He knew from Lavróff that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokólsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazároff. I frankly replied, ‘Bazároff is an admirable painting of the Nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as much as you did your other heroes.’ ‘On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,’ Turguéneff replied, with unexpected vigour. ‘When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazároff’s death.’

Turguéneff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazároff. He so identified himself with the Nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazároff’s point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history-makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. ‘Analysis first of all, and then egoism, and therefore no faith—an egoist cannot even believe in himself:’ so he characterized Hamlet. ‘Therefore he is a sceptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber’s plate for the magic helmet of Mambrin (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which they may be alone to see. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it—and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies; and his scepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.’

These thoughts of Turguéneff give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet, and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazároff. He represented his superiority admirably well: he understood the tragic character of his isolated position; but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love which he bestowed, as on a sick friend, when his heroes approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.

‘Did you know Mýshkin?’ he once asked me, in 1878. At the trial of our circle Mýshkin revealed himself as the most powerful personality. ‘I should like to know all about him,’ he continued. ‘That is a man; not the slightest trace of Hamletism.’ And in so saying he was obviously meditating on this new type in the Russian movement, which did not exist in the phase that Turguéneff described in ‘Virgin Soil,’ but was to appear two years later.

I saw him for the last time in the autumn of 1881. He was very ill, and worried by the thought that it was his duty to write to Alexander III.—who had just come to the throne, and hesitated as to the policy he should follow—asking him to give Russia a constitution, and proving to him by solid arguments the necessity of that step. With evident grief he said to me: ‘I feel that I must do it, but I feel I shall not be able to do it.’ In fact, he was already suffering awful pains occasioned by a cancer in the spinal cord, and had the greatest difficulty even in sitting up and talking for a few moments. He did not write then, and a few weeks later it would have been useless. Alexander III. had announced in a manifesto his intention to remain the absolute ruler of Russia.

VII

In the meantime affairs in Russia took quite a new turn. The war which Russia began against Turkey in 1877 had ended in general disappointment. There was in the country, before the war broke out, a great deal of enthusiasm in favour of the Slavonians. Many believed, also, that the war of liberation in the Balkans would result in a move in the progressive direction in Russia itself. But the liberation of the Slavonian populations was only partly accomplished. The tremendous sacrifices which had been made by the Russians were rendered ineffectual by the blunders of the higher military authorities. Hundreds of thousands of men had been slaughtered in battles which were only half victories, and the concessions wrested from Turkey were brought to naught at the Berlin Congress. It was also widely known that the embezzlement of State money went on during this war on almost as large a scale as during the Crimean war.

It was amidst the general dissatisfaction which prevailed in Russia at the end of 1877, that one hundred and ninety-three persons, arrested since 1873, in connection with our agitation, were brought before a high court. The accused, supported by a number of lawyers of talent, won at once the sympathies of the public. They produced a very favourable impression upon St. Petersburg society; and when it became known that most of them had spent three or four years in prison, waiting for this trial, and that no less than twenty-one of them had either put an end to their lives by suicide or become insane, the feeling grew still stronger in their favour, even among the judges themselves. The court pronounced very heavy sentences upon a few, and relatively lenient ones upon the remainder; saying that the preliminary detention had lasted so long, and was so hard a punishment in itself, that nothing could justly be added to it. It was confidently expected that the Emperor would still further mitigate the sentences. It happened, however, to the astonishment of all, that he revised the sentences only to increase them. Those whom the court had acquitted were sent into exile in remote parts of Russia and Siberia, and from five to twelve years of hard labour were inflicted upon those whom the court had condemned to short terms of imprisonment. This was the work of the chief of the Third Section, General Mézentsoff.

At the same time, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, General Trépoff, noticing, during a visit to the house of detention, that one of the political prisoners, Bogolúboff, did not take off his hat to greet the omnipotent satrap, rushed upon him, gave him a blow, and, when the prisoner resisted, ordered him to be flogged. The other prisoners, learning the fact in their cells, loudly expressed their indignation, and were in consequence fearfully beaten by the warders and the police. The Russian political prisoners bore without murmuring all hardships inflicted upon them in Siberia, or through hard labour, but they were firmly decided not to tolerate corporal punishment. A young girl, Véra Zasúlich, who did not even personally know Bogolúboff, took a revolver, went to the chief of police, and shot at him. Trépoff was only wounded. Alexander II. came to look at the heroic girl, who must have impressed him by her extremely sweet face and her modesty. Trépoff had so many enemies at St. Petersburg that they managed to bring the affair before a common-law jury, and Véra Zasúlich declared in court that she had resorted to arms only when all means for bringing the affair to public knowledge and obtaining some sort of redress had been exhausted. Even the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London ‘Times,’ who had been asked to mention the affair in his paper, had not done so, perhaps thinking it improbable. Then, without telling anyone about her intentions, she went to shoot Trépoff. Now that the affair had become public, she was quite happy to know that he was but slightly wounded. The jury acquitted her unanimously; and when the police tried to rearrest her, as she was leaving the court-house, the young men of St. Petersburg, who stood in crowds at the gates, saved her from their clutches. She went abroad, and soon was among us in Switzerland.

This affair produced quite a sensation throughout Europe. I was at Paris when the news of the acquittal came, and had to call that day on business at the offices of several newspapers. I found the editors glowing with enthusiasm, and writing forcible articles in honour of this Russian girl. Even the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes,’ in its review of the year 1878, declared that the two persons who had most impressed public opinion in Europe during the year were Prince Gortchakóff at the Berlin Congress and Véra Zasúlich. Their portraits were given side by side in several almanacs. Upon the workers of Western Europe the devotion of Véra Zasúlich produced a profound impression.