Music also played a very great part in my development. From it I borrowed even greater joy and enthusiasm than from poetry. The Russian opera hardly existed in those times; but the Italian opera, which had a number of first-rate stars in it, was the most popular institution at St. Petersburg. When the prima donna Bosio fell ill, thousands of people, chiefly of the youth, stood till late at night at the door of her hotel to get news of her. She was not beautiful, but seemed so much so when she sang that young men madly in love with her could be counted by the hundred; and when she died, she had a burial such as no one had ever had at St. Petersburg before. All St. Petersburg was then divided into two camps: the admirers of the Italian opera, and those of the French stage, which even then was showing in germ the putrid Offenbachian current that a few years later infected all Europe. One form was also divided, half and half, between these two camps, and I belonged to the former. We were not permitted to go to the pit or to the balcony, while all the boxes in the Italian opera were always taken months in advance, by subscription, and even transmitted in certain families as an hereditary possession. But we gained admission, on Saturday nights, to the passages in the uppermost gallery, and had to stand there in a Turkish bath atmosphere, while to conceal our showy uniforms we used to wear our black overcoats, lined with wadding and with a fur collar, tightly buttoned in spite of the heat. It is a wonder that none of us got pneumonia in this way, especially as we came out overheated with the ovations which we used to make to our favorite singers, and stood afterwards at the stage door to catch one more glimpse of our favorites, and to cheer them. The Italian opera, in those years, was in some strange way intimately connected with the radical movement, and the revolutionary recitatives in Wilhelm Tell and The Puritans were always met with stormy applause and vociferations which went straight to the heart of Alexander II; while in the sixth-story galleries, and in the smoking-room of the opera, and at the stage door the best part of the St. Petersburg youth came together in a common idealist worship of a noble art. All this may seem childish; but many higher ideas and pure inspirations were kindled in us by this worship of our favorite artists.
VII
Every summer we went out camping at Peterhof, with the other military schools of the St. Petersburg district. On the whole, our life there was very pleasant, and certainly it was excellent for our health: we slept in spacious tents, bathed in the sea, and spent a great deal of time during the six weeks in open-air exercise.
In military schools the main purpose of camp life was evidently military drill, which we all disliked very much, but the dullness of which was occasionally relieved by making us take part in manoeuvres. One night, as we were going to bed, Alexander II aroused the whole camp by having the alert sounded. In a few minutes all the camp was alive—several thousand boys gathering round their colors, and the guns of the artillery school booming in the stillness of the night. All military Peterhof came galloping to the camp, but owing to some misunderstanding the Emperor remained on foot. Orderlies hurried in all directions to get a horse for him, but there was none, and not being a good rider, he would not ride any horse but one of his own. He was very angry, and freely gave vent to his anger. “Imbecile (durák), have I only one horse?” I heard him shout to an orderly who reported that his horse was in another camp.
With the coming darkness, the booming of the guns, and the rattling of the cavalry, we boys grew very excited, and when Alexander ordered a charge, our column charged straight upon him. Tightly packed in the ranks, with lowered bayonets, we must have had a menacing aspect; and I saw the Emperor, who was still on foot, clearing the way for the column in three formidable jumps. I understood then the meaning of a column which marches in serried ranks under the excitement of the music and the march itself. There stood before us the Emperor, our commander, whom we all venerated; but I felt that in this moving mass not one page or cadet would have moved an inch aside or stopped to make room for him. We were the marching column, he was but an obstacle, and the column would have marched over him. “Why should he be in our way?” the pages said afterward. “Boys, rifle in hand, are even more terrible in such cases than old soldiers.”
Next year, when we took part in the great manoeuvres of the St. Petersburg garrison, I saw some of the sidelights of warfare. For two days in succession we did nothing but march up and down in a space of about twenty miles, without having the slightest idea of what was going on round us, or for what
