THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE—THE RUSSIAN CONSUL AT NICE—LETTER TO A. F.
ORLOV—PERSECUTION OF A CHILD—THE VOGTS—TRANSFERENCE FROM THE GRADE OF
UPPER COURT COUNCILLOR TO THAT OF SIMPLE PEASANT—RECEPTION AT CHÂTEL
(1850-1851)
A year after our arrival in Nice from Paris I wrote: ‘_In vain I rejoiced
at my quiet seclusion, in vain I drew the pentagram on my doors: I have
not found a quiet haven nor the peace I desired. Pentagrams protect us
from unclean spirits—no polygons protect us from unclean men, unless
perhaps the square of the prison-cell window._
‘_A tedious, wearisome, and extremely empty period, the exhausting
journey between the halting place of 1848 and the halting place of
1852,—there is nothing new except perhaps some personal misfortune
breaking the heart, another vital spring snapped._’—(‘Letters from France
and Italy,’ June 1, 1851.)
Indeed, going over that time makes my heart ache as it does at the memory
of funerals, operations, agonising illnesses. Without touching here upon
my inner life, which was more and more overcast by dark storm-clouds,
public events and the news in the papers were enough to make any one flee
into the desert. France was dropping with the swiftness of a falling
star to the 2nd of December. Germany lay at the feet of Nicholas, to
which Hungary, sold and unhappy, had dragged her. The _condottieri_ of
the police met at their œcumenical councils, and secretly consulted
together concerning common measures of international espionage. The
revolutionaries maintained their empty agitation. The men at the head
of the movement, disappointed in their hopes, lost their heads. Kossuth
returned from America somewhat less nationalistic, Mazzini together
with Ledru-Rollin and Ruge was founding in London the Central European
Committee ... while the reaction was growing more and more ferocious.
After our meeting in Geneva, and then again in Lausanne, I saw Mazzini
in 1850; he was secretly in France, staying in some aristocratic family,
and sent one of his intimate associates to fetch me. Then he told me of
his project of an international league in London, and asked whether I
would like to take part in it _as a Russian_; I made no definite answer.
A year later Orsini came to me in Nice, handed me the programme, various
manifestoes of the European Central Committee, and a letter from Mazzini
renewing his proposition. I did not dream of joining the Committee; what
element of Russian life could I have represented at that time, completely
cut off from everything Russian as I was? But this was not the only
reason why the European Committee did not attract me. It seemed to me
that its basis lacked depth of thought and unity, that there had been no
necessity for its foundation, and that its form was simply a mistake.
The side of the movement which the Committee represented—that is, the
revolt of the oppressed nationalities—was not strong enough in 1851 to
be openly represented by a league. The existence of such a Committee
showed nothing but the tolerance of the English constitution, and partly
too that the English Government did not believe in its power or they
would have suppressed it, either by an alien bill or by a motion for the
suspension of _habeas corpus_.
The European Committee, though it scared all the governments, did
nothing, without perceiving that fact. Even the most earnest people
are terribly easily led away by formalism, and persuade themselves
that they are doing something by having periodical meetings, issuing
masses of papers, minutes, motions, voting, accepting resolutions,
printing manifestoes, _professions de foi_, and so on. The revolutionary
bureaucracy dissolves things into words and forms just as our official
bureaucracy does. In England there are masses of all sorts of
associations which hold impressive meetings attended by dukes and lords,
clergymen and secretaries. Treasurers collect funds, literary men write
articles, and all of them together do absolutely nothing. These meetings,
for the most part philanthropic and religious, on the one hand serve as
an entertainment, on the other soothe the Christian conscience of people
who are given up to worldly interests. But a revolutionary senate in
London could not _en permanence_ maintain this meek-and-mild character.
It was a public conspiracy, a conspiracy with open doors—that is, an
impossible one.
A conspiracy is bound to be secret. The period of secret societies is
over only in England and America. Everywhere where there is a minority,
in advance of the understanding of the masses and hoping to realise an
idea they have grasped, secret societies will be formed, if there is
no freedom of speech or right of free assembly. I speak of this quite
impartially; after my youthful attempts, ending in my exile in 1835, I
have _never been a member of any secret society_, but not at all because
I consider the spending of energy on individual effort more worth while.
I have not been a member of such societies because I have not happened to
come upon a society which was in harmony with my own aims, and in which I
could have achieved anything. If it had been my lot to be in touch with
Pestel’s or Ryleyev’s society,[73] I should have flung myself into it
heart and soul.
Another error or another misfortune of the Committee lay in its lack
of unity. This focussing together of heterogeneous ideals could only
have developed the power of its component parts by common action. If
each member of the Committee had brought nothing but his exclusive
nationality, that would not have mattered; they would have had a unity in
their hatred for the chief enemy they had in common, the Holy Alliance.
But their views, agreed on two negative principles, opposition to
monarchy and to socialism, differed on every other subject. To act in
unison they must have made compromises, and compromises of that kind
are destructive of the one-sided force of each, for the sake of common
accord, tying just the strings which sound most sharply, and so making
the combined effect colourless, blurred, and hesitating.
After reading the papers which Orsini had brought me, I wrote the
following letter to Mazzini:—
‘DEAR MAZZINI,—I have a sincere respect for you, and so I am
not afraid to tell you my opinion frankly. In any case you will
give me a patient and indulgent hearing.
‘You are perhaps one of the chief political leaders of recent
times whose name has remained surrounded by sympathy and
respect. One may differ from you in opinion, in method, but
cannot fail to respect you personally. Your past, the Rome
of 1848 and 1849, compel you to bear proudly your great
bereavement until events call back their champion who is in
advance of them. That is why it is painful to me to see your
name coupled with the names of men of no ability who have
ruined the cause, with names which only recall the calamities
they have brought upon us.
‘Is an organisation with these elements possible? It can lead
to nothing but confusion.
‘These men are of no use to you nor to history; all that one
can do for them is to forgive them their transgressions. You
want to cover them with your name, you want to share with them
your influence and your past; they will share with you their
unpopularity and their past.
‘What is there new in the manifestoes, what is there new in
the _Proscrit_? Where are the signs of the terrible lessons
that should have been learnt from the twenty-fourth of
February? This is the continuation of the old liberalism and
not the beginning of a new freedom—it is an epilogue and not
a prologue. Why is there not in London the organisation you
desire? Because it cannot be formed on the basis of indefinite
ideals, but only on a great idea held in common: and where is
that?
‘The first publication made under such conditions as the
manifesto you have sent ought to have been full of sincerity,
but who can read without a smile the signature of Arnold Ruge
on a manifesto which speaks in the name of Divine Providence?
From 1838 Ruge has been preaching philosophic atheism; for him
(if his brain is constructed logically) the idea of Providence
ought to present itself as everything reactionary in embryo.
It is a compromise, a bit of diplomacy, of policy, a weapon in
the hands of our enemies. Moreover, all that is unnecessary.
The theological part of the manifesto is a pure luxury; it adds
neither to its meaning nor to its popularity. The common people
have a positive religion and church. Deism is the religion of
the rationalists, the representative system applied to faith,
religion surrounded by atheistic institutions.
‘For my part, I advocate a complete rupture with incomplete
revolutionaries. One scents the reaction a hundred yards from
them. Having taken the burden of a thousand blunders on their
shoulders, they go on justifying them to this day—the surest
proof that they will repeat them.
‘In the _Nouveau Monde_ there is the same _vacuum horrendum_;
the same melancholy chewing over of the cud, at once green and
dry, which still is not digested.
‘Please do not imagine that I am saying this in order to get
out of doing anything. No, I am not sitting with my arms
folded. I have too much blood in my veins and energy in my
character to be satisfied with the part of a passive spectator.
From my thirteenth year I have served the same idea and the
same standard—of war against every oppressive power, against
every form of slavery in the name of absolute personal freedom.
I should like to continue my little guerilla warfare—like a
true Cossack ... _auf eigene Faust_, as the Germans say, beside
the great revolutionary army—not entering into its regular
ranks until they are completely formed.
‘In the interval of waiting, I am writing. Perhaps that
interval of waiting will last long—it is not in my power to
change the fitful development of men; but to speak, to appeal,
to persuade is in my power—and I am doing this with all my
heart and with all my mind.
‘Forgive me, dear Mazzini, both the candour and the length of
my letter, and do not cease to love me a little and to reckon
me a man devoted to your cause—but also devoted to his own
convictions.’
‘NICE, _September 13, 1850_.’
To this letter Mazzini answered with a few friendly lines in which,
without touching on the essential point, he spoke of the necessity of
uniting all forces in one activity, deplored the difference of men’s
views, and so on.
In the same autumn in which Mazzini and the European Committee remembered
me, the anti-European Committee of Nicholas remembered me too, at last.
One morning our maid, with a somewhat anxious look, told me that the
Russian consul was downstairs and asking whether I could see him. I
looked upon my relations with the Russian Government as so completely at
an end that I was surprised at this honour, and could not imagine what he
wanted of me.
A German-looking official of the second order walked in.
‘I have the honour to make a communication to you.’
‘Although,’ I replied, ‘I do not know of what nature, I am almost certain
that it will be unpleasant. I beg you to be seated.’
The consul flushed, was a little disconcerted; then sat down on the sofa,
took a document out of his pocket, and after reading, ‘Adjutant-General
Count Orlov has notified to Count Nesselrode and His Im...,’ rose to his
feet again.
At that point I fortunately remembered that the secretary in our Embassy
in Paris had risen from his chair on announcing to Sazonov the Tsar’s
command that he should return to Russia, and Sazonov suspecting nothing
had also got up from his chair, though the secretary had done this from
a deep sense of duty which required that a loyal subject should be on
his legs with his head a little bowed when conveying the sovereign’s
will; and therefore, the more stiffly erect the consul stood, the more
comfortably I buried myself in my armchair, and, wishing him to observe
the fact, said with a nod: ‘Pray go on; I am listening.’
‘...perial Majesty,’ he went on, resuming his seat, ‘has been graciously
pleased to command that So-and-so shall promptly return to Russia and
should be informed thereof, accepting from him no reasons for delaying
his departure and granting him no postponement under any circumstances.’
He paused. I continued sitting without saying a word.
‘What am I to answer?’ he asked, folding up the paper.
‘That I am not going.’
‘How do you mean “not going”?’
‘What I say: simply I’m not going.’
‘Have you considered that such a step...?’
‘I have considered.’
‘But this is beyond anything.... Kindly tell me what I am to write. For
what reason...?’
‘You have been commanded not to accept any reasons.’
‘What am I to say, then? Why, this is disobedience to the will of His
Imperial Majesty!’
‘Say so, then.’
‘This is impossible. I should never venture to write that ...’ and he
crimsoned more than ever. ‘Really, you had better change your mind while
it is all still within four walls.’ (The consul evidently thought the
Third Section was a monastery.)
Philanthropic as I am, I was not willing, for the sake of facilitating
the correspondence of the consul at Nice, to go into one of Father
Leonty’s cells of the Peter-Paul Fortress or to Nertchinsk, especially as
there seemed no prospect that Nicholas would sink into a decline.
‘Surely,’ I said to him, ‘when you were coming here you could not for
one second have imagined that I should go? Forget that you are a consul
and consider the position yourself. My estate has been sequestrated, my
mother’s fortune was detained, and all that without asking me whether I
wished to return. Can I go back after that without taking leave of my
senses?’
He hesitated, continually flushing, and at last hit on a clever, adroit,
and above all new idea.
‘I cannot,’ he said, ‘enter into ... I understand the difficulty of your
position; on the other hand, the gracious mercy of the Sovereign!...’
I looked at him; he blushed again. ‘... Besides, why cut off all way of
retreat. Write to me you are very ill; I’ll send that to the Count.’
‘That’s too stale; besides, what is the object of telling a lie for
nothing?’
‘Well, then, will you be so kind as to give me your answer in writing.’
‘Certainly. Can you leave me a copy of the notice you read to me?’
‘That is not usual.’
‘What a pity! I am making a collection of them.’
Simple as my written answer was, the consul was alarmed by it. He seemed
to think that he might be transferred on account of it to Beyrout or
Tripoli, or I do not know where; he positively declined to venture,
either to accept or to forward it. In spite of my assurances that no
responsibility could fall on him, he refused, and begged me to write
another letter.
‘That’s impossible,’ I answered. ‘I am not taking this step as a joke,
and I am not going to write nonsensical reasons: here is the letter for
you, and you can do what you like with it.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the mildest consul since the days of Junius Brutus and
Calpurnius Bestia: ‘you write the letter, not to me but to Count Orlov,
and I’ll simply forward it.’
‘That’s an easy matter; I’ve only to put _M. le Comte_ instead of _M. le
Consul_. I agree to that.’
As I was copying my letter it struck me that there was no need for me to
write to Orlov in French. If it were in Russian some cantonist in his
office or in the office of the Third Section might read it; it might
be sent to the Senate, and a young head secretary might show it to his
clerks: why deprive them of this satisfaction? And so I translated the
letter, and here it is:—
‘DEAR SIR, COUNT ALEXEY FYODOROVITCH,—The Imperial Consul at
Nice has notified me of the will of the Most High concerning my
return to Russia. With every inclination to do so, I find it
impossible to comply with it without making my position clear.
‘Before any summons to return, more than a year ago, an
injunction was placed on my estate, my business papers in
private hands were confiscated, and, finally, money, a sum
of ten thousand francs sent to me from Moscow, was seized.
Such severe and extreme measures against me prove that I am
not merely accused of some crime, but, before any inquiry,
any trial has been held, am found guilty and punished by the
deprivation of part of my property.
‘I cannot hope that my mere return can save me from the
melancholy consequences of a political trial. It is easy for me
to explain every one of my actions, but in cases of that kind
it is opinions and theories that are on trial. It is upon them
that verdicts are based. Can I, should I, expose myself and all
my family to such a trial?... Your Excellency will appreciate
the simplicity and candour of my answer, and will bring to the
consideration of the Most High the reasons that compel me to
remain in foreign parts in spite of my deep and genuine desire
to return to my country.’
‘NICE, _September 23, 1850_.’
I really do not know whether it was possible to answer more simply and
discreetly; but the habit of slavish silence is so deeply rooted among us
that the consul at Nice thought even this letter monstrously audacious,
and probably Orlov himself thought the same.
To be silent, not to laugh and not to cry, and to answer on a set
pattern, without praise or criticism, without signs of pleasure or grief,
is the ideal to which despotism tries to reduce its subjects and has
reduced the soldiers; but by what means? Well, I will tell you.
On one occasion, Nicholas, seeing a fine young soldier wearing a cross
at a review, asked him: ‘Where did you receive your cross?’ Unluckily
this soldier was a seminarist sent for a soldier in punishment for some
prank, and, wishing to take advantage of the opportunity to display his
eloquence, he answered: ‘Under the victorious eagles of Your Majesty.’
Nicholas looked sternly at him and at the general, pouted, and went on.
When the general following him reached the soldier, white with rage he
shook his fist in his face and said: ‘I’ll beat you into your coffin, you
Demosthenes!’
Is it strange that eloquence does not flourish with such encouragement?
Having got rid of the emperor and the consul, I wanted to get out of the
class of persons living without a passport.
The future was dark and gloomy.... I might die, and the thought that that
same blushing consul would arrive to dispose of everything in my house,
and to seize my papers, compelled me to think of obtaining the rights of
citizenship somewhere. I need hardly say that I fixed upon Switzerland,
in spite of the fact that just about that time the Swiss police had been
playing pranks with me.
Within a year after the birth of my second son we noticed with horror
that he was completely deaf. Various consultations and experiments soon
proved that it was impossible to cure the deafness. But then the question
arose whether we ought to leave him to become dumb, as is usually done.
The schools I had seen in Moscow had seemed to me far from satisfactory.
Talking on one’s fingers and by signs is not conversation; talking must
be by the mouth and the lips. I knew by what I had read that attempts had
been made in Germany and Switzerland to teach deaf mutes to speak as we
speak, and to listen by watching the lips. In Berlin I saw for the first
time an oral lecture given to deaf mutes and heard them recite verses.
This was an immense step in advance of the method of the Abbé de l’Epée.
This teaching was carried to great perfection in Zurich. My mother, who
was passionately fond of Kolya, determined to settle with him for a few
years in Zurich in order to send him to the school.
The child was gifted with exceptional abilities: the everlasting
stillness about him, by concentrating his lively, impulsive character,
assisted his development in a wonderful way, and at the same time
encouraged an exceptional power of plastic observation. His eyes glowed
with intelligence and interest; at five years old he could imitate every
one who came to see us with intentional caricature, and with such comic
mimicry that no one could help laughing.
In six months he had made great progress at the school. His voice was
_voilée_; he scarcely marked the accent, but already spoke German very
fairly and understood everything said to him slowly; nothing could have
been better. On my way through Zurich I thanked the director and council
of the school and paid them various civilities, and they did the same to
me.
But after I had gone away the elders of the town of Zurich learnt that I
was not a Russian count but a Russian _émigré_, and, moreover, friendly
with the radical party, which they could not endure; and, what is more,
with socialists, whom they hated; and, what was worse than all that put
together, that I was not a religious man and openly admitted the fact.
This last they learned from an awful little book, _Vom andern Ufer_,
which had, as though to mock them, come out under their very noses with
the imprint of the best Zurich firm of publishers. On learning this
their conscience troubled them at the thought that they were giving an
education to the son of a man who believed neither in Luther nor in
Loyola, and they set to work to find means to get rid of him. Since
Providence was particularly interested in the question, it at once showed
them the way. The town police suddenly demanded the _child’s passport_;
I answered from Paris, supposing that it was a simple formality, that
Kolya certainly was my son, that his name was on my passport, but that
I could not obtain a separate one for him from the Russian Embassy,
because I was not on the best of terms with them. The police were not
satisfied, and threatened to turn the child out of the school and out of
the town. I spoke of this in Paris; one of my acquaintances published
a paragraph about it in the _National_. Put to shame by publicity, the
police said that they did not insist on turning the child out, but only
on the payment of an insignificant sum of money as a guarantee that the
child was himself and not somebody else. What guarantee is there in a few
hundred francs? On the other hand, if my mother and I had not had the
money, the child would have been turned out. (I asked them about that
through the _National_.) And this could happen in the nineteenth century
in free Switzerland! After what had taken place I disliked the idea of
leaving the child in this den of asses.
But what was to be done? The best teacher in the institution, a young
man who devoted himself enthusiastically to the training of deaf mutes,
a man of a thorough university education, luckily did not share the
views of the police Sanhedrin, and was a great admirer of the very book
which had so stirred the wrath of the pious police-constables of the
canton of Zurich. We suggested to him that he should leave the school,
enter my mother’s household as tutor, and go with her to Italy. He of
course consented. The authorities of the school were furious, but could
do nothing. My mother prepared to go with Kolya and with this young man,
Spielmann, to Nice. Before leaving she sent for her deposit; it was not
given to her, on the pretext that Kolya was still in Switzerland. I
wrote from Nice. The Zurich police demanded proofs that Kolya had the
legal right to live in Piedmont.
This was too much, and I wrote the following letter to the president of
the Zurich canton:—
‘M. LE PRÉSIDENT,—In 1849, I placed my son, aged five years, in
the Zurich School for the Deaf and Dumb. A few months later the
Zurich police asked my mother for his passport. Since among us
passports are not required for newborn babies or for children
going to school, my son had not a separate one but was entered
upon mine. This explanation did not satisfy the Zurich police.
They demanded a deposit. My mother, fearing that the child who
had brought down upon himself such dangerous suspicions on the
part of the Zurich police would be expelled, paid it.
‘In August 1850, my mother, wishing to leave Switzerland,
asked for the deposit, but the Zurich police did not return
it; they wished to ascertain first that the child had actually
left the canton. On reaching Nice my mother asked Messieurs
Avigdor and Schultgess to receive the money, giving them a
proof that we, and above all my suspicious six-year-old son,
were in Nice and not in Zurich. The Zurich police, keeping
a tight hold on the deposit money, then demanded another
certificate, to be witnessed by the police here, “that my son
is officially permitted to live in Piedmont” (_que l’enfant est
officiellement toléré_). M. Schultgess communicated this to M.
Avigdor.
‘Seeing this eccentric curiosity on the part of the Zurich
police I refused M. Avigdor’s proposal to send a new
certificate, which he very graciously offered to take for
me himself. I did not want to afford the Zurich police this
satisfaction, since, for all the dignity of its position, it
has no right to constitute itself an international police, and
because its demand is insulting not only to me but to Piedmont.
‘The Sardinian Government, M. le Président, is a free and
civilised one; how is it possible that it should not permit
(_ne tolérera pas_) an invalid child of six years old to live
in Piedmont? I am really at a loss as to how I am to regard
this demand of the Zurich police, whether as a strange joke or
as the result of a partiality for deposits in general.
‘Presenting this affair for your scrutiny, M. le Président, I
beg you as a special favour, in case of another refusal, to
explain the proceeding, which is so curious and interesting
that I do not think I shall be justified in concealing it from
the knowledge of the public.
‘I have written again to M. Schultgess to receive the money,
and I can confidently assure you that neither my mother nor
myself nor the child who is the object of suspicion have the
smallest inclination to return to Zurich after these unpleasant
attentions from the police. There is not the faintest risk of
it.’
‘NICE, _September 9, 1850_.’
I need hardly say that after that the police of the town of Zurich, in
spite of their œcumenical pretensions, paid the deposit.
Except my Swiss naturalisation, I would not have accepted citizenship
in any European country, not even England; I disliked the idea of
voluntarily becoming anybody’s subject. I did not want to change a bad
master for a good one, but to escape from serfdom into being a free
tiller of the soil. This was only possible in two countries: America and
Switzerland.
America—I greatly respect. I believe that she is destined to a great
future, I know that she is now twice as near to Europe as she was; but
American life is distasteful to me. It is very likely that her angular,
coarse, dry elements will be welded together into something different.
America has not yet settled down, she is an unfinished edifice. Labourers
and workmen in their workaday clothes are dragging about beams and
stones, sawing, hewing, hammering. Why should outsiders settle in it
before it is dry and warm?
Moreover, America, as Garibaldi said, is the ‘land for forgetting home’;
let those who have no faith in their fatherland go there—they ought to
get away from their graveyards. It was quite the contrary with me: the
more I lost all hope of a Latin-German Europe, the more my belief in
Russia revived again; but to dream of returning there while Nicholas was
Tsar would have been madness.
And so there was nothing left for it but to ally myself with the free men
of the Helvetian Confederation.
As early as 1849, Fazy had promised to naturalise me in Geneva, but kept
putting it off; perhaps he simply did not want to add to the number of
socialists in his canton. I got sick of this. I was passing through a
black period, the very walls were tottering and might crumble about my
head, misfortune is never far off.... Karl Vogt offered to write about
my naturalisation to J. Schaller, who was at that time president of the
Freiburg canton and leader of the radical party. But, having mentioned
Vogt, I must say something about him first.
In the monotony of the shallow and slow-moving life of Germany one meets
at times, as though to redeem it, sturdy, healthy families full of
strength, persistence, and talent. One generation of gifted persons is
followed by another more numerous, still preserving the same sturdiness
of mind and body. Looking at some dingy, old-fashioned house, in a dark,
narrow side-street, it is hard to believe how many have been the young
lads, in a hundred years, who have come down the worn stone steps of its
staircase with a wallet on their shoulder and all manner of souvenirs,
made of hair or of flowers in it, followed by the blessings and tears
of their mother and sisters ... and have gone out into the world with
nothing but their own strength to look to, and have become distinguished
men of science, celebrated doctors, naturalists, and literary men. And
the little house, covered with tiles, is filled up again in their absence
by a new generation of students, eagerly pressing forward into the
unknown future.
In the lack of any other there is the inheritance of example, the
inheritance of the family fibre. Each one begins for himself, and knows
that the time will come when his old grandmother will lead him down the
worn stone staircase: the grandmother who has seen three generations
into the world, washed them in the little bath, and seen them off with
full confidence in them. He knows that the proud old woman is sure of
him, too, sure that he will do something ... and he invariably does do
something.
_Dann und wann_ after many years all this scattered population is in the
little old home again, all the originals—grown older—of the portraits
hanging in the little drawing-room, in which they are wearing students’
_bérets_ and are wrapped in cloaks with a Rembrandt intention on the
part of the artist: then there is bustle again in the little house, the
two generations get to know each other, become intimate ... and then all
go back to work again. Of course, with all this some one is bound to be
in love with somebody; of course, sentimentality, tears, surprises, and
sweet tarts are the inevitable accompaniment; but all that is effaced
by the real, purely living poetry, full of strength and muscle such
as I have rarely met with in the degenerate, rickety children of the
aristocracy, and still less among the petty-bourgeois, who strictly check
the number of their children in accordance with their account-book.
The ancestral home of Vogt belonged to this class of blessed ancient
German families.
Vogt’s father was an extremely gifted professor of medicine in Berne;
his mother was one of the Vollens, that eccentric Swiss-German family
which was so much talked of at one time. The Vollens were leaders of
Young Germany at the period of _Tugendbunds_ and _Burschenschafts_,
of Karl Sand and of the political _Schwärmerei_ of 1817 and 1818. One
Vollen was thrown into prison for the Wartburg celebration in memory of
Luther: he certainly did deliver an incendiary speech, after which he
made a bonfire of Jesuitical and reactionary books and various symbols
of autocracy and the Papal power. The students dreamed of making him
emperor of a one and undivided Germany. His grandson, Karl Vogt, actually
was one of the _vicars of the empire_ in 1849. Healthy blood must have
flowed in the veins of the son of the Berne professor, in the grandson
of the Vollens—_au bout du compte_, everything depends on the chemical
combination and the quality of the elements. Karl Vogt is not the man to
dispute that with me.
In 1851 I was passing through Berne. Straight from the posting-chaise, I
went to Vogt’s father with a letter from his son. The elder Vogt was at
the university. His wife, a hospitable, lively, and extremely intelligent
old woman, met me; she received me as her son’s friend, and at once
took me to see his portrait. She did not expect her husband home before
six o’clock; I very much wanted to see him, and came back at that time,
but he had already gone to some patients for a consultation. The old
lady greeted me the second time like an old friend, and led me into the
dining-room, wishing me to take a glass of wine. One part of the room
was filled by a large round table fixed immovably into the floor; I had
heard of this table long ago from Vogt, and so was delighted to make its
personal acquaintance. Its inner part moved on an axle: various dishes
were placed upon it; coffee, wine, and everything wanted, such as plates,
mustard, salt, so that any one could turn what he wanted to himself, ham
or preserves, without troubling any one and without the aid of servants.
The only thing was that it would not do to be too dreamy or to talk too
much, or one might put a spoon into the sugar-basin instead of into the
mustard-pot ... if any one had turned the disc. In this large population
of brothers and sisters, intimate friends and relations, in which every
one was differently engaged, and had to keep to fixed hours, a common
dinner in the evening was difficult to arrange. Any one who came in, and
wanted something to eat, sat down to the table, twirled it to the right
or twirled it to the left and managed capitally. The mother and sisters
superintended, and ordered this or that to be brought in.
I could not stay with them; Fazy and Schaller, who were in Berne at the
time, wanted to come and see me in the evening. I promised to visit the
Vogts again if I should stay another half-day, and, after inviting the
younger brother, the law student, to supper with me, went home. I felt
it was out of the question to invite the old father so late, and after
such a day. But about twelve o’clock the waiter, respectfully opening the
door to usher him in, announced: ‘Der Herr Professor Vogt.’ I got up from
the table and went to meet him. A rather tall old man, extremely well
preserved, with a clever, expressive face, walked into the room.
‘Your visit,’ I said, ‘is doubly welcome; I had not dared to ask you so
late after your labours.’
‘I did not want to let you pass through Berne without seeing you. Hearing
that you had been to us twice, and that you had invited Gustav, I invited
myself. I am very, very glad to see you, both from what Karl writes of
you, and, flattery apart, I wanted to make the acquaintance of the
author of _From the Other Shore_.’
‘I thank you most truly: here is a place, please sit down with us; we are
in the middle of supper: what will you take?’
‘I want nothing to eat, but I will drink a glass of wine with pleasure.’
There was so much ease and freedom in his appearance, words, and
movements, together with not that good-heartedness characteristic
of flabby, mawkish, and sentimental people, but with that special
good-heartedness we see in strong natures confident in themselves. His
appearance was not the least constraint to us; on the contrary, it made
everything livelier.
The conversation passed from subject to subject; everywhere and in
everything he was at home, intelligent, _éveillé_, original. The talk
touched on the Federal concert which had been given in the morning in the
Berne Cathedral, at which all had been present except Vogt. The concert
was on an immense scale; musicians and singers had come from all parts
of Switzerland to take part in it. It had, of course, been a concert of
sacred music. Haydn’s celebrated composition had been performed with
talent and understanding. The audience was attentive but cold; it walked
out of the cathedral as people walk out of the morning service; I do
not know how much reverence there was, but there was no enthusiasm. I
experienced the same thing myself. In a moment of candour I said so to
the friends with whom I had gone. Unluckily, they were orthodox, learned,
ardent musicians; they fell upon me, declared I was a profane outsider
who did not know how to listen to deep and serious music.
‘You care for nothing but Chopin’s mazurkas,’ they said.
‘There is no great harm in that,’ I thought, but, considering myself not
a very competent judge, I held my peace.
One needs considerable courage to acknowledge impressions which run
counter to the generally accepted prejudice or opinion. It was a long
while before I could bring myself to say, in the presence of outsiders,
that _Jerusalem Delivered_ was dull, that I could not finish reading the
_New Héloïse_, that _Hermann and Dorothea_ was a masterly production but
disgustingly tedious. I said something of the sort to Vogt, telling him
what I had observed about the concert.
‘Well,’ he asked, ‘do you like Mozart?’
‘Extremely! without reservation.’
‘I knew as much, for I am in complete sympathy with you. How is it
possible for an awakened modern man to force himself artificially into
the religious mood which would make his enjoyment of it natural and
complete? There is no sacred music for us, just as there is no religious
literature; for us it has only an historical interest. In Mozart, on the
other hand, we hear the note of the life familiar to us, he is singing
out of the fulness of feeling and passion, not praying. I remember when
_Don Giovanni_ and the _Nozze di Figaro_ were new, what a delight they
were, what a revelation of a new source of enjoyment! Mozart’s music
created an epoch, a revolution in men’s minds, like Goethe’s _Faust_,
like the year 1789. We saw in his compositions the enlightened thought of
the eighteenth century with its secularisation of life invading music;
with Mozart the revolution and the new age have entered into art. How can
we read Klopstock after _Faust_, or listen to these musical liturgies
without faith?’
The old man talked at length and extraordinarily interestingly. He grew
animated; twice I filled his glass, he did not refuse it, and was in no
haste to drink. At last he looked at his watch: ‘Bah! it’s two o’clock;
good-bye, I have to be with a patient at nine!’
With real affection I escorted him home.
Two years later he showed how much vigour was left in his grey head and
how _real_ his theories were—that is, how close to practice. A Viennese
refugee, Dr. Kudlich, courted one of Vogt’s daughters: the father
consented to the marriage; but, all at once, the Protestant Consistory
demanded the bridegroom’s certificate of baptism. Of course, as an
exile, he could get nothing from Austria, and he presented the sentence
which had been passed upon him in his absence. The mere testimony and
permission of Vogt would have been sufficient for the Consistory, but
the Berne pietists, instinctively hating Vogt and all exiles, persisted.
Then Vogt gathered together all his friends, the professors and various
leading personages of Berne, told them the position, then called his
daughter and Kudlich, took their hands, made them clasp hands, and said
to those present: ‘I call you, friends, to witness that I as father bless
this marriage and give my daughter at her desire to this man.’
This action petrified the pious society of Switzerland; it looked with
indignation and horror at the precedent created not by a hot-headed
youth, nor a homeless refugee, but by an old man of irreproachable
character, respected by every one.
Now let us pass from the father to the elder son.
I made his acquaintance in 1847, at Bakunin’s, but we became particularly
intimate during the two years of our life at Nice. He had not only a
serene intelligence, but one of the serenest characters of all the men I
have seen. I should reckon him a very happy man if I knew that he would
not live long; but there is no counting upon fate, though she has spared
him hitherto, letting him off with nothing worse than a few migraines.
His realistic temperament, full of life and open to everything, has much
to ensure enjoyment, everything to make dullness impossible, and almost
nothing to cause inner torment, the fretting of intellectual discontent,
the suffering from theoretical doubt, and disappointment in practical
life over dreams that cannot be fulfilled. A passionate worshipper of
the beauties of nature, an indefatigable worker in science, he did
everything with extraordinary ease and success; he was not in the least
a dry pedant, but an artist in his own work, he enjoyed it; a radical
by temperament, a realist by constitution, and a humane man through his
clear and good-heartedly ironical outlook, he lived precisely in that
sphere of life to which alone Dante’s words—_Qui è l’uomo felice_—apply.
He spent his life actively and carelessly, never lagging behind, but
everywhere in the foremost rank. He had no fear of bitter truths, and
looked as steadily at men as at polypi and medusæ, expecting nothing from
either but what they could give. His researches were not superficial,
but he felt no impulse to pass beyond a certain depth below which
everything clear ends, and which is in truth, after a fashion, an escape
from reality. He was not lured into those sloughs of despond in which
men revel in their neurotic sufferings. His clear and simple attitude
to life excluded from his healthy outlook the poetry of melancholy, the
ecstasies and morbid humours, which we love as we do everything thrilling
and pungent. His irony, as I observed, was good-natured, his mockery was
light-hearted; he was the first to laugh, and from his heart, at his
own jokes, with which he poisoned the ink and the beer of the pedantic
professors and his parliamentary colleagues _in der Paul’s Kirche_.
This living realism was the common bond of sympathy between us, though
our lives and development had been so different that we disagreed about
many things.
I had not and could not have the harmony and unity that Vogt had. His
education had been as regular as mine had been unsystematic; neither
family continuity nor theoretical growth had ever been interrupted in
him; he was carrying on the tradition of his family. His father stood
beside him an example and a helper; following him, he took up the study
of natural science. Among us each generation is usually at variance with
the one before; there is no common moral tie between us. From my earliest
years I was inevitably struggling against the outlook of every one
surrounding me; I was in opposition in the nursery, because our elders,
our grandfathers, were not Vollens but serf-owners and senators. When I
left it, I flung myself with the same impetuosity into another struggle,
and, as soon as I had finished at the university, was in prison and then
in exile. My continuity of learning was destroyed by this, but it gave me
another kind of training, experience of a world on the one hand wretched,
and on the other hand dirty.
When I was sick of the study of this pathology, I flung myself greedily
upon philosophy, for which Vogt felt an invincible aversion. When he had
completed the medical course and had received his doctor’s diploma, he
could not bring himself to practise, saying that he had not sufficient
faith in the medical hocus-pocus, and devoted himself entirely to
physiology again. His work very soon attracted the attention not only of
German scientists but also of the Parisian Academy of Science. He was
already Professor of Comparative Anatomy in Giessen and the colleague of
Liebig (with whom he afterwards carried on a furious chemico-theological
controversy), when the revolutionary hurricane of 1848 tore him from his
microscope and flung him into the Frankfort Parliament.
I need hardly say that he was in the most radical section, that he
made speeches full of wit and daring, and exhausted the patience of
the mast moderate progressives, and sometimes even of the immoderate
Prussian King. Being by no means a politician, he became, through his
atomic weight, one of the leaders of the opposition; and when Archduke
Johann, who had been a vicar of the Empire, finally threw off the
mask of good-nature and popularity won by marrying the daughter of a
stationmaster and sometimes wearing a frock-coat, Vogt and four others
were elected in his place. Then the fortunes of the German revolution
went rapidly downhill: the governments had attained their object, had
gained time (as Metternich advised), and had no longer need to spare the
parliament. Banished from Frankfort, the parliament had a brief, shadowy
existence at Stuttgart under the melancholy title of _Nach-parlament_.
And there the reactionaries made an end of it. There was nothing left for
the vicars of the Empire but to get away as best they could from certain
prison and penal servitude.... When he crossed the Swiss mountains
Vogt shook the dust of the Frankfort assembly from off his feet, and
inscribing himself in the traveller’s book as ‘K. Vogt, runaway vicar of
the German Empire,’ set to work again upon natural science with the same
untroubled serenity, light-hearted temper, and unwearying industry. He
came to Nice in 1850, with the object of studying marine zoophytes.
Although we started from different directions and came by different
paths, we met in sober maturity in science.
Was I as consistent as Vogt—and in life, did I look at it as soberly?
Now I fancy not. Though indeed I do not know whether it is good to begin
with being sober; it wards off not only many calamities, but also the
best moments of life. It is a difficult question which luckily is settled
for each man, not by choice nor by considerations of what is best, but
by constitution and circumstance. It was not that I tried to retain all
sorts of inconsistent convictions, but _they remained of themselves_,
though I was theoretically emancipated. I outlived the romanticism of
revolution, the mystic belief in progress and in humanity lasted longer
than other theological dogmas; but when I had outlived them, I still
had left a religious belief in individuals, a faith in two or three
men, a confidence in myself, in the human will. There were, of course,
contradictions in this; inner contradictions lead to misfortunes, the
more painful and mortifying because they are deprived of the last comfort
of man, justification in his own eyes....
In Nice, Vogt set to work with extraordinary zeal.... The calm, warm bays
of the Mediterranean Sea is a rich breeding-ground for all _frutti di
mare_, the water is simply full of them. At night the streaks of their
phosphorescent light trail gleaming after a boat and drip from the oar,
the _salpi_ can be picked up with the hand or with any cup or dish. So
he had no lack of material. From early morning Vogt would sit at the
microscope, would watch, would draw, write, or read, and at five o’clock
rush, sometimes with me, into the sea (he swam like a fish); then he
would come to us to dine, and, everlastingly good-humoured, was ready for
a learned discussion or for any sort of nonsense, sang killing songs,
accompanying them on the piano, or told the children stories with such
masterly art that they listened to him for hours without moving.
Vogt possessed an immense talent for exposition. Half in joke he
delivered several lectures on ‘physiology for ladies’ in our house.
Everything came out so living, so simple, and so artistically expressed,
that all the ground he had covered before attaining this clarity was not
suspected. That is the whole problem in teaching—to render science so
intelligible and well assimilated as to make it speak a simple, everyday
language.
There are no difficult sciences; the difficulty lies in the exposition
which is not fully digested. The language of learning, a technical
language with coined words, a shorthand, temporary language, is of use
for students; the meaning is concealed in its algebraic formulæ in order
that in explaining the law the same thing may not be repeated a hundred
times over. Passing through a series of scholastic methods, science has
been overgrown by all this rubbish of the schools, where pedants have
grown so accustomed to the monstrous jargon that they use no other, and
it seems intelligible to them: in former years they even prized it as
something won by hard labour and distinguished from the vulgar tongue. As
we pass from students to real knowledge, props and scaffoldings become
distasteful, and we look for simplicity. Who has not observed that
beginners as a rule make use of many more abstruse words than those who
have mastered the subject?
A second cause of obscurity in science arises from the
unconscientiousness of those who teach it, shown in trying to conceal
part of the truth and to avoid risky questions. Science which has any
object except the knowledge of the truth is not science. It ought to
have the courage of direct, open speech. No one could charge Vogt with
lack of candour, with timid compromise. ‘Sensitive souls’ more readily
reproach him with telling too directly and too simply what he holds for
the truth, in direct contradiction with the generally received deception.
The Christian attitude has trained us to dualism, to ideal imagery, so
thoroughly that everything naturally healthy strikes us unpleasantly.
Our intelligence, warped through ages, is disgusted by naked beauty, by
daylight, and craves for twilight and a veil.
Many when reading Vogt are offended at his accepting the most startling
consequences so readily, at his finding it so easy to sacrifice things,
at his having to make no effort, at his not worrying to try to reconcile
theology with biology; it is as though he had nothing to do with the
former.
As a matter of fact, Vogt’s temperament was such that he never had
thought differently and was incapable of thinking differently; that was
just where his direct realism came in. Theological objections could
have for him only an historical interest; the absurdity of dualism was
so clear to his simple outlook that he could not enter into serious
controversy with it, just as his opponents—the theologians of chemistry
and the holy fathers of physiology—cannot seriously discuss magic or
astrology. Vogt brushed aside their attacks with a jest—and, unluckily,
that is not enough.
The nonsense with which they answered him is the nonsense believed all
the world over, and for that reason very important. The childishness of
the human brain is such that it will not accept the simple truth; for
vague, muddled, and incoherent minds nothing is intelligible but what is
incomprehensible, what is impossible or absurd.
There is no need to go to the common herd for examples; literary
and cultivated circles, legal and learned institutions, governments
and revolutionaries, vie with each other in maintaining the innate
senselessness of mankind. And just as seventy years ago the frigid deist
Robespierre executed Anacharsis Cloots,[74] so the Wagners and their like
would to-day hand Vogt over to the hangman.
The struggle is impossible; all the strength is on their side. Against
a handful of scientists, naturalists, doctors, two or three thinkers
and poets, stands the whole world, from Pius IX. with the Immaculate
Conception to Mazzini with the Republican Iddio; from the Moscow orthodox
hysterics of Slavophilism to Lieutenant-General Radowitz, who when he
was dying bequeathed to Wagner, the professor of physiology, what it
had never occurred to any one to bequeath before—the immortality of the
soul, and its defence; from American spiritualists who call up the dead,
to English missionary colonels who preach the Word of God to Indians on
horseback at the head of their soldiers. There is nothing left for free
men but the consciousness of being right, and hope in future generations.
And suppose it is proved that this senselessness, this religious mania,
is the essential condition of organised society, that for men to live
quietly side by side they must be driven out of their wits and terrified,
that this mania is the one dodge by which history is created?
I remember a French caricature aimed at some time or other against the
Fourierists with their _attraction passionnée_; it represents an ass with
a stick fixed upon its back, and a wisp of hay hung on the stick so that
he can see it. The donkey, thinking to reach the hay, is obliged to move
forward—the hay, of course, moves too, and he follows it. Perhaps the
worthy animal might progress in that way, but all the same he would be
made a fool of!
I will pass now to an account of how hospitably I was received by one
country when another had just turned me out for no reason whatever.
Schaller promised Vogt to take steps about my naturalisation—that is,
to find a commune which would consent to receive me and then to support
the case in the Great Council. For naturalisation in Switzerland it is
essential that some town or village commune should previously agree
to accept the new citizen, a regulation quite in keeping with the
self-government of each canton and each little district. The village
of Châtel near Morat (Murten) agreed to receive my family into the
number of its peasant families for a small money contribution to the
village society. This village is not far from the lake of Murten, the
neighbourhood of which was the scene of the defeat and slaying of Charles
the Bold, whose unhappy death and name were so adroitly used by the
Austrian censorship (and afterwards the Petersburg one) to replace the
name of William Tell in Rossini’s opera.
When the case came before the Great Council, two Jesuitical deputies
raised their voices against me, but did nothing. One of them said that it
ought to be ascertained why I was in exile, and how I had provoked the
anger of Nicholas. ‘Why, but that’s a recommendation in itself!’ somebody
answered, and they all laughed. Another, from far-sighted prudence,
asked for fresh guarantees that in case of my death the education and
maintenance of my children would not fall on the poor commune. This son
in Jesus too was satisfied by Schaller’s answer. My rights of citizenship
were accepted by a vast majority, and I was transformed from an upper
court councillor to a peasant of the village of Châtel near Murten,
_originaire de Châtel près Morat_, as the Freiburg clerk wrote on my
passport.
Naturalisation, however, is no hindrance to a career in Russia. I have
two illustrious examples before my eyes: Louis-Napoleon became a citizen
of Thurgovie, and Alexander the Second a burgher of Darmstadt; both
became emperors after their naturalisation. I am not going so far as that.
On receiving the news of the ratification of my rights, it was almost
necessary for me to go and thank my new fellow-citizens and to make their
acquaintance. Moreover, just at that time I had an intense craving to be
alone, to look into myself, to revise the past, to discern something in
the mist of the future, and I was glad of this external reason.
On the eve of my departure from Nice, I received a summons from the head
of the police _di la Sicurezza publica_. He informed me that I was
ordered by the Minister of the Interior to leave immediately the domains
of Sardinia. This strange step on the part of the tame and evasive
Sardinian Government surprised me far more than my banishment from Paris
in 1850; besides, there was no sort of occasion for it.
I am told that I was indebted for it to the zeal of two or three faithful
Russian subjects living in Nice, and among them it is pleasant for me to
name the Minister of Justice, Panin; it was more than he could tolerate
that a man who had brought upon himself the Imperial wrath of Nicholas
was not only living in peace and in the same town as himself, but was
actually writing articles, though aware that the Most High did not look
upon this with favour. When he went to Turin, this Minister of Justice, I
am told, asked the minister Azeglio, as a friend, to banish me. Azeglio’s
heart, probably, had some intuition that when I was learning Italian in
the Krutitsky Barracks I had read his _La Disfida di Barletta_—a novel
neither ‘classical nor old-fashioned,’ though nevertheless tedious; and
so he did nothing, or perhaps he hesitated to send me out because such
friendly attentions should have been preceded by the sending of a Russian
ambassador, and Nicholas was still sulking over the revolutionary ideas
of Charles Albert.
On the other hand, the chief of police in Nice and the ministers in
Turin took advantage of the suggestion at the first opportunity. Some
days before I was turned out, there was a popular demonstration in Nice,
in which the boatmen and shopkeepers, carried away by the eloquence of
the banker Avigdor, protested, and rather audaciously too, against the
suppression of the free port, talking of the independence of the duchy of
Nice, and its inalienable rights. The imposition of a light customs-duty
on the whole kingdom diminished their privileges, regardless of the
‘independence of the duchy of Nice,’ and its rights ‘inscribed on the
scrolls of history.’
Avigdor, that O’Connell of the Paillon (that is the name of the dry
river that runs through Nice), was thrown into prison, patrols paraded
the streets at night, and so did the people, and both sang songs, the
same songs too; and that was all. Need I say that neither I nor any
other foreigner took any part in this domestic quarrel over tariffs and
customs-duties? Nevertheless, the _Intendant_ pitched upon several of the
refugees as ringleaders, and among them, upon me. The ministry, wishing
to set an example of salutary severity, ordered me to be turned out
together with the rest.
I went to the _Intendant_ (a Jesuit), and, observing to him that it was a
superfluous luxury to turn a man out when he was going of himself and had
his passport already viséd in his pocket, asked him what was wrong. He
declared that he was as surprised as I was, and that the measure had been
taken by the Ministry of the Interior without any preliminary reference
to himself. At the same time, he was so extremely polite that I had no
doubt in my mind that he was responsible for the whole nasty business.
I reported my conversation with him to the well-known deputy in the
opposition, Lorenzo Valerio, and went off to Paris.
Valerio made a savage attack upon the minister in his interpellation, and
demanded the reasons for my deportation. The minister was disconcerted,
denied any influence of the Russian diplomacy, threw everything upon the
report of the _Intendant_, and meekly concluded by saying that if the
ministry had acted too hastily and imprudently it would with pleasure
alter its decision.
The opposition applauded; consequently, _de facto_, the prohibition
was withdrawn, but though I wrote to the minister he made no answer.
I read Valerio’s speech and the answer to it in the newspapers, and
resolved to go simply to Turin on the return journey from Freiburg.
That I might not be refused a visa, I went without a visa; on the Swiss
border of Piedmont, passports are not examined with the savage zeal of
French gendarmes. In Turin I went to the Minister of the Interior: I was
received by his deputy, who superintended the superior police, Count
Pons de la Martino, a man well known in those parts, clever, crafty, and
devoted to the Catholic party.
His reception surprised me. He said to me everything I had meant to say
to him; something similar had happened to me in one of my interviews with
Dubbelt, but Count Pons far outdid that.
He was a very elderly, thin, sickly-looking man of most unprepossessing
appearance, with malicious, sly-looking features, rough grey hair, and
a rather clerical aspect. Before I had time to say a dozen words in
regard to the reason of my asking for an interview with the minister, he
interrupted me with the words:—
‘Why, upon my word, what doubt can there be about it?... Go to Nice,
go to Genoa, stay here—only without the slightest _rancune_ ... it was
all the doing of the _Intendant_ ... you see, we are still learning our
business, we are not accustomed to legality, to constitutional order. If
you had done anything contrary to the law, there is a law-court for that;
then you would have no cause to complain of injustice, would you?’
‘I quite agree with you, I should not.’
‘Instead of that _they take_ steps which cause irritation ... and excite
an uproar—and without any need whatever!’
After this speech against _himself_, he hastily snatched up a piece of
paper with the ministerial imprint, and wrote: _Si permette al Sig. A. H.
di ritornare a Nizza e di restarvi quanto tempo credera convienente. Per
il ministro S. Martino—12 Giulio 1851._ ‘Here, take this to provide for
all possibilities, though you may rest assured that you will never need
it. I am very glad, very glad indeed, that we have settled this business
with you.’
As this was equivalent, in the vulgar tongue, to ‘Go, and God bless you,’
I left my Pons, smiling at the thought of the face of the _Intendant_ at
Nice; but Providence did not favour me with the sight of it—he had been
transferred.
But to return to Freiburg and its canton: when, like all mortals who have
been in Freiburg, we had listened to the celebrated organ and driven
over the celebrated bridge, we set off for Châtel, accompanied by a
good-natured old man, the treasurer of the Freiburg canton. At Murten
the prefect of police, a vigorous man and a radical, asked us to stay
with him, telling us that the village elder had charged him to send word
beforehand of our arrival, as he and the other householders would be very
much disappointed if I came without letting them know; and they were all
in the fields at work when I arrived. After walking about Morat or Murten
for a couple of hours, we set off, and the prefect with us.
Near the elder’s house several old peasants were awaiting us, headed by
the elder himself, a tall, venerable, grey-headed, and rather bent but
muscular old man. He stepped forward, took off his hat, held out his
broad, strong hand to me, and saying, ‘_Lieber Mitbürger ..._,’ delivered
a speech of welcome in such Swiss-German that I did not understand a word
of it. It was possible to make a rough guess at what he could say to me,
and therefore, reflecting that if I concealed that I did not understand
him, he would conceal that he did not understand me, I boldly answered
him:—
‘Dear Citizen Elder, and dear fellow-citizens of Châtel! I am come to
thank you for giving a refuge to me and my children in your commune,
and putting an end to my homeless wandering. I, dear citizens, did not
leave my native land to seek another; I loved the Russian people with my
whole heart, but I left Russia because I could not be a dumb, inactive
witness of oppression. I left it after exile pursued by the ferocious
despotism of Nicholas. His powerful arm, which has reached me everywhere
where there is a king or a lord, is not long enough to reach me in your
commune! Without fear I put myself under your protection, as in a haven
where I can always find peace. You, citizens of Châtel, you a handful of
men, you taking me amongst you, have been able to arrest the lifted hand
of the Russian Emperor armed with a million bayonets. You are stronger
than he! But you are strong only through the free republican institutions
that have been yours for ages! With pride I enter into your commune, and
hurrah for the Helvetian Republic!’
‘_Dem neuen Bürger hoch! Es lebe der neue Bürger!_’ answered the old men,
and warmly pressed my hand; I myself was somewhat agitated!
The village elder invited us into his house.
We went in, and sat down on benches at a long table on which there was
bread and cheese. Two peasants dragged in a bottle of terrific size,
larger than those famous bottles which are snugly stored away for whole
winters in our old-fashioned houses in some corner by the stove, filled
with home-made liqueurs and cordials. This bottle was covered with
basket-work, and full of white wine. The village elder told us that this
was the local wine, but that it was very old, that he remembered the
bottle for over thirty years, and that this wine was only drunk on very
special occasions. All the peasants sat down with us to the table except
two, who were busy with the cathedral-like bottle. They poured wine from
it into a large jug, and the village elder poured it from the jug into
the glasses; there was a glass before every peasant, but he brought me
a grand crystal goblet, observing as he did so to the treasurer and the
prefect: ‘You must excuse me on this occasion; to-day we offer the cup of
honour to our fellow-citizen; you are old friends.’
While the elder was filling the glasses, I noticed that one of the
company, dressed not quite like a peasant, was very restless, mopping his
face, turning crimson, and seeming ill at ease; when the village elder
proposed they should drink my health, he leaped on his feet with the
courage of despair, and addressing me began a speech. ‘That,’ the elder
whispered in my ear with a significant air, ‘is the citizen teacher in
our school.’ I stood up.
The teacher spoke not Swiss but German, and not simply but on the model
of particularly famous orators and writers: he referred both to William
Tell and to Charles the Bold (what would the Austrian and Russian stage
censorship have done?—perhaps they would have called them William the
Bold and Charles Tell), and at the same time did not forget the less new
than expressive comparison of bondage with a gilded cage from which the
bird will still strive to be free. Nicholas caught it hot from him; he
ranked him with very disreputable persons from Roman history. I almost
interrupted him at that point to say, ‘Don’t insult the dead,’ but, as
though from a presentiment that Nicholas would soon be among them, held
my peace.
The peasants listened to him, craning their wrinkled sunburnt necks and
putting up their hands to their ears like sunshades; the treasurer had a
little nap, and to conceal the fact was the first to praise the orator.
Meanwhile the village elder was not sitting idle, but zealously filling
up glasses and preparing toasts like the most practised master of
the ceremonies—‘To the Confederation!’ ‘To Freiburg and its radical
government!’ ‘To President Schaller!’
‘To my kindly fellow-citizens of Châtel!’ I proposed at last, feeling
that the wine, though its taste was not strong, was far from weak in its
effects. All rose to their feet.... The elder said: ‘No, no, _lieber
Mitbürger_, a full glass, as we drank a full glass to you.’ My venerable
friends were becoming expansive, the wine was warming them up.... ‘Bring
your children,’ said one. ‘Yes, yes,’ others chimed in; ‘let them see how
we live: we are simple people, they will learn no harm from us, and we
shall have a look at them.’
‘Certainly!’ I answered, ‘certainly!’
Then the village elder began apologising for the poorness of their
reception, saying that it was all the treasurer’s fault, that he ought
to have let them know two days beforehand, that then it would have been
very different, they might have provided a band, and that they would have
welcomed and escorted me with gun-shots. I very nearly said to him, _à
la_ Louis-Philippe: ‘After all, what has happened?—only one peasant more
in Châtel.’
We parted great friends. I was rather surprised that I had seen not one
woman or girl, nor even one young man. It was a working day, however. It
is noteworthy, too, that to a festivity so unusual for them the pastor
had not been invited.
I felt greatly indebted to them for that. The pastor would certainly have
spoilt it all; he would have delivered a stupid sermon, and with his
decorous propriety would have been like a fly in a glass of wine which
must be removed before you can drink with pleasure.
At last we were seated again in the treasurer’s little carriage, or
rather chaise; we took the prefect to Morat, and set off for Freiburg.
The sky was covered with storm-clouds; I felt sleepy and giddy. I tried
not to go to sleep: surely it cannot be their wine? I wondered with some
contempt for myself.... The treasurer smiled slyly, and then himself
began dozing; drops of rain began falling, I covered myself with my
overcoat, must have fallen asleep ... then woke up at the contact of cold
water.... The rain was pouring in bucketsful, black storm-clouds seemed
striking fire from craggy heights, far-away peals of thunder came rolling
over the mountains. The treasurer was standing in the hall laughing
loudly and talking with the host of the Zöringer Hof.
‘Well,’ the host asked me, ‘it seems our simple peasant wine is very
different from the French, eh?’
‘Why, can we have arrived?’ I asked, emerging drenched from the chaise.
‘There’s nothing strange in that,’ observed the treasurer; ‘what is
strange is that you have slept through a storm such as we have not had
for a long time. Did you really hear nothing?’
‘Nothing!’
Afterwards I found out that the simple Swiss wines, which do not taste
at all strong, acquire great strength with age and act powerfully on
those unaccustomed to them. The treasurer avoided telling me this on
purpose; besides, even if he had told me I could not have refused the
peasants’ good-natured hospitality and their toasts, still less could I
have ceremoniously moistened my lips and made difficulties. That I did
the right thing is proved by the fact that when a year later, on my way
from Berne to Geneva, I met the prefect of Morat at the station, he said
to me: ‘Do you know how you acquired great popularity among our Châtel
peasants?’ ‘No!’ ‘To this day they tell with proud self-satisfaction how
their new fellow-citizen, after drinking their wine, slept through a
storm and drove in a downpour of rain from Morat to Freiburg, knowing
nothing about it.’
And so that is how I became a free citizen of the Swiss Confederation and
got drunk on Châtel wine.[75]