron follows naturally on Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Hume.—(_Author’s Note._)

[66] Here Herzen ignorantly uses the word ‘Quaker’ as equivalent to ‘Nonconformist,’ or perhaps ‘Puritan.’ It is needless to point out that tolerance is one of the most prominent principles of the Society of Friends.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[67] These fragments, printed in vol. iv. of _The Polar Star_, ended with the following dedication, written before the arrival of Ogaryov in London and before the death of Granovsky:

‘... Accept this skull—it belongs to you by right’ (_Pushkin_).

Here for the time we will stop. Some day I shall publish the chapters I have omitted and shall write others, without which my narrative remains unintelligible, incomplete, perhaps useless, and in any case will not be what I meant. But all that must be later, much later....

Now let us part; and one word at leave-taking, to you friends of my youth.

When everything had been buried, when even the clamour partly provoked by me, partly spontaneous, had subsided about me, and people had dispersed to their homes, I lifted up my head and looked around me; I had nothing living, nothing akin to me but my children. Wandering among strangers, watching them more closely, I gave up seeking _friends_ and held aloof—not from men but from intimacy with them.

It is true, at times it seems that I have still feelings in my heart, words which it is a pity not to utter, which might do good or at least bring comfort to the listener, and one is sorry that it must all be smothered and lost in the soul, as the eye loses itself in the empty distance ... but that is the rapidly fading glow of sunset, the reflection of the retreating past.

It is to that that I have turned back. I have left the world alien to me and have come back to you; and again we have been living together as in old times, are meeting every day, and nothing is changed, no one has grown older, no one is dead—and I am as at home with you, and it is as clear that I have no other standpoint than ours, no vocation but that to which I dedicated myself from childhood.

My story of the past is, maybe, dull and feeble, but you, friends, will give it a warm reception; this work has helped me to live through a terrible period, it has lifted me out of the idle despair in which I was perishing, it has brought me back to you. With it I enter upon my winter, not _gaily_ but _calmly_ (in the words of the poet whom I love beyond measure):—

‘_Lieta no ... ma sicura!_’ said Leopardi of death in his _Ruysch e le sui mummie_.

So all unwittingly you have saved me: accept this skull—it belongs to you by right.

ISLE OF WIGHT, VENTNOR, _October 1, 1855_.

[68] This endorsement is done for security in sending cheques in order that no one else should be able to receive the money.

[69] This was not P. D. Kisselyov, who was in Paris later, the well-known minister of crown property, a very decent man; but the other one, afterwards transferred to Rome.—(_Author’s Notes._)

[70] I translate it word for word.—(_Author’s Note._)

[71] Mlle. Le Normand (1772-1843) was a well-known fortune-teller of the period.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[72] Later on Professor Tchitcherin preached a doctrine somewhat similar in the Moscow University.—(_Author’s Note._)

[73] Pestel was the leader of the Union of the South, and Ryleyev of the Union of the North, which combined in the attempt to overthrow the autocracy and establish constitutional government in Russia on December 14, 1825.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[74] A French revolutionist, one of the founders of the _culte de la raison_, beheaded in 1794.—(_Translator’s Note._)