My father was taken straight to Arakchéyev’s[[8]] house and detained there. When the Minister asked for the letter, my father said that he had given his word of honour to deliver it in person. The Minister then promised to consult the Tsar, and informed him next day in writing, that he himself was commissioned by the Tsar to receive the letter and present it at once. For the letter he gave a receipt, which also has been preserved. For about a month my father was under arrest in Arakchéyev’s house; no friend might see him, and his only visitor was S. Shishkóv, whom the Tsar sent to ask for details about the burning of Moscow, the entry of the French, and the interview with Napoleon. No eye-witness of these events had reached Petersburg except my father. At last he was told that the Tsar ordered him to be set at liberty; he was excused, on the ground of necessity, for having accepted a safe-conduct from the French authorities; but he was ordered to leave Petersburg at once, without having communication with anyone, except that he was allowed to say good-bye to his elder brother.
[8]. This minister was the real ruler of Russia till the death of Alexander in 1825.
When he reached at nightfall the little village where we were, my father found us in a peasant’s cottage; there was no manor-house on that estate. I was sleeping on a settle near the window; the window would not shut tight, and the snow, drifting through the crack, had covered part of a stool, and lay, without melting, on the window-sill.
All were in great distress and confusion, and especially my mother. One morning, some days before my father arrived, the head man of the village came hurriedly into the cottage where she was living, and made signs to her that she was to follow him. My mother could not speak a word of Russian at that time; she could only make out that the man was speaking of my uncle Paul; she did not know what to think; it came into her head that the people had murdered him or wished to murder first him and then her. She took me in her arms and followed the head man, more dead than alive, and shaking all over. She entered the cottage occupied by my uncle; he was actually dead, and his body lay near a table at which he had begun to shave; a stroke of paralysis had killed him instantly.
My mother was only seventeen then, and her feelings may be imagined. She was surrounded by half-savage bearded men, dressed in sheepskins and speaking a language to her utterly incomprehensible; she was living in a small, smoke-grimed peasant’s cottage; and it was the month of November in the terrible winter of 1812. My uncle had been her one support, and she spent days and nights in tears for his loss. But those “savages” pitied her with all their heart; their simple kindness never failed her, and their head man sent his son again and again to the town, to fetch raisins and gingerbread, apples and biscuits, to tempt her to eat.
Fifteen years later, this man was still living and sometimes paid us a visit at Moscow. The little hair he had left was then white as snow. My mother used to give him tea and talk over that winter of 1812; she reminded him how frightened she was of him, and how the pair of them, entirely unintelligible to one another, made the arrangements about my uncle’s funeral. The old man continued to call my mother Yulíza Ivánovna (her name was Luise); and he always boasted that I was quite willing to go to him and not in the least afraid of his long beard.
We travelled by stages to Tver and finally to Moscow, which we reached after about a year. At the same time, a brother of my father’s returned from Sweden and settled down in the same house with us. Formerly ambassador in Westphalia, he had been sent on some mission to the court of Bernadotte.
§4
I still remember dimly the traces of the great fire, which were visible even in the early twenties—big houses with the roof gone and window-frames burnt out, heaps of fallen masonry, empty spaces fenced off from the street, remnants of stoves and chimneys sticking up out of them.
Stories of the Great Fire, the battle of Borodino, the crossing of the Berezina, and the taking of Paris—these took the place of cradle-song and fairy-tale to me, they were my Iliad and Odyssey. My mother and our servants, my father and my old nurse, were never tired of going back to that terrible time, which was still so recent and had been brought home to them so painfully. Later, our officers began to return from foreign service to Moscow. Men who had served in former days with my father in the Guards and had taken a glorious part in the fierce contest of the immediate past, were often at our house; and to them it was a relief from their toils and dangers to tell them over again. That was indeed the most brilliant epoch in the history of Petersburg: the consciousness of power breathed new life into Russia; business and care were, so to speak, put off till the sober morrow, and all the world was determined to make merry to-day and celebrate the victory.