Chapter V: Appendix

Haug and Tessier went one morning to the hotel in Zurich where the Herweghs were staying. They asked whether he was at home, and, on the waiter’s answering that he was, asked to be taken straight up to him without being announced. On seeing them, Herwegh, trembling and white as a sheet, got up and without a word leaned against a chair.

‘He was a terrible sight—the look of horror so distorted his face,’ Tessier told me.

‘We have come to you,’ Haug said to him, ‘to carry out the wishes of our dead friend. On her deathbed she wrote to you—you sent the letter back with the seal unbroken, on the pretext that it was written under compulsion. She herself commissioned Tessier and me to bear witness that she wrote that letter herself, of her free will, and then to read it aloud to you.’

‘I don’t want—I won’t....’

‘Sit down and listen,’ said Haug, raising his voice.

They sat down, Haug broke open the letter and took out of it _a note in Herwegh’s handwriting_.

When the letter, which had purposely been registered, was sent back again, I gave it into Engelson’s keeping. The latter observed to me that two of the seals had been tampered with.

‘You may be sure,’ he said to me, ‘that that scoundrel has read the letter and that is just why he has sent it back.’ He took the letter to the candle and showed me that there were two sheets of paper instead of one inside it. ‘Who sealed up the letter?’ ‘I did.’ ‘Was there nothing but the letter in it?’ ‘Nothing.’

Then Engelson took a similar sheet of notepaper, a similar envelope, put three seals on it and ran to the chemist’s shop; there he weighed both the letters—the one that had been sent back weighed half as much again as the other. He came home prancing about and singing and cried out to me, ‘I was right! I was right!’

Haug took out the note, read the letter aloud, then glanced at the note, which began with abuse and upbraiding, handed it to Tessier and asked Herwegh:

‘Is that your handwriting?’

‘Yes, yes, I wrote it.’

‘Then you did open the letter?’

‘I am not bound to account to you for my actions.’

Haug tore his note into bits and, flinging them in his face, said: ‘What a blackguard you are!’

Herwegh, panic-stricken, snatched at the bell-rope and began pulling it with all his might.

‘What are you about? are you crazy?’ said Haug and seized him by the arm. Herwegh, pulling himself away from him, dashed to the door, opened it and shouted, ‘Murder! Murder!’ (‘_Mord! Mord!_’).

At the violent ringing of the bell and this shout, there was a general rush up the stairs to his room—waiters and visitors from rooms in the same passage appeared on the scene.

‘Police! police! murder!’ Herwegh was by now shouting in the corridor.

Haug went up to him and, giving him a sound smack on the cheek, said to him: ‘There, you scoundrel (_Schuft_), that is for sending for the police.’

Tessier, meanwhile, went back into the room, wrote down their names and addresses and handed them to Herwegh without a word. A crowd of spectators had gathered on the stairs. Haug first apologised to the hotel-keeper, then went away with Tessier.

Herwegh rushed off to the Commissaire of Police, begging for the protection of the law against the persons who had been sent to murder him, and kept asking whether he could not take proceedings against them for the slap in the face.

The Commissaire of Police, in the presence of the hotel-keeper, inquired into the details of the case and expressed doubts whether persons who had come in this way in broad daylight to the hotel, without concealing their names and addresses, were really hired assassins. As regards legal proceedings, he imagined that it would be very easy to take them and thought it almost certain that Haug would be condemned to a small fine and a brief term of imprisonment.

‘But what is inconvenient in your case,’ he added, ‘is that to secure the conviction of that gentleman you will have publicly to prove that he really did give you a slap in the face; it seems to me that it would be more to your advantage to drop it—God knows what revelations it might lead to.’

The Commissaire’s logic gained the day.

I was staying at the time at Lugano. Thinking things over, I felt very uneasy: I was certain that Herwegh would not challenge Haug or Tessier, but I was not at all certain that Haug would quietly leave Zurich and do nothing further. A challenge on Haug’s part[22] would be quite out of keeping with the character I wanted to give to the business. Tessier, on whose good feeling and intelligence I could thoroughly rely, was altogether too much of a Frenchman.

Haug was capriciously obstinate and childishly irritable. He was continually having tiffs or being huffy, first with Hoetsky, then with Engelson, then with Orsini and the Italians, whom he succeeded in setting against him in the end—and Orsini, shaking his head a little with his characteristic smile, used to say very funnily: ‘_Oh il general, il general Aug!_’

Karl Vogt, with his clear, practical view of everything, was the only person who had any influence over Haug. He treated him aggressively, pelted him with gibes, shouted at him—and Haug obeyed him.

‘What secret have you discovered,’ I once asked Vogt, ‘for subduing our Bengal general?’

‘_Vous l’avez dit_,’ answered Vogt. ‘You have put your finger on the secret. I subdue him just because he is a general and believes he is. A general knows what discipline means—he cannot oppose a higher authority—you forget that I am a Vicar of the Empire.’

Vogt was perfectly right. A few days later Engelson, not thinking what he was saying and that he was speaking in Haug’s presence, said: ‘Only a German could be such a blackguard.’

Haug was offended. Engelson assured him that he had not meant it, that the silly phrase was a slip of the tongue. Haug observed that what mattered was not his saying it in his presence, but his having such an opinion of Germans. And he walked out of the room.

Early next morning he went to Vogt, found him in bed, woke him and told him of the insult paid to Germany, begging him to be his second and to take a challenge to Engelson.

‘Why, do you think that I have gone out of my mind as well as you?’ Vogt asked him.

‘I am not in the habit of accepting insults.’

‘He did not insult you. One says all sorts of things—besides, he apologised.’

‘He insulted Germany—and he shall see that he cannot with impunity insult a great nation in my presence.’

‘But why are you the exclusive representative of Germany?’ Vogt shouted at him. ‘Am not I a German? Have not I the right to defend her as much as you—more than you?’

‘No doubt, and if you take it on yourself, I will give way to you.’

‘Good—but entrusting it to me, I hope you will not interfere. You sit quiet here, and I will go and find out whether Engelson really has that opinion, or whether it was just a phrase dropped by chance—and meanwhile, we will tear up your challenge.’

Half an hour later Vogt came in to me—I knew nothing of what had happened the day before. Vogt walked in, laughing aloud as usual, and asked me: ‘Is Engelson walking about freely here or not? I have shut our general up at home. Only fancy, he wanted to fight Engelson on account of the damned Germans, of whom Engelson spoke rudely; I persuaded him that the privilege is mine. Half the business is settled; now you must smooth down Engelson if he is not in a state of delirium.’

Engelson had no suspicion that Haug was so angry—at first he wanted to have a personal explanation with him and was ready to accept the challenge, then gave way, and we sent for Haug. The Vicar of the Empire laid aside his medusae and his _salpi_ for that morning, and stayed on till Haug and Engelson were engaged in a perfectly friendly discussion over a bottle of wine and cutlets _à la Milanaise_.

In Lucerne, where I went from Lugano, I found a new problem awaiting me. On the very day of my arrival, Tessier told me that Haug had written an article in regard to the slap in the face and had described the whole affair in it; that he wished to publish this note and that Tessier had only succeeded in preventing him by urging that he could not publish such a thing without my consent. Haug, who had no doubt whatever of my consent, was induced to await my coming.

‘Do everything you can to prevent this unlucky article being published,’ Tessier said to me; ‘it will ruin everything—it will make an everlasting laughing-stock of you and all of us and the memory so precious to us.’

In the evening Haug gave me his manuscript. Tessier was right. I could never have risen again from such a blow. Everything was stated with an ardent enthusiastic affection for me and for Natalie, and it was all funny, _funny to me_—at that time of tears and despair. The whole article was written in the style of Don Carlos in prose. The man who was capable of writing such a thing was bound to have a high opinion of his work and, of course, could not relinquish it without a struggle. My task was not an easy one. It had all been written for my sake, from affection, in all good faith, honesty, and sincerity, and, instead of showing gratitude, I had to poison for him the idea which had taken such deep root in his mind and had gained such a hold upon him.

I could make no compromise. After hours of reflection, I made up my mind to write him a long letter; I thanked him for his affection, but besought him not to publish the article. ‘If it really is necessary to publish anything about this dreadful business, that melancholy right belongs to me alone.’

I sealed up this letter and sent it to Haug at seven o’clock in the morning. Haug answered me: ‘I don’t agree with you; I have set up a monument to you and to her, I have raised you to an unassailable pinnacle, and if any one dared to hint a word against you I would make him hold his tongue. But you have the right to decide in your own affair and, of course, if you want to write it I give way to you.’

He was morose and abrupt in his manner all day. In the evening the awful thought occurred to me: ‘If I die he will set up that monument,’ and so, as I said good-bye, I embraced him, saying: ‘Haug, don’t be angry with me; really, no one can be a better judge than I in such a thing.’

‘But I am not angry, I am only hurt.’

‘Well, if you are not angry, leave me your manuscript, make me a present of it.’

‘With the greatest pleasure.’

It is interesting that from that time Haug retained a literary grudge against me, and later on, in London, on my observing that he wrote in too elaborate and figurative a style to Garibaldi and Murchison, Haug answered smiling: ‘I know that you are a polemical writer, you have the style of cold reason—but feeling and poetry have a different language.’

And once more I thanked my stars that I had not only taken his manuscript from him, but on my departure for England had burnt it.

The news of the slap in the face had spread far and wide, and suddenly an article appeared in a Zurich paper signed by Herwegh. He said that the ‘celebrated’ slap in the face had never been given, but that on the contrary he had pushed Haug away so that his back had rubbed against the wall—which apart from everything else was hardly credible to people who knew the muscular and alert Haug and the frail and awkward leader of the Baden expedition. He said further that it was all part of an intrigue with far-reaching ramifications contrived by Baron Herzen on Russian gold, and that the men who had visited him were in my pay.

Haug and Tessier at once published in the same newspaper a grave, concise, restrained, and dignified account of the incident.

I added to their explanation that I had never had any one in my pay except my servants and Herwegh, who had lived for the two previous years at my expense and was the only person of my acquaintance in Europe who owed me a considerable sum of money. This weapon, so alien to me, I used in defence of my slandered friends.

To this Herwegh retorted in the same paper that ‘he had never needed to borrow money from me, and did not owe me a farthing.’ (His wife had always borrowed for him.)

At the same time a doctor wrote to me from Zurich that Herwegh had commissioned him to challenge me.

I answered through Haug that now, as before, I looked upon Herwegh as a man not entitled to satisfaction. That his punishment had begun, and that I should continue to go my own way. One cannot help observing that of the only two persons (apart from Emma) who took Herwegh’s side—this doctor and Richard Wagner, the musician of the future—neither had any respect for Herwegh personally. The doctor who sent the challenge added: ‘As for the rights and wrongs of the case, I know nothing about it and wish to have nothing to do with it.’ And in Zurich he had said to his friends: ‘I am afraid that he will not go through with it, but wants to get up a scene of some sort, only I will not let him trifle with me and make a fool of me. I have told him I shall take a second loaded pistol in my pocket. That is for him!’

As for Richard Wagner, he complained to me by letter that Haug had been too rough and ready, and said that he could not pass a severe judgment on a man ‘whom he loves and pities, that he needs considerate treatment, and that he may still be redeemed from his trivial effeminate life, his eccentric dissoluteness, may rally his forces and show himself in a different aspect.’

Loathsome as it was to make a scandal about money, together with all the other horrors, yet I saw that by that I should deal him a blow which all the bourgeois world, that is, the whole public opinion of Switzerland and Germany, would understand and take to heart.

The I.O.U. for ten thousand francs, which Madame Herwegh had given me and had afterwards tried to redeem for a few words of belated penitence, was in my hands. I gave it to a notary.

With the newspaper in one hand, and the I.O.U. in the other, the notary went to Herwegh demanding an explanation.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘that is not my signature.’

Then the notary showed him his wife’s letter, in which she wrote that she was borrowing the money for him and with his knowledge.

‘I know nothing about it and never authorised her to do so; but you must address yourself to my wife in Nice. I have nothing to do with it.’

‘So you really do not remember authorising your wife...?’

‘I don’t remember it.’

‘That is a great pity; it puts quite a different complexion on this simple money claim, and your creditor may prosecute your wife for obtaining money under false pretences....’

On this occasion the poet showed no alarm, but valiantly replied that that was not his business. The notary laid his answer before Emma. I did not pursue the matter. They never paid the money, of course.

‘Now,’ said Haug, ‘now to London.... We could not leave that blackguard like that.’ A few days later we were looking out at the London fog from the fourth storey of Morley’s Hotel.

With my move to London in the autumn of 1852 the most painful part of my life ends—and with it I break off my story.

(_Finished in 1858._)

* * * * *

To-day is the 2nd of May 1863 ... the eleventh anniversary. Where are those who stood at the graveside? Not one of them is here ... some are gone for ever, others are very far away—and not only geographically.

Orsini’s head has rolled bleeding from the scaffold.

The body of Engelson—who died an enemy—lies at rest in a Channel island.

Tessier du Mothe, the chemist-naturalist, has remained the same gentle and good-natured fellow, but is calling up spirits and turning tables.

Charles Edmond, the friend of Prince Napoleon, is librarian in the Palais du Luxembourg.

Karl Vogt has remained more unchanged, more true to himself than any.

Haug I saw a year ago. He quarrelled with me over some trifle in 1854, left London without saying good-bye and broke off all relations. I learnt by chance that he was in London. I sent word to him ‘that the tenth anniversary of her burial had come, that it was shameful to keep up ill-feeling on no serious grounds, that we were bound together by sacred memories, and that if he had forgotten I still remembered with what readiness he had held out the hand of friendship to me.’

Knowing his character, I took the first step and went to him. He was touched and glad to see me, but for all that the meeting was more melancholy than any parting.

At first we talked of persons and of incidents and recalled details of the past. Then a pause followed. It was obvious to us that we had nothing to say to each other, that we had become complete strangers. I made an effort to keep up the conversation. Haug did his utmost; various incidents of his trip in Asia Minor served our turn. They, too, were exhausted at last, and it was difficult again.

‘Oh dear,’ I said suddenly, taking out my watch, ‘it’s five o’clock and I have an engagement. I must leave you.’ It was a fib. I had no engagement at all. Haug, too, seemed to feel as though a weight had rolled off his back.

‘Is it really five o’clock? I am going to dine to-day at Clapham.’

‘It will take you an hour to get there, I will not keep you. Good-bye.’

And going out into the street, I was on the point of bursting into “laughter”?—no, tears.

Two days later he came to lunch with me. It was the same thing again. He was meaning to leave London the next day—so he said; he remained a good deal longer, but we had had enough and we did not try to see each other again.

ADDENDA TO SECTION THREE

_Extracts from a Diary_

_Feb. 2, 1863._—The moments are rare when it occurs to me to put down anything in this book—some fresh pain, trouble, anxiety. This book might be called—if it were not _zu Deutsch_—a book of lamentations.

The Polish rebellion, the fate of the Russian officers, illness, dissensions, misunderstandings all about one—separation, and the old phrase comes back into my mind again, ‘What an endless capacity for suffering is given man and what a tiny capacity for enjoyment!’

Moreover, happiness, harmony—all that flies away, scarcely leaves a trace, merely touches the present moment—while grief, sickness, the expectation of trouble, all that drags on and on, cuts more deeply, like a plough, and leaves deep furrows.

* * * * *

_Sept. 24, 1863, Genoa, Hotel Feder. Cari luoghi io vi ritrovi._—I have come to Italy by the same route by which I came in 1847. Then I went down from Esterel to Cannes and to Nice on a most exquisite autumn day. I went there again in 1851, on the way to Hyères, twenty-four hours after the awful news of the loss of my mother, my son, and Spielmann. And that is already twelve years ago. I longed to look once more at these parts, yet was afraid to be again in the same surroundings. Nature, that ages slowly, remains the same, but man changes. The first time that I came here, I was looking for a full life with a rich setting.

The Alps were before us, there were no clouds above us and, light-hearted and full of courage, I pushed on ahead.

The second time I came stunned with grief. Before me was the wrecked ship, behind me my wrecked life. Now I am going to my children, expecting nothing for myself personally, except leisure for thought, free from anxiety, with harmony and peace about me, the _noli me tangere_ of weariness and age.

Between Toulon and Nice we left the railway and drove to Hyères. Everything has been wiped away in twelve years. I could not even find the hotel at which I stayed then. The Napoleonic mania for reconstruction has passed over this too.... Then there was no body, no rag, now no house, no place....

Loss more complete there could not be. _Fu ... e non è!_

We made a triumphal entry into Nice. The railway was not yet finished; we sat on the roof of the diligence, the evening darkened, and the moon rose, it had been a day like summer! Towards morning the mistral blew with passing spurts of rain, and we heard the dreary murmur of the sea.

That sound always upsets me, and it was never more hateful than at that moment when, after twelve years, I came back for the first time to visit her grave.

But what a lovely place! Her body is not lowered into the darkness underground, but lifted up into the mountain ... in the distance stretch the Alps, below there is the sea.... One broken string has ruined all the melody ... but such a string—with it the knot that held all together is severed and the web is unravelled.

I was vexed with myself in the graveyard, the earth was cold, the stones were cold ... only then I saw the painful effect of the absence of a tombstone. Without a form, a sign, a written word, a material symbol, in fact, one loses hold.

The cornice of Italy! Again I passed along it. It saw me last when, with hopes renewed, we were going home from Turin in 1851. And those beautiful _cari luoghi_ called back the past more vividly than the graveyard, her bright image floated against the background of the dark blue sea and the mountains—and with it I fell asleep, and for a brief space all the dreadful happenings of the past were blotted out.

In Nice I visited both our houses. There was no one living in either of them, and I could wander through the rooms. Inside almost everything remained as of old ... the shutters were closed, there was thick grey dust and the air was close. It seemed as though we had left it a few days before. I looked at these dumb witnesses of dreadful things and thought: Why had I summoned them as witnesses of the past? And I longed to escape from them, to get away, though I feared no testimony, no accusation—I feared my memories.

In the room where she died I opened the shutters. The familiar view of the sea, the shore, and the church ... she sketched it several times.... The bedstead was standing in the same place—the mattresses had been taken off it and piled up beside it on the floor—the funeral might have been yesterday. The cook who lived with us came, and the gardener of Sue’s house, and I met the maid who was with us then. I saw simple-hearted genuine delight on their faces. The two misfortunes that had befallen us while they were with me had made a close bond between us. In their affection for me there was an element of sympathy, of pity. The faces were the same, only a little older.

Yes, it all happened here!

* * * * *

_Steamer Aunis, Sept. 27, 1863, Civita Vecchia._—We stopped before the wall of a fortress.... Everything is sullen and ugly except the sky.... French soldiers saunter up and down—a lad absolutely naked swims up to the steamer and sitting in a little boat reminds me of the boy in Flandrin’s[23] picture. I cannot land on the Papal shore—I remain on deck. Towards night we sail into Naples; I go to my children, as to the great winter holiday. It will not be long before my 31st of December. May she who is absent be there in them, and may the flowers of their young life surround me once more. And again to work, again to the road which every day grows stonier, but which we tread together[24] as we did when we set off in 1833—thirty years ago! Amen.

* * * * *

_Zurich, Nov. 27, 1868._—Two years ... another two years ... and the same chaos ... Zurich ... here began the tragedy that ended in the funeral of the 2nd of May. Here were written the first letters full of doubt, of terror, of concealed hope. Here he lived for years.

I looked at this town, as Ulysses looked at the rocks on which he left his blood and fragments of torn flesh. And strange to say, I like meeting these blood-stained rocks. I recall that time of unbroken pain—the few minutes of intense passion and the serene figure of a child—his untroubled eyes in the midst of grief and confusion, and I look with love at the garden, at the avenue along which I used to walk with him.

Why did no one guess how much love was left in me, how much, how much, was lavished upon me? Even _she_ forgot it for the time, and only fully understood it afterwards. And Natalie, what an infinite pity that she never understood that side!

Only the strong acknowledges his fault, only the strong is humble, only the strong forgives—and indeed only the strong laughs, though often his laughter is equal to tears.

SELECTIONS FROM CORRESPONDENCE RELATING TO SECTION THREE

_A Letter to Richard Wagner_[25]

DEAR SIR,—Allow me to thank you for your letter of June 30.
It is another proof of the universal condemnation of the
person in question, which will overwhelm him in the end.
I appreciate with all my heart your magnanimous desire to
champion the man. And I can give you no better proof of my
deep respect for you than by expressing my own opinion with
perfect frankness. I do not in the least share your hopes:
there is a degree of degradation from which a man can never
rise, for he must have destroyed everything human in himself
before he could sink to such depths. Believe me, I thoroughly
understand that passion is a law to itself, and that no one can
be held responsible for the fatal consequences of the tragic
conflicts it involves. Unfortunately, the misdeeds of this man
are of quite a different character—mean, utterly plebeian,
vulgar, cynical, and cowardly. To inspire respect passion must
be coupled with power, with irresistible force—then and only
then it escapes censure. It must be what it really is, _i.e._
tempestuous, overwhelming. It burns and sweeps all before it,
it kills but does not poison drop by drop—does not scheme
for a year to deceive a friend and for another year to take
vengeance on the woman by slander. Passion will face death,
but will not face being ignominiously kicked out of the house.
I have come to know you through your fine work on the _chef
d’œuvre_ of the future. You have well grasped the bond uniting
all the arts, which ought to be combined in a harmonious
concrete whole. I appeal to your aesthetic sense. How can you
justify an existence devoid of every religious feeling, how
can you dream of a future of serenity and self-restraint for
a creature destitute of all manliness, of all chivalrous and
generous feeling, a man without a trace of a conscience? A
man, no—a hetaira of the male sex, who has sold his youth for
francs to an unsexed woman, a worthy accomplice of all his
infamies—a creature who for the sake of comfort has betrayed
his convictions, whose part in the German revolution was a
flight from the field of battle, without accounting for the
money entrusted to him—such a creature has no future. Every
day he was warmly pressing his friend’s hand, calling him in
his letters his one support, his one defence, longing for
the moment to pour out his soul to him, for ever talking
enthusiastically of friendship, and at the same time betraying
his friend! That creature has not passed through a tragedy—he
has simply behaved like a blackguard.

A man who brought his wife into his friend’s house in order
to sully it—with the sole object of keeping his family at the
friend’s expense, at his expense paying his debts—is not a
Werther but a Robert Macaire.[26]

In any case, the second part of the story surpasses the first.
I am not speaking of the slanders he has circulated—secretly,
but in such a way that they are known in Russia—nor of the
coarse brutality of leaving his ex-wife in Nice to spy upon
me, to insult me, to drive me out of the town. A year after he
has allowed himself to be turned out of the house, he sends me
a mean challenge. Knowing little of the etiquette of affairs
of honour, he sends me a challenge by post, without mentioning
even his seconds. Then he returns my wife’s letter as though
unopened, _after tampering with the seal_. The disgusting
challenge, in which, among other things, he gibes at the
unhappy death of my son, does not explain in what way I have
wronged him. There was no possibility of understanding for what
insult he desired satisfaction. It was not a _cartel_, but an
equivalent of a slap in the face. Unhappily, I was then by the
bedside of a dying woman, a woman of the loftiest soul, saintly
in her regrets, who had come to understand the sort of man she
had to deal with—such was the woman whose end was hastened by
the filthy attacks of this depraved man.

A duel between him and me? Never! What would it prove? We
are not equals. I am his judge. I might be his executioner,
but not his opponent. A duel is no expiation, no punishment;
a duel is rehabilitation of honour, but I want to establish
his dishonour. As a socialist and a revolutionary, I have
appealed to the only authority I recognise. I had the spirit,
the courage to submit the affair to the judgment of my friends
the democrats. I showed the letters, I told the facts. My
appeal roused a general outburst of condemnation. Herwegh’s
moral death has been decreed. Despised by all decent men,
excommunicated from the body of democrats, he will be forced
to hide his ignominious existence in some remote corner of the
world. For he will find no peace in France, Italy, Switzerland.

I swear, and my friends swear it also—every day brings us fresh
proofs—that all representatives of the militant revolution
stand by us.—Receive, etc.

A. HERZEN.

_Letter from Haug to Herzen_[27]

MY UNHAPPY ALEXANDR!—Do nothing to avenge your outraged honour
till you have seen me. I shall be in Nice in a few days. I have
only just seen your letter to Mazzini of February the 6th. What
fatal consequences have followed the fact that my last letter,
written in December, did not reach you!

My heart is as desolate as a graveyard. Nothing but crosses and
tombstones. The best of humanity are turning to dust before
my eyes, happiness has vanished for ever, I see with a curse
the holiest hopes of human love at its highest defiled by the
grotesque images of abject scoundrels.

My poor, unhappy Iskander, I suffer as you do, more bitterly
than you do, for I have the highest esteem for Madame Herzen.

You don’t know that one evening Mazzini sent me the brief
sentence: ‘_on vous aura écrit que Herzen a perdu sa femme_.’
This was at the very moment when France was dying. One thing on
the top of another. An angel at the deathbed of a nation. Only
later I heard that the calamity had overtaken your mother. Poor
woman!

For a year you kept silent. By your silence and by the laconic
way in which you returned my letter to Madame Herzen, you
gave rise to a prolonged hideous uncertainty. It has been a
burning poison. You don’t know to what a point my soul, perhaps
from excess of enthusiasm, has grown into your life. When,
late one night, near La Madeleine, you told me that Natalie
was your bliss, your heaven, I came to love that heaven,
with which, perhaps, I was in love before. Natalie was for
me the incarnation of the spirit of the East, you were its
representative. You yourself said to me once, Alexandr, ‘Haug,
you are a pure-hearted man.’ Yes, I am. And I am faithful to my
feeling. You are my religion. I have never consciously profaned
it.

Your distress comes as an agony into my life. I will heal it.
The dream of our age, the solidarity of nations, would become
... [_word illegible_] if those who dream of it would carry
it out in action instead of talking of it. You are right in
refusing to fight. Already one of the greatest sons of the
East has been struck by a scoundrel’s bullet. And where was the
expiation, where was the justice of destiny? Solidarity ought
to have another side. Darkness is dispelled, but the light is
too glaring. There must be the true light which will make the
blind see. The truth of a better future ... [_word illegible_].
My greetings to the angel of your life, Natalie. She is a saint
of humanity. She must be a saint, for every one loves her. And
Mazzini says, ‘_la femme c’est l’ange perdu_.’ Good-bye.

_Herzen’s answer to Haug_

DEAR HAUG,—Your letter of March the 10th gave me great
pleasure. I have been so unhappy of late, I feel so shattered,
so insulted in all that was holiest and most precious to me,
and there are moments when my strength fails me, I am overcome
by utter despair, I feel impotent, humiliated.... Your letter
found me at such a moment, it revived me again—I thank you.

Yes, I accept your brotherly sympathy, I press your
outstretched hand, not that you should fight my battles, but
only support me in this painful struggle that I may end it as I
should wish.

But before bringing you into the thick of this sad and
distressing business, I must make you acquainted with a few
facts. I will tell you them. It is very painful to me, but
it is unavoidable. When I have told my story, judge and act
according to the dictates of your heart.

You reminded me in your letter of a conversation we had walking
by the Madeleine at night. Ah, how grateful I am to you for
that! That conversation does not only lighten my burden, but
serves me as a kind of proof and testimony, in any case, as
regards you. Yes, I opened my heart and soul to you that night.
That rarely happens with me, I never talk of my feelings, I am,
as it were, ashamed—my feelings are for myself alone. And so I
told you then that only one woman has played a part in my life,
and that that part was an immense one, that I have loved only
one woman, and that love was living unchanged in my heart. A
deep affection bound us together as children and survived all
the ups and downs of a stormy life; I will add now that that
love gives me the strength to bear the tortures of my present
position. Yes, our love has worked a miracle—a far greater one
than that of lasting fourteen years—it has survived the shock
that might have destroyed it. We have never been so united
as since this misfortune has befallen us. It has welded us
more closely together. The humiliations I am suffering on her
account, the fact that I have taken half the blame upon myself,
have been fresh foundations for our love.

We are no longer the same people, and that is why nothing has
changed between us.

Hand in hand, we proudly entered upon life; we thought that we
should pass with head erect before admiring multitudes. What
was there to fear after twelve years of union, of love?... A
filthy encounter, a pestilential breath which we could not
withstand has humbled us. Now we are moving away from life in a
lowlier spirit, crushed by an awful memory, we are approaching
the grave, weary and downcast, but hand in hand as before.
Neither of us is innocent, nor guilty; one who has the strength
to forgive shares the responsibility for the past. If any man
despises us, let him hold aloof, let him forget us. Our union,
so humanly holy, has been desecrated by that creature. But
you, you who love us so much, must pause, you must ponder more
deeply what I am saying to you and discern the true image of
our indissoluble union under the dirt and disgrace with which
it has been covered.

I pass to the facts. When we met that creature for the second
time he was very unhappy. Reviled by friends of his own
party—he was accused of cowardice in connection with the Baden
expedition, and even of dishonesty—he was no better off in
his private life: tied for the sake of money to a woman whom
he did not love, but who made him feel his indebtedness to
her, depraved and spoiled by a passionate thirst for trivial
enjoyments, he was not capable of undertaking anything new. He
was alone, there were people who thought highly of his talents,
but there was not one who respected him personally. I held out
a hand to him. At the bottom of that embittered soul I descried
earnest thought, poetical talent which dazzled me. He became
passionately attached to me, he never left my side. No other
man has said so much of his affection for me, he was jealous
over me, tried to keep my friends from me, called me his
brother, his twin soul, his one friend and support; he wrote
to me that if I were to take it into my head to cast him off,
he would cling to me because he could not exist without me. He
reproached me for coldness and shed tears, recalling our first
meeting.

I will show you his letters, which I have fortunately kept.

This passionate, ardent affection for me and boundless love
for my children was what first drew him and Natalie together.
She abandoned herself to her liking for him without a second
thought, and he had plenty of time to draw his nets closer and
closer round a woman who fell into the snare more naïvely than
one who would have struggled against it. There was nothing to
restrain that utterly depraved creature; he found nothing in
his heart to make him feel all the baseness and vileness of
such an outrage. Neither regard for the children, nor respect
for the house that had given him a shelter, nor respect for
himself—why, you know he still persisted in his declarations of
love to me.

Do you know what it means to have doubts and not to dare to
put them into words, to suspect and not to have the courage to
confess it? I am not going to give you the inner history of
that awful time, we will talk of that in the future. To-day I
will only say that that struggle has aged me, I wasted in it
what was left of life and energy. No, I said to myself, this is
impossible: how could they conceal the truth from me, from me,
their true and faithful friend, how could they put me in the
degrading position of a spectator, how could I have deserved
such contempt? On the other side I saw that every explanation
was avoided. In Paris, in December, I began to express my
suspicions more boldly. I was alone in Paris. Natalie was left
in Zurich, where the creature was staying at my mother’s. In
her letters Natalie protested, spoke of the indissoluble ties
that held us together, and finally came herself to Paris.

While I was in Paris I had the opportunity of studying that
creature’s character more closely. There had always been
something in him that revolted me, the selfish injustice, the
harsh coarseness of his behaviour to others, especially to his
wife, whom he exploited, demanding money. My letters to him
from Paris were full of amazement at his behaviour; with my
habitual frankness I blamed him without reserve. His letters
became more and more tender, he talked of nothing but our
leading a pure and serious life together, which should serve as
an example and foundation for the future, far from the crowd
and full of harmony. I answered him: ‘You will bring with you
into that life the corroding egoistic element that will poison
it,’ and quoted the lines of Pushkin:

‘Leave us, proud man!
...
Freedom you want, but only for yourself;
Your very voice strikes terror to our hearts.
Fearful and kindly are we gypsy folk,
You are bold and evil—go away from us!’

When I was turned out of Paris in July 1850, I went to Nice.

This was a great blunder, I ought to have gone to London. All
this time the creature was living at my mother’s in Zurich. At
the end of August she brought him to Nice. Two days before his
arrival, Madame Herwegh, foreseeing misunderstandings, borrowed
ten thousand francs from me for two years. They were without
means. I offered them a storey in the house which I had taken,
accepting, from motives of delicacy, a nominal rent, ostensibly
to cover the cost of it. And so the whole family, women and
children, established themselves at my expense. He knew all
this, allowing his wife to act as she thought best, and now she
has the effrontery to reproach me with having reminded her of
this when she was leaving.

At Nice I grasped the full extent of the catastrophe. Natalie
was struggling between two feelings. She was trying to forget
herself, she was afraid to face the truth. I was shattered,
wounded, profoundly unhappy. And looking at this abject,
pitiful creature, who avoided any explanation, who oppressed
his wife, who was beginning to envy me my fortune, I often
repeated the words which Hamlet said to his mother.

But an inner voice told me that this was not so. I saw it with
my own eyes but I did not believe it. That saved me, saved
Natalie, saved the children. It was time to put an end to it
all, in any case to the falsity of the position. The idea of
playing the part of judge and injured husband never entered my
head.

Never in my life have I stooped to a degrading inconsistency
between my principles and my actions. I demanded the truth;
that I was entitled to.

After two or three feverish conversations Natalie told me all.
(You will see later on the abominable use to which the creature
put this word ‘all.’)

No one without my iron health could have lived through the
agonies I endured listening to her, and the four or five
sleepless nights that followed our first conversation.

On one of those nights we were sitting together on the sofa;
there was death in my heart; thoughts of suicide for the first
time floated before my mind; I wanted to drink the cup to the
bitter dregs. I put one or two questions to her. She answered.
A silence followed. I was annihilated, I was overwhelmed by a
rush of rage, shame and anguish, and, I confess it to you, I
had an impulse to kill Natalie. With a feeling of gladness I
dwelt on the thought....

The silence continued. At last I raised my eyes and looked
at her. Her face was awful, terribly pale, bluish; her lips
were blanched, her features were working; she said nothing
but looked fixedly at me with dim, questioning eyes. Her
appearance affected me so much, that forgetting everything I
took her hand, and letting my head fall on her shoulder, began
comforting her in a voice full of tenderness which came from
my heart. This was the real crisis for Natalie. She flung
herself sobbing on my neck; I laid her on the sofa; she was
almost unconscious, and only had the strength to say: ‘Don’t
be afraid, these are good tears, it’s my admiration for you,
it’s my tenderness. No, no,’ she kept saying, ‘I will never
leave you, if only you can put up with me and forget what has
happened.’ Her soul, spellbound by a morbid passion, awakened
and revived with the energy and force of former days. She
came back ‘like a ship returning to its haven after a storm,
half-wrecked but triumphant at its escape’ (her own words in a
letter to me).

In her infatuation she had not seen whither she was drifting.
She was going to meet death, while he was still seeking ‘a
brilliant future’ in the words of Madame Herwegh, who, I swear
on my honour, was already drawing up a plan for the division of
my property.

After that scene I knew that Natalie would remain, but that
she was still under the influence of the creature’s threats,
under the influence of the past. I had to take action. I
suggested that I should leave Nice the following day and let
them settle things as they thought best. Natalie would not hear
of my going. Then I insisted that the creature should leave
the house. As Natalie was terribly afraid of a duel or some
bloody encounter, she asked me in token of my reconciliation
and forgiveness to promise her that I would not do anything
to provoke it. I promised, but on condition that he left the
house. This is what the creature calls ‘using pressure’ and
‘taking a base advantage of my position.’ Of course I used
influence, but only by devotion, by love.

Prevention and persuasion are very different things. At this
moment, for instance, I am influencing you. I must tell you too
that all this time the creature remained in hiding in his room
on the first storey and did not come down to the dining-room or
the drawing-room. But he sent me his wife, who came with the
most monstrous proposition, made in a naïvely disgusting form,
to which no woman but a Berlin German would demean herself. She
proposed that I should let Natalie go with the creature while
she would remain with me. I repeated for the last time that I
was ready to go if Natalie wished it; she ran off to Natalie
at once. She knows her answer and can tell it you, I know the
result. At first the creature refused to go, then went through
a farce of suicide, then told me through his wife, that he was
ready for a duel to the death, but nothing would induce him to
fire at ‘the friend’ whom he was conscious of having wronged.

But soon his timid, lymphatic temperament got the upper hand
and, in a very bourgeois style, with his luggage, governess and
children, he went on to Mentone and then to Geneva.

There was something so humiliating and ludicrous in this
male Hagar with his Berlin Ishmael, cast out from the house
which had sheltered them, that I took no further action. I
was absorbed by a very different question. I wanted to reach
a clear understanding of the true state of Natalie’s heart.
The step she had just brought herself to was the inevitable
compensation for the insult I had suffered. Passion might
gain the ascendant. What motives were guiding her now? Was it
renunciation, self-sacrifice, devotion without love? And if so,
would she have the strength to hold out and, finally, had I the
right to accept such a sacrifice? After the first weeks during
which our conversations were often passionate and gloomy, I
grasped that it was a perfectly natural return to the love
which had been her guiding thread throughout her life, she was
coming back to her normal condition, her momentary passion had
been a casual incident; as soon as she had thrown off the yoke
of a capricious, exacting creature who worked upon her only by
threats, she felt more free, more youthful in soul.

The creature’s mean behaviour destroyed the last vestiges
of her unhappy attachment. In his first letter to Natalie
he begged her not to justify herself by throwing the blame
on him, to take it all on herself. Then followed threats of
scandal, murder and amazing suggestions such as that she should
rehabilitate him in my opinion and take him as a tutor to my
children. Natalie felt that she must not drive him to despair
and asked my sanction to write to him at times. I told her
that I looked at it very differently, but she might act as she
thought best. The correspondence, which all passed through my
hands, led to all the horrors that followed. Natalie gave him
a promise to meet him a year later on condition that he should
not misuse the privilege of writing to her—that only increased
his epistolary incontinence. Natalie took back her promise and
at last, in August or November, broke off all correspondence
with him. She despised him, was ashamed of him.

Only one thing was wanted to complete the meanness of his
behaviour—that was to make it public; and he spread abroad
the whole story. He did his share and his wife did hers. But
they did not merely publish it abroad, they added slander. No
one ventured to mention the man’s name in my hearing; I held
my peace, respecting the obligation of silence which has no
sacredness for the plebeian soul.

All of a sudden, in July, I learned in Geneva from Sazonov that
the creature had told him the whole story. This unexpected
intelligence distressed me and I returned to Turin, depressed
and gloomy. Natalie, seeing from my letters how unhappy I
was, came from Nice to meet me and reached Turin the same
day as I did. This sign of affection touched me. There, for
the last time, we talked it all over. We came to understand
each other better than ever. Yes, we were the same, with one
terrible memory, one deep scar added. Those days in Turin
brought back to me our glorious youth; they reminded me of our
life together at Vladimir. Yes, it was a second wedding, a
wedding of more significance, perhaps, than the first. It was
accompanied by deep consciousness, full understanding of all
the responsibility we were taking up anew, and for this we were
indebted to the past which had almost ruined us and covered
us with disgrace. I leave it to Natalie to give you the inner
account of our reconciliation and the full harmony of our home
life, which lasted until the terrible blow that fell upon us.
On November 16th my mother, my second son and his tutor—one of
my friends—perished in the Mediterranean. This blow shattered
Natalie’s health. Exhaustion and weakness passed into acute
illness. She was attacked by pleurisy: on the 2nd or 3rd of
January, she was so much worse that the doctors doubted whether
she would recover. And the wretch seized this moment to send me
a mean challenge. Through his wife, whom he made live in Nice,
he knew everything that was happening to us. I should not have
opened his letter, except that he wrote on the envelope ‘an
honourable challenge.’

Inside, instead of a challenge, I found a dirty letter,
revolting in its cynicism, full of charges against Natalie and
the basest disclosures. He covered the vileness of this by
saying, ‘You have been told all,’ as though I would ever have
cared to demean myself or Natalie by the repetition of all the
revolting details. I spoke of this letter to my friend Engelson
(he was the first person after Sazonov to whom I spoke of this
business). What was my amazement when I saw that he too was
fully informed of all that had taken place. Monsieur and Madame
H. had initiated all their acquaintances into the sad details
of our breach with them, forgetting that he had played the
part of a traitor and she of a go-between. I was amazed and
scandalised. What duel could suppress these slanders! Natalie
and I, by keeping it all absolutely secret, had given them full
opportunity for circulating their vile calumnies. Next day
it was public property that I had received a challenge. The
creature had told his wife, and a few days later Madame Reihel
informed my wife from Paris that she had just heard it from
Madame Kolatchek.

After the intervention of the Baden heroine it would have been
too absurd to play a melodramatic part in this mournful drama.
A duel would be unthinkable, it would have set nothing right,
it would have been a trap, he was the only man who could have
been rehabilitated by a duel. As for me, I did not think about
my honour, I wanted to chastise the wretch, to revenge myself
on him; the defence of my honour was of very little interest
to me. I may say frankly that my past, beginning with five
years of exile on the borders of Siberia and ending with our
banishment from Paris, gave me, if not certain rights, at any
rate a confidence in myself. If my honour could depend upon a
traitor whose past was as well known as my own, I should prefer
to lose it.

To refuse a duel is not an easy thing to do. Remember, I am
writing to you two months after the challenge. I passed through
a regular mental illness before I succeeded in recovering my
sense of honour by a firm, resolute decision to rise superior
to this man, who is devoid of every feeling of dignity and
generosity, to rise superior to time-honoured conventions, and
obstinately to refuse this miscreant the honour of fighting. I
was conscious that I was taking my stand against a monstrous
and merciless force. This unjust, haughty, inhuman force is
all-powerful where honour is concerned, it dominates even
the most independent natures, they submit to its decrees and
abandon their own convictions simply to show that they have the
courage to face a pistol. I take my stand against despotism,
because I feel myself pure, guiltless, because I feel myself
strong enough to appeal to my friends and to lay it all before
them. My refusal had another, more serious significance: I
wanted my action to be a definite and solemn recognition
of the freedom of woman. I wanted to leave it to woman to
defend her own honour in complete independence. Only the
weak-minded, the immature and the feeble need to be defended,
and in this case the woman is strong, and if she acts alone
she is stronger still. This man, revenging himself upon her
for not persisting in wrongdoing, for not becoming his slave,
thought to crush her with his cynicism. He will be himself
crushed by the grandeur of her repentance.... Not a month ago
that woman spoke, and public opinion, amazed, went over to
her side. Before that, I alone was pitied and the slanderous
charges, rapidly circulated during the previous twelve months
by the efforts of Madame H., were continually repeated, but now
Natalie stands confronting them all, lovely in her energy and
determination.

That was the beginning of my triumph.

I am finishing, dear Haug. The details, the letters of my
friends, the creature’s insolent and stupid behaviour, his
refusal, for instance, to receive my answer through my
second, his asking for a secret duel, his return of a certain
letter—all that you will learn from my friends, who have
surrounded me with so much warmth and devotion and given me the
strength to bear my humiliating position.

What they will tell you will not differ in any material point
from my story; all you will learn from them is the depths of
degradation to which a plebeian, mean, coarse and abject soul
can sink. For what does all this parade of eloquence amount
to, what is the object of all these letters, all these words?
Why did not he simply come, pistol in hand, why did he run
away from the house, why did he not try (he wrote twenty times
about it) to kill Natalie or me, why in the last resort did he
not kill himself? He had neither the energy nor the daring for
that. It is easier to spread calumnies, to bully his wife—and
that is what he does. One must put an end to it and punish
the wretch. For that, I need the help and the advice of my
friends, and above all the conviction that should I, by the
irony of fate, perish in the conflict, my friends will set an
awe-inspiring example of justice and solidarity,—Your devoted

A. HERZEN.

_Letter of Herzen to his Wife_

GENEVA, A CAFÉ, _June 28, 1851_.

Judge for yourself what I am feeling, and the state I am in.

He has told Sazonov all about it.... Details that took my
breath away. He told him that ‘he was sorry for me, but that
what was done could not be undone, that you had begged him to
keep silent, that in a few months’ time, _when I was calmer_,
you would leave me....’

Dear! I will not add a word. Sazonov said he had heard you were
ill and asked what it was. I was numb with horror while he
talked. I insist upon an answer from you to this last point.
It is all beyond the wildest dreams. Sazonov knows absolutely
all about it.... I insist on having the truth.... Answer me at
once; I shall weigh every word. My heart is breaking.... And
you call this consistent development.

To-morrow I am going to Freiburg. I have never sunk so low
as this before. Address your answer to this to Turin, _poste
restante_.

Can it be really you that they are talking about? My God,
my God, what I have suffered for my love.... What more is
there?... Answer, answer to Turin!

_Letters of Natalie Herzen to her Husband_

_July 3, 1851._—My dear, my dear, if only I had wings, how I
would fly to you! It is more than I can bear.... I can’t tell
you how I have felt since your last letter, and I don’t know
how to say anything. All I know, dear, is that I love you with
all the power of loving there is in me, that nothing but death
can tear me from you. These latter days have shown it to me
more clearly than ever. And—I, too, will be open—I will say
more. My love for you makes me afraid: it is too beautiful, it
is timid, dear, it has too vivid a memory of the anguish of not
being understood, not valued, not wanted, not loved in the same
way.... Well, so be it! My fate is settled once for all; to
live and to die for you.... The children ... they too are you.
You can make of it what you like.

I embrace you, Alexandr! Be well and calm.

_July 4._—Alexandr, my Alexandr, let us suffer together!
Darling, how hard it is! How sorry I am for you, for you, dear!
and what can I do? If only I could hold you in my arms ... and
to die with you if you don’t care to live or don’t believe me,
if I can do nothing for you.... I think now that education is
all nonsense: the children have good natures and that will
save them.... Life is hard, dear, insufferable, when I know
that you are so unhappy. Yesterday I could not bear to have
people about me, so I drove in the evening to the Engelsons
and spent a long time on the way.... It was awful coming back
to the house without you. No, I can’t stay like this, I shall
come to you in Turin on the 7th or before, so as to be there on
the 8th: inquire for me at the Hotel Feder. My chest and all
my bones feel as though they were broken, but my brain won’t
stop working.... It is awful to think that there are two more
days before the 7th and two days on the journey.... If I am not
in Turin on the 8th, it will be because something has kept me
here—don’t wait for me, but come here; I am writing that I may
be there, perhaps, for fear we may miss each other.

I have just spoken to Rocca. I sent him to book a seat in the
post-chaise that goes on Sunday afternoon at half-past four;
so that by Tuesday morning we may meet in the hotel....

My heart throbs and throbs and stands still, I can hardly
breathe.... Oh, if I could comfort you, dear, set your heart at
rest!...

I embrace you, I embrace you.

_July 7._—Yesterday I received the letter in which you write
that you will not reach Turin before the 10th; I have put off
going till to-morrow; two extra days without the children and
without you would be awful.

I don’t know what to say to your reproaches, dear, after all
that I have said already. It seems to me after them that it
is of no use for me to go ... on your account.... Tata is
inconsolable since she has heard that I am going. ‘Father
is big and can come alone, or take me, take me with you.’ I
say, ‘The mountains are high and dangerous for children to go
over them’—‘I would rather die with you than be left without
you’—and all that was said so quietly, in secret from the rest.
What sufferings life has in store for such a nature!... It’s
silly but it breaks my heart to listen to her, yet I can’t help
it, this time I must be selfish; not on your account, I shall
come for my own sake; I must see you and hear you, my dear, my
heart is so heavy. Tata may have much happiness before her in
her life, but for me the sun is going down and time is ebbing.

And so till we meet, Alexandr.... Why am I going? Your last
letter was so cold....

_Letter of Herzen to his Son_

_June 28 (1851)._

Greetings, Sasha! Do you often think of me, my little dear? Do
think of me: it will make me gladder and happier. I may come
sooner than I expected—perhaps about the tenth. I would give
a great deal to be with you all now, to look at you and Tata
asleep.

Good-bye, dear.

I shall be in Freiburg on the 30th of June, and shall stay
there five days; if I leave by the 6th I shall be in Turin by
the 8th.

Tell me how you met the Colonel.[28]

_Letter from Herzen to M. K. Reihel_

GENEVA, _June 29 (1851), morning_.

This evening I am going to Freiburg, and so I shall be there
to-morrow; I shall stay there not more than four or five days;
so that when you get this letter, you can send on other letters
_poste restante_, Turin.

When I stepped on Swiss soil I felt that I was really free;
unless the whole country were occupied by a foreign army there
is no danger here; moreover, a Swiss subject cannot actually
be expelled from Piedmont—so that everything is right on that
score. As to other things, what am I to say to you? I have
grown older. That I have told you before, that you have seen
for yourself; at times I seem to fall back into the old rut,
but there is no limpidity, the water is dull, troubled, muddy,
and it is not at all amusing. But you, Marya Kasparovna, were
very kind in the way you met me and saw me off. Give me your
hand, we are old friends; mind that prolonged absence and
other interests do not cool your helpful affection for us
(don’t be angry—human nature is weak and changeable, nothing
in it is quite secure). Perhaps life will bring us together
again—anything may happen, for everything comes by chance.

Most likely you have already sent off an answer to Bernacki.

Good-bye; give my love to Reihel. Was Maurice pleased with the
toys?[29]

The colonel has set off gloomily from Lyons: he suffers much,
for he loves much; he is consumed by an inward fire and no palm
baths will put it out.

Once more good-bye. Give my greetings to Bernacki.

_Letter from Herzen to his Wife_

_June 29-30, 1851._

I embrace the children. I will write to them from Freiburg, but
I have no time now. I have to go off somewhere. I went to bed
late and overslept myself to-day.

My love to mother and every one.

Why have the books that were returned been paid for? Golovin
was to have asked for them from Turin.

_Letter from Herzen to his Son_

FREIBURG, _July 2 (1851)_.

DEAR SASHA,—Yesterday I went with the local treasurer to Morat,
and from there with the prefect to the village which has
adopted us: Burg or in the French Châtel. A little village; the
inhabitants came to meet us, and the elder made me a speech
in broken German, which I answered as best I could; then they
brought me an immense glass of wine and the schoolmaster made a
speech. The elder apologised for not having made preparations
for my reception, and especially for no guns having been fired.
They are all kind, simple people, they were very much pleased
with me, and invited me to come with all my family next year.
Good-bye, dear; I kiss Tata, Kolya, Olenka.

Kiss Granny’s hand for me.

_Letter from Herzen to his Wife_

GENEVA, _July 5 (1851), Saturday_.

I arrived here an hour ago—here I am already nearer to you,
darling; I don’t know how things will go in Piedmont; I think
of leaving the day after to-morrow at eleven o’clock in the
evening, or if I can’t get a seat, on the 8th; so by the 10th I
shall be in Turin and by the 13th I may be at home; but that is
not certain yet.

There has been a tremendous holiday here; I was really touched
by the grandeur of the reception of the federal banner and of
the deputation from Argau. Yes, say what you like, it is a
republic.

I cannot write: frightfully tired; at one o’clock in the night
I got into the diligence and travelled without stopping till
I arrived here at four in the afternoon. But fatigue is good
for me, only my hand won’t write, and my thoughts won’t hang
together.

I have found out everything about education in Vevey—if
necessary we might be there. Moreover we have never once
thought of the Italian Switzerland, _i.e._ Ticino; they say
Lugano is a very charming town, and until there is a European
war life there is possible.

Good-bye, dear; I feel rather better, but all that depends on a
dream, on memory, on nothing.

I kiss the children.

Chambéry is all nonsense.

_Letter from Herzen to his Wife_

_July 1851._

Here is something more for the colonel. Sazonov’s uncle has
sent him the decision of the Senate and the Tsar concerning
him. The Senate has sentenced him to penal servitude for
disobedience to the Imperial command, but the Imperial Council
has mitigated the sentence, and the Tsar has confirmed that ...
_Risum teneatis_, ‘To condemn him, Sazonov, to perpetual exile
from the borders of the Empire’—there’s a punishment for an
emigrant! His uncle has sent him 6000 francs and he is going to
London.

The Germans who saw Bakunin at Prague said that the latter part
of the time he was _chained_ to the wall!

_A Postscript to his Son_

TURIN, _July 10, 1851_.

Mother has written you so much that she has crowded me into the
margin. But soon we shall be talking, dear; I think we may set
off in three days’ time.

_Letter from Natalie Herzen to her daughter Natalie_

TURIN, _July 13, 1851_.

Tatotchka, my darling, my birdie, my little star, my little
flower, my joy! I am hastening to you. Soon I shall see you and
how happy we shall be together! I’ll tell you how I travelled
over mountains and valleys. And meanwhile, till I come, my
little one, be well and merry and good. Kiss Olya as I kiss
you. Hug Puponka.

YOUR MOTHER.

_Herzen’s Postscript to the above Letter_

Here we are travelling and travelling; the carriage creaks,
the horses snort, the whip clacks, we go on and on, and soon
we shall arrive. François will run and open the gate, Rocca
will fry and bake. And Tata—she will run and scream and throw
herself—flop!—on her daddy’s neck.

Look after Hoetsky,[30] and see that he does not get into
mischief. Make a low bow for me to Alexandra Christianovna and
press her hand warmly.

_Letter from Herzen to his Son_

TURIN, _July 13, 1851_.

Perhaps, dear Sasha, we may be in time to arrive on Tuesday,
and on Wednesday you may almost certainly expect us by the
diligence coming from Geneva, I believe it stops at the Hotel
York. Did you get the telegraph? Show Kolya how to play with
it—it is a very ingenious toy, and I think it will greatly
amuse him.

I read with great pleasure in Engelson’s letter that he is
satisfied with your conduct. But you are in your thirteenth
year, and if we were poor people you would have to be earning
your own living and helping your family. You can see for
yourself that the children of the poor are much more sensible
and steady, especially in everything practical: they are less
timid and more cautious. What they gain through necessity we
must acquire by will.

_P.S._—Your letters of the 11th have just come.

_SECTION FOUR_

ENGLAND

(1852-1855)