The possessed or, The devils
soberly, and not to mix up our national rustic pitch with _bouquet de
l'Impératrice._"
Liputin agreed at once, but remarked that one had to perjure oneself and
praise the peasant all the same for the sake of being progressive, that
even ladies in good society shed tears reading "Poor Anton," and that
some of them even wrote from Paris to their bailiffs that they were,
henceforward, to treat the peasants as humanely as possible.
It happened, and as ill-luck would have it just after the rumours of the
Anton Petrov affair had reached us, that there was some disturbance
in our province too, only about ten miles from Skvoreshniki, so that a
detachment of soldiers was sent down in a hurry.
This time Stepan Trofimovitch was so much upset that he even frightened
us. He cried out at the club that more troops were needed, that they
ought to be telegraphed for from another province; he rushed off to the
governor to protest that he had no hand in it, begged him not to allow
his name on account of old associations to be brought into it, and
offered to write about his protest to the proper quarter in Petersburg.
Fortunately it all passed over quickly and ended in nothing, but I was
surprised at Stepan Trofimovitch at the time.
Three years later, as every one knows, people were beginning to talk
of nationalism, and "public opinion" first came upon the scene. Stepan
Trofimovitch laughed a great deal.
"My friends," he instructed us, "if our nationalism has 'dawned' as
they keep repeating in the papers--it's still at school, at some German
'Peterschule,' sitting over a German book and repeating its everlasting
German lesson, and its German teacher will make it go down on its knees
when he thinks fit. I think highly of the German teacher. But nothing
has happened and nothing of the kind has dawned and everything is going
on in the old way, that is, as ordained by God. To my thinking that
should be enough for Russia, _pour notre Sainte Russie_. Besides, all this
Slavism and nationalism is too old to be new. Nationalism, if you like,
has never existed among us except as a distraction for gentlemen's
clubs, and Moscow ones at that. I'm not talking of the days of Igor, of
course. And besides it all comes of idleness. Everything in Russia comes
of idleness, everything good and fine even. It all springs from the
charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of our gentry! I'm ready to
repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don't know how to live by our
own labour. And as for the fuss they're making now about the 'dawn'
of some sort of public opinion, has it so suddenly dropped from heaven
without any warning? How is it they don't understand that before we
can have an opinion of our own we must have work, our own work, our own
initiative in things, our own experience. Nothing is to be gained for
nothing. If we work we shall have an opinion of our own. But as we
never shall work, our opinions will be formed for us by those who have
hitherto done the work instead of us, that is, as always, Europe, the
everlasting Germans--our teachers for the last two centuries. Moreover,
Russia is too big a tangle for us to unravel alone without the Germans,
and without hard work. For the last twenty years I've been sounding the
alarm, and the summons to work. I've given up my life to that appeal,
and, in my folly I put faith in it. Now I have lost faith in it, but I
sound the alarm still, and shall sound it to the tomb. I will pull at
the bell-ropes until they toll for my own requiem!"
"Alas! We could do nothing but assent. We applauded our teacher and with
what warmth, indeed! And, after all, my friends, don't we still hear
to-day, every hour, at every step, the same "charming," "clever,"
"liberal," old Russian nonsense? Our teacher believed in God.
"I can't understand why they make me out an infidel here," he used to
say sometimes. "I believe in God, _mais distinguons_, I believe in Him as
a Being who is conscious of Himself in me only. I cannot believe as my
Nastasya (the servant) or like some country gentleman who believes 'to
be on the safe side,' or like our dear Shatov--but no, Shatov doesn't
come into it. Shatov believes 'on principle,' like a Moscow Slavophil.
As for Christianity, for all my genuine respect for it, I'm not a
Christian. I am more of an antique pagan, like the great Goethe, or
like an ancient Greek. The very fact that Christianity has failed to
understand woman is enough, as George Sand has so splendidly shown in
one of her great novels. As for the bowings, fasting and all the rest
of it, I don't understand what they have to do with me. However busy the
informers may be here, I don't care to become a Jesuit. In the year 1847
Byelinsky, who was abroad, sent his famous letter to Gogol, and warmly
reproached him for believing in some sort of God. _Entre nous soit dit,_ I
can imagine nothing more comic than the moment when Gogol (the Gogol of
that period!) read that phrase, and... the whole letter! But dismissing
the humorous aspect, and, as I am fundamentally in agreement, I point to
them and say--these were men! They knew how to love their people, they
knew how to suffer for them, they knew how to sacrifice everything for
them, yet they knew how to differ from them when they ought, and did not
filch certain ideas from them. Could Byelinsky have sought salvation
in Lenten oil, or peas with radish!..." But at this point Shatov
interposed.
"Those men of yours never loved the people, they didn't suffer for them,
and didn't sacrifice anything for them, though they may have amused
themselves by imagining it!" he growled sullenly, looking down, and
moving impatiently in his chair.
"They didn't love the people!" yelled Stepan Trofimovitch. "Oh, how they
loved Russia!"
"Neither Russia nor the people!" Shatov yelled too, with flashing eyes.
"You can't love what you don't know and they had no conception of the
Russian people. All of them peered at the Russian people through their
fingers, and you do too; Byelinsky especially: from that very letter to
Gogol one can see it. Byelinsky, like the Inquisitive Man in Krylov's
fable, did not notice the elephant in the museum of curiosities, but
concentrated his whole attention on the French Socialist beetles; he did
not get beyond them. And yet perhaps he was cleverer than any of you.
You've not only overlooked the people, you've taken up an attitude of
disgusting contempt for them, if only because you could not imagine any
but the French people, the Parisians indeed, and were ashamed that the
Russians were not like them. That's the naked truth. And he who has
no people has no God. You may be sure that all who cease to understand
their own people and lose their connection with them at once lose to
the same extent the faith of their fathers, and become atheistic or
indifferent. I'm speaking the truth! This is a fact which will be
realised. That's why all of you and all of us now are either beastly
atheists or careless, dissolute imbeciles, and nothing more. And you
too, Stepan Trofimovitch, I don't make an exception of you at all! In
fact, it is on your account I am speaking, let me tell you that!"
As a rule, after uttering such monologues (which happened to him pretty
frequently) Shatov snatched up his cap and rushed to the door, in the
full conviction that everything was now over, and that he had cut short
all friendly relations with Stepan Trofimovitch forever. But the latter
always succeeded in stopping him in time.
"Hadn't we better make it up, Shatov, after all these endearments," he
would say, benignly holding out his hand to him from his arm-chair.
Shatov, clumsy and bashful, disliked sentimentality. Externally he was
rough, but inwardly, I believe, he had great delicacy. Although he often
went too far, he was the first to suffer for it. Muttering something
between his teeth in response to Stepan Trofimovitch's appeal, and
shuffling with his feet like a bear, he gave a sudden and unexpected
smile, put down his cap, and sat down in the same chair as before, with
his eyes stubbornly fixed on the ground. Wine was, of course, brought
in, and Stepan Trofimovitch proposed some suitable toast, for instance
the memory of some leading man of the past.
CHAPTER II. PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING.
I
THERE WAS ANOTHER being in the world to whom Varvara Petrovna was as
much attached as she was to Stepan Trofimovitch, her only son, Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin. It was to undertake his education that Stepan
Trofimovitch had been engaged. The boy was at that time eight years old,
and his frivolous father, General Stavrogin, was already living apart
from Varvara Petrovna, so that the child grew up entirely in his
mother's care. To do Stepan Trofimovitch justice, he knew how to win his
pupil's heart. The whole secret of this lay in the fact that he was a
child himself. I was not there in those days, and he continually felt
the want of a real friend. He did not hesitate to make a friend of this
little creature as soon as he had grown a little older. It somehow came
to pass quite naturally that there seemed to be no discrepancy of age
between them. More than once he awaked his ten- or eleven-year-old
friend at night, simply to pour out his wounded feelings and weep before
him, or to tell him some family secret, without realising that this was
an outrageous proceeding. They threw themselves into each other's arms
and wept. The boy knew that his mother loved him very much, but I doubt
whether he cared much for her. She talked little to him and did not
often interfere with him, but he was always morbidly conscious of her
intent, searching eyes fixed upon him. Yet the mother confided his whole
instruction and moral education to Stepan Trofimovitch. At that time her
faith in him was unshaken. One can't help believing that the tutor had
rather a bad influence on his pupil's nerves. When at sixteen he was
taken to a lyceum he was fragile-looking and pale, strangely quiet and
dreamy. (Later on he was distinguished by great physical strength.)
One must assume too that the friends went on weeping at night, throwing
themselves in each other's arms, though their tears were not always due
to domestic difficulties. Stepan Trofimovitch succeeded in reaching
the deepest chords in his pupil's heart, and had aroused in him a vague
sensation of that eternal, sacred yearning which some elect souls can
never give up for cheap gratification when once they have tasted and
known it. (There are some connoisseurs who prize this yearning more than
the most complete satisfaction of it, if such were possible.) But in any
case it was just as well that the pupil and the preceptor were, though
none too soon, parted.
For the first two years the lad used to come home from the lyceum
for the holidays. While Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovitch were
staying in Petersburg he was sometimes present at the literary evenings
at his mother's, he listened and looked on. He spoke little, and was
quiet and shy as before. His manner to Stepan Trofimovitch was as
affectionately attentive as ever, but there was a shade of reserve in
it. He unmistakably avoided distressing, lofty subjects or reminiscences
of the past. By his mother's wish he entered the army on completing
the school course, and soon received a commission in one of the most
brilliant regiments of the Horse Guards. He did not come to show himself
to his mother in his uniform, and his letters from Petersburg began to
be infrequent. Varvara Petrovna sent him money without stint, though
after the emancipation the revenue from her estate was so diminished
that at first her income was less than half what it had been before. She
had, however, a considerable sum laid by through years of economy.