§22
Our special group consisted of five to begin with, and then we fell in with a sixth, Vadim Passek.
There was much that was new to us in Vadim. We five had all been brought up in very much the same way: we knew no places but Moscow and the surrounding country; we had read the same books and taken lessons from the same teachers; we had been educated either at home or in the boarding-school connected with the University. But Vadim was born in Siberia, during his father’s exile, and had suffered poverty and privation. His father was his teacher, and he was one of a large family, who grew up familiar with want but free from all other restraints. Siberia has a stamp of its own, quite unlike the stamp of provincial Russia; those who bear it have more health and more elasticity. Compared to Vadim we were tame. His courage was of a different kind, heroic and at times overbearing; the high distinction of suffering had developed in him a special kind of pride, but he had also a generous warmth of heart. He was bold, and even imprudent to excess; but a man born in Siberia and belonging to a family of exiles has this advantage over others, that Siberia has for him no terrors.
As soon as we met, Vadim rushed into our arms. Very soon we became intimate. It should be said that there was nothing of the nature of ceremony or prudent precaution in our little coterie of those days.
“Would you like to know Ketcher, of whom you have heard so much?” Vadim once asked me.
“Of course I should.”
“Well, come at seven to-morrow evening, and don’t be late; he will be at our house.”
When I arrived, Vadim was out. A tall man with an expressive face was waiting for him and shot a glance, half good-natured and half formidable, at me from under his spectacles. I took up a book, and he followed my example.
“I say,” he began, as he opened the book, “are you Herzen?”
And so conversation began and soon grew fast and furious. Ketcher soon interrupted me with no ceremony: “Excuse me! I should be obliged if you would address me as ‘thou.’”
“By all means!” said I. And from that minute—perhaps it was the beginning of 1831—we were inseparable friends; and from that minute Ketcher’s friendly laugh or fierce shout became a part of my life at all its stages.
The acquaintance with Vadim brought a new and gentler element into our camp.
As before, our chief meeting-place was Ogaryóv’s house. His invalid father had gone to live in the country, and he lived alone on the ground-floor of their Moscow house, which was near the University and had a great attraction for us all. Ogaryóv had that magnetic power which forms the first point of crystallisation in any medley of disordered atoms, provided the necessary affinity exists. Though scattered in all directions, they become imperceptibly the heart of an organism. In his bright cheerful room with its red and gold wall-paper, amid the perpetual smell of tobacco and punch and other—I was going to say, eatables and drinkables, but now I remember that there was seldom anything to eat but cheese—we often spent the time from dark till dawn in heated argument and sometimes in noisy merriment. But, side by side with that hospitable students’ room, there grew more and more dear to us another house, in which we learned—I might say, for the first time—respect for family life.
Vadim often deserted our discussions and went off home: when he had not seen his mother and sisters for some time, he became restless. To us our little club was the centre of the world, and we thought it strange that he should prefer the society of his family; were not we a family too?
Then he introduced us to his family. They had lately returned from Siberia; they were ruined, yet they bore that stamp of dignity which calamity engraves, not on every sufferer, but on those who have borne misfortune with courage.