If these lines happen to fall under The Chemist’s eyes, I beg that he will read them before going to bed, when the nerves are less active; and I am convinced that he will be able then to pardon this friendly gossip, and all the more because I cherish a real regard for him.
§7
And so, at last, the doors of my prison were opened, and I was free. The solitude of my smallish room and the quiet half-secret interviews with my one friend, Ogaryóv, were now exchanged for a noisy family of six hundred members. In a fortnight, I was more at home there than I had ever been, from the day I was born, in my father’s house.
But even here my father’s house pursued me, in the shape of a footman whom my father sent with me to the University, especially when I walked there. I spent a whole term in trying to dodge this escort, and was formally excused from it at last. I say “formally,” because my valet Peter, who was entrusted with this duty, very soon realised, first, that I disliked being escorted, and secondly, that he himself would be much better off in various places of amusement than in the entrance-hall of my lecture-room, where he had no occupation except to exchange gossip and pinches of snuff with the two porters. What was the motive of this precaution? Was it possible that Peter, who had been liable all his life to drinking-bouts that lasted for days, could keep me straight? I don’t suppose my father believed that; but, for his own peace of mind, he took measures—ineffective, indeed, but still measures—much in the way that freethinkers keep Lent. This is a characteristic feature of the old system of education in Russia. Till I was seven, I was not allowed to come downstairs alone—the flight was rather steep; and Vyéra Artamónovna went on bathing me till I was eleven. It was of a piece with this system that I should have a servant walking behind me to College, and should not be allowed, before I was twenty-one, to be out later than half-past ten. I was never really free and independent till I was banished; but for that incident, the system would probably have gone on till I was twenty-five or thirty-five.
§8
Like most energetic boys who have been brought up alone, I rushed into the arms of my companions with such frank eagerness, made proselytes with such sublime confidence, and was myself so fond of everyone, that I could not but kindle a corresponding warmth in my hearers, who were mostly of the same age as myself. I was then seventeen.
The process of making friends was hastened partly by the advice which worldly wisdom gave me—to be polite to all and intimate with none, to confide in nobody; and there was also the belief which we all took with us to College, the belief that here our dreams would be realised, that here we should sow the seed of a future harvest and lay the foundations of a permanent alliance.
The young men of my time were admirable. It was just the time when ideals were stirring more and more in Russia. The formalism of theological training and Polish indolence had alike disappeared, and had not yet given place to German utilitarianism, which applies culture to the mind, like manure to a field, in the hope of a heavier crop. The best students had ceased to consider learning as a tiresome but indispensable byway to official promotion; and the questions which we discussed had nothing to do with advancement in the Civil Service.
On the other hand, the pursuit of knowledge had not yet become divorced from realities, and did not distract our attention from the suffering humanity around us; and this sympathy heightened the social morality of the students. My friends and I said openly in the lecture-room whatever came into our heads; copies of forbidden poems were freely circulated, and forbidden books were read aloud and commented on; and yet I cannot recall a single instance of information given by a traitor to the authorities. There were timid spirits who held aloof and shut their eyes; but even they held their tongues.
One foolish boy made some disclosures to his mother, when she questioned him, under threat of the rod, about the Málov affair. The fond mother—she was a Princess and a leader in society—rushed to the Rector and communicated her son’s disclosures, in order to prove his repentance. We found this out, and tormented him so, that he left before his time was up.