I found two captives already immured in the dirty cellar which served as a prison, and there were two more in another room; six was the total number of those who suffered for this affair. We were sentenced to a diet of bread and water, and, though we declined some soup which the Rector sent us, we did not suffer; for when the College emptied at nightfall, our friends brought us cheese, game, cigars, wine, and liqueurs. The sentry grumbled and scolded, but he took a small bribe, and introduced the supplies. After midnight, he moved to some distance and allowed several of our friends to join us. And so we spent our time, feasting by night and sleeping by day.
A certain Panin, a brother of the Minister of Justice and employed under our Visitor, mindful of Army traditions, took it into his head one night to go the rounds and inspect our cellar-prison. We had just lit a candle, keeping it under a chair to betray no light, and were attacking our midnight meal, when a knocking was heard at the outer door, not the meek sound that begs for admittance and fears to be heard more than not to be heard, but a knock of power and authority. The sentry turned rigid, we hid the bottles and our guests in a cupboard, blew out the light, and dropped on our pallet-beds. Panin came in. “You appear to be smoking,” he said—the smoke was so thick that Panin and the inspector who were carrying a lantern were hardly visible. “Where do they get a light from? From you?” he asked the sentry. The man swore he was innocent, and we said that we had got tinder of our own. The inspector promised to take it and our cigars away; and Panin went off, without ever noticing that there were twice as many caps in the room as heads.
On Saturday evening the inspector appeared and announced that I and one other might go home; the rest were to stay till Monday. I resented this proposal and asked him whether I might stay. He fell back a step, looked at me with that expression of dignified wrath which is worn by ballet-dancers when representing angry kings or heroes, and said, “By all means, if you want to!” Then he left us; and this sally on my part brought down more paternal wrath on me than any other part of the affair.
Thus the first nights which I spent away from home were spent in prison. I was soon to experience a prison of another kind, and there I spent, not eight days, but nine months; and when these had passed, instead of going home, I went into exile. But much happened before that.
From this time I was a popular hero in the lecture-room. Till then I was considered “all right” by the rest; but, after the Málov affair, I became, like the lady in Gógol, all right in the fullest sense of that term.
§12
But did we learn anything, meanwhile, and was study possible under such circumstances? I think we did. The instruction was more limited in quantity and scope than in the forties. But a university is not bound to complete scientific education: its business is rather to put a man in a position to walk by himself; it should raise problems and teach a man to ask questions. And this is exactly what was done by such professors as Pávlov and Kachenovsky, each in his own way. But the collision of young minds, the exchange of ideas, and the discussion of books—all this did more than professors or lectures to develop and ripen the student. Moscow University was a successful institution; and the professors who contributed by their lectures to the development of Lérmontov, Byelínski, Turgénev, Kavélin, and Pirógov, may play cards with an easy conscience, or, with a still easier conscience, rest in their graves.
And what astonishing people some of them were! There was Chumakov, who treated the formulae of Poinsot’s Algebra like so many serfs—adding letters and subtracting them, mixing up square numbers and their roots, and treating x as the known quantity. There was Myágkov, who, in spite of his name,[[47]] lectured on the harshest of sciences, the science of tactics. The constant study of this noble subject had actually given a martial air to the professor; and as he stood there buttoned up to the throat and erect behind his stock, his lectures sounded more like words of command than mere conversation. “Gentlemen, artillery!” he would cry out. It sounded like the field of battle, but it only meant that this was the heading of his next discourse. And there was Reiss, who lectured on chemistry but never ventured further than hydrogen—Reiss, who was elected to the Chair for no knowledge of his own but because his uncle had once studied the science. The latter was invited to come to Russia towards the end of Catherine’s reign; but the old man did not want to move, and sent his nephew instead.
[47]. Myágki is the Russian for “mild.”
My University course lasted four years, the additional year being due to the fact that a whole session was lost owing to the cholera. The most remarkable events of that time were the cholera itself, and the visits of Humboldt and Uvárov.