Our intimacy did not last long: the Governor soon perceived that I was unfit to move in the highest circles of Vyatka.
After three months he was dissatisfied with me, and after six months he hated me. I ceased to attend his dinners, and never even called at his house. As we shall see later, it was a visit to Vyatka from the Crown Prince[[96]] that saved me from his persecution.
[96]. Afterwards Alexander II.
In this connexion it is necessary to add that I did nothing whatever to deserve either his attentions and invitations at first, or his anger and ill-usage afterwards. He could not endure in me an attitude which, though not at all rude, was independent; my behaviour was perfectly correct, but he demanded servility.
He was greedily jealous of the power which he had worked hard to gain, and he sought not merely obedience but the appearance of unquestioning subordination. Unfortunately, in this respect he was a true Russian.
The gentleman says to his servant: “Hold your tongue! I will not allow you to answer me back.”
The head of an office says to any subordinate who ventures on a protest: “You forget yourself. Do you know to whom you are speaking?”
Tufáyev cherished a secret but intense hatred for everything aristocratic, and it was the result of bitter experience. For him the penal servitude of Arakchéyev’s office was a harbour of refuge and freedom, such as he had never enjoyed before. In earlier days his employers, when they gave him small jobs to do, never offered him a chair; when he served in the Controller’s office, he was treated with military roughness by the soldiers and once horse-whipped by a colonel in the streets of Vilna. The clerk stored all this up in his heart and brooded over it; and now he was Governor, and it was his turn to play the tyrant, to keep a man standing, to address people familiarly, to speak unnecessarily loudly, and at times to commit long-descended nobles for trial.
From Perm he was promoted to Tver. But the nobles, however deferential and subservient, could not stand Tufáyev. They petitioned for his removal, and he was sent to Vyatka.
There he was in his element once more. Officials and distillers, factory-owners and officials,—what more could the heart of man desire? Everyone trembled before him and got up when he approached; everyone gave him dinners, offered him wine, and sought to anticipate his wishes; at every wedding or birthday party the first toast proposed was “His Excellency the Governor!”