Thereupon he told me a strange story, which I was able to verify at a later date by means of papers preserved in the Home Office at Petersburg.
§6
Tufáyev had a mistress at Perm, the sister of a humble official named Petrovski. The fact was notorious, and the brother was laughed at. Wishing therefore to break off this connexion, he threatened to write to Petersburg and lay information, and, in short, made such a noise and commotion that the police arrested him one day as insane and brought him up to be examined before the administration of the province. The judges and the inspector of public health—he was an old German, much beloved by the poor, and I knew him personally—all agreed that Petrovski was insane.
But Chebotarev knew Petrovski and had been his doctor. He told the inspector that Petrovski was not mad at all, and urged a fresh examination; otherwise, he would feel bound to carry the matter further. The administration raised no difficulties; but unfortunately Petrovski died in the mad-house before the day fixed for the second examination, though he was a young man and enjoyed good health.
News of the affair now reached Petersburg. The sister was arrested (Tufáyev ought to have been) and a secret enquiry began. Tufáyev dictated the replies of the witnesses. He surpassed himself in this business. He devised a means to stifle it for ever and to save himself from a second involuntary journey to Siberia. He actually induced the sister to say that her youth and inexperience had been taken advantage of by the late Tsar Alexander when he passed through Perm, and that the quarrel with her brother dated from that event.
Was her story true? Well, la regina ne aveva molto,[[92]] says the story-teller in Púshkin’s Egyptian Nights.
[92]. The reference in Púshkin is to Cleopatra’s lovers.
§7
Such was the man who now undertook to teach me the business of administration, a worthy pupil of Arakchéyev, acrobat, tramp, clerk, secretary, Governor, a tender-hearted, unselfish being, who shut up sane men in mad-houses and made away with them there.
I was entirely at his mercy. He had only to write some nonsense to the Minister at Petersburg, and I should be packed off to Irkutsk. Indeed, writing was unnecessary; he had the right to transfer me to some savage place like Kai or Tsarevo-Sanchursk, where there were no resources and no means of communication. He sent one young Pole to Glazov, because the ladies had the bad taste to prefer him as a partner in the mazurka to His Excellency. In this way Prince Dolgorúkov was transferred from Perm to Verchoturye, a place in the Government of Perm, buried in mountains and snow-drifts, with as bad a climate as Beryózov and even less society.