§2
The Sparrow Hills, at the foot of which Sonnenberg had been so nearly drowned, soon became to us a Holy Place.
One day after dinner, my father proposed to take a drive into the country, and, as Niko was in the house, invited him and Sonnenberg to join us. These drives were no joke. Though the carriage was made by Iochim, most famous of coachmakers, it had been used, if not severely, for fifteen years till it had become old and ugly, and it weighed more than a siege mortar, so that we took an hour or more to get outside the city-gates. Our four horses, ill-matched both in size and colour, underworked and overfed, were covered with sweat and lather in a quarter of an hour; and the coachman, knowing that this was forbidden, had to keep them at a walk. However hot it was, the windows were generally kept shut. To all this you must add the steady pressure of my father’s eye and Sonnenberg’s perpetual fussy interference; and yet we boys were glad to endure it all, in order that we might be together.
We crossed the Moscow River by a ferry at the very place where the Cossack pulled Sonnenberg out of the water. My father walked along with gloomy aspect and stooping figure, as always, while Sonnenberg trotted at his side and tried to amuse him with scandal and gossip. We two walked on in front till we had got a good lead; then we ran off to the site of Vitberg’s cathedral[[35]] on the Sparrow Hills.
[35]. See part II, chap. IX.
Panting and flushed, we stood there and wiped our brows. The sun was setting, the cupolas of Moscow glittered in his rays, the city at the foot of the hill spread beyond our vision, a fresh breeze fanned our cheeks. We stood there leaning against each other; then suddenly we embraced and, as we looked down upon the great city, swore to devote our lives to the struggle we had undertaken.
Such an action may seem very affected and theatrical on our part; but when I recall it, twenty-six years after, it affects me to tears. That it was absolutely sincere has been proved by the whole course of our lives. But all vows taken on that spot are evidently doomed to the same fate: the Emperor Alexander also acted sincerely when he laid the first stone of the cathedral there, but the first stone was also the last.
We did not know the full power of our adversary, but still we threw down the glove. Power dealt us many a shrewd blow, but we never surrendered to it, and it was not power that crushed us. The scars inflicted by power are honourable; the strained thigh of Jacob was a sign that he had wrestled with God in the night.
From that day the Sparrow Hills became a place of pilgrimage for us: once or twice a year we walked there, and always by ourselves. There, five years later, Ogaryóv asked me with a modest diffidence whether I believed in his poetic gift. And in 1833 he wrote to me from the country:
“Since I left Moscow, I have felt sad, sadder than I ever was in my life. I am always thinking of the Sparrow Hills. I long kept my transports hidden in my heart; shyness or some other feeling prevented me from speaking of them. But on the Sparrow Hills these transports were not lessened by solitude: you shared them with me, and those moments are unforgettable; like recollections of bygone happiness, they pursued me on my journey, though I passed no hills but only forests.”
“Tell the world,” he ended, “how our lives (yours and mine) took shape on the Sparrow Hills.”
Five more years passed, and I was far from those Hills, but their Prometheus, Alexander Vitberg, was near me, a sorrowful and gloomy figure. After my return to Moscow, I visited the place again in 1842; again I stood by the foundation-stone and surveyed the same scene; and a companion was with me—but it was not my friend.