INTRODUCTION.
By Mrs. Mona Caird.
In giving to the world her exciting and terrible story, “Mademoiselle Sophie” has also conveyed incidentally some idea of her remarkable character. As I had the privilege of hearing from her own lips all that she relates in this series of papers, I can supplement her unintentional self-portraiture by recording the impression that she made upon me at our first meeting.
I had always taken a strong interest in the political movements of Russia and in the Slavonic races whose character and temperament have something more or less mysterious to the Western mind. The Russian novel presents rather than explains this mystery. It is perhaps to the Tartar blood that we must attribute the incomprehensible element. Between the East and the West, there is, psychologically speaking, a great gulf fixed.
There are times when the reader of Russian fiction begins to wonder whether he or the author is not a little off his mental balance, so fantastic, so inconsequent, yet so insanely logical (so to put it) are the beings with whom he finds himself surrounded—beings, however, evidently and bewilderingly human, so that though they may appear scarcely in their right minds (as we should judge our compatriots), they can never be mistaken for mere figures of sawdust and plaster such as people extensive realms of Western fiction. It is the reality of the characters, coupled with their eccentric demeanour (the most humdrum Slav appears wildly original to the inexperienced Anglo-Saxon), that stirs anxiety.
Would “Mademoiselle Sophie” be like one of these erratic creations, or would she resemble the heroines of Russian political history whose marvellous courage and endurance excite the wonder of all who can even dimly realise what it must be to live from moment to moment in imminent peril of life and limb, and in ceaseless anxiety as to the fate of relatives and friends? Of all the trials that “Mademoiselle Sophie” went through, this last, she told me, was the worst. The absolute silence, the absolute ignorance in which she had to pass her days, seemed to have broken her wonderful spirit more than any other hardship.
It is not every day in the Nineteenth century that one comes in contact with a human being who has had to submit to the “ordeal by fire” in this literal mediæval fashion; who has endured perils, insults, physical privations and torments, coupled with intense and ceaseless anxiety for years; and this in extreme youth before the troubles and difficulties of life have more gradually and gently taught the lessons of endurance and silent courage that probably have to be learnt by all who are destined to develop and gather force as they go, and not to dwindle and weaken, as seems to be the lot of those less fortunate in circumstance or less well-equipped at birth for the struggles that in one form or another present themselves in every career.
Russia is a nation that may almost be said to have preserved to this day the conditions of the Middle Ages. It affords, therefore, to the curious an opportunity for the study of the effect upon human character of these conditions. Here are still retained, to all intents and purposes, the thumbscrew and the rack; indeed, this is the case in a literal sense, for “Mademoiselle Sophie” told me that it was certain that prisoners were sometimes tortured in secret, after the good old-fashioned methods, not exactly officially (since the matter was kept more or less dark), but nevertheless by men in the employment of the Government who were able to take advantage of the powers bestowed by their office to practise despotism even to this extreme.
Many of the so-called Nihilists or Revolutionists (as “Mademoiselle Sophie” insisted on styling the more moderate party to which she belongs) seem to stand in the position of the early Protestants, when they protested against the abuses of the Catholic Church while retaining their reverence for the institution itself.