“Of course, Ivan,” Madame Wertsch resumed, “you can go to the Petrovitches at proper times and in a proper way, when the old man wishes to see you.”
“He will never see me again,” Ivan answered sadly; “he is quite blind now.”
One incident of his first winter in Moscow shocked Ivan considerably, though it made scarcely any impression upon those around him. Coming out at midnight with the Wertsches from a sumptuous entertainment at the palace of a friend, they found their little postilion lying dead in the snow, close to the horses’ feet, with the reins still wound around his stiffened arm. The child—a mujik of twelve years old, chosen for his beauty—had fallen from his seat overcome by cold and fatigue, and the coachman, himself half frozen, did not know what had happened until too late to help him. Such accidents were of daily occurrence, Ivan was told, during the frosty weather. No one seemed to think much about it; he was only a mujik, one of the “black people,” in the eyes of the fashionable world little better than beasts of burden. But Ivan was haunted for weeks with the dead face of the pretty boy, to whom he had often given a few kopecks to buy sweetmeats. Another face came before him too with a reproachful, accusing look—the face that he had seen bending compassionately over the senseless form of Stefen Alexitch. Ivan often looked for that face in public places, in fashionable assemblies, in church; but it is needless to add that he looked for it in vain.
About two years after his arrival in Moscow, Ivan made an expedition to Nicolofsky to visit his old friends. Although scarcely sixteen, he already considered himself, and was considered by others, quite grown up. The young Russian of that day ripened early into manhood: fifteen was a usual age for entering the army, and education was then considered complete. Still, though he thought himself old enough for any adventure, Ivan might have postponed his journey for another year, had not the proprietor of a neighbouring estate, who was going to spend the summer at his country house, obligingly offered him a seat in his carriage.
He had provided himself with gifts for all his friends, and ransacked the “Silver Row” in the Great Bazaar for the prettiest ear-rings and bracelets he could procure for Anna Popovna. The welcome he received was everything that could be desired—affectionate, enthusiastic, and admiring. There was but one exception. Michael Ivanovitch scowled upon him with undisguised ill-humour. He would like to know what brought him there, he was heard to mutter; adding that the less boyars and mujiks had to say to one another the better for both. Otherwise, his visit was a complete success. He returned to Moscow fancying himself desperately in love with Anna Popovna, and the hero of one of his favourite romances, in which princes sighed for shepherdesses and queens wedded clowns. An attack of fever, which he had shortly afterwards, and which kept him for some time confined to the house, gave him leisure to indulge his dreams and reveries.
As he grew older, the works of Voltaire and Diderot began to replace in his esteem the flimsy, unreal productions of the novelists. M. Thomassin’s only genuine love was a love of pleasure, his only genuine hatred a hatred of religion. Consequently he taught his pupils just enough to make them sensualists and scoffers like himself. He bid fair to succeed as completely with Ivan as he had done with Adrian and Leon Wertsch; indeed Ivan would probably go farther than they, because his nature was stronger and his character more energetic. What has no root is easily displaced. The religion of Ivan’s early years was a mere superstition, a matter of outward forms and observances; therefore, when he ceased to attach importance to these, he lost everything. “From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.” There was no mental conflict, there were no keen and bitter searchings of heart. From a dead faith he glided almost insensibly into a dead scepticism, and by neither the faith nor the scepticism had the profound slumber of his soul been at any time disturbed.
He continued to attend the numerous church services because others did so, and because the exquisite music (in the Greek Church entirely vocal) and the gorgeous ceremonial gratified his taste. He also observed, at least as strictly as those around him, the long and severe fasts of the Church; availing himself, however, of such evasions as were sanctioned by custom: “name days,” for example, which happened to fall in Lent were sure to be honoured with a double measure of feasting.
Meanwhile his emotional nature craved excitement and his mind needed occupation. Genuine, earnest study under a competent teacher he would have thoroughly enjoyed; but the Greek and Latin lessons with which M. Thomassin supplemented his instructions in French were very superficial and perfunctory. Fortunately he had another master for Polish and German; and with these languages he took some pains, because a knowledge of them was necessary in order to obtain a commission in the army. But even in these his interest was slight; for at present he found the attractions of the ballroom and the gaming-table far more powerful than those of the library.
The narrow world of pleasure in which he lived thrilled but faintly to the shock of those mighty impulses that were moving the great world around him. Now and then he heard the strife of many tongues which accused the Czar of blindness for having made peace with Napoleon at all, and of weakness for keeping that peace in spite of numberless provocations. In those days, any one who heard the talk of the salons in Moscow and St. Petersburg might have thought it the easiest thing in the world to measure swords once more with the conqueror of Austerlitz. Ivan shared the sentiments of those around him, and accordingly he was overjoyed when at last, in defiance of Napoleon, the ukase was published which reopened the trade with England under the protection of neutral flags, and foreign luxuries appeared once more upon the table of the noble, while foreign gold glided quickly into the purse of the merchant. He shared, too, the universal indignation at Napoleon’s atrocious spoliation of the Duke of Oldenburg, the Czar’s brother-in-law, perhaps the most flagrant of his many violations of the Treaty of Tilsit. Ivan was breathing an atmosphere highly charged with electricity, and full of the indications of an approaching storm; but he knew not the signs of the times. Besides, how was it possible that he, whom competent judges were calling the best dancer in Moscow, and who was the acknowledged favourite of fortune at all games of hazard, could disquiet himself about the designs of Napoleon and the prospect of a war with France?