§8
There was another victim of the system whom I cannot but recall together with Alexyéi. My uncle had a servant of thirty-five who acted as a clerk. My father’s oldest brother, who died in 1813, intending to start a cottage hospital, placed this man, Tolochanov, when he was a boy, with a doctor, in order to learn the business of a dresser. The doctor got permission for him to attend lectures at the College of Medicine; the young man showed ability, learned Latin and German, and practised with some success. When he was twenty-five, he fell in love with the daughter of an officer, concealed his position from her, and married her. The deception could not be kept up for long: my uncle died, and the wife was horrified to discover that she, as well as her husband, was a serf. The “Senator,” their new owner, put no pressure on them at all—he had a real affection for young Tolochanov—but the wife could not pardon the deception: she quarrelled with him and finally eloped with another man. Tolochanov must have been very fond of her: he fell into a state of depression which bordered on insanity; he spent his nights in drunken carouses, and, having no money of his own, made free with what belonged to his master. Then, when he saw he could not balance his accounts, he took poison, on the last day of the year 1821.
My uncle was away from home. I was present when Tolochanov came into the room and told my father he had come to say good-bye; he also gave me a message for my uncle, that he had spent the missing money.
“You’re drunk,” said my father; “go and sleep it off.”
“My sleep will last a long time,” said the doctor; “I only ask you not to think ill of my memory.”
The man’s composure frightened my father: he looked at him attentively and asked: “What’s the matter with you? Are you wandering?”
“No, Sir; I have only swallowed a dose of arsenic.”
The doctor and police were summoned, milk and emetics were administered. When the vomiting began, he tried to keep it back and said: “You stop where you are! I did not swallow you, to bring you up again.” When the poison began to work more strongly, I heard his groans and the agonised voice in which he said again and again, “It burns, it burns like fire!” Someone advised that the priest should be sent for; but he refused, and told Calot that he knew too much anatomy to believe in a life beyond the grave. At twelve at night he spoke to the doctor: he asked the time, in German, and then said, “Time to wish you a Happy New Year!” and then he died.
In the morning I went hastily to the little wing, used as a bath-house, where Tolochanov had been taken. The body was lying on a table in the attitude in which he died; he was wearing a coat, but the necktie had been removed and the chest was bare; the features were terribly distorted and even blackened. It was the first dead body I had ever seen; and I ran out, nearly fainting. The toys and picture-book which I had got as New Year’s presents could not comfort me: I still saw before me the blackened features of Tolochanov, and heard his cry, “It burns like fire!”
To end this sad subject, I shall say only one thing more: the society of servants had no really bad influence on me. On the contrary, it implanted in me, in early years, a rooted hatred for slavery and oppression in all their manifestations. When I had been naughty as a child and my nurse, Vyéra Artamónovna, wished to be very cutting, she used to say, “Wait a bit, and you will be exactly like the rest, when you grow up and become a master!” I felt this to be a grievous insult. Well, the old woman may rest in peace—whatever I became, I did not become “exactly like the rest.”