After the Senator had left it, the whole house assumed a more and more gloomy aspect. The walls, the furniture, the servants—every thing and person had a furtive and dissatisfied appearance; and of course my father himself was more dissatisfied than anyone else. The artificial stillness, the hushed voices and noiseless steps of the servants, were no sign of devotion, but of repression and fear. Nothing was ever moved in the rooms: the same books lay on the same tables, with the same markers in them, for five or six years together. In my father’s bedroom and study the furniture was never shifted and the windows never opened, not once in a twelvemonth. When he went to the country, he regularly took the key of his rooms in his pocket, lest the servants should take it into their heads to scour the floors or to clean the walls in his absence.
CHAPTER II
Gossip of Nurses and Conversation of Generals—A False Position—Boredom—The Servants’ Hall—Two Germans—Lessons and Reading—Catechism and the Gospel.
§1
UNTIL I was ten, I noticed nothing strange or peculiar in my position.[[15]] To me it seemed simple and natural that I was living in my father’s house, where I had to be quiet in the rooms inhabited by him, though in my mother’s part of the house I could shout and make a noise to my heart’s content. The Senator gave me toys and spoilt me; Calot was my faithful slave; Vyéra Artamónovna bathed me, dressed me, and put me to bed; and Mme. Provo took me out for walks and spoke German to me. All went on with perfect regularity; and yet I began to feel puzzled.
[15]. Herzen’s parents were never married with the Russian rites, and he bore throughout life a name which was not his father’s.
My attention was caught by some casual remarks incautiously dropped. Old Mme. Provo and the household in general were devoted to my mother, but feared and disliked my father. The disputes which sometimes took place between my parents were often the subject of discussion between my nurses, and they always took my mother’s side.
It was true that my mother’s life was no bed of roses. An exceedingly kind-hearted woman, but not strong-willed, she was utterly crushed by my father; and, as often happens with weak characters, she was apt to carry on a desperate opposition in matters of no importance. Unfortunately, in these trifles my father was almost always in the right, and so he triumphed in the end.
Mme. Provo would start a conversation in this style: “In her place, I declare I would be off at once and go back to Germany. The dulness of the life is fit to kill one; no enjoyment and nothing but grumbling and unpleasantness.”