§4
Thus it was that Ogaryóv and I entered upon life hand in hand. We walked in confidence and pride; without counting the cost, we answered every summons and surrendered ourselves sincerely to each generous impulse. The path we chose was not easy; but we never once left it; wounded and broken, we still went on, and no one out-stripped us on the way. I have reached, not our goal but the place where the road turns downhill, and I seek instinctively for your arm, my friend, that I may press it and say with a sad smile as we go down together, “So this is all!”
Meanwhile, in the wearisome leisure to which I am condemned by circumstances, as I find in myself neither strength nor vigour for fresh toil, I am recording our recollections.[[37]] Much of what bound us so closely has found a place in these pages, and I give them to you. For you they have a double meaning, the meaning of epitaphs, on which we meet with familiar names.
[37]. This was written in 1853.
But it is surely an odd reflection, that, if Sonnenberg had learned to swim or been drowned when he fell into the river, or if he had been pulled out by some ordinary private and not by that Cossack, we should never have met; or, if we had, it would have been at a later time and in a different way—not in the little room of our old house where we smoked our first cigars, and where we drew strength from one another for our first long step on the path of life.
CHAPTER V
Details of Home Life—Men of the Eighteenth Century in Russia—A Day at Home—Guests and Visitors—Sonnenberg—Servants.
§1
THE dulness and monotony of our house became more intolerable with every year. But for the prospect of University life, my new friendship, my interest in politics, and my lively turn of character, I must either have run away or died of the life.