ONE winter evening my uncle came to our house at an unusual hour. He looked anxious and walked with a quick step to my father’s study, after signing to me to stay in the drawing-room.

Fortunately, I was not obliged to puzzle my head long over the mystery. The door of the servants’ hall opened a little way, and a red face, half hidden by the wolf-fur of a livery coat, invited me to approach; it was my uncle’s footman, and I hastened to the door.

“Have you not heard?” he asked.

“Heard what?”

“The Tsar is dead. He died at Taganrog.”

I was impressed by the news: I had never before thought of the possibility of his death. I had been brought up in great reverence for Alexander, and I thought with sorrow how I had seen him not long before in Moscow. We were out walking when we met him outside the Tver Gate; he was riding slowly, accompanied by two or three high officers, on his way back from manœuvres. His face was attractive, the features gentle and rounded, and his expression was weary and sad. When he caught us up, I took off my hat; he smiled and bowed to me.

Confused ideas were still simmering in my head; the shops were selling pictures of the new Tsar, Constantine; notices about the oath of allegiance were circulating; and good citizens were making haste to take the oath—when suddenly a report spread that the Crown Prince had abdicated. Immediately afterwards, the same footman, a great lover of political news, with abundant opportunities for collecting it from the servants of senators and lawyers—less lucky than the horses which rested for half the day, he accompanied his master in his rounds from morning till night—informed me that there was a revolution in Petersburg and that cannon were firing in the capital.

On the evening of the next day, Count Komarovsky, a high officer of the police, was at our house, and told us of the band of revolutionaries in the Cathedral Square, the cavalry charge, and the death of Milorádovitch.[[26]]

[26]. When Nicholas became Emperor in place of his brother Constantine, the revolt of the Decembrists took place in Petersburg on December 14, 1825. Five of the conspirators were afterwards hanged, and over a hundred banished to Siberia.

Then followed the arrests—“They have taken so-and-so”; “They have caught so-and-so”; “They have arrested so-and-so in the country.” Parents trembled in fear for their sons; the sky was covered over with black clouds.