The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
IVAN'S EDUCATION.
"Our young people think they know everything when they have learned to dance and to speak French."—Words of the Emperor Alexander, quoted by Madame de Choiseul-Gouffier.
PETROVITCH the merchant would have thought himself greatly lacking in his duty towards Ivan the boyar if he had suffered him to remain beneath his roof. As soon as he had provided him with a fashionable outfit—that is to say, an outfit composed of garments fashionable in Paris three seasons previously—he transferred him to the palace of a widowed lady of rank who had promised to act as his guardian. He was to associate with her sons, and to share with them the instructions of the French tutor whose services were then considered indispensable to every young Russian of noble birth. For these advantages Petrovitch paid very liberally: in many families, even of the highest position, good silver roubles were not as plentiful as they were desirable, and were not likely to be rejected when they presented themselves for acceptance.
Feodor was deputed to accompany Ivan to his new home, since the elder members of the family did not care to present themselves. It must be owned that the little Russian, in his glossy blue caftan of the finest cloth and his bright silken sash, had the advantage of his companion, who looked as awkward as a naturally graceful boy could contrive to do with his limbs confined in the tightest of French garments.
Having reached the stately painted gateway of the Wertsch family mansion or palace, the two boys were admitted by the porter and led across an ample courtyard into a large saloon furnished in a manner utterly strange to Ivan. As no one was there, he had time to indulge his wonder and curiosity. Chairs and tables, divans and ottomans, with many other objects, of the uses of which he had not the slightest conception, were scattered about in profusion; the woodwork was painted rose-colour or lilac, and lavishly adorned with gilding, while the numerous cushions were covered with a kind of tapestry of a shining gray. At one side of the room a row of slender shafts, rose-coloured and tipped with gold, supported climbing-plants in luxuriant flower; at the other, three large windows looked out upon the terrace and the pleasure-grounds beyond it. Ivan thought these windows were open, and was stepping confidently towards one of them, when Feodor pulled him back with a laugh. "Take care, Prince Ivan," he said; "that is one great sheet of glass. I have seen such before; they cost—oh, I know not how many roubles. But come, let us look at the orangery;" and he pointed to a trellised door at the farther end of the room.
Here a fairy scene met their view. Oranges gleamed amidst dark glossy foliage like "golden lamps hid in a night of green;" heavy clusters of grapes, purple and amber, hung high above their heads; peaches, apricots, and plums ripened temptingly beside them—for in that ungenial climate many fruits that grow elsewhere in the open air require the protection of glass. Wonderful was the wealth of flowers, all of which were new to Ivan. Sheets of blossom—gold, and purple, and scarlet, azure, and creamy white—wooed his delighted gaze; and ever and anon he paused as some rare peculiar beauty, rose or lily, geranium or costly orchid, attracted his eye with the richness of its colouring or the grace of its form.
But this was not the first "orangery" (all greenhouses were then called orangeries in Russia) which Feodor had seen, and he had no objection to show off his larger experiences before his senior and his superior in rank. He could even name to him a few of the flowers. "Look here," he said, as he paused before a plant laden with clusters of graceful bells, their dark crimson sheaths half concealing cups of white faintly tinged with rose-colour; "that is called fuchsia. There is one of the same kind in the Kremlin gardens. Last winter's frost nearly killed it; but it lives still—a thick, stunted, hardy bush, with little red flowers, as unlike as possible to this one. That is like me, and this one before us is like you, Prince Ivan. You are going to be put in the orangery, because you were born a boyar; while I am left outside in the frost and snow. After all, I had rather be myself than you. It is hot here in the orangery, and there is not room enough—one could not run or play in comfort."
He was about to try the experiment by indulging in a race from one end of the tiled passage to the other, when a strange figure was seen approaching them. It was that of a young lad with flat, ugly Tartar features, and very fantastically dressed. He was one of those Calmucks whom the Russian nobility had a singular fancy for keeping in their houses as pets; although, as they grew up, they often proved very troublesome to their patrons. With a grin and a bow he informed the boys that the countess was ready to receive them, and invited them to follow him into her presence. Having passed once more through the saloon, they entered a boudoir richly furnished and adorned with hangings of blue and silver. An elderly lady, dressed in exaggerated French fashion, reclined on a couch. Her appearance was not improved by two rows of teeth dyed an ebony hue, a curious Russian custom of the period. She played with a fan, which was rather useless in that climate, while she conversed in French with two gentlemen in frock coats who sat near her. When Ivan entered, she languidly extended her hand, glittering with jewelled rings, and addressed some words to him in the same tongue. He looked embarrassed, but the ready Feodor came to his aid. "Pas Français, madame," he said.
The Countess Wertsch accordingly condescended to the use of her native language, in which she bade Ivan welcome cordially enough. She then gave him a French bonbonnière, and told him to help himself and his companion to its contents, while she continued her conversation with her guests. Ivan could not help thinking, from the manner of the speakers, that this conversation had reference to himself, and he was beginning to grow hot and uncomfortable, when Feodor effectually diverted his thoughts by taking out his pocket-knife and cutting upon one of the bonbons—a large almond covered with chocolate—a striking likeness of the countess's rather peculiar face. He was on the point of indulging in a laugh which might have had awkward consequences, when a young man, dressed à la française, and carrying in his hand a long pipe tipped with amber, lounged into the room.
"This is Adrian, my eldest son," said the countess, turning to Ivan. "You are to be fellow-students, so you ought to be friends.—Adrian, this is Prince Ivan Pojarsky."
Adrian made a bow, and addressing himself to Ivan, asked if he had seen the new piece at the French theatre.
Ivan, who thought he meant a new part of the building, answered with simplicity, "I do not know; everything I see here is alike new to me."
"Then I shall have the pleasure of introducing you to a great many things," said Adrian, with a smile, and, by way of a further overture of friendship, he took out and presented a jewelled snuff-box. Ivan supposed this to be another kind of bonbonnière; but fortunately for himself he was not attracted either by the look or the odour of its contents, and declined with thanks.
At length the older guests took their leave, and the countess turned her attention to the boys. She seemed struck with the appearance of Ivan's little companion, and asked him many questions, which he answered with a grace and sprightliness that interested her still further.
"I should like to keep both of you," she said to Feodor. "Will you stay with me, and become my little page of honour? I will have you taught French, and you shall be always with your friend Prince Ivan."
"I thank you, madame," Feodor answered gravely. "But I cannot leave my grandfather. I belong to him, and I will stay with him always—always," he repeated with earnestness.
"But, my little lad, your grandfather is very old. Some day he will die, and then what will become of you?"
"When he dies, I will die too," said Feodor resolutely, with a glow in his dark eyes.
"Wait, boy, till you are ten years older," laughed Adrian, "and for no man in the world will you say as much as that. As for a woman—well, I know not; you may have your fever-fit like another, and get over it, and laugh at it."
Feodor gave him a surprised, incredulous look, and repeated quietly, "When he dies, I will die too." Then, turning to the countess, he took his leave in words he had been carefully instructed to use: "May I be permitted to kiss your hand, madame? My grandfather will expect me at home."
She responded graciously, and asked Adrian to take him into the orangery and give him some fruit. Ivan went with them, being anxious to see the last of his little friend. They passed a half-opened door, which the boys had not noticed before. Within was a kind of oratory: sacred pictures glittered in frames of gold and silver adorned with jewels, and lights were burning before them in massive silver candlesticks. Adrian turned in, but not to make his reverence, as the boys supposed. On the contrary, he deliberately used one of the candles to light his pipe. Ivan and Feodor were both horrified, and Ivan said, "How can you do that? The saint will be angry, and some harm will happen to you."
"My dear innocent babe, when you know a little more you will believe a little less. Ah, here comes Mousié, our French professor.—M. Thomassin, here is your new pupil, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch Pojarsky."
A dapper little Frenchman glided noiselessly towards them, and bowed profoundly. But the ceremony of introduction accomplished, Adrian went off with him, much to the relief of the boys, whom he left in the charge of a servant, bidding him supply Feodor plentifully with fruit.
That day was the beginning of a new life for Ivan. His versatile, imitative Russian nature stood him in good stead. Ashamed of his ignorance of what Adrian and Leon Wertsch knew so well, and perhaps with the same feelings of emulation towards them as of old towards Michael, he devoted his quick intelligence and his retentive memory to two branches of study,—the French language and the art of reading. The average Russian is a remarkably good linguist, and Ivan was much more than an average Russian. It very soon became unsafe for "Mousié" to say anything in his presence which he was not intended to understand; nor was it long before he could read sufficiently well to amuse his leisure with the worthless sentimental romances then, unhappily, popular in Russia.
In other ways his education made rapid progress. He soon appreciated the attractions of the French theatre; he learned to like the taste of champagne; and cards and loto were substituted for the homely babshkys of his childhood. Under the tutelage of M. Thomassin—as worthless and unprincipled a Frenchman as ever professed and propagated the doctrines of Voltaire—the Wertsches were growing up into frivolous, dissipated young men of fashion, and open scoffers at what they styled a stupid and antiquated superstition. Their mother, a thoroughly ignorant woman, with a thin veneering of showy accomplishments, was a little horrified when their contempt for things she had been accustomed to revere was manifested in her presence; but she supposed that all must be right which was taught them by a fashionable French "professeur." At all events, they only did like other people in the beau monde, and its opinion was her idol.
Once only did Ivan see her really provoked. He often visited his kind old friend Petrovitch, as indeed for every reason he was bound to do. The easiest way of reaching or returning from the merchants' quarter was by crossing the river, in summer by a ferry-boat, in winter on foot or in a sledge. Once, however, just when the ice was beginning to break, and the passage was difficult and rather unsafe, Ivan stayed with the Petrovitches for dinner, and came home in the evening in a drosky by a longer route. The countess, before his return, had been a little alarmed for his safety, but was much more annoyed when he made his appearance and explained how his day had been spent.
"It is well enough to visit people like the Petrovitches," she said. "But to eat in their house! such a thing is never done in the world—never! For Heaven's sake, Ivan, do not let any one know of it. You would be talked about."
Adrian, who was present, took Ivan's part. "After all, mother," he said, "in St. Petersburg his Imperial Majesty has been known to drink tea in the house of a merchant."
"His Imperial Majesty," replied the countess with solemnity, "had better take care of himself."
"Which," returned Adrian, "he is abundantly able to do."
"Of course, Ivan," Madame Wertsch resumed, "you can go to the Petrovitches at proper times and in a proper way, when the old man wishes to see you."
"He will never see me again," Ivan answered sadly; "he is quite blind now."
One incident of his first winter in Moscow shocked Ivan considerably, though it made scarcely any impression upon those around him. Coming out at midnight with the Wertsches from a sumptuous entertainment at the palace of a friend, they found their little postilion lying dead in the snow, close to the horses' feet, with the reins still wound around his stiffened arm. The child—a mujik of twelve years old, chosen for his beauty—had fallen from his seat overcome by cold and fatigue, and the coachman, himself half frozen, did not know what had happened until too late to help him. Such accidents were of daily occurrence, Ivan was told, during the frosty weather. No one seemed to think much about it; he was only a mujik, one of the "black people," in the eyes of the fashionable world little better than beasts of burden. But Ivan was haunted for weeks with the dead face of the pretty boy, to whom he had often given a few kopecks to buy sweetmeats. Another face came before him too with a reproachful, accusing look—the face that he had seen bending compassionately over the senseless form of Stefen Alexitch. Ivan often looked for that face in public places, in fashionable assemblies, in church; but it is needless to add that he looked for it in vain.
About two years after his arrival in Moscow, Ivan made an expedition to Nicolofsky to visit his old friends. Although scarcely sixteen, he already considered himself, and was considered by others, quite grown up. The young Russian of that day ripened early into manhood: fifteen was a usual age for entering the army, and education was then considered complete. Still, though he thought himself old enough for any adventure, Ivan might have postponed his journey for another year, had not the proprietor of a neighbouring estate, who was going to spend the summer at his country house, obligingly offered him a seat in his carriage.
He had provided himself with gifts for all his friends, and ransacked the "Silver Row" in the Great Bazaar for the prettiest ear-rings and bracelets he could procure for Anna Popovna. The welcome he received was everything that could be desired—affectionate, enthusiastic, and admiring. There was but one exception. Michael Ivanovitch scowled upon him with undisguised ill-humour. He would like to know what brought him there, he was heard to mutter; adding that the less boyars and mujiks had to say to one another the better for both. Otherwise, his visit was a complete success. He returned to Moscow fancying himself desperately in love with Anna Popovna, and the hero of one of his favourite romances, in which princes sighed for shepherdesses and queens wedded clowns. An attack of fever, which he had shortly afterwards, and which kept him for some time confined to the house, gave him leisure to indulge his dreams and reveries.
As he grew older, the works of Voltaire and Diderot began to replace in his esteem the flimsy, unreal productions of the novelists. M. Thomassin's only genuine love was a love of pleasure, his only genuine hatred a hatred of religion. Consequently he taught his pupils just enough to make them sensualists and scoffers like himself. He bid fair to succeed as completely with Ivan as he had done with Adrian and Leon Wertsch; indeed Ivan would probably go farther than they, because his nature was stronger and his character more energetic. What has no root is easily displaced. The religion of Ivan's early years was a mere superstition, a matter of outward forms and observances; therefore, when he ceased to attach importance to these, he lost everything. "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." There was no mental conflict, there were no keen and bitter searchings of heart. From a dead faith he glided almost insensibly into a dead scepticism, and by neither the faith nor the scepticism had the profound slumber of his soul been at any time disturbed.
He continued to attend the numerous church services because others did so, and because the exquisite music (in the Greek Church entirely vocal) and the gorgeous ceremonial gratified his taste. He also observed, at least as strictly as those around him, the long and severe fasts of the Church; availing himself, however, of such evasions as were sanctioned by custom: "name days," for example, which happened to fall in Lent were sure to be honoured with a double measure of feasting.
Meanwhile his emotional nature craved excitement and his mind needed occupation. Genuine, earnest study under a competent teacher he would have thoroughly enjoyed; but the Greek and Latin lessons with which M. Thomassin supplemented his instructions in French were very superficial and perfunctory. Fortunately he had another master for Polish and German; and with these languages he took some pains, because a knowledge of them was necessary in order to obtain a commission in the army. But even in these his interest was slight; for at present he found the attractions of the ballroom and the gaming-table far more powerful than those of the library.
The narrow world of pleasure in which he lived thrilled but faintly to the shock of those mighty impulses that were moving the great world around him. Now and then he heard the strife of many tongues which accused the Czar of blindness for having made peace with Napoleon at all, and of weakness for keeping that peace in spite of numberless provocations. In those days, any one who heard the talk of the salons in Moscow and St. Petersburg might have thought it the easiest thing in the world to measure swords once more with the conqueror of Austerlitz. Ivan shared the sentiments of those around him, and accordingly he was overjoyed when at last, in defiance of Napoleon, the ukase was published which reopened the trade with England under the protection of neutral flags, and foreign luxuries appeared once more upon the table of the noble, while foreign gold glided quickly into the purse of the merchant. He shared, too, the universal indignation at Napoleon's atrocious spoliation of the Duke of Oldenburg, the Czar's brother-in-law, perhaps the most flagrant of his many violations of the Treaty of Tilsit. Ivan was breathing an atmosphere highly charged with electricity, and full of the indications of an approaching storm; but he knew not the signs of the times. Besides, how was it possible that he, whom competent judges were calling the best dancer in Moscow, and who was the acknowledged favourite of fortune at all games of hazard, could disquiet himself about the designs of Napoleon and the prospect of a war with France?