I returned that summer from Nikólskoye to Moscow in a new fashion. There being then no railway between Kaluga and Moscow, there was a man, Buck by name, who kept some sort of carriages running between the two towns. Our people never thought of traveling in these carriages: they had their own horses and conveyances; but when my father, in order to save my stepmother a double journey, proposed to me, half in joke, that I should travel alone in that way, I accepted his offer with delight.
A tradesman’s wife, old and very stout, and myself on the back seats, and a tradesman or artisan on the front seat, were the only occupants of the carriage. I found the journey very pleasant—first of all because I was traveling by myself (I was not yet sixteen), and next because the old lady, who had brought with her for a three days’ journey a colossal hamper full of provisions, treated me to all sorts of homemade delicacies. The surroundings during that journey were delightful. One evening especially is still vivid in my memory. We came to one of the great villages and stopped at an inn. The old lady ordered a samovar for herself, while I went out into the street, walking about anywhere. A small “white inn,” at which only food is served, but no drinks, attracted my attention, and I went in. Numbers of peasants sat round the small tables, which were covered with white napkins, and enjoyed their tea. I followed their example.
Everything there was new to me. It was a village of “Crown peasants,” that is, peasants who had not been serfs, and enjoyed a relative well-being, probably owing to the weaving of linen, which they carried on as a home industry. Slow, serious conversations, with occasional laughter, were going on at the tables, and after the usual introductory questions, I soon found myself engaged in a conversation with a dozen peasants about the crops in our neighborhood, and answering all sorts of inquiries. They wanted to know all about St. Petersburg, and especially about the rumors concerning the coming abolition of serfdom. A feeling of simplicity and of natural relations of equality, as well as of hearty goodwill, which I always felt afterwards when among peasants or in their houses, pervaded me at that inn. Nothing extraordinary happened that night, so that I even ask myself whether the incident is worth mentioning at all; and yet, that warm dark night in the village, that small inn, that talk with the peasants, and the keen interest they took in hundreds of things lying far beyond their habitual surroundings, have made a poor “white inn” more attractive to me ever since than the best restaurant in the world.
V
Stormy times came now in the life of our corps. When Girardot was dismissed, his place was taken by one of our officers, Captain B⸺. He was rather good-natured than otherwise, but he had got it into his head that he was not treated by us with due reverence corresponding to the high position which he now occupied, and he tried to enforce upon us more respect and awe towards himself. He began by quarreling over all sorts of petty things with the upper form, and—what was still worse in our opinion—he attempted to destroy our “liberties,” the origin of which was lost in “the darkness of time,” and which, insignificant in themselves, were perhaps on that very account only the dearer to us.
The result of it was that for several days the school was in an open revolt, which ended in wholesale punishment, and in the exclusion from the corps of two of our favorite pages de chambre.
Then the same captain began to intrude into the classrooms, where we used to spend one hour in the morning in preparing our lessons, before the classes began. We were considered to be there under our teaching staff, and were happy to have nothing to do with our military officers. We resented that intrusion very much, and one day I loudly expressed our discontent by telling the captain that this was the place of the inspector of the classes, not his. I spent weeks under arrest for that frankness, and perhaps would have been excluded from the school, had it not been that the inspector of the classes, his aid, and even our old director judged that, after all, I had only expressed aloud what they all used to say to themselves.
No sooner were these troubles over, than the death of the Dowager-Empress, the widow of Nicholas I, brought a new interruption in our work.
The burial of crowned heads is always so arranged as to produce a deep impression on the crowds. The body of the Empress was brought from Tsárkoye Seló, where she died, to St. Petersburg, and here, followed by the imperial family, all the high dignitaries of the state, and scores of thousands of functionaries and corporations, and preceded by hundreds of clergy and choirs, it was taken from the railway station, through the main thoroughfares, to the fortress, where it had to lie in state for several weeks. A hundred thousand men of the guard were placed along the streets, and thousands of people, dressed in the most gorgeous uniforms, preceded, accompanied, and followed the hearse in a solemn procession. Litanies were sung at every important crossing of the streets, and here the ringing of the bells on the church towers, the voices of the vast choirs, and the sounds of the military bands united in the most impressive way, so as to make people believe that the immense crowds really mourned the loss of the Empress.
As long as the body lay in state in the cathedral of the fortress, the pages, among others, had to
