I
Il n’y a qu’un héroisme au monde: c’est de voir le monde tel qu’il
est—et de l’aimer.—ROMAIN ROLLAND.
On the 15th of October, 19—, at four o’clock in the afternoon, in the
garden of the Monte Pincio in Rome, sat a girl, no longer in the first
flush of youth, Irene Mstinskaia. She held a book in her hand, having
come to the park with the object of reading in the fresh air; but, as had
always been the case since her arrival in Rome, she could not concentrate
her thoughts on the English novel open before her. Her glance glided
across the blue autumnal sky, lingered caressingly on the magnificent
southern pines and palms, rested on the statues gleaming white among the
verdure, and always returned to the Eternal City, as it lay spread out
before her, at the feet of the Pincio.
Irene had travelled much and seen much, but no town had yet produced so
deep an impression on her. She tried in vain to define this power that
Rome wielded over her, and, finding no explanation, she invented one
of her own: “Who knows,” thought Irene dreamily, “perhaps people never
really quite die, but remain for ever hovering in spirit round those
places where they have most forcibly lived and suffered. It may be that
Rome is full of the ghosts of ancient Romans, of early Christians, of
Renaissance painters, of nineteenth-century Italians, who died nobly in
the struggle for Italy’s freedom and unity. All these phantoms are unable
to tear themselves away from their beloved Eternal City. They are the
rulers of Rome to-day, as much as in their own time, and we, foreigners,
fall under their influence and cannot dissociate our thoughts from them.”
On the whole, the influence of Rome was not only overwhelming—it was
also soothing. Wandering in museums, among ruins, through churches and
catacombs, Irene felt, day by day, stealing into her soul a profound,
indescribable sense of peace, such as that which unconsciously comes over
one as one enters a convent. And it was just for this holy stillness and
peace that her tired soul was thirsting.
Let not the reader think, however, that my heroine had passed through the
storm of some great misfortune, or the suffering of some severe illness.
On the contrary, her life and circumstances were such, that many a
short-sighted and superficial observer envied her exceedingly.
At the death of her parents, Irene had remained entirely free, with
plenty of money, a good name, and a good position in society. She enjoyed
excellent health, in spite of the fact that she had been born and had
passed all her life in Petrograd; she was clever and well educated. What
more, one asks oneself, could anyone desire of the Fates?
But, somehow, it is an unfortunate fact in dear Russia, that even the
most precious gifts of the gods seem never to be of any benefit to our
people. How is one to explain this curious circumstance? Does it arise
from some peculiarity in the Russian temperament, or from the general
disorder and purposelessness of our way of living? The French, in the
similar case of “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” have laid all the blame at
the door of the wicked fairy who was offended at not being invited to the
christening. I think I shall not go far wrong if I say that in Russia
the part of the wicked fairy is played by the parents of the infant
themselves. Oh, of course not intentionally, but simply as a consequence
of our Russian laziness and the absence of organized and formulated ideas
in the bringing up of our children.
Irene Mstinskaia lost her mother early and was brought up by her father,
a scientist who spent all his life in his laboratory, disliked society,
and received nobody but an occasional friend, as jealously devoted to
science as himself. He adored his little Irene, petted and spoiled
her; but, like most Russian parents, took very little interest in her
spiritual development. The child grew up, lonely, silent, pensive. Books
took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She
read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her
ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations
from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those
deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary
production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring
observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her
ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated
character. He united in himself the stoicism of an ancient Roman, the
romanticism of a mediæval knight, the gallantry of a powdered marquis,
and the dignified chivalry of the hero of an English novel.
Do not laugh, reader! Irene was not stupid; she was only young and
inexperienced, knew little or nothing of life, and sincerely believed
in her fantastic dream hero. Most pathetic of all was the fact that
she set about looking for him among the relations and friends of
her late mother, who had belonged by birth to the higher government
circles—_i.e._, the most unromantic circles of Russian society. The
proximity of the court, the glitter of wealth and social position,
transforms almost every young Petrograd official into a mere hunter
after honours, money, decorations, caring for nothing but his career and
the chance of some brilliant appointment. The distance that separates
Petrograd from the rest of Russia destroys in these young people
what should be the fundamental idea at the root of all conscientious
government service—the good of the country. Their service becomes simply
a ladder by which they can mount upwards towards the making of a career,
and any means seems justifiable to attain this end. Already in childhood
these young people are familiar with conversations about promotions and
honours, and their souls early imbibe the poison that makes worldlings
and cynics. Their wives also cannot influence them for good, since they,
too, in the majority of cases grow up in the same official circles,
and see nothing blameworthy in career-hunting. On the contrary,
they intrigue and help and encourage their husbands in the rush for
advantageous appointments.
To a fresh young soul, such as Irene’s the cynicism of “officialdom’s”
conversations and ideals could not but stand out in all its true
ugliness, causing her to turn away, sick with disillusionment and
disgust. She regarded this whole spirit of self-advancement-at-any-price
with the profoundest contempt, and considered it low and vulgar
and worthy only of menials. Her father, holding his noble birth in
high honour, had instilled into his daughter the assurance that her
aristocratic antecedents placed her on a level with all the de Rohans
and de Montmorencys in the world. She regarded decorations and titles
and social honours with contempt, and could not understand how anybody
could attach importance to such toys. Her means were sufficient to ensure
lifelong freedom from care; luxury, however, did not attract her, for
Irene was an idealist, who looked upon love, pure, sanctified love, as
the greatest happiness life could offer.
Had she been English or American, this lonely girl would not have been
content with her limited circle of acquaintances, and would have gone in
search of her hero through the length and breadth not only of Russia, but
of all Europe.
Irene, however, was Russian, and therefore placid and unenterprising!
So she not only did not travel, but had not the energy, even at home in
Petrograd, to look round and make sure that her hero was not concealed
somewhere in the social circles of the capital. She profoundly despised
the pitiful types she met in society, and though sick at heart,
waited patiently and untiringly for the one man before whom she was
destined some day to bow her head. Her own individual faith was largely
responsible for this patient, confident expectation. Already in her early
childhood, Irene had worked out for herself her own personal credo, in
the place of which, without understanding it in the least, most people
unthinkingly accept the religion officially adopted by the State. Her
faith, of course, rested upon a Christian basis—but her Christianity was
of the kind that shapes itself according to the varying idiosyncrasies of
every individual believer’s soul and mind.
Irene firmly believed that in spite of the perpetual struggle between
good and evil, good is incomparably the stronger of the two, and must
always triumph. Therefore, people desirous of attaining happiness,
must as a first step be just and honourable, and never offend nor hurt
anyone. Then, and then only, can God send them peace and success in all
their undertakings, and then only can they be happy without the smallest
struggle or effort to attain this natural happiness. Irene believed
in this so firmly and deeply, that it always amazed her to see people
winning success and worldly goods by means of intrigue and dishonesty.
“The madmen!”—she thought to herself—“how can they not realize that they
are building up their well-being on sand, and that each dishonest action
may turn out to be the one rotten beam through which the whole edifice
will fall to pieces?”
Irene often endeavoured to explain her theory to other people, and
was always astonished at their lack of trust in God’s help, and their
incomparably greater faith in their own “smartness” and roguery. How
did these blind mules manage not to see what was, to her, clear as day?
And Irene profoundly regretted that she was not endowed with oratorical
gifts, by means of which she might have helped to save these people from
needlessly wasting and misdirecting their energies.
The silent, dreamy girl carefully observed the lives of her
acquaintances, and every time that any of them achieved some success,
or suffered some misfortune, she tried to account for this circumstance
by one or other of their preceding actions. I am afraid that in her
eagerness to prove, even to herself, the justice of her theory, she often
deceived herself, and dragged in irrelevant facts. She was sincerely
happy at the sight of virtue rewarded, and, though naturally anything
but cruel or revengeful, she nevertheless rejoiced triumphantly when
wickedness was laid low! It is true that occasionally, under the
influence of scientific books, which, as the years passed, held an
ever-increasing attraction for Irene, she said to herself that people
were wicked owing to the particular construction of their skulls or
spinal cords, and were as innocent of their own vice as the tiger is
innocent of his carnivorous nature. In the same way, it followed that it
was not only natural and easy for good people to be good, but that it
would be exceedingly difficult for them to act dishonestly, or in any way
contrary to their natures. There was, indeed, according to this theory,
no such thing as the eternal struggle between good and evil—there were
only on the one side healthy and therefore honest natures, and on the
other, morally diseased and, therefore, cruel or vicious ones. But when
Irene began to meditate on these ideas, there arose in her poor head
such a confused chaos of tangled thoughts, that she hastily banished
all scientific propositions, and returned to her old faith, in which
everything was clear and simple.
Irene worked carefully and untiringly at herself and her own moral and
mental development. She not only did not admit of any dishonourable
action, but severely admonished and persecuted herself for every bad
thought, every shade of feeling, that tended towards envy or revenge.
And so, as always happens when one works long and obstinately for the
achievement of a certain result, Irene really succeeded in raising her
own honour and integrity to a point beyond reproach. The loftier grew her
own ideal, however, the more difficult she found it to reconcile herself
to the weaknesses of others. Day by day, her requirements in connection
with her unknown hero increased, and day by day he became always more
difficult to find. She submitted every man who crossed her path to so
severe an examination that not one passed through it successfully. The
young married women of her acquaintance, noticing how wistfully she
looked at their children, advised her to marry, even without love, only
to become a mother and thus attain the one real aim, the one true
happiness that life can give to a woman. Irene listened to their advice
with amazement. According to her ideas, a woman had no right to bring a
new life into the world unless she had found a man who could pass on to
the child only the highest and most irreproachable moral qualities. Such
an idea is, of course, fundamentally good and logical—but, unfortunately,
it is also somewhat difficult to carry out! Nature is so fantastic and
capricious, that sometimes a child may bear no likeness whatever to its
ideal parents, but may bear a striking and very unwelcome resemblance to
some long-forgotten black sheep great-grandfather! On the whole, indeed,
resignation, and faith in God’s mercy, are the most suitable frames of
mind in this connection; but these are frames of mind that one could
hardly expect from Irene! Idealists who passionately believe in their
ideals, hypnotize themselves and become the slaves of their own thoughts.
At thirty, in order to avoid any future moral torment at the appearance
of a grey hair or a decayed tooth, Irene decided that she was an old
woman, and that there was no longer any occasion to think about love. She
began to dress always in black, and assumed with men the air of an old
maiden aunt. Her dream now was only of friendship, and she longed for the
warmth of a friendly hearth.
Her women friends, however, did not believe in her sincerity, did not
consider her as old as she imagined herself to be, and were afraid
for their husbands. Year by year, Irene felt herself to be always
increasingly lonely and isolated, and then, suddenly, came the Japanese
War.
Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant
future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed
to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready to fight for
truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted.
When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest
astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared war
on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for having
fallen victims to such madness! Her despair and suffering at the news
of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near
relations were at the war, but each of our losses, nevertheless, found
its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with
grief, she attached no importance either to the Russian revolution, or
to the reforms that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their
ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound
contempt for Russia.
Everything became cold and indifferent to her in her homeland. She no
longer believed in anybody; she trusted neither the masses nor the
educated classes. They were all cowards, they were all narrow, lazy, and
ignorant. She began to go abroad more frequently. There, in contrast,
everything pleased her immensely. She admired the German peasants for
their love of work, the Swiss for their orderliness, the French for their
wit. In old days, after having passed three months abroad, she had always
grown homesick, and on reaching the Russian frontier, had felt inclined
to embrace the very railway porters for their good-humoured Slavonic
faces! Now, she returned home with regret, found fault with Russian
arrangements, and looked with disgust at the endless, monotonous fields,
at the dull, slumbering type of life and nature that slipped placidly
along outside the windows of the sleepy train.
Her contempt for Russia was encouraged by the countless critical and
scathing articles that appeared in the newspapers as a result of the
newly granted freedom of the Press. According to these articles all
Russia’s resources had been used up by drink and by robbery, and the
whole country was in a state of ruin and primitive savagery. They did
not attempt to explain why, all this being so, Russia had not, long
ago, died of starvation and famine, why our government stock stood
higher than before the war, and why Europe set as much value as ever on
Russian opinion. But Irene, like most women, did not measure the rights
and wrongs of the newspaper accusations. They were in tune with her
pessimistic mood, and she no longer believed in Russia, just as she no
longer believed in her own happiness.
The most cruel pain of all, however, was that occasioned by a gradually
awakening doubt about the justice of her own beliefs. It seemed to
her that, logically, it was time God rewarded her in some way for her
scrupulous honesty, and she suffered at the absence of this reward. In
observing the lives of others, Irene could persuade herself that if they
had no outward success, they enjoyed the greater blessing of inner peace
and happiness. It was difficult, however, to deceive her own self in
this matter; for, indeed, poor Irene not only had no happiness, but the
boon of inner peace had not even been granted to her. Her soul had been
wounded, torn, immersed in darkness and despair, from which there seemed
no escape. And yet there, before her very eyes, wicked and dishonourable
people triumphed and rejoiced. How was this to be explained? Could her
credo have been a mistake, could she have been struggling and wandering
all her life along the wrong path? Such an admission would have been,
for Irene, equal to suicide—for she could never have reconciled herself
to a world in which only wickedness and deceit triumph.
Life in Russia grew at last so unbearable that she decided to emigrate.
Her first idea was to go and live in England, with which country she was
acquainted through the medium of her beloved English novels. By chance,
however, Zola’s “Rome,” with its magnificent descriptions of Roman life,
fell into her hands, and she suddenly felt drawn towards Italy. It is for
this reason that we find her, on this warm autumn day, sitting in the
garden of the Monte Pincio.