But this episode, which led to my confinement within the walls of the University prison, is worth telling.
§9
Málov, though a professor in the University, was a stupid, rude, ill-educated man, an object of contempt and derision to the students. One of them, when asked by a Visitor, how many professors there were in their department, replied that there were nine, not counting Málov.[[46]] And this man, who could be spoken of in this way, began to treat his class with more and more rudeness, till they determined to turn him out of the lecture-room. When their plan was made, they sent two spokesmen to our department, and invited me to bring reinforcements. I raised the fiery cross against the foe at once, and was joined by some adherents. When we entered Málov’s lecture-room, he was there and saw us.
[46]. There is here an untranslatable play on words.
One fear only was depicted on the faces of all the audience—that he might refrain for once from rude remarks. But that fear soon passed off. The tightly packed lecture-room was in a fever and gave vent to a low suppressed noise. Málov made some objection, and a scraping of feet began. “You are like horses, expressing your thoughts with your feet,” said the professor, imagining, I suppose, that horses think by gallop and trot. Then the storm broke, with hisses and yells. “Turn him out! turn him out! Pereat!” Málov turned white as a sheet and made a desperate effort to control the noise, but failed; the students jumped up on the benches. Málov slowly left his chair, hunched himself up, and made his way to the door. The students followed him through the court to the street outside, and threw his goloshes out after him. The last detail was important: if once it reached the street, the proceeding became much more serious; but what lads of seventeen or eighteen would ever take that into account?
The University Council took fright and induced the Visitor to represent the affair as settled, and, with that object, to consign the guilty persons or someone, at least, to the University prison. That was rather ingenious on their part. Otherwise, it was likely enough that the Emperor would send an aide-de-camp, and that the aide-de-camp, in order to earn a cross, would have magnified the affair into conspiracy and rebellion; then he would have advised penal servitude for all the offenders, and the Emperor, in his mercy, would have sent them to the colours instead. But seeing vice punished and virtue triumphant, the Emperor merely confirmed the action of the students by dismissing the professor. Though we drove Málov as far as the University gates, it was Nicholas who drove him out of them.
So the fat was in the fire. On the following afternoon, one of the porters hobbled up to me, a white-haired old man who was normally in a state more drunk than sober, and produced from the lining of his overcoat a note from the Rector for me: I was ordered to call on him at seven in the evening. The porter was soon followed by a student, a baron from the Baltic Provinces, who was one of the unfortunate victims enticed by me, and had received an invitation similar to mine. He looked pale and frightened and began by heaping reproaches on me; then he asked me what I advised him to say.
“Lie desperately,” I answered; “deny everything, except that there was a row and you were present.”
“But if the Rector asks why I was in the wrong lecture-room?”
“That’s easy. Say of course that our lecturer did not turn up, and that you, not wishing to waste your time, went to hear someone else.”