§11
But Dvigubski was by no means a good-natured professor: his reception of us was exceedingly abrupt and discourteous; I talked terrible nonsense and was rude, and the baron played second fiddle to me. Dvigubski was provoked and ordered us to appear before the Council next morning. The Council settled our business in half an hour: they questioned, condemned, and sentenced us, and referred the sentence, for confirmation, to Prince Golitsyn.
I had hardly had time to give half a dozen performances in the lecture-room, representing the proceedings of the University Court, when the beginning of the lecture was interrupted by the appearance of a party, consisting of our inspector, an army major, a French dancing-master, and a corporal, who carried an order for my arrest and incarceration. Some students escorted me, and there were many more in the court-yard, who waved their hands or caps. Clearly I was not the first victim. The University police tried in vain to push them back.
I found two captives already immured in the dirty cellar which served as a prison, and there were two more in another room; six was the total number of those who suffered for this affair. We were sentenced to a diet of bread and water, and, though we declined some soup which the Rector sent us, we did not suffer; for when the College emptied at nightfall, our friends brought us cheese, game, cigars, wine, and liqueurs. The sentry grumbled and scolded, but he took a small bribe, and introduced the supplies. After midnight, he moved to some distance and allowed several of our friends to join us. And so we spent our time, feasting by night and sleeping by day.
A certain Panin, a brother of the Minister of Justice and employed under our Visitor, mindful of Army traditions, took it into his head one night to go the rounds and inspect our cellar-prison. We had just lit a candle, keeping it under a chair to betray no light, and were attacking our midnight meal, when a knocking was heard at the outer door, not the meek sound that begs for admittance and fears to be heard more than not to be heard, but a knock of power and authority. The sentry turned rigid, we hid the bottles and our guests in a cupboard, blew out the light, and dropped on our pallet-beds. Panin came in. “You appear to be smoking,” he said—the smoke was so thick that Panin and the inspector who were carrying a lantern were hardly visible. “Where do they get a light from? From you?” he asked the sentry. The man swore he was innocent, and we said that we had got tinder of our own. The inspector promised to take it and our cigars away; and Panin went off, without ever noticing that there were twice as many caps in the room as heads.
On Saturday evening the inspector appeared and announced that I and one other might go home; the rest were to stay till Monday. I resented this proposal and asked him whether I might stay. He fell back a step, looked at me with that expression of dignified wrath which is worn by ballet-dancers when representing angry kings or heroes, and said, “By all means, if you want to!” Then he left us; and this sally on my part brought down more paternal wrath on me than any other part of the affair.
Thus the first nights which I spent away from home were spent in prison. I was soon to experience a prison of another kind, and there I spent, not eight days, but nine months; and when these had passed, instead of going home, I went into exile. But much happened before that.
From this time I was a popular hero in the lecture-room. Till then I was considered “all right” by the rest; but, after the Málov affair, I became, like the lady in Gógol, all right in the fullest sense of that term.