Chapter 38

SWITZERLAND—JAMES FAZY AND THE REFUGEES—MONTE ROSA

The agitation in Europe was still so violent in 1849 that it was

difficult, living in Geneva, to fix the attention on Switzerland alone.

Moreover, political parties are rather like the Russian Government in the

skill with which they divert the attention of the traveller. If he falls

under their influence, he sees everything, but sees it all not simply but

from a certain angle; he cannot get out of an enchanted circle. His first

impression is prearranged, suborned, and does not belong to himself.

The prejudiced view of the party catches him unawares, unprepared,

indifferent, and, so to say, disarmed, and before he has taken his

bearings it becomes his view. In 1849 I knew only Radical Switzerland,

that Switzerland which brought about a democratic revolution, which in

1847 suppressed the _Sonderbund_.[56] Then more and more surrounded

by the refugees, I shared their indignation with the cowardly Federal

Government and the pitiful part it was playing in the face of its

reactionary neighbours.

I learnt more about Switzerland and got to understand it better on later

visits, and most of all in London. In the dreary leisure of the years

1853 and 1854 I learnt a great deal, and formed a different view of many

things that I had experienced or seen in the past.

Switzerland was passing through a difficult ordeal. Among the ruins of

the whole world of free institutions, among the fragments of foundering

civilisations grinding each other into dust, amidst the destruction of

all conditions of human life, of all political forms, for the benefit of

a brutal despotism, two countries remained as they were—one behind its

sea, the other behind its mountains, both mediæval republics, both firmly

rooted in the soil by the traditions of ages.

But what a difference of power and position between England and

Switzerland! If Switzerland, too, is like an island behind her mountains,

her position, shut in by other countries, and her national spirit compel

her to steer her course with care, and also make her politics far

from simple. In England the common people do not stir, they are three

centuries behindhand. Activity in England is confined to a certain class:

the majority of the people are outside any movement; they are scarcely

stirred by Chartism, and even that is confined exclusively to the town

workmen. England stands aside, flings its inflammable material across

the ocean as it accumulates, and there it grows triumphantly. Ideas do

not crowd upon her from the Continent, but enter slowly, adapted to her

manners and translated into her language.

It is utterly different in Switzerland: she has no ruling caste, nor

even striking differences between the town and country. The patriarchal

patricians of the cantons could not hold out against the first pressure

of democratic ideas. Every doctrine, every idea passes backwards and

forwards across Switzerland, and they all leave their traces on her: she

speaks three languages. Calvin preached there; the tailor Weitling[57]

preached there; there Voltaire laughed and Rousseau was born. That land

in which every man from the ploughman and the workman upwards has a

hand in the government, which is oppressed by powerful neighbours, has

no standing army, no bureaucracy, and no dictatorship, remains after

the storms of revolution and the saturnalia of reaction the same free

republican federation as before.

I should very much like to know how conservatives explain the fact

that the only countries in Europe that are tranquil are those in which

personal freedom and freedom of speech are the least restricted. While

the Austrian Empire, for instance, is kept up by a series of _coups

d’état_ with the stimulant of galvanic shocks and administrative

revolutions, and the French throne is only maintained by terrorism and

the abolition of all legality, in Switzerland and England even the absurd

and antiquated forms that have grown up with their freedom are preserved

unshaken under its mighty canopy.

The behaviour of the Federal Council in regard to political refugees,

whom they turned out at the first request from Austria and from France,

was disgraceful. But the responsibility for it falls exclusively on the

Government; questions of foreign policy are by no means so near the

heart of the people as domestic problems. In reality all nations are

only interested in their own affairs; everything outside is confined to

a remote preference or simply a rhetorical exercise, sometimes sincere,

but even then rarely affecting practice. The nation which has gained a

reputation by its humane sympathy with all and everything knows less

geography than any and is more than any tainted with insufferably

susceptible patriotism. Moreover, the Swiss is by nature itself not

drawn to distant horizons: he is confined to his native valley by his

mountains, as the dweller by the sea to its shore, and as long as he is

not interfered with in it he says nothing.

The right, assumed by the Federal Government, of dealing with the

refugees did not really belong to the Swiss central government at all;

according to its law, the question of the exiles was in the jurisdiction

of each canton. The Swiss Radicals, carried away by French theories,

tried to strengthen the central government in Berne, and made a great

mistake. Fortunately, the attempts at centralisation, except in those

instances in which its practical benefit is obvious, such as the

organisation of the post and maintenance of roads and currency, were

not at all popular in Switzerland. Centralisation may do a great deal

for order and for various public undertakings, but it is incompatible

with freedom. It easily brings a nation to the position of a well-tended

flock, or a pack of hounds cleverly kept in order by a huntsman.

That is why the Americans and the English hate it as much as the Swiss.

Numerically weak, uncentralised Switzerland is a many-headed hydra, a

Briareus; you cannot vanquish her at one blow. Where is her head? Where

is her heart? Moreover, one cannot imagine a king without a capital

city. A king is as great an absurdity in Switzerland as the grades of

the Russian civil service in New York. The mountains, republicanism, and

federalism have reared and preserved in Switzerland a mighty, vigorous

breed of men, as sharply differentiated from each other as the soil is by

the mountains, and as united by them as it is.

It is worth seeing the representatives of various cantons gathered

together at some federal shooting competition, with their several

standards, in their several costumes, with carbine on shoulder. Proud

of their separate individuality and of their unity, coming down from

their native mountains, they greet each other with brotherly shouts and

salute the federal standard (which is kept in the town where the last

competition was held), and yet remain distinct.

In these festivals of a free people, in the military games, free

from the offensive _étalage_ of monarchy and the gorgeous setting of

gold-embroidered aristocracy and dazzling guards, there is something

impressive and powerful. On all sides speeches are delivered, home-made

wine flows, there are sounds of shouting, singing, and bands; and all

are conscious that there is no leaden weight, no oppressive burden of

authority, on their shoulders....

In Geneva soon after my arrival a banquet was given at the end of the

term to the pupils of all the schools. James Fazy, the president of the

canton, invited me to this fête. A big pavilion had been put up in an

open space in Carouge. The council and all the leading figures in the

canton were present, and dined with the children. A number of citizens,

those whose turn it was, in uniform and carrying guns, had been summoned

for a guard of honour. Fazy delivered a speech of a thoroughly radical

character, congratulated the prize-winners, and proposed the health of

‘The future citizens!’ to the strains of music and the firing of cannon.

After this the children filed past him, two by two, to the field where

various sports had been prepared, air-balloons, acrobatic performances,

and so on. The armed citizens—that is, the fathers, uncles, and elder

brothers of the school-children—formed an avenue, and as the head of the

column passed they presented arms.... Yes! presented arms before their

sons and the orphans brought up at the expense of the canton.... The

children were the honoured guests of the town, its ‘future citizens.’

All this was strange to such of us as had been present at Russian school

anniversaries and similar ceremonies.

It seems strange to us, too, that all the workmen, all the grown-up

peasants, the waiters in restaurants as well as the restaurant-keepers,

those who live in mountains and those who live in marshes, have a very

good knowledge of the affairs of the canton, take an interest in them,

and belong to one or other party. Their language, their degree of

culture, is very different; and if a Geneva workman sometimes reminds

one of a member of some Lyons club, while the simple mountaineer is to

this day like the men who surrounded Schiller’s William Tell, that does

not prevent their both taking the warmest interest in public affairs. In

France there are offshoots and branches of political and social societies

in the towns; their members are interested in the revolutionary question,

and incidentally know something of the actual government. But, on the

other hand, those who are outside these associations, and especially the

peasants, know nothing and care nothing either for the affairs of France

or for the affairs of the department.

Lastly, both we Russians and the French are struck by the absence of

all sorts of trappings and vestments, all the operatic setting of a

government. The president of a canton, the president of the Federal

Assembly, the state secretaries (_i.e._ the ministers), and the federal

colonels go to the café like simple mortals, dine at the common table,

discuss public affairs, argue with workmen and argue before them among

themselves, and they all drink the same wine and _kirsch_.

From the beginning of my acquaintance with James Fazy, I was impressed

by this democratic simplicity, and it was only later on that I perceived

that in all matters relating to the law the government of the canton

was anything but weak, in spite of its lack of wardrobe grandeur, of

stripes on trousers, of plumage, of beadles with staves, of sergeants

with moustaches, and all the other gewgaws and superfluities of the royal

_mise en scène_.

In the autumn of 1849 the persecution of refugees who had sought

shelter in Switzerland began; the government was in the weak hands of

doctrinaires, the federal ministers lost their heads. The intimidated

Confederation, which had once refused Louis-Philippe’s request for

the deportation of Louis-Napoleon, now at the command of the latter

turned out those who sought a refuge, and performed the same gracious

act for Austria and Prussia. Of course, the Federal Government had on

this occasion to deal not with a fat old king who disliked extreme

measures, but with men whose hands were wet with blood and who were in

the fury of savage reprisals. But what was the Federal Assembly afraid

of? If it had been capable of looking beyond its mountains, it would

have perceived how much secret alarm lay hidden under the insolence and

menaces of the neighbouring governments. Not one of them had in 1849 a

sufficiently stable position and sense of its own power to begin a war.

The Confederation need only have shown its teeth and they would have

desisted; the doctrinaires preferred timid submission, and began a petty,

unworthy persecution of men who had nowhere to go to.

For a long time some of the cantons, and among them that of Geneva,

maintained their opposition to the Federal Assembly, but at last even

Fazy was drawn, _nolens volens_, into persecuting the refugees.

His position was very unpleasant. The transition from being a conspirator

into being a member of the government, however natural it may be, has its

comic and vexatious sides. In reality, it must be said that it was not

Fazy who went over to the government, but the government who went over to

Fazy; nevertheless, the former conspirator was not always at one with the

president of the canton. He had to strike at his own people, or at times

openly to disregard the Federal decrees, or to take measures against

which he had been declaiming for the last ten years. He followed the one

or the other course as the caprice took him, and so excited the hostility

of both sides.

Fazy was a man of great energy and of great administrative abilities,

but too much of a Frenchman not to like hard-and-fast measures,

centralisation, authority. He had spent his whole life in the political

struggle. As a young man we meet him on the Paris barricades of 1830,

and then in the Hôtel de Ville among the young people who, in opposition

to Lafayette and the bankers, demanded the proclamation of a republic.

Périer[58] and Laffitte[59] considered that the ‘best republic’ was

the Duc d’Orléans; he was made king, while Fazy threw himself into the

extreme republican opposition. Then he was associated with Godefroy

Cavaignac[60] and Marrast,[61] with the Société des Droits de l’Homme

and with the Carbonari, was mixed up with Mazzini’s Savoy expedition,

and published a journal which after the French fashion was suppressed by

successive fines....

Convinced at last that there was no doing anything in France, he

bethought himself of his native land, and transferred all his energy and

all the experience he had gained as a politician, a journalist, and a

conspirator to the advancement of his ideas in the canton of Geneva. He

thought out a radical revolution in it, and carried it through. Geneva

rose up against its old government. Debates, attack and counter-attack,

passed from private rooms and newspapers into the market-place, and

Fazy appeared at the head of the rebellious part of the town. While he

was organising and stationing his armed friends, a grey-headed old man

looked out of a window and, having been an officer by profession, could

not resist giving advice where to station a cannon or a company. Fazy

obeyed him. The advice was excellent—but who was this officer? Count

Osterman-Tolstoy, commander-in-chief of the allied armies at Kulm, who

had left Russia on the accession of Nicholas and had lived afterwards

almost permanently at Geneva.

During this revolution Fazy showed that he possessed to the full not

merely tact and judgment, but also the audacity which Saint-Just

considered necessary in a revolutionary. Having vanquished the

Conservatives almost without bloodshed, he appeared before the Grand

Council and informed it that it was dissolved. The members wanted to

arrest him, and asked with indignation: ‘In whose name dare he speak like

that?’

‘In the name of the people of Geneva, who are sick of your bad government

and are with me,’ and thereupon Fazy pulled back the curtain on the

council-room door. A crowd of armed men filled the hall, ready at Fazy’s

first word to lower their guns and fire. The old ‘patricians’ and

peaceful Calvinists were disconcerted. ‘Go, while there is yet time!’

observed Fazy, and they meekly trudged home, while Fazy sat down at the

table and wrote a decree or _plébiscite_ announcing that the people of

Geneva, having dissolved the old government, were assembling to elect a

new one and to frame a new democratic code, and in the meantime were

entrusting the executive power to James Fazy. This was his eighteenth of

Brumaire for the benefit of democracy and the people. Though he did elect

himself dictator, the choice was undoubtedly a very good one.

From that time—that is, from the year 1846—he had been governing Geneva.

Since, in accordance with the constitution, the president is elected for

a period of two years and cannot be elected twice in succession, the

people of Geneva appointed every two years some inconspicuous adherent of

Fazy’s, and in this way he remained _de facto_ president, to the great

distress of the Conservatives and Pietists, who always remained in the

minority.

Fazy displayed new abilities during the period of his dictatorship.

Administration, finance, everything made rapid progress; the resolute way

in which radical principles were put into practice won the attachment of

the people: Fazy showed himself as vigorous in organisation as he had

been in destruction. Geneva flourished under his rule. This I was told

not only by his friends but by people completely disinterested, among

others by the celebrated victor of Kulm, Osterman-Tolstoy.

Abrupt and irritable, hasty and intolerant by disposition, Fazy always

had despotically republican leanings; as he grew used to authority, the

despotic _pli_ sometimes got the upper hand. Moreover, events and ideas

after 1848 caught Fazy unawares; he was perplexed on the one hand and

circumvented on the other. Here it was the republic of which he had

dreamed with Godefroy Cavaignac and Armand Carrel ... and yet there

was something wrong about it. His old comrade Marrast, as president of

the National Assembly, observed to him that he had made an incautious

reference to Catholicism ‘at lunch in the presence of the secretary,’

and told him that religion must be respected in order that the priests

might not be incensed; when the ex-editor of the _Nationale_ passed from

room to room in the president’s house, two sentries saluted him. Another

friend and _protégé_ of Fazy’s went further still: he became himself

president of the republic, but would not recognise his old comrade, and

aimed at being a Napoleon.

‘Was the republic in danger?’ And meanwhile the workers and the leading

men were not interested in it; they were all talking of socialism. So

that was what was to blame—and with obstinacy and exasperation Fazy

fell upon socialism. That meant that he had reached his limit, his

_Kulminationspunkt_, as the Germans say, and was going downhill.

Mazzini and Fazy, who had been socialists in the days before socialism,

became its enemies when it began to pass from general tendencies into a

new revolutionary force. Many a lance I have broken with both of them,

and I have seen with surprise how little can be done by logic when a man

does _not want_ to be convinced. If in both these men it was policy,

a concession to the necessity of the times, what need had they to get

so hot about it? What need had they to play their parts so well even

in private conversation? No, there was something else in it, a sort of

grudge against a doctrine formulated _outside_ their own circle: there

was a spite against the very name. I once suggested to Fazy that in

our conversations I should call socialism Cleopatra, that he might not

be angered by the word and prevented from understanding by the sound

of it. Mazzini’s _brochures_ against socialism later on did the famous

agitator far more harm than did Radetsky,—but that is not the point under

discussion here.

One day on reaching home I found a note from Struve—he informed me that

Fazy was turning him out, and very abruptly. The Federal Government had

long before decreed the deportation of Struve and Heinzen; Fazy had

confined himself to communicating the fact to them. What new incident had

occurred?

Fazy did not want Struve to publish his ‘international’ journal in

Geneva; he was afraid—and perhaps he was right—that Heinzen and Struve

would publish such dangerous nonsense as to provoke again threats from

France, to raise a howl from Prussia, and set Austria gnashing its

teeth. How a practical man could imagine that the journal would come

into existence I do not know; anyway, he offered Struve the choice of

giving up the journal or of leaving Geneva. To give it up when Struve

was fanatically dreaming that by means of his journal he would finally

vanquish ‘the seven scourges of mankind’ was too much for the Baden

revolutionary. Then Fazy sent a policeman to him with the order to leave

the canton at once. Struve received the policeman frigidly, and announced

that he was not yet ready for departure. Fazy resented the treatment of

the policeman, and ordered the police to turn Struve out. To enter a

house without a legal warrant was impossible; the measures taken in Berne

had been by the police and not by a legal tribunal (what the French call

_mesures de salut publique_). The policeman knew that, but, wishing to

oblige Fazy, and probably to pay Struve back for his rude reception, got

a carriage ready and sat down with a comrade under a lime-tree not far

from Struve’s house.

Struve, secretly delighted that the era of persecution and martyrdom was

beginning again, and convinced beforehand that nothing of importance

would be done to him, sent notes concerning the proceedings to all

his acquaintances. While awaiting their fervent sympathy and ardent

indignation he could not resist going out to visit his friend Heinzen,

who had received a similar polite _billet-doux_ from Fazy. As Heinzen

lived close by, Struve, _ganz gemüthlich_, went off to him wearing his

indoor clothes and slippers. He had scarcely reached the lime-tree

behind which the crafty son of Calvin was concealed, when the latter

barred his way and, showing the order of the Federal Council, asked

Struve to follow him. Two policemen reinforced the urgency of his

invitation. The astonished Struve, cursing Fazy and putting him on the

list of the ‘seven scourges,’ got into the carriage and was driven off

with the policeman to the canton of Vaud.

Since Fazy had been dictator, nothing of the sort had happened in Geneva.

There was something coarse, unnecessary, and even clownish about it. I

was returning home between eleven and twelve that evening, boiling with

indignation: at the Pont des Bergues I met Fazy; he was walking along in

excellent spirits, accompanied by a few Italian refugees.

‘Ah, good evening; any news?’ he said, seeing me.

‘A great deal,’ I answered with elaborate frigidity.

‘Why, what?’

‘Why, here for instance in Geneva, just as in Paris, men are seized in

the street, carried off by force; _il n’y a plus de sécurité dans les

rues_—I am afraid to walk about....’

‘Oh, you are referring to Struve ...’ answered Fazy, already so angry

that his voice began to break. ‘What is one to do with these nonsensical

people? I am tired of them: I’ll show these gentry what it means to treat

the law with contempt, to be openly disobedient to the orders of the

Federal Council....’

‘A right,’ I observed, smiling, ‘which you reserve for yourself alone.’

‘Am I to expose the canton and myself to danger for the sake of every

lunatic broken out of Bedlam, and to do it under present circumstances

too? And, what’s more, one gets no thanks but only rudeness from them.

Only fancy, gentlemen: I sent a _commissaire_ of the police to him, and

he all but kicked him out—it’s beyond anything! They don’t understand

that an official (_magistrat_) coming in the name of the law must be

treated with respect, mustn’t he?’

Fazy’s companions nodded their heads affirmatively.

‘I don’t agree,’ I said, ‘and see no reason at all to respect a man for

being a policeman and for coming to announce some nonsense written by

Fourrère or Drouey[62] in Berne. There is no need to be rude, but why

should one lavish civilities on a man who comes to one as an enemy, and,

what’s more, an enemy supported by force?’

‘I never heard such things in my life,’ remarked Fazy, shrugging his

shoulders and flashing a withering glance at me.

‘It’s new to you because you have never thought about it. To imagine that

officials are sacred personages is something thoroughly monarchical.’

‘You refuse to see the difference between respect for the law and

slavish servility, because with you the Tsar and the law are the same

thing—_c’est parfaitement russe_!’

‘But how is one to see it when your respect for the law means respect for

a constable or a police-sergeant?’

‘Are you aware, sir, that the _commissaire_ of police whom I sent is not

merely a very honest man, but one of the most devoted patriots? I have

seen him in action....’

‘And an exemplary father of a family,’ I went on; ‘only, that has nothing

to do with either me or Struve; we are not acquainted with him, and

he came to Struve not as a model citizen but as the instrument of an

oppressive power....’

‘Why, upon my soul,’ observed Fazy, growing more and more irate, ‘what

do you care for that Struve? Only yesterday you were laughing at him

yourself....’

‘I should not laugh to-day if you were to hang him.’

‘Do you know what I think——?’ He paused. ‘It’s my opinion that he is

simply a Russian spy.’

‘Oh, Lord, what nonsense!’ I said, bursting into laughter.

‘Nonsense, indeed!’ shouted Fazy still more loudly; ‘I tell you that in

earnest!’

Knowing the unbridled hastiness of my Geneva tyrant, and knowing that

with all his irritability he was in reality a hundred times better than

his words and not an ill-natured man, I might perhaps have let his

shouting pass; but there were other people listening. Besides, he was

president of the canton, and I was just such another vagrant without a

passport as Struve himself, and therefore I responded in a stentorian

voice:

‘Do you imagine because you are president that, if you say a thing,

that’s enough for every one to believe it?’

My shouting produced its effect: Fazy lowered his voice, but, mercilessly

beating his fist against the parapet of the bridge, he observed: ‘Why,

there was his uncle too, Gustav Struve, a Russian attorney in Hamburg.’

‘That’s as good as “The Wolf and the Lamb.” I had better be going home.

Good-bye!’

‘Yes, indeed, we had better go to bed instead of arguing, or we shall end

by quarrelling,’ observed Fazy with a forced smile.

I went to the Hôtel des Bergues; Fazy and the Italians crossed the

bridge. We had been shouting so excitedly that several of the windows

of the hotel had been opened, and an audience consisting of waiters and

tourists had been listening to our discussion.

Meanwhile the policeman and very honest citizen who had carried Struve

off returned, not alone but still accompanied by Struve. A very amusing

incident had occurred in the first little town in the canton of Vaud,

near Coppet, where Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier once lived. The

prefect of the police, an ardent republican, hearing how Struve had been

seized, declared that the Geneva police had acted illegally, and not only

refused to send him on further, but turned him back.

The fury of Fazy may be imagined when, to put the finishing touch to

our conversation, he heard of Struve’s safe return. After exchanging

abuse with the ‘tyrant’ by letter and by word of mouth, Struve departed

to England with Heinzen; there the latter formulated his demand for

two million heads, and then peacefully sailed off with his Pylades to

America, at first with the object of founding a _school for young girls_,

afterwards to edit in St. Louis _The Pioneer_, which is sometimes too

strong for elderly men to stomach.

Five days after our conversation on the bridge I met Fazy in the Café de

la Poste.

‘Why is it I have not seen you for so long?’ he asked; ‘surely you are

not still angry? Well, I must own all this business with the refugees

is enough to drive one out of one’s mind! The Federal Council keeps

bombarding me with one note after another, and here the accursed

_sous-préfet_ of Gex is simply staying here on purpose to see whether

the French are interned. I try to satisfy every one, and for that my own

people are angry with me. Here’s a new trouble now, and a very nasty

one; I am sure they’ll abuse me, and what am I to do?’ He sat down at my

little table and, dropping his voice, went on: ‘This is not a question of

talk: it’s not socialism, it’s simply robbery!’

He handed me a letter. Some German feudal prince complained that when his

little town had been taken by the students various objects of value had

been seized by them, and among other things some ancient vessel of rare

workmanship; that it was in the possession of the late commander of the

legion, Blenker;[63] and as it had come to the knowledge of his highness

that Blenker was living in Geneva, he asked for the co-operation of Fazy

in recovering the stolen articles.

‘What do you say?’ asked Fazy in a solemn voice.

‘Nothing. Lots of things happen in war-time.’

‘What ought I to do, do you think?’

‘Take no notice of the letter, or write to the fool that you are not his

detective in Geneva. What have you to do with his crockery? He ought

to be glad Blenker did not hang him, and here he is worrying about his

goods.’

‘You are a very dangerous sophist,’ said Fazy, ‘and you don’t think what

discredit such things cast on our party.... We can’t leave it like that.’

‘I don’t know why you take it to heart so much. Far worse things are done

in the world. As for the party and its honour, I dare say you will say

again that I am a sophist—but think for yourself, will you do any good

by giving publicity to the matter? Don’t take any notice of the German

prince’s accusation and it will be taken as a calumny; but if people

add to the rumour about it that you sent to make a police search—what

is more, if by ill-luck anything is found—then it will be difficult to

exonerate Blenker and the whole party.’

Fazy was genuinely amazed at the Russian irregularity of my views. The

Blenker affair ended most fortunately. He was not in Geneva: on the

arrival of the police and investigating magistrates, his wife calmly

showed all their possessions and their money, described where they had

got them from, and, hearing about the vessel, found it herself—it was a

very ordinary silver vessel. It had been taken by some young men in the

legion and brought to their colonel as a souvenir of the victory.

Later on, Fazy apologised to Blenker, admitting that he had been over

hasty in the matter. The immoderate passion for discovering the truth,

for going into every detail in criminal cases, for pursuing the guilty

with fury and crushing them, is a purely French failing. The judicial

process is for them a bloodthirsty sport like bull-baiting for the

Spaniards; the prosecutor, like a skilful toreador, is humiliated and

mortified if the baited beast escapes unharmed. In England there is

nothing of the kind: the judge looks with cool unconcern at the prisoner

in the dock, shows no zeal, and is almost pleased when the jury acquit

him.

The refugees, on their side, tormented Fazy and poisoned his existence.

That was all very natural, and one must not be too severe upon it. The

passions unloosed during revolutionary movements are not appeased by

failure, and, having no other outlet, find a vent in peevish restlessness

of spirit. These men had a mortal longing to speak just when they had to

hold their tongues, to keep in the background, to efface and concentrate

themselves; they, on the contrary, were trying not to disappear from

the footlights, but to advertise their existence by every means in

their power. They wrote pamphlets, wrote to the newspapers, talked

at meetings, talked in cafés, spread false news, and frightened the

foolish governments by expectations of an immediate insurrection. The

majority of them belonged to the class of very harmless persons who

make up the chorus of revolution; but the terrified governments with

equal senselessness believed in their power, and, unaccustomed to free,

bold speech, made an outcry about the inevitable danger, the menace to

religion, the throne, and the family, and insisted that the Federal

Council should expel these terrible advocates of disorder and destruction.

One of the first measures taken by the Swiss Government was the removal

from the French frontier of those of the refugees who were specially

disliked by Napoleon. It was particularly disagreeable to Fazy to carry

out this measure; he was personally acquainted with almost all of them.

After informing them of the order to leave Geneva, he did his best not

to know who had gone and who had not. Those who remained had to keep

away from the principal cafés, from the Pont des Bergues, and that was

the very concession they would not make. This led to ludicrous scenes,

suggestive of a boarding-school, scenes in which the performers on

the one side were the representatives of the people, grey-headed men,

well-known literary men over forty, and on the other, the president

of a free canton and the police agents of the servile neighbours of

Switzerland.

Once, in my presence, the _sous-préfet_ of Gex asked Fazy in an ironical

tone: ‘Tell me, M. le président, is So-and-so in Geneva?’ ‘He has been

gone a long time,’ Fazy answered abruptly. ‘I am very glad to hear it,’

said the _sous-préfet_, and went on his way. And Fazy, clutching my arm

convulsively and pointing furiously at a man who was calmly smoking a

cigar: ‘There he is! there he is! Let us move to the other side, so as

not to meet the villain. This is hell—there is no other word for it!’

I could not help laughing. Of course, it was a refugee who had been

expelled, and he was promenading up and down the Pont des Bergues, which

is for Geneva what the Tverskoy Boulevard is for Moscow.

I stayed in Geneva till the middle of December. The measures which the

Russian Government was stealthily beginning to take against me compelled

me to go to Zurich to try to save my mother’s property, upon which the

Tsar ‘of eternal memory’ was beginning to lay his Imperial claws.

This was a terrible period of my life. A lull between two thunderclaps,

an oppressive, painful, but not eventful calm ... there were menacing

omens, but I still, even then, turned away from them. Life was troubled,

inharmonious, but there were bright days in it; for those I was indebted

to the grand natural scenery of Switzerland.

Remoteness from men, and beautiful natural surroundings have a

wonderfully healing effect. From experience I wrote in _A Wreck_:—

‘When the soul bears within it a great grief, when a man has not mastered

himself sufficiently to grow reconciled with the past, to grow calm

enough for understanding, he needs distance and mountains, the sea and

warm mild air. He needs them that sadness may not pass into bitterness

and despair, that he may not grow hard....’

I was longing for a rest from many things even then. A year and a half

spent in the centre of political upheavals and dissensions, in continual

irritation, in the midst of bloody sights, terrible downfalls, and petty

treacheries, had left much bitterness, misery, and weariness at the

bottom of my soul. Irony began to take a different character. Granovsky

wrote to me after reading _From the Other Shore_, which I wrote just at

that time: ‘Your book has reached us. I read it with joy and a feeling

of pride ... but, for all that, there is something of fatigue about it;

you stand too much alone, and perhaps you will become a great writer,

but what was in Russia living and attractive to all in your talent seems

to have disappeared on foreign soil....’ Then Sazonov, who, just before

I left Paris in 1849, read the beginning of my story, _Duty before

Everything_, written two years previously, said to me: ‘You won’t finish

that story, and you will never write anything more like it. Your bright

laughter and good-natured jesting are gone for ever.’

But could a man pass through the ordeal of 1848 and 1849 and remain

the same? I was myself conscious of the change. Only at home, when no

outsiders were present, there were sometimes moments as of old, not of

‘bright laughter’ but of bright sadness; recalling the past and our

friends, recalling recent scenes of our life in Rome, beside the cots of

our sleeping children or watching their play, the soul was attuned to the

mood of old days—there came a breath of freshness, of youthful poetry, of

gentle harmony, there was peace and content in the heart, and under the

influence of such an evening life was easier for a day or two.

These minutes were not frequent; a wretched, depressing distraction

prevented them. The number of visitors kept increasing about us, and

towards evening our little drawing-room in the Champs-Élysées was full of

strangers. For the most part, these were newly arrived refugees, good and

unfortunate people, but I was intimate with only one man.... And why was

I intimate with him!...

I was delighted to leave Paris, but in Geneva we found ourselves in the

same society, though the persons in it were different and it was on a

narrower scale. In Switzerland everything at that time had rushed into

politics; everything—_tables d’hôte_ and coffee-houses, watchmakers and

women—all were divided into parties. An exclusive preoccupation with

politics, particularly in the painful stagnation which always follows

unsuccessful revolutions, is extremely wearisome with its arid barrenness

and monotonous censure of the past. It is like summer-time in big cities

where everything is hot, dusty, airless, where through pale trees the

walls and the hot paving-stones reflect the glaring sun. A living man

craves for air which has not been breathed over a thousand times, free

from the smell of the refuse of life, from the sound of discordant

jangling, from the dirty, putrid stench and everlasting noise.

Sometimes we did in fact tear ourselves away from Geneva, visit the

shores of Lake Léman and the foot of Mont Blanc; and the frowning, gloomy

beauty of mountain scenery with its intense shadows screened all the

vanity of vanities from one’s eyes, refreshing soul and body with the

cold breath of its everlasting glaciers.

I do not know whether I should like to stay for ever in Switzerland. We

dwellers in the plains and prairies after a time feel the mountains a

restriction; they are too immense and too close, they hem us in, limit

us; but sometimes it is good to stay a while in their shadow. Moreover,

a pure and good-hearted race live in the mountains, a race of people

poor but not unfortunate, with few wants, accustomed to a life of sturdy

independence. The froth of civilisation, its verdigris, has not settled

on these people; historical changes have passed like clouds beneath

their feet, scarcely touching them. The Roman world still persists

in Graubünden, the times of the peasant wars have scarcely passed in

Appenzell. Perhaps in the Pyrenees, in the Tyrol, or other mountains, the

same sturdy type of population may be found, but it no longer exists in

Europe as a whole.

In the north-east of Russia, however, I have seen something like it. In

Perm and Vyatka I have come upon people of the same stamp as in the Alps.

Exhausted by the long, unbroken climb step by step up the mountain, my

companion and I, travelling to Zermatt, stopped to give our horses a

rest, and went into a small inn a little above St. Niklaus, if I remember

right. The hostess, a tall, thin, but muscular old woman, was all alone

in the house. Seeing guests, she bustled about, complaining of the

scantiness of her stores, and, after rummaging here and there, brought

out a bottle of _kirsch_, some bread hard as a stone (bread is not a

simple matter in the mountains; it is brought up from the villages on

asses), some smoked mutton (also very dry), some cheese and goat’s milk,

and then proceeded to make us a sort of sweet omelette which I could not

eat; but the mutton, the cheese, and the _kirsch_ were very good. The

woman regaled us as though we were invited guests, put choice morsels

before us with a good-natured air, and kept apologising. Our guides, too,

ate and drank _kirsch_. As I was going away I asked her what we owed her.

The woman pondered for a long time, even went into the other room to

collect her thoughts, and then, after some preliminary remarks about the

dearness of provisions and the difficulty of transport, ventured to say

_five francs_. ‘What!’ I commented, ‘with the horses’ food, too?’ She did

not understand what I meant, and made haste to add: ‘Well, four will be

enough.’

When I was being taken from Perm to Vyatka, in a village where we changed

horses I asked a woman who was sitting on a log beside her hut for some

_kvass_. ‘It’s dreadfully sour,’ she answered; ‘but here, I’ll bring

you some home-made beer; it’s left from the holiday, you see.’ A minute

later she brought me an earthenware jug wrapped in a rag, and a dipper.

The gendarme and I drank to our hearts’ content. As I handed the dipper

back to the old woman I gave her ten or fifteen kopecks, but she would

not take the coin, saying: ‘God bless you! to think of taking from a

travelling man, and you going as you are,’ glancing at the gendarme. ‘But

why should we drink your good beer for nothing, auntie? Take it for cakes

for the children.’ ‘No, kind sir, don’t you think it; but if you’ve money

to spare, give it to the poor or put up a candle to God.’

Another similar incident happened to me on the Great River near Vyatka.

I had gone to look at the curious procession in which the _ikon_ of

St. Nicholas of Hlynov is taken down the river to pay a visit. On the

way back, I went with my driver into a hut where he got some oats. The

people of the house and three pilgrims were sitting down to dinner; there

was a strong smell of cabbage soup, and I asked for some for myself.

A young woman brought me a wooden bowl of soup, a hunk of bread, and

a huge salt-cellar. When I had eaten I gave the master of the house a

quarter-rouble. He looked at me and scratched the back of his head,

saying: ‘That won’t do, you know; here you’ve eaten two-ha’porth and

given me a quarter-rouble; it’s not right for me to take it—it’s a sin

before God and a shame before men.’

I remember I have somewhere mentioned the Perm peasant habit of putting a

piece of bread with _kvass_ or milk outside the window at night, in case

an _unfortunate_—that is, an exile—should be making his way back from

Siberia and be afraid to knock, so that he might find nourishment without

making a noise. I have found a like custom on the Swiss mountains; only,

not being near Siberia, there it is done simply for the benefit of

travellers. On the rather high peaks, where life is scanty, where the

rock stands out like the skull of a man beginning to grow bald, and an

icy-cold wind blows on the vegetation, as dried and withered as the herbs

in a chemist’s shop—there I came upon huts, empty, but with unlocked

doors, that a traveller who had lost his way or had been overtaken by

bad weather might find hospitality even without a host. All sorts of

peasant wares were there, and, on the table, cheese, bread, and goat’s

milk. Some after eating leave a coin on the table, others leave nothing,

but evidently nobody steals. Of course, very few strangers reach them,

but nevertheless these unlocked doors amaze a townsman.

Since I am talking of mountains and heights, I will describe my visit to

Monte Rosa. How can I better finish my chapter on Switzerland than on a

height of seven thousand feet?

From the hut of the old woman who was ashamed to take five francs for

feeding four men and two horses, including a whole bottle of _kirsch_,

we were climbing till late evening up a narrow pass, in places hardly

more than a yard wide, to Zermatt; on the rocky and uneven little path

the accustomed horses moved carefully at a walking pace, picking out the

spot to put their hoof on. The guides were continually reminding us not

to touch the reins, but to let the horse go as it would. On one side was

a steep precipice, some three thousand feet or more. At the bottom below,

the Visp roared and raced along with a sort of senseless haste, as though

trying to find a more open channel to break away from its narrow, stony

bed. Its foaming and whirling surface could be seen here and there; on

its mountainous banks there were regular pinewoods which looked like moss

from the height on which we were moving. On our other side there was a

bare, stony height here and there hanging over our heads. For whole hours

one goes on and on ... the hoofs ring on the stone, the horse slips, the

Visp roars, and still there are the same rocks on one side, beyond which

nothing can be seen, and on the other the abyss below already growing

dim with the twilight—it produces a feeling of dreariness, of nervous

fatigue. I should not care to repeat that journey often.

Zermatt is the highest spot on which several families are living: it

stands as though in a cauldron; huge masses of mountains surround it. One

of the people there takes in the few travellers; we found in his house

a Scotsman, a geologist. It got quite dark while they were setting our

supper; the nearness of the mountains made the evening twice as dark.

Between ten and eleven our hostess, listening at the window, said: ‘Why,

there’s the sound of hoofs, and I can hear the shout of the guides ...

who would care to travel at night-time on such a path?’ The tramp of

hoofs came slowly nearer; the hostess took a lantern and went out with it

to the entrance. I followed her; something began to stand out against the

black darkness, figures appeared in the streak of light from the lantern,

and at last two horses came up to the entrance. On one horse sat a tall,

middle-aged woman, on the other a boy of fourteen. The lady alighted from

the horse as calmly as though she had returned from a ride in Hyde Park,

and went into the common room. She had met the Scotsman before, and so

began talking to him at once. After asking for something to eat, she sent

her son to find out from the guides how long the horses must rest. They

said that two hours would be enough. ‘Surely you are not going on without

waiting for daylight?’ asked the Scotsman. ‘One can’t see an inch before

one’s face, and you’ll be going down by a new road.’

‘This is the time I’ve allowed for it.’

Two hours later the Englishwoman and her son began the descent on the

Italian side, and we went to bed for two or three hours. At dawn we took

as a third guide a botanist who knew all the paths and whistled the

Alpine airs in a wonderful way, and began our ascent of one of the nearer

peaks, climbing towards a sea of ice and the Matterhorn.

At first a greyish mist hid everything and wetted us with a fine rain;

we went up and up and it sank lower; soon it became glaringly bright and

the air became extraordinarily pure and clear.

Hugo describes somewhere ‘what can be heard on the mountains’; his

mountain could not have been a high one. I was struck, on the contrary,

by the complete absence of sound; there was absolutely nothing to

be heard except the light, intermittent grinding from the slipping

avalanches, and that only at rare intervals ... as a matter of fact, the

stillness is deathly, _transparent_—I use the word intentionally,—an

extraordinary rarefaction of the air seems to make _visible_, audible,

this absolute dumbness, this eternal, inanimate, elemental sleep[64] of

primeval ages.

Life is noisy—but everything living is below and hidden in the clouds.

Here are no plants, only grey rough lichen is found here and there

upon the stones. Higher still it is even fresher, and the region of

never-melting frost begins: here there is the dividing line, here is

nothing; only the most inquisitive of all animals crosses it to peep for

a minute at that desert of emptiness, to look at the highest outposts of

the planet, and hastens to descend to his own domain, full of vanities,

of trivial bustle—where he is at home.

We halted before that sea of snow and ice which lay stretched between

us and the Matterhorn; ringed round by mountains that were bathed in

sunshine, dazzlingly white, it looked like the frozen arena of some

titanic coliseum. Hollowed out in places by the winds into the form of

waves, it seems to have grown stiff at the very moment of movement; the

curves of the billows are frozen before they have had time to sink.

I got off my horse and lay down on a granite boulder moored to the shore

by the snowy billows ... mute, motionless whiteness, boundless on all

sides ... a light wind lifted a fine white powder, wafted it away, set

it whirling ... it fell, and all again passed into stillness; but twice

the avalanches breaking away with a hollow reverberation rolled down in

the distance, clinging to the rocks, clashing against them and leaving a

cloud of snow behind them....

A man feels strange in this setting—a visitor, superfluous, an outsider;

and on the other hand he breathes more freely, and as though from the

colour surrounding him grows whiter and purer within ... earnest and full

of a sort of devout gravity!...

What melodramatic rhetoric I should be charged with if I concluded

this picture of Monte Rosa by saying that in that world of whiteness,

freshness, and silence, of the two travellers stranded on that height,

reckoning each other dear friends, one was plotting black treachery

against the other!

Yes, life sometimes plays us melodramatic tricks—it has its _coups de

théâtre_ which are very artificial.

Appendix II

(_From ‘West European Sketches—Notebook II.’_)

I

IL PIANTO

After the days of June, I saw that the revolution was vanquished, but

I still believed in the vanquished, in the fallen, I believed in the

wonder-working powers of the relics, in their moral strength. In Geneva

I began to understand more and more clearly not only that the revolution

was vanquished, but that it was bound to be vanquished.

My head was dizzy with my discoveries, an abyss was opening before my

eyes, and I felt that the ground was giving way under my feet.

It was not the reaction that vanquished the revolution. The reaction

showed itself everywhere densely stupid, cowardly, in its dotage;

everywhere it shamefully retreated into safety before the onrush of the

popular tide, furtively biding its time in Paris, in Naples, in Vienna,

and in Berlin. The revolution fell, like Agrippina, under the blows

of her own children, and, what was worst of all, without their being

conscious of it; there was more heroism, more youthful self-sacrifice,

than good judgment; and the pure, noble victims fell, not knowing why.

The fate of the survivors was almost more grievous. While absorbed

in dissensions among themselves, in personal disputes, in melancholy

self-delusion, and consumed by unbridled vanity, they kept dwelling on

their unexpected days of triumph, and were unwilling to take off their

faded laurels or wedding garments, though it was not the bride who had

deceived them.

Misfortunes, idleness, and poverty induced intolerance, obstinacy,

nervous irritability.... The exiles broke up into little groups, rallying

not round principles but round names and hatreds. The fact that their

thoughts continually turned to the past, and that they lived in an

exclusive, narrow circle, began to find expression in speech and thought,

in manners and in dress; a new class—the class of refugees—was formed,

and grew as stiff and rigid as the rest. And just as once St. Basil the

Great wrote to St. Gregory Nazianzen that he ‘gloated over fasting and

revelled in privations,’ so now there were voluntary martyrs, victims by

vocation, unhappy as a profession, and among them were very conscientious

people; and indeed St. Basil was quite sincere when he wrote to his

friend of his orgies of mortifying the flesh and of the voluptuous

ecstasy of persecution. With all that, ideas did not move a step forward,

thought slumbered.... If these people had been awakened by the blast of a

new trumpet and a new call to battle, they would, like the nine sleeping

maidens, have been the same as on the day on which they fell asleep.

These bitter truths made my heart sink with despondency; I had to live

through a hard stage of my education.

I was sitting mournfully one day in my mother’s dining-room in gloomy,

disagreeable Zurich; it was at the end of December 1849. I was going next

day to Paris. It was a cold, snowy day; two or three logs smoking and

crackling burned reluctantly on the hearth. All were busy with packing.

I sat utterly alone. My life in Geneva floated before my mind; the whole

future looked dark; I felt afraid of something, and I was so insufferably

miserable that if I could I would have fallen on my knees and wept and

prayed; but I could not, and instead of prayer I wrote my curse—my

_Epilogue_ to 1849.

‘Disillusionment, fatigue, _Blasiertheit_!’ The democratic critics said

of those lines, wrung out of me by pain. Yes, disillusionment! Yes,

fatigue!... Disillusionment is a vulgar, hackneyed word, the veil under

which the sloth of the heart, egoism posing as love, the noisy emptiness

of vanity with pretensions to everything and strength for nothing, lie

hidden. All these exalted, misunderstood characters, thin with envy

and miserable with superciliousness, have wearied us for years past,

both in life and in novels. All that is perfectly true; but is there

not something real, characteristic of our times, at the bottom of these

spiritual sufferings which degenerate into absurd parody and vulgar

masquerade?

The poet who found words and voice for this malady was too proud to pose

and to suffer for the sake of applause; on the contrary, he often uttered

his bitter thought with so much humour that simple-hearted readers were

convulsed with merriment. Byron’s disillusionment was more than caprice,

more than a personal mood; Byron was shattered because life deceived him.

And life deceived him not because his demands were unreal, but because

England and Byron were of different ages, were of different educations,

and met just at the epoch when the mist was being dissipated.

This divergence has existed in the past, but in our age it has come to

consciousness; in our age the impossibility of any conviction bridging

the gulf has become more and more evident. After the Roman break-up came

Christianity; after Christianity—the belief in civilisation, in humanity.

Liberalism is the _latest religion_, though its church is not of the

other world but of this. Its theology is political theory; it stands upon

the earth and has no mystical conciliations, it aims at conciliation in

real life. Triumphant and then defeated liberalism has revealed the rift

in all its nakedness; the painful consciousness of this is expressed in

the irony of the modern man, the scepticism with which he sweeps away the

fragments of his shattered idols.

Irony gives expression to the vexation aroused by the fact that

logical truth is not the same as the truth of history, that apart from

dialectical development it has its own development through chance and

passion, that apart from reason it has its romance.

Disillusionment[65] in our sense of the word was not known before the

Revolution; the eighteenth century was one of the most religious periods

of history. I am not speaking now of the great martyr Saint-Just or

of the apostle Jean-Jacques; but was not the pope Voltaire, blessing

Franklin’s grandson in the name of God and Freedom, a fanatic of his

religion of humanity?

Scepticism was proclaimed together with the republic of the 22nd of

September 1792.

The Jacobins and revolutionaries in general belonged to a minority,

separated from the life of the people by their culture: they formed

something like a secular clergy ready to shepherd their human flocks.

They represented the _highest_ thought of their time, its _highest but

not its common consciousness_, not the _thought of all_.

This new clergy had no means of coercion, neither physical nor

supernatural: from the moment that the governing power dropped out of

their hands, they had only one weapon—conviction. But for conviction

to be _right_ is not enough; their whole mistake lay in supposing so;

something more was necessary—_mental equality_.

So long as the desperate conflict lasted to the strains of the hymn of

the Huguenots and the hymn of the Marseillaise, so long as men were burnt

at the stake and blood was flowing, this inequality passed unobserved.

But at last the oppressive edifice of feudal monarchy fell, and slowly

the walls were shattered, the locks torn off the gates ... one more blow

struck, and the brave men advance, the gates are flung open and the crowd

rushes in. But it was not the crowd they expected. Who are these men; to

what age do they belong? These are not Spartans, not the great _populus

Romanus_. _Davus sum, non Œdipus!_ An overwhelming wave of filth flooded

everything. The inner horror of the Jacobins was expressed in the Terror

of 1793 and 1794: they saw their fearful mistake, tried to correct it

with the guillotine; but, however many heads they cut off, they still had

to bow their own before the might of the class of society that was rising

to the top. Everything gave way before it; it overpowered the Revolution

and the Reaction, it filled up the old forms and submerged them because

it made up the one effective majority of its day. Sieyès was more right

than he thought when he said that the petty-bourgeoisie _was everything_.

The petty-bourgeois were not produced by the Revolution; they were ready

with their codes and their traditions, in a different way discordant with

the revolutionary idea. The aristocracy had held them down and kept them

in the background; set free, they passed over the dead bodies of those

who had freed them and established their own regime. The minority were

either crushed or swallowed up among the bourgeois.

A few men of each generation were, in spite of events, left the obstinate

guardians of the idea; these Levites, or perhaps Aztecs, are unjustly

punished for their monopoly of exclusive culture, for the mental

superiority of the well-fed caste, the leisured caste that had time to

work not only with muscles.

We are angered, moved to fury, by the absurdity, by the injustice of this

fact. As though some one (apart from ourselves) had promised us that

everything in the world should be just and beautiful and go easily. We

have marvelled enough at the abstract wisdom of nature and of historical

development; it is time to perceive that in nature as in history there

is a great deal that is fortuitous, stupid, unsuccessful, and confused.

Reason, fully developed thought, comes last. Everything begins with the

foolishness of the newborn child; possibility and striving are innate in

him, but before he reaches development and consciousness he is exposed to

a series of external and internal influences, checks and obstacles. One

has water on the brain, another falls and flattens his skull—both remain

idiots; the third does not fall nor die of scarlet fever—and becomes a

poet, a military leader, a bandit, or a judge. We know as a rule far

more of the successes in nature, in history, and in life: we are only

now beginning to feel that all the cards are not so well shuffled as we

thought, because we are ourselves a losing card, a failure.

It mortifies us to find that the idea is impotent that truth has no

compelling force over the world of actuality. A new sort of Manichæism

takes possession of us, we are led, _par dépit_, to believe in rational

(that is, purposive) evil, as we did believe in rational good—that is the

last tribute we pay to idealism.

The anguish will pass with time; its tragic and passionate character will

be softened: it scarcely exists in the new world of the United States.

That young people, enterprising and more practical than intelligent, is

so occupied in the organisation of its own life that it knows nothing

at all of our agonies. Moreover, there are not two cultures there. The

persons who make up the classes in that society are incessantly changing,

they rise and fall with the bank account of each. The sturdy race of

English colonists is multiplying terribly; if it gets the ascendency,

people will not be the happier for it, but they will be more comfortable.

That comfort will be duller, poorer, more arid than that which floated

in the ideals of romantic Europe; but with it there will be neither

Tsar nor centralisation, and perhaps there will be no hunger either. Any

one, who can put off the old Adam of Europe from himself and be born

again a new Jonathan, had better take the first steamer to some place

in Wisconsin or Kansas; there he will certainly be better off than in

decaying Europe.

Those who _cannot_, remain to live out their lives, representatives of

the fair dream with which men lulled themselves to sleep. They have lived

too much in fantasies and ideals to fit into the age of American good

sense.

There is no great loss in that; we are not many, and we shall soon be

extinct.

But how is it men grow up so out of harmony with their environment?...

Imagine a hothouse-reared youth—the one, for instance, who has described

himself in _The Dream_; imagine him face to face with the most boring,

with the most tedious society, face to face with the monstrous Minotaur

of English life, uncouthly welded together of two beasts—the one sinking

into decrepitude, the other knee-deep in filthy mire, weighed down like

the Caryatides whose everlastingly strained muscles leave not a drop of

blood to spare for the brain. If he could have adapted himself to this

life, he would, instead of dying at thirty in Greece, by now have been

Lord Palmerston or Lord John Russell. But since he could not, there is

nothing surprising in his saying, like his Harold to his ship:

‘Nor care what land thou bearest me to,

But not again to mine.’

But what awaited him in the distance? Spain devastated by Napoleon,

Greece sunk back into barbarism, the general resurrection after 1814

of all the stinking Lazaruses; there was no getting away from them in

Ravenna or in Diodati. Byron could not be satisfied like a German with

theories _sub specie æternitatis_, nor like a Frenchman with political

chatter; he was crushed, but crushed like a menacing Titan, flinging his

scorn in men’s faces and not troubling to soften the blow.

This discordance and disharmony, of which Byron as a poet and a genius

was conscious forty years ago, has, after a succession of painful

experiences, after the filthy transition from 1830 to 1848, and the

infamous one from 1848 to the present, overwhelmed many of us to-day. And

we, like Byron, do not know what to do with ourselves, where to lay our

heads.

The realist Goethe, like the romantic Schiller, knew nothing of this

rending of the spirit. The one was too religious, the other too

philosophical. Both could find peace in abstract spheres. When the

‘spirit of negation’ appears as such a jester as Mephistopheles, then

the disharmony is not yet tragic; his mocking and for ever contradictory

nature is still blended in the higher harmony, and in its own due time

will chime in with everything—_sie ist gerettet_. Lucifer in _Cain_ is

very different; he is the gloomy angel of darkness, on whose brow shines

with dim lustre the star of bitter thought, full of inner discords which

can never be harmonised.

He does not jest with negation, he does not amuse with the impudence of

his infidelity, he does not allure by sensuality, he does not procure

simple maidens, wine, and diamonds, but calmly impels to murder, by some

inexplicable force, like the lure of still moonlit water, that promises

nothing but death in its comfortless, cold, glimmering embraces.

Neither Cain nor Manfred, neither Don Juan nor Byron, has any deduction,

any solution, any ‘moral.’ Perhaps from the point of view of dramatic art

this is a defect, but it gives a stamp of sincerity and shows the depths

of the gulf. Byron’s epilogue, his last word, if you like, is _The

Darkness_; that is the logical conclusion of a life that begins with _The

Dream_. Complete the picture for yourselves.

Two enemies, hideously disfigured by hunger, are dead, they are devoured

by some crab-like monsters ... a ship is rotting—the tarred rope sways in

the muddy waters in the darkness, there is fearful cold, the animals are

dying out, history has already perished and the place is cleared for new

life: our period will be reckoned as the fourth formation—that is, if the

new world arrives at being able to count up to four.

Our historical vocation, our work, lies in the fact that by our

disillusionment, by our sufferings, we reach resignation and humility in

face of the truth, and spare following generations from these troubles.

With us humanity is regaining sobriety, with us recovering from its

drunken orgy; we are its birth-pangs. If the birth-agony ends well, all

is for the best; but we must not forget that the child or mother, or

maybe both, may die by the way, and then—well, then history, like the

Mormon it is, will begin the process over again.... _E sempre bene_,

friends!

We know how Nature disposes of the individual: whether sooner or later,

whether without sacrifice or over the bodies of the dead, she cares not;

she goes her way, or goes any way that chances. Ten thousands of years

she builds up a coral reef, every spring abandoning to death the foremost

ranks. The polypi die without suspecting that they have served the

_progress_ of the reef.

We, too, shall serve something. Entering into the future as an element

in it does not mean that the future will fulfil our ideals. Rome did not

carry out Plato’s idea of a republic nor the Greek idea in general. The

Middle Ages were not the development of Rome. Modern Western thought will

pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence in

its place, just as our body passes into the composition of grass, of

sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality,

but what is there to be done about it?

Now I am accustomed to these thoughts, they no longer terrify me. But at

the end of 1849 I was overwhelmed by them; and in spite of the fact that

every event, every meeting, every contact, every person seemed bent on

tearing away the last green leaves, I still frantically and obstinately

sought a _way of escape_.

That is why I prize now so highly the courageous thought of Byron. He saw

that there is _no escape_, and proudly said so.

I was unhappy and perplexed when these thoughts began to haunt me; I

tried by every means to run away from them ... like a lost traveller,

like a beggar, I knocked at every door, stopped every one I met and asked

my way, but every meeting and every event led to the same result—to

_humility_ in the face of the _truth_, to meek acceptance of it.

Three years ago I sat by Natalie’s sick-bed and saw death drawing her

mercilessly, step by step, to the grave; that life was all that was

precious to me. About me all was darkness; I sat alone in dull despair,

but did not comfort myself with hopes, did not betray my grief for one

moment by the narcotic thought of meeting beyond the grave.

So it is hardly likely that I should be false to myself over the

impersonal problems of life.

II

POST SCRIPTUM

I know that my outlook on Europe will meet with a bad reception at

home. We for our own comfort _want_ a different Europe and believe in

it as Christians believe in Paradise. Dissipating dreams is always a

disagreeable thing to do, but some inner force which I cannot overcome

makes me tell the truth even when it does me harm.

As a rule we know Europe from school, from literature—that is, we do not

know it, but judge it _à livre ouvert_, from books and pictures, just as

children judge the real world from their _Orbis pictus_, imagining that

all the women in the Sandwich Islands hold their hands above their heads

with a sort of tambourine, and, wherever there is a naked negro, there is

sure to be standing five paces from him a lion with a dishevelled mane or

a tiger with fierce eyes.

Our _classic_ ignorance of the Western European will be productive of a

good deal of harm; race hatreds and bloody collisions will develop from

it later on.

In the first place, we know nothing but the top, _cultured_ layer of

Europe, which conceals the heavy substratum of popular life formed by the

ages, and evolved by instincts and by laws that are little understood

in Europe itself. European culture does not penetrate into those

foundations in which, as in the works of the Cyclops, the hand of man is

indistinguishable from that of nature and history passes into geology.

The European states are welded together of two different peoples whose

special characteristics are maintained by utterly different educations.

There is here none of the Oriental unity which makes the Turk who is a

Grand Vizier and the Turk who hands him his pipe just like each other.

Masses of the country population have, since the religious wars and the

peasant risings, taken no active part in events; they have been swayed by

them to right and left like growing corn, never for a minute leaving the

ground in which they are rooted.

Secondly, that stratum with which we do become acquainted, with which we

do enter into contact, we only know historically, not as it is to-day.

After spending a year or two in Europe we see with surprise that the men

of the West do not correspond as a rule with our conception of them, that

they are _greatly inferior_ to it.

Elements of truth enter into the ideal we have formed, but either these

no longer exist or they have completely changed their character. The

valour of chivalry, the elegance of aristocratic manners, the stern

decorum of the Protestants, the proud independence of the English,

the luxurious life of Italian artists, the sparkling wit of the

Encyclopedists and the gloomy energy of the Terrorists—all that has been

melted down and transmuted into one dead level of universally predominant

_bourgeois manners_. They make up a complete whole—that is, a finished,

self-contained outlook upon life with its traditions and rules, with its

own good and evil, with its own manners and its own morality of a lower

order.

As the knight was the leading type of the feudal world, so the merchant

has become the leading type of the new world; feudal lords are replaced

by employers. The merchant in himself is a colourless intermediate

figure; he is the middle-man between the producer and the consumer; he

is something of the nature of a means of communication, of transport.

The knight was more in himself, more of a person, and kept up his

dignity as he understood it, which made him in reality not dependent

either on wealth or on position; his personality was what mattered. In

the petty-bourgeois the personality is concealed or does not stand out,

because it is not what matters; what matters is the ware, the produce,

the thing, what matters is _property_.

The knight was a terrible ignoramus, a bully, a duellist, a bandit

and a monk, a drunkard and a pietist, but he was open and genuine in

everything: moreover, he was always ready to lay down his life for what

he thought right; he had his moral tradition, his code of honour—very

arbitrary, but one from which he did not depart without loss of his own

respect or the respect of his peers.

The merchant is a man of peace and not of war, stubbornly and

persistently sticking to his rights, but weak in attack; calculating,

parsimonious, he sees trade in everything, and, like the knight, enters

into single combat with every one he meets, but measures himself with him

in cunning. His ancestors—mediæval townsmen—were forced to be sly to save

themselves from violence and robbery; they purchased peace and wealth by

evasiveness, by secretiveness and pretence, keeping themselves close and

holding themselves in check. His ancestors, cap in hand and bowing low,

cheated the knight; shaking their heads or sighing, they talked to their

neighbours of their poverty, whilst they secretly buried their hoards

in the earth. All this has naturally passed into the blood and brains

of their descendants, and has become the physical characteristic of a

special human species known as the _middle class_.

While it was in a difficult position and joined with the enlightened

aristocracy in defending its faith, in fighting for its rights, it was

full of greatness and poetry. But this was not for long, and Sancho

Panza, having gained his place and lolling simply at his ease, let

himself go and lost his peasant honour, his commonsense; the vulgar side

of his nature got the upper hand.

Under the influence of petty-bourgeoisie everything is changed in Europe.

Chivalrous honour is replaced by the honesty of the book-keeper, elegant

manners by propriety, courtesy by stiff decorum, pride by a readiness to

take offence, parks by kitchen gardens, palaces by hotels, open to _all_

(that is, all who have money).

The old, out-of-date, but consistent conceptions of relations between

men have been shaken, while no new recognition of the _true_ relations

between men has appeared. This chaotic void has greatly contributed to

the development of all the bad and petty sides of bourgeoisie under the

all-powerful influence of unbridled acquisitiveness.

Analyse the moral principles current for the last half-century, and what

a medley you will find! The Roman conception of the state together with

the Gothic division of powers, Protestantism and political economy,

_salus populi_ and _chacun pour soi_, Brutus and Thomas à Kempis,

the Gospel and Bentham, the balancing of income and expenditure and

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. With such a hotch-potch in the head and with a

magnet in the breast, for ever attracted by gold, it was not hard to

arrive at the absurdities reached by the foremost countries of Europe.

The whole of morality has been reduced to the duty of him who has not by

every possible means to acquire, and of him who has to preserve and to

increase his property; the flag which they run up in the market-place

when trading begins has become the banner of a new society. The man has

_de facto_ become the appurtenance of property; life has been reduced to

a perpetual struggle for money.

The political question since 1830 is becoming exclusively the

petty-bourgeois question, and the age-long struggle is expressed in the

passions and tendencies of the ruling class. Life is reduced to a gamble

on the Stock Exchange; everything—the publication of newspapers, the

elections, the legislative chambers—all have become money-changers’ shops

and markets. The English are so used to putting everything into shop

language that they call their old English Church the _Old Shop_.

All parties and shades of opinion in the petty-bourgeois world

have gradually divided into two camps: on one hand the bourgeois

property-owners, obstinately refusing to abandon their monopolies; on

the other the petty-bourgeois who have nothing, who want to tear the

wealth out of the others’ hands but have not the power—that is, on the

one hand _avarice_, on the other hand _envy_. Since there is no real

moral principle in all that, the part taken by any individual on one

or the other side is determined by external conditions of fortune and

social position. One wave of the opposition after the other triumphs—that

is, attains to property or position—and passes naturally from the side

of envy to the side of avarice. Nothing can be more favourable for

this transition than the fruitless swing backwards and forwards of

parliamentary parties—it gives movement and sets limits to it, provides

an appearance of _doing something_, and an external show of public

interest in order to attain their private ends.

Parliamentary government, not as it follows from the popular foundations

of the Anglo-Saxon _Common Law_, but as it has taken shape in the law

of the state, is simply the wheel in a squirrel’s cage, and the most

colossal one in the world. Could a show of a triumphant march forward

whilst remaining majestically in the same spot be possibly achieved more

perfectly than it is by the two English Houses of Parliament?

But just that maintenance of the show is the great point. Upon everything

belonging to contemporary Europe, two characteristics obviously

derived from the shop are deeply imprinted: on one hand, hypocrisy

and secretiveness; on the other, ostentation and _étalage_. It is all

window-dressing, buying at half-price, passing off rubbish for the real

thing, show for reality, concealing some condition, taking advantage of

a literal meaning, seeming instead of being, behaving properly instead

of behaving well, keeping up external _Respektabilität_ instead of inner

dignity.

In this world everything is so much a stage sham that even the coarsest

ignorance assumes an air of education. Which of us has not blushed for

the ignorance of Western European society? I am not here speaking of men

of learning, but of the people who make up what is called society. There

can be no serious theoretical education; it takes too much time and is

too distracting from _business_. Since nothing that lies outside trading

operations and the ‘exploitation’ of their social position is essential

in the petty-bourgeois world, their education is bound to be limited.

That is what accounts for the absurdity and slowness of mind which we see

in the bourgeois, whenever he has to step off the common beaten track.

Cunning and hypocrisy are by no means so clever and so far-sighted as is

supposed; their range is poor, and they are soon out of their depth.

The English are aware of this, and so do not leave the beaten track,

and put up with the not merely burdensome but, what is worse, absurd

inconveniences of their mediævalism through fear of any change.

The French petty-bourgeois have not been so prudent, and for all their

slyness and duplicity have fallen headlong into an empire.

Full of confidence in their victory, they proclaimed universal suffrage

as the basis of their new regime. This arithmetical standard suited their

taste; the truth is determined by addition and subtraction, it could be

reckoned up and put down in figures.

And what did they put to the decision of the votes of all in the present

state of society? The question of the existence of the republic. They

wanted to crush it by means of the people, to make of it an empty word,

because they did not like it. Is any one who respects the truth going

to ask the opinion of the first stray man he meets? What if Columbus or

Copernicus put America or the movement of the earth to the vote?

It was shrewdly conceived, but in the end the good souls overshot their

mark.

The gap between the _parterre_ and the actors, covered at first by the

faded carpet of Lamartine’s eloquence, has grown wider and wider; the

blood of June has washed the channel deeper; and then the question of the

president was put to the irritated people. As answer to the question,

Louis-Napoleon, rubbing his sleepy eyes, stepped out and took everything

into his hands—that is, even the petty-bourgeois, who fancied, from

memory of old days, that he would reign and they would govern.

What you see on the great stage of political events is repeated in

microscopic form on every hearth. The corruption of petty-bourgeoisie has

crept into all the secret places of the family and private life. Never

has Catholicism, never have the ideas of chivalry, been impressed on men

so deeply, so many-sidedly, as the bourgeois ideas.

Noble rank had its obligations. Of course, since its rights were partly

fantastic, its obligations were fantastic too, but they did provide a

certain mutual security between equals. Catholicism laid still more

obligations. Feudal knights and believing Catholics often failed to carry

out their obligations, but the consciousness that, by so doing, they were

guilty of a breach of the social bonds recognised by themselves prevented

them from being free in their lapses and from justifying their behaviour.

They had their holiday attire, their official setting which was not false

but rather their ideal.

We are not now concerned with the nature of those ideals. They were

tried and their cause was lost long ago. We only want to point out that

petty-bourgeoisie on the contrary involves no obligations, not even the

obligation to serve in the army, so long as there are volunteers; or

rather, its only obligation is _per fas et nefas_ to have property. Its

gospel is brief: ‘Heap up wealth, multiply thy riches till they are like

the sands of the sea, use and misuse thy financial and moral capital,

without ruining thyself, and in comfort and honour thou wilt attain

length of years, marry thy children well, and leave an honoured memory

behind thee.’

The destruction of the feudal and Catholic world was essential, and was

the work not of the petty-bourgeois but simply of free men—that is,

of men who had set themselves free from all wholesale classification.

Among them were knights like Ulrich von Hutten, gentlemen like Voltaire,

watchmakers’ apprentices like Rousseau, army doctors like Schiller,

and merchants’ sons like Goethe. The petty-bourgeois took advantage of

their work and showed themselves emancipated, not only from monarchs and

slavery but from all social obligations, except that of contributing to

the hire of the government who guarded their security.

Of Protestantism they made _their own_ religion, a religion that

reconciles the conscience of the Christian with the practice of the

usurer, a religion so bourgeois that the common people, who shed their

blood for it, have abandoned it. In England the working class goes to

church less than any.

Of the Revolution they tried to make their own republic, but it slipped

between their fingers, just as the civilisation of antiquity slipped away

from the barbarians—that is, with no place in real life, but with hope

for _instaurationem magnam_.

The Reformation and the Revolution were both so terrified by the

emptiness of the world which they had come into that they sought

salvation in two forms of monasticism—the cold, dreary bigotry of

Puritanism and the frigid, artificial civic morality of republican

formalism.

Both the Quaker[66] and the Jacobin forms of intolerance were based on

the fear that the ground was not firm under their feet; they saw that

they needed to take strong measures, to persuade men in the one case that

this was the church, in the other that it was freedom.

Such is the general atmosphere of European life. It is most oppressive

and insufferable where the modern Western system is most developed,

where it is most true to its principles, where it is most wealthy and

most _cultured_—that is, most industrial. And that is why it is not so

unendurably oppressive to live in Italy or Spain as it is in England or

France.... And that is why poor, mountainous, rustic Switzerland is the

only corner of Europe into which one can retreat in peace.[67]