The coffin was carried from the house, where a religious service had already taken place, to the church across the street, and there a new service was begun. The church was so quickly filled that hundreds had to remain outside. But I was advised by my companion to go to the cemetery; for the funeral proper takes place only there, and it is of importance to secure a good place. We attended to various matters in the city, and reached, after more than a half-hour's ride in the sleigh, the cemetery where rest the city's celebrities. Names are again mentioned to me with respect and reverence. What an unsubstantial thing is fame, after all. The few sounds that fill one with awe fall on the unheeding ear of another. Another sphere, and nothing remains of the words that are esteemed in the first.
We stamp through the snow along the narrow paths between the gravestones towards the spot where the deceased is to find his last resting-place. A densely packed multitude is already pushing towards the newly dug grave. Near-by a mausoleum, with open portico, is already entirely occupied by women. We attempt to find a place there. We are met by hostile glances. Then one of the ladies approaches me and says something in Russian, which, of course, I do not understand. I express my regrets in German and French. She now excuses herself, declaring that she had made a mistake. A word from my companion, and the excitement is at once allayed.
"It was nothing," he explained to me. "They did not know whether you were a spy or a foreigner. They know it now, and are no longer uneasy. People know one another in this circle. But you are an entirely new person that must first be classified." Evidently my companion played a prominent part in this society without statutes, for a place was made for me with the greatest readiness; so that I found myself among none but celebrities, whose names were mentioned by the young ladies standing near in respectful whispers. They were mostly writers, scholars, and professors; among them was also the author of a work on Siberia, which I had read with horror years ago. He had already spent twelve years of his life in exile, and now he was again exposing himself to oppression by the authorities. Although the police were still out of sight, it would have hardly been advisable for a spy to appear here. Among the thousands of men, women, and girls who were already densely crowded about the grave, there was not a single person that was not acquainted with at least a part of those present. Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd. A name is mentioned and repeated resentfully. Suvorin. Who is Suvorin? The editor of the Novoye Vremya. He was supposedly seen by some one. What impudence! Where is he? He shall at once leave the cemetery! But it was only a false alarm. Suvorin would not dare to come here; and why not? I inquire about the nature of his paper. Is it a Libre Parole or Intransigeant? Is it nationalistic or clerical? An old gentleman who hears my question replies, turning towards me: "No-ism, scoundrelism." I see how the word is winged and is approvingly repeated in a widening circle. Yes, the most widely circulated sheet in Russia, which enjoys government patronage and the best and most authentic news from all the departments, is branded here with the deepest contempt by the flower of Russian intelligence as a well-poisoner, a worthless cynic. Russia is surely a remarkable land, it does not grant a license for baseness even to anti-Semitism. The hours follow one another. The snow under our feet had turned to water, and then again to ice, but it is no longer possible to leave one's place. We are ranged shoulder to shoulder, the men scarcely able to make room enough for the women to keep them from being crushed against the trees and gravestones. An elderly woman, with remarkably delicate features, and wrapped in a thin cloak, is standing quite near me. She has been here since ten o'clock this morning—that is, more than four hours. I feel almost ashamed of my fur coat and my felt overshoes when I see that bit of intelligent poverty standing near me. My neighbor and myself succeed, without her noticing it, in placing her between our coats, so that she might feel somewhat warmer. And thus thousands of women and girls are standing, old and young, down to the unsophisticated school-girl, pretty and homely, all of them patient and orderly; and what impressed me especially was the absence of the least trace of flirting between the men and women students. All of them were possessed by one sentiment—by political passion and the yearning for freedom. I am not foolish enough to think that in Russia erotic tendencies are eliminated in the intercourse between the youth of the opposite sexes, but nothing of it is noticeable here, and I must assume from this that frivolity and cynicism have no abode in this generation. All those who are standing here run the gantlet of imprisonment and deportation, and frivolous thoughts have no room here.
We hear, at last, the indistinct noise that heralds the approach of a great crowd of people. Then the noise becomes more differentiated—it changes into song. It is the student body following the coffin with songs of mourning over the miles of road. They sing beautifully, in wonderful polyphonic choirs, do the Russians; even envy must follow the song. They have a perfect ear. After the long waiting the final deliverance through its solemn notes affects the heart strangely. And now a new wave of approaching humanity. The impossible becomes possible, the students crowd past us and gather about the grave. The coffin is lifted over our heads and into the noose of the dull gravedigger. A moment of silence. Then the pope reads a short prayer and gives a short funeral sermon on the departed brother in Christ. Then only does the funeral ceremony proper begin. The pope steps aside. A white-haired man, a university professor, whose name passes from mouth to mouth, extols the departed champion of freedom. He is followed by a poet speaking in swinging verse. Then a woman. Then a student. Then a woman again, in irregular, improvised order. Then my neighbor, the man from Siberia, calls out to the students. Then begins a song full of fervor and passion. Then a woman speaks again, and after her a young girl. The police, hundreds of them, with many officers, are crowded quite into the background. It is better so. For of all the speeches I distinguished but one word, spoken in passionate tones, "Svoboda! Svoboda!" (Liberty! Liberty!). And, as if that word were a signal, it calls forth sighs and weeping and the gnashing of teeth. It is an indescribable drama, a terribly exciting scene. I cannot control myself, and cry out to my neighbor, "Make the poor girl keep still," and I point towards the police, but I am not understood. They have all been seized by a religious fanaticism that makes martyrdom bliss. How truly lovable they are, these educated people that still have an ideal and are strange to the base satiety that so sadly deforms our Western youth! And how the heart contracts at the thought that all this beautiful enthusiasm must vanish without result; that the longing and inspiration are helplessly shivered against the brutality of the Cossacks and gendarmes!
We left the consecrated ground in a strange intoxication after a tiring struggle with the densely packed crowd that would move neither forward nor backward. "It is not the business of the police to maintain order, but only to keep people under surveillance." I have been astonished to this very day that no one was trampled to death in the crowd.
I heard a few days later that the statistician Annenski, an old man of sixty-five, was arrested for having delivered one of those impassioned speeches at the grave. A number of men of irreproachable character, among them the historian who was the first speaker there, testified that Annenski was not one of the speakers. I could have testified to that myself, for I stood among the speakers, and each one was named to me. But the police would not give up its victim. Annenski was still in confinement when I left Russia. Now he is banished to Reval for four years, because they had found in his house a few numbers of Struve's periodical.
I, however, carried away with me from Mikhailovski's grave the certainty that the coming generation is lost to the reaction. Young Russia, in so far as it possesses an academic education, is liberal, both the men and the women. And thus that funeral day was for me the most hopeful day that I had lived in Russia.