Chapter 42 (4)

[75] I cannot forbear adding that I had to correct this very page at Freiburg, and in the same Zöringer Hof. And the host was still the same, looking like a regular innkeeper, and the dining-room in which I sat with Sazonov in 1851 was the same, and the room in which a year later I wrote my will, making Karl Vogt my executor: and this page brings back to me so many details.

Fifteen years!

Unconsciously, unaccountably, one is seized with terror....

_14th October 1866._—(_Author’s Note._)

[76] Frappoli, Ludovico (1815-1878), an Italian politician who took part in the revolutionary movement of 1848, was a partisan of Garibaldi’s, and always on the extreme left in the Italian Parliament. He reintroduced Freemasonry into Italy.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[77] Leroux, Pierre (1797-1871), a prominent follower of St. Simon.

[78] Considérant, Victor (1808-1893), a philosopher and political economist, advocate of Fourierism.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[79] In Stuart Mill’s new book _On Liberty_, he uses an excellent expression in regard to these truths settled once and for ever: ‘the deep slumber of a decided opinion.’—(_Author’s Note._)

[80] _Histoire de la Révolution Française._

[81] I had then published _Vom andern Ufer_.—(_Author’s Note._)

[82] My answer to the speech of Donozo Cortes, of which fifty thousand copies were printed, was all sold out; and when two or three days later I asked for a few copies for myself, they had to be bought through the bookshops.—(_Author’s Note._)

[83] After this was written I met him again in Brussels.—(_Author’s Note._)

[84] I have to some extent modified my opinion of this work of Proudhon (1866).—(_Author’s Note._)

[85] Proudhon himself said: ‘_Rien ne ressemble plus à la préméditation que la logique des faits._’

[86] As I was correcting the proofs of this, I came upon a French newspaper with an extremely characteristic incident in it. Near Paris a student had a liaison with a girl, which was discovered. The girl’s father went to the student and on his knees besought him, with tears, to vindicate his daughter’s honour and marry her; the student refused with contumely. The kneeling father gave him a slap in the face, the student challenged him, they shot at each other; during the duel the old man had a paralytic stroke. The student was disconcerted, and ‘decided to marry,’ and the girl was grieved, and also decided to marry. The newspaper adds that this happy _dénouement_ will no doubt do much to promote the old father’s recovery. Can this have happened outside a madhouse? Can China or India, at whose grotesque absurdities we mock so much, furnish anything uglier or sillier than this story? I will not say more immoral. This Parisian romance is a hundredfold more wicked than the burning of a widow or the burying of a vestal virgin. In those cases there was religious faith, removing all personal responsibility, but in this case there is nothing but conventional, shadowy ideas of external honour, of external reputation.... Is it not clear from this story what the student was like? Why should the girl’s life be bound to his _à perpétuité_? Why was she ruined to save her reputation? Oh, Bedlam! (1866.)—(_Author’s Note._)

[87] Cambacérès, Jean-Jacques (1753-1824), one of the nearest advisers of Napoleon, and compiler of the _Code Civil_. He attempted to dissuade Napoleon from the invasion of Russia.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[88] Leone Leoni is the hero, or rather villain, whose name supplies the title of one of George Sand’s earlier novels.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[89] A character in the famous romance _Astrée_ by Victor d’Urfé (1568-1626), adopted into the Russian language as the type of the faithful and devoted swain.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[90] The reference is to the _Voyage du jeune Anarchasis_, by Barthélemy (1779).—(_Translator’s Note._)

[91] Bouilhet, Louis, was a great friend of Flaubert, with whom he collaborated. His own works include _Hélène Peyron_, and a very successful drama, _La Conjuration d’Amboise_.

[92] Ribeyrolles, a talented writer on _La Réforme_, the organ of the Extreme Left, of which Flocon was editor.—(_Translator’s Notes._)

[93] Louis Blanc, author of _L’Histoire de Dix Ans_, one of the most widely read books of the epoch.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[94] The real name of Messenhauser was Cæsar Wengel, a soldier and writer, who took an active part in the rising of 1848, first in Lemberg and then in Vienna. On the suppression of the rising he was sentenced to be shot, and asked that as an officer he might give the word of command to the soldiers who were to shoot him, and so conducted the business of his own execution with remarkable composure.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[95] I was in those days what the Poles call a ‘passport man,’ and had not yet cut off all possibility of return to Russia.—(_Author’s Note._)

[96] His article on ‘The Position of Russia in the All-World Exhibition’ was published in vol. ii. of the _Polar Star_.—(_Author’s Note._)

[97] A series of very remarkable letters of his, of which I propose to publish a considerable number some day, date from this period.—(_Author’s Note._)

[98] The _Polar Star_ is the name of the paper edited by Ryleyev, one of the five Decembrists hanged by Nicholas in 1825. On the anniversary of their execution Herzen brought out the first number of his paper of the same name.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[99] W. J. Linton, a friend of Mazzini, and author of a series of sketches of Italian, French, and Polish exiles, and of Herzen, called _European Republicans_. His wife, Mrs. Lynn Linton, a prominent figure some forty years ago, wrote several novels, and created a journalistic sensation by an onslaught on ‘The Girl of the Period.’—(_Translator’s Note._)

[100] Baroness Malwida von Meysenbug, authoress of _Memoirs of an Idealist_, was a great friend of Wagner, and also of Nietzsche, whom she cared for at times with motherly kindness. At this date she was living in Herzen’s house as the governess of his children, the youngest of whom, Olga, remained in her charge for many years.—(_Translator’s Note._)

[101] With this ends that part of _My Past and Thoughts_ which was corrected by the author in its final form and published in four volumes. The chapter which follows (in the next volume) is now published for the first time, and is that for which, as Herzen himself more than once says, he wrote all the rest.—(_Note to the Russian edition_, 1921.)