The Colonel demanded, “Where do these books come from?”
“From the people who had them last.”
“Their names?”
“What, Colonel! You, the chief of the secret police of X——, you don’t know!”
This answer kindled a light of anger in his little Chinese eyes. For my part, I had spoken very slowly, looking steadily at him, and smiling as if it were a jest; but it wasn’t exactly a jest. While the Colonel had been questioning me, I had reflected. It was impossible that my cousins should have had books of this sort in their possession without speaking to me about them; and it was most unlikely that they could have belonged to Serge, who, always very careful, made it a strict rule never to bring anything of a compromising nature to our uncle’s house. But I had often heard that the political police, to create evidence against people whom they strongly suspected, but who were too prudent for their taste, and also to make their arrests appear less arbitrary in the eyes of the public, had a pleasant habit of bringing “forbidden” things with them to the houses where they made their perquisitions, for the sake of supplying what they might not be able to find. Was this what had happened now? Had I been caught in such a trap?
That was what I asked the Colonel in the form of a little jest.
“THROWS HERSELF AT THE COLONEL’S FEET.”
Did he understand? He answered with a piece of advice: that I should be less gay. For the rest, he was in a hurry; he looked at his watch; announced that all was over, and that I was under arrest; and called for witnesses to sign the procès-verbal. Our gardener ran out to find somebody. He came back with two people who had been attracted to our house by the lights and the noise. One was a cabman, the other was Dr. A——, a neighbour who had recently come to live at X——, and whom we knew only by sight. These men stared at me with surprise and curiosity. I scarcely saw them. The words “Under arrest” had completely upset my Aunt Vera, who, till then so calm, was now crying bitterly, covering me with kisses, and repeating, “My child! My child!” The old nurse also was crying, sobbing, and muttering to herself. Just when I feel that I myself am about to give way, and cry too—that which I am anxious, most anxious, not to do—she, the old nurse, throws herself at the Colonel’s feet, and begs grace for me, telling him that I am too young, too frail, to go to prison, that I have been coughing these many days, that I may die there! This makes the Colonel smile. For me, I tell the old nurse to get up. I scold her. Stupefied, trembling, she sinks to the floor in a corner of the room, and weeps for me as the Russian peasants weep for their dead, mingling with her sobs memories of our common past, praises of my good qualities, and so forth. All this, uttered in a low sing-song, is like a sort of funeral dirge.
I hear it still at the moment when the Colonel shuts me into a cab, with two gendarmes facing me, and another on the box beside the driver, to whom the order is given, “The fortress!”