§6
Within a week or a fortnight the pock-marked policeman came again and went with me again to Tsinski’s house. Inside the door some men in chains were sitting or lying, surrounded by soldiers with rifles; and in the front room there were others, of various ranks in society, not chained but strictly guarded. My policeman told me that these were incendiaries. As Tsinski himself had gone to the scene of the fires, we had to wait for his return. We arrived at nine in the evening; and at one in the morning no one had asked for me, and I was still sitting very peacefully in the front hall with the incendiaries. One or other of them was summoned from time to time; the police ran backward and forward, the chains clinked, and the soldiers, for want of occupation, rattled their rifles and went through the manual exercise. Tsinski arrived about one, black with smoke and grime, and hurried on to his study without stopping. Half an hour later my policeman was summoned; when he came back, he looked pale and upset and his face twitched convulsively. Tsinski followed him, put his head in at the door, and said: “Why, the members of the Commission were waiting for you, M. Herzen, the whole evening. This fool brought you here at the hour when you were summoned to Prince Golitsyn’s house instead. I am very sorry you have had to wait so long, but I am not to blame. What can one do, with such subordinates? I suppose he has been fifty years in the service, and is as great a blockhead as ever. Well,” he added, turning to the policeman and addressing him in a much less polite style, “be off now and go back.”
All the way home the man kept repeating: “Lord! what bad luck! A man never knows what’s going to happen to him. He will do for me now. He wouldn’t matter so much; but the Prince will be angry, and the Commissioner will catch it for your not being there. Oh, what a misfortune!”
I forgave him the hock, especially when he declared that, though he was once nearly drowned at Lisbon, he was less scared then than now. This adventure surprised me so much that I roared with laughter. “How utterly absurd! What on earth took you to Lisbon?” I asked. It turned out that he had served in the Fleet twenty-five years before. The statesman in Gógol’s novel, who declares that every servant of the State in Russia meets with his reward sooner or later,[[69]] certainly spoke the truth. For death spared my friend at Lisbon, in order that he might be scolded like a naughty boy by Tsinski, after forty years’ service.
[69]. Gógol, Dead Souls, Part I, chap. 10.
Besides, he was hardly at all to blame in the matter. The Tsar was dissatisfied with the original Commission of Enquiry, and had appointed another, with Prince Serghéi Golitsyn as chairman; the other members were Staal, the Commandant of Moscow, another Prince Golitsyn, Shubenski, a colonel of police, and Oranski, formerly paymaster-general. As my Lisbon friend had received no notice that the new Commission would sit at a different place, it was very natural that he should take me to Tsinski’s house.