Chapter V: Golovin page 301 (4)

‘Your persecution and your infamous conduct force me once
more to repeat, and in the presence of witnesses, what I have
written to you several times already; yes, my infatuation was
immense and blind, but your character, treacherous, Jewish in
the worst sense, your unbridled egoism, have been displayed
in all their hideous nakedness when you were leaving here
and since, while Alexandr’s goodness and devotion have been
greater every day. My unhappy infatuation has only been a new
pedestal on which to raise my love for him. You have tried to
cover that pedestal with mud, but you can do nothing to break
our union, which is stronger and firmer now than ever it was.
Your charges, your slanders against a woman only fill Alexandr
with contempt for you, you dishonour yourself by this baseness.
What has become of your everlasting protestations of religious
respect for my will, of your love for the children? It is not
long since you swore that you would rather vanish off the face
of the earth than cause Alexandr a moment’s distress. Have
I not always told you that I could not for one day survive
parting with him, that if he left me, even if he died—I would
remain alone to the end of my life...?

‘As for my promise to see you again some day, it is true that I
made it—I was sorry for you then, I wanted our parting to be
humane—you have made it impossible for me to keep that promise.

‘From the time you went away you began torturing me, demanding
first one promise, then another. You meant to vanish for
years, to go away to Egypt, if only you could take with you
the smallest hope. When you saw that that did not answer,
you suggested one absurd thing after another—impossible,
ludicrous—and ended by threatening me with _publicity_,
tried to estrange me completely from Alexandr, tried to make
him kill you, fight you, and finally threatened to commit
terrible crimes. These threats had no more effect on me, you
had repeated them too often. I tell you again what I wrote in
my last letter: “I remain in my home—my home is Alexandr and
my children,” and if I could not remain as mother and wife, I
would remain as nurse and servant. There is no bridge between
me and you. You have made even the past loathsome to me.

‘NATALIE HERZEN.’

‘NICE, _February 18, 1852_.’

A few days later the letter returned from Zurich. Herwegh sent it back unopened; the letter had been sent registered with three seals, and was returned with the receipt in the same envelope.

‘If that’s it,’ observed Natalie, ‘it shall be read to him.’

She sent for Haug, Tessier, Engelson, Orsini, and Vogt, and said to them:

‘You know how I long to justify Alexandr, but what can I do, chained to my bed? I may not get over this illness—let me die in peace, trusting that you will carry out my last request. That man has sent me back my letter; I want one of you to read it to him, and in the presence of witnesses.’

Haug took her hand and said: ‘Your letter shall be read to him, I stake my life on that!’

That simple vigorous action affected us all—and the sceptical Vogt went out as much stirred as the fanatical Orsini, who preserved a fervent respect for Natalie to the end of his days. The last time I saw him before he went away to Paris—at the end of 1857—he spoke with tenderness of Natalie, and perhaps with secret reproach. Of us two, Orsini certainly is not the one who could be accused of moral inconsistency—of dualism of words and deeds!

Once, late in the evening, or rather night, I had been having a long and melancholy discussion with Engelson. At last he went to his room, and I went upstairs. Natalie was sleeping quietly; I stayed a few minutes in her bedroom and went out into the garden. Engelson’s window was open. Standing disconsolately at the window he was smoking a cigar. ‘Such is fate, it seems,’ he said and came towards me. ‘Why aren’t you asleep, why have you come?’ he asked, and there was a nervous quiver in his voice. Then he caught hold of my hand and went on. ‘Do you believe in my boundless love for you, do you believe there is no one in the world dearer to me than you?—leave Herwegh to me—there is no need of a court, or of Haug—Haug’s a German—give me the right to avenge you, I am a Russian.... I’ve thought over a complete plan; I need your confidence, your blessing.’ He stood with a pale face before me, his arms folded, in the light of the coming dawn. I was deeply touched and felt ready to fall on his neck with tears. ‘Do you believe or not that I would sooner perish, be wiped off the face of the earth, than compromise a business in which so much is involved that is sacred to me? But without your confidence my hands are tied. Tell me openly: yes or no? If it’s no—good-bye and the devil take it all, and the devil take you and me too. I shall go away to-morrow, and you will not hear of me again.’

‘I believe in your friendship and in your sincerity, but I am afraid of your imagination and your nerves, and I have no great faith in your practical ability. You are nearer to me than any of the others here, but I must own, I fancy that you may do harm and get yourself into trouble.’

‘So you think General Haug has practical talents?’

‘I don’t say that, but I believe Haug is a more practical man, just as I think Orsini is more practical than Haug....’

Engelson would hear no more—he began dancing about on one leg, singing, and at last recovering himself, said to me: ‘There you are, there you are, putting your foot in it.’ He put his hand on my shoulder and added in an undertone: ‘It’s with Orsini that I thought out the whole plan, with the most practical man on earth. Come, give us your blessing, father.’

‘But will you give me your word not to attempt anything without telling me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me your plan, then.’

‘I can’t do that, at any rate I can’t do that now.’

A silence followed. What he meant to do it was not difficult to guess.

‘Good-night,’ I said, ‘let me think a little,’ and I could not help adding: ‘What possessed you to tell me about it?’

Engelson understood me.

‘My damned weakness, but nobody will ever know that I’ve told you.’

‘But I know,’ said I in answer, and we parted.

Anxiety over Engelson and fear of some catastrophe which would be a fatal shock to Natalie in her weak state compelled me to prevent his scheme from being carried out. Orsini shook his head, and looked at it regretfully ... and so instead of punishing I saved Herwegh, though, of course, it was not for his sake nor for my own. There was not a trace of sentimentality or magnanimity about it.

And, indeed, how are magnanimity and sympathy possible with this hero turned inside out? Emma, alarmed by something, quarrelled with Vogt for speaking impertinently of her Georg, and besought Charles Edmond to write to the latter, advising him to stay quietly at Zurich and abandon every sort of provocation—or it would be the worse for him. I do not know what Charles Edmond wrote, his task was not an easy one. But Herwegh’s answer was remarkable. First, he said it was not for the Vogts nor for Charles Edmond to judge him, then that it was I who had broken the bond between him and me, and so the whole responsibility fell upon me. After going into everything and defending himself even in the ambiguous part he had played, he concluded thus: ‘I don’t even know whether this can be called treachery. Those cads are still talking about money—to put a stop to that paltry accusation once for all, I may say openly that Mr. Herzen did not with his few thousand francs pay too high a price for the moments of distraction and enjoyment which we spent together in that oppressive time!’ ‘_C’est grand, c’est sublime_,’ said Charles Edmond, ‘_mais c’est niederträchtig_.’ To which Hoetsky replied that the stick was the only answer to such letters, and that he would give it him the next time they met. Herwegh relapsed into silence.

2

DEATH

With the coming of spring Natalie was better; she would sit up for the greater part of the day in an easy-chair, was able to do her hair for the first time during her illness and was soon able to listen without exhaustion when I read aloud to her.

We were planning, as soon as she should be a little better, to go to Seville or Cadiz. She was eager to get strong, eager to live, eager to go to Italy.

After the return of the letter there was complete silence, as though both husband and wife felt in their conscience that they had reached a limit rarely reached, had overstepped it, and desisted.

Natalie had not yet gone downstairs and was in no haste to do so: she meant to go down for the first time on the 25th of March, my birthday. She was having a white merino blouse made for that day, and I had ordered an ermine cloak from Paris. Two days before, Natalie herself wrote or dictated to me the list of the guests she wanted to invite besides the Engelsons, Orsini, Vogt, Mordini, and Paccelli and his wife.

Two days before my birthday, Olga developed a cold and cough, there was influenza in the town. Natalie got up twice in the night and went across her room to the nursery. It was a warm night, but stormy. She woke up in the morning with an acute attack of influenza—she had an agonising cough and towards evening fever.

There could be no question of her getting up next day; a feverish night was followed by terrible prostration and aggravated symptoms. All the faint reviving hopes to which we clung so desperately were shattered. The unnatural sound of the cough had a sinister menace.

Natalie would not hear of putting off our visitors. Anxious and melancholy, at two o’clock we sat down to table without her.

Madame Paccelli brought with her a song her husband had composed for my birthday. She was a silent, melancholy and very kind-hearted woman. It seemed as though some sorrow weighed upon her—either the curse of poverty was too great a burden, or perhaps life had promised her something more than everlasting music-lessons and the devotion of a feeble, colourless man, conscious of his inferiority to her.

In our house she met with more homeliness and a warmer welcome than with her other pupils, and she came to love Natalie with southern fervour.

After lunch she sat a little with the invalid, and came away from her, pale as a sheet. The guests begged her to sing the song she had brought with her; she sat down at the piano, struck a few chords, began singing and all at once, with a frightened look at me, burst into tears, let her head fall on the instrument and sobbed spasmodically. So ended our fête.

Almost without saying a word, the guests dispersed, with a weight like a stone on their hearts.

I went upstairs. The same fearful cough continued. It was the prelude to the funeral.

And there were two of them.

Within two months from my birthday Madame Paccelli was buried too. She had set off for Mentone or Roccabrunn on a donkey. The donkeys in Italy are accustomed to ascend the mountains at night without missing their footing. On this occasion the donkey stumbled in broad daylight—the hapless woman fell off, rolled on to the sharp rocks and died on the spot in terrible agonies.... I was in Lugano when I received the news. So she was no more. _Nur zu_—what grotesque absurdity was to come next...?

After that all is clouded over ... there comes a blank gloomy night indistinct in my memory, it is useless or impossible to describe it ... a time of pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, the stupefying consciousness of terror, of moral impotence and horrible physical strength....

Everything in the house seemed to have collapsed. There was a peculiar disorder and chaos, a hurry and bustle, the servants were run off their legs; and together with the approach of death, there came fresh scandal, fresh nastiness.... Fate did not gild the pill for me, nor did men spare me either; his shoulders are broad, they seemed to say, let him bear it.

Three days before Natalie’s end, Orsini brought me a note for her from Emma. She besought Natalie ‘to forgive her for all that had been done against her and against all of us.’ I told Orsini that it was out of the question to give the patient the note, but that I fully appreciated the feeling that had led Emma to write these lines and that I accepted them. I did more: on one of the last peaceful moments, I said quietly to Natalie: ‘Emma asks your forgiveness.’ She smiled ironically and did not answer a word. She knew the woman better than I did.

In the evening I heard a loud conversation in the billiard-room, which was where our intimate friends usually gathered. I went in and found a heated conversation going on. Vogt was exclaiming, Orsini was urging something and was paler than usual. The argument stop at my entrance.

‘What is it?’ I asked, feeling certain that some fresh meanness was in question.

‘Why,’ Engelson answered, ‘what’s the use of making a secret of it? but it’s so charming, such a Teutonic gem, that I should be ready to stand on my head if it had happened at any other time.... The chivalrous Emma has commissioned Orsini to tell you that, since you forgive her, she suggests that in proof of it you should give her back the I.O.U. for ten thousand francs which she gave you when you paid off their creditors. _Stupendisch theuer, stupendisch theuer._’

Orsini, embarrassed, added: ‘I think she has gone out of her mind.’

I took out her note and, giving it to Orsini, said to him: ‘Tell the woman that she asks too high a price—that, if I did value her feeling of repentance, it was not at ten thousand francs!’

Orsini did not take the note.

Through such filth I was dragged beside her deathbed: what was this? madness or vice, depravity or density?

On the evening of the 29th of April, Marya Kasparovna arrived. Natalie had been expecting her from day to day. She had several times begged her to come, fearing that Madame Engelson would take the charge of the children into her hands. Every hour she looked for her coming, and when we got a letter from her she sent Haug and Sasha to meet her at the bridge over the Var. But in spite of this, seeing Marya Kasparovna was terribly agitating for her. I remember the faint cry, almost a moan, with which she said ‘Masha,’ and could say nothing more.

The illness had found Natalie half-way through her pregnancy, Bonfils and Vogt thought that her condition had assisted her recovery from the pleurisy.

Marya Kasparovna’s arrival brought on the birth, which was easier than had been expected; the baby was born alive, but her strength was exhausted. A terrible prostration followed. The baby was born towards morning. Towards evening she told us to give her the little one and call the children. The doctor had prescribed absolute quiet. I besought her not to do this. She looked at me gently.

‘You, too, heed what they say, Alexandr,’ she said; ‘mind that you are not very sorry later on for robbing me of this moment. I am a little easier just now. I want to show baby to the children myself.’ I called the children.

Not having the strength to hold the little one, she laid him beside her, and with a bright and joyous face said to Sasha and Tata: ‘Here is another little brother. You must love him.’ The children rushed with delight to kiss her and the baby. I remembered that a few days before Natalie had repeated, looking at the children:

‘And may the young life sport and play
About the entrance to the grave.’

Overwhelmed with grief, I looked at this apotheosis of the dying mother. When the children had gone I besought her to rest and not to speak. She tried to rest and could not: tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘Remember your promise.... Ah, how terrible to think that they will be left alone, quite alone ... and in a foreign land!... But can it be that there is no hope?’

She fixed on me a glance of entreaty and despair. These transitions from terrible hopelessness to illusive dreams of recovery tore my heart inexpressibly those last few days. At the moments when I had least faith, she would take my hand and say: ‘No, Alexandr, it can’t be so, it’s too stupid, we have a life before us if only this weakness would pass.’

The rays of hope slipped away, they faded of themselves and were replaced by unutterably gloomy, quiet despair.

‘When I am not here,’ she would say, ‘everything will be arranged somehow; now I can’t imagine how you’ll live without me, it seems I am so necessary to the children, but when one thinks—they will grow up just the same even without me, and everything will go on as though it had always been so.’ She added a few words more about the children, about Sasha’s health, said how glad she was that he had grown stronger in Nice, and that Vogt, too, agreed that he had. ‘Look after Tata, you must be very careful with her—she has a deep and reserved character. Ah,’ she added, ‘if only I could live till my Natalie[21] comes!... Well, are the children asleep?’ she asked a little later.

‘Yes,’ I said.

There was the sound of a child’s voice in the distance.

‘That is Olenka,’ she said, and smiled (for the last time). ‘See what she wants.’

Towards night she became terribly restless, without speaking she motioned that her pillow was uncomfortable. But however I arranged it, she was still restless, and with distress and even vexation kept changing the position of her head; then she fell into a heavy sleep.

In the middle of the night she made a movement with her hand as though she wanted to drink; I gave her a spoonful of orange juice mixed with sugar and water, but her teeth were firmly clenched; she was unconscious. I was numb with horror. It was daybreak. I drew back the curtain and, with a sort of senseless feeling of despair, saw that not only her lips but even her teeth had turned black.

Why was it, why this awful unconsciousness, why this black colour?

Dr. Bonfils and Karl Vogt had been sitting all night in the drawing-room. I went and told Vogt what I had seen. He avoided my eyes and went upstairs without answering. No answer was needed. Her pulse was scarcely beating.

About midday she came to herself and sent for the children, but did not utter a word.

She thought that it was dark in the room. It was the second time this had happened in the daylight. She asked me why there were no candles (two candles were burning on the table). I lighted another candle, but not noticing it, she said that it was dark: ‘Oh, my dear, how my head aches!’ she said, and two or three words more.

She took my hand—and already hers was not like a living hand—and covered her face with it. I said something to her. She answered indistinctly, consciousness was lost again and never came back....

In that condition she remained till the following morning, from midday or one o’clock on the 1st of May till seven o’clock on the morning of the 2nd. I longed for one more word ... one word ... or for the end to come! Those awful, cruel nineteen hours!

At moments she returned to half-consciousness, said distinctly that she wanted to take off the flannel, the dressing-jacket, asked for a handkerchief, but nothing more.

Several times I began to speak: it seemed to me that she heard but could not utter a word, a look of bitter pain seemed to pass over her face. Twice she pressed my hand, not convulsively but intentionally. At six o’clock in the morning I asked the doctor how long it would go on. ‘Not more than an hour.’

I went into the garden to call Sasha. I wanted him to keep his mother’s last minutes in his memory for ever. As I went upstairs with him, I told him what a sorrow was in store for us. He had no suspicion of the truth.

Pale and almost fainting, he went into the room with me.

‘Let us kneel here side by side,’ I said to him, pointing to a rug by the side of the bed. The sweat of death covered her face, her hand spasmodically caught at her dressing-jacket, as though trying to take it off. A few moans, a few sounds that reminded me of Vadim’s death agony—then those, too, ceased.

The doctor took her hand and let it drop, it fell like a stone.

The boy was sobbing. I do not fully remember what happened for the first moment. I rushed away into the hall, met Charles Edmond, tried to say something to him, but, instead of words, a sound such as I had never heard broke from me. I stood before the window and, stupefied, with no clear understanding, stared at the senselessly moving, sparkling sea.

Then suddenly I remembered the words: ‘Look after Tata.’ I felt alarmed that the child might be frightened. I had forbidden their speaking to her before, but could I rely upon it? I had her fetched and, shutting myself up with her in the study, sat her on my knee and, preparing her little by little, told her at last that Mother was dead. She trembled all over, her face flushed in patches, tears came into her eyes.... I led her upstairs. There already everything was changed. Natalie was lying as though alive on a bed decked with flowers, beside the baby, who had died the same night. The room was draped with white and full of flowers. The taste of the Italians, artistic in everything, knows how to bring something soothing into the heartrending sorrow of death. The frightened child was impressed by the beautiful surroundings. ‘Mamma is here,’ she said; but when I lifted her up and she touched the cold face with her lips, she broke into hysterical weeping.

I could bear no more, I went out....

An hour and a half later I was sitting alone again by the same window and again staring blankly at the sea and the sky. The door opened and Tata came in. She came up to me and, caressing me, said in a frightened whisper: ‘Daddy, I was good, wasn’t I? I didn’t cry very much.’ I looked at the motherless child in deep distress. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘you will need to be good. You will know no mother’s petting, no mother’s love, nothing can take their place. There will be a gap in your heart, you will not experience the best, purest devotion, the only disinterested devotion in the world. You will feel it yourself, perhaps, but no one will feel it for you. What is a father’s love compared with a mother’s anguish of love?’

Natalie lay all surrounded with flowers. The blinds had been let down. I sat on the chair, the same chair as usual, beside the bed; all was stillness except the splash of the sea under the window. It seemed as though a faint, faint breath were rising from her lips.

Gently grief and distress sank into calm, as though suffering had passed away without a trace, effaced by the careless serenity of the tomb that knows not what it stands for. And I watched and watched all night. What if she really should wake?

She did not wake; it was not sleep, it was death.

And so it was true.

On the floor and down the staircase masses of orange-red geranium had been flung. That fragrance even now makes me tremble like an electric shock, and I recall all the details, every minute, and see the room draped in white, with the veiled looking-glass; beside her, also covered with flowers, the yellow body of the baby, who had fallen asleep without awakening; and her cold, terribly cold brow.... I go with rapid steps, with no thought, no aim, into the garden. Our François is lying on the grass sobbing like a child. I try to say something to him and have no voice, I run back there again. A lady I do not know, dressed all in black, and followed by two children, softly opens the door—she asks leave to repeat a Catholic prayer—I am ready to pray with her myself. She kneels down before the bed and the children kneel beside her, she murmurs a prayer in Latin. The children softly repeat it after her. Then she says to me: ‘They, too, have no mother, and their father is far away. You were at the burial of their grandmother.’ They were Garibaldi’s children.

Within twenty-four hours crowds of exiles had gathered in the courtyard and the garden. They had come to follow her to the grave.

Vogt and I laid her in the coffin, and it was carried out. I walked firmly after it, holding Sasha by the hand and thinking: this is how men look at the crowd when they are led out to be hanged. Two Frenchmen (one of them, I remember, was the Comte de Voguet) in the street pointed with hatred and derision at the absence of a priest. Tessier rebuked them. I was panic-stricken, and made a sign to him with my hand; silence was essential. An immense wreath of small dark-red roses lay on the coffin. We each picked a rose; it was like a drop of blood on every one.

As we went up the hillside, the moon rose and there was a gleam on the sea that had had its share in killing her. We buried her on the hillside that stands out in sight of Esterel on the one hand and Corniche on the other. There was a garden all round. And so she was still among flowers as on her bed....

A fortnight later Haug recalled her last wish and his promise, and he and Tessier prepared to go to Zurich.

It was time for Marya Kasparovna to return to Paris. Every one insisted that I should let Tata and Olga go with her, and myself go with Sasha to Genoa.

It made my heart ache to part from them, but I had no confidence in myself. Perhaps, I thought, it really will be better for them; well, if it is better for them, so let it be. I only begged her not to take the children before the 9th of May, I wanted to spend with them the fourteenth anniversary of my wedding.

The day after that I saw them as far as the bridge over the Var. Haug went with them as far as Paris. We watched the customs-house authorities, the gendarmes and police of all sorts worrying the passengers.

Haug lost his stick, a present from me, hunted for it and was vexed. Tata was crying. The conductor, in a uniform jacket, sat down beside the driver. The diligence drove off along the Draguignan road, and we, Tessier, Sasha, and I, went back across the bridge, got into the carriage and drove to the place where I lived.

A home I had no longer. With the departure of the children the last trace of family life vanished. Everything assumed a bachelor air. Engelson and his wife went away two days later. Half of the rooms were shut up. Tessier and Edmond moved into the house. The feminine element was excluded. Only Sasha’s age and features reminded one that there had been something else ... recalled some one absent.

Five days after the funeral Herwegh wrote to his wife: ‘This news has grieved me deeply. I am full of gloomy thoughts. Send me by the first post _I Sepolcri_ of Hugo Foscolo.’ And in a following letter: ‘Now has come the time for reconciliation with Herzen. The cause of our quarrel exists no longer ... if only I could see him face to face—he is the only man capable of understanding me!’

Yes, I did understand him.

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