A gloomy terror used to spread through our house when ‘it became known that one of the servants was to be sent to ‘the recruiting board. ‘The man was chained and placed under guard in the office, to prevent suicide. A peasant- cart was brought to the office door, and the doomed man was taken out between two watchmen. All the servants surrounded him. He made a deep bow, asking every one to pardon him his willing or unwilling offenses. If his father and mother lived in our village, they came to see him ‘off. He bowed to the ground before them, and his mother 96 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST and his other female relatives began loudly to sing out theit lamentations, —a sort of half-song and half-recitative: “To whom do you abandon us? Who will take care of you in the strange lands? Who will protect you from cruel men?’ — exactly in the same way in which they sang their lamentations at a burial, and with the same words.
Thus Andréi had now to face for twenty-five years the terrible fate of a soldier: all his schemes of happiness had come to a violent end.
The fate of one of the maids, Pauline, or Pélya, as she used to be called, was even more tragical. She had been apprenticed to make fine embroidery, and was an artist at the work. At Nikdlskoye her embroidery frame stood in sister Héléne’s room, and she often took part in the con- versations that went on between our sister and a sister of our stepmother who stayed with Helene. Altogether, by her behavior and talk Pélya was more like an educated young person than a housemaid.
A misfortune befell her: she realized that she would soon be a mother. She told all to our stepmother, who burst into reproaches: ‘I will not have that creature in my house any longer! I will not permit such a shame in my house! oh, the shameless creature!’ and so on. The tears of Héléne made no difference. Pélya had her hair cut short, and was exiled to the dairy; but as she was just embroidering an extraordinary skirt, she had to finish it at the dairy, in a dirty cottage, at a microscopical window. She finished it, and made many more fine embroideries, all in the hope of obtaining her pardon. But pardon did not come.
The father of her child, a servant of one of our neigh bors, implored permission to marry her; but as he had no money to offer, his request wasrefused. Pélya’s “too gen tlewoman-like manners” were taken as an offense, and r EDUCATION OF SERFS lene.
most bitter fate was kept in reserve for her. There was in our household a man employed as a postilion, on account of his small size; he went under the name of “ bandy-legged Filka.’”’ In his boyhood a horse had kicked him terribly, and he did not grow. His legs were crooked, his feet were turned inward, his nose was broken and turned to one side, his jaw was deformed. ‘To this monster it was decided to marry Pélya, —and she was married by force. The couple were sent to become peasants at my father’s estate in Ryazan.
Human feelings were not recognized, not even suspected, in serfs, and when Turguéneff published his little story “Mumu,” and Grigordvich began to issue his thrilling nov- els, in which he made his readers weep over the misfortunes of the serfs, it was to a great number of persons a startling revelation. ‘They love just as we do; is it possible?” exclaimed the sentimental ladies who could not read a French novel without shedding tears over the troubles of the noble heroes and heroines.
The education which the owners occasionally gave to some of their serfs was only another source of misfortune for the latter. My father once picked out in a peasant house a clever boy, and sent him to be educated as a doctor’s assistant. The boy was diligent, and after a few years’ apprenticeship made a decided success. When he returned home, my father bought all that was required for a well-equipped dispensary, which was arranged very nicely In one of the side houses of Nikdlskoye. In summer time, ‘Sasha the Doctor —that was the familiar name under which this young man went in the household — was busy gathering and preparing all sorts of medieal herbs, and in -ashort time he became most popular in the region round Nikélskoye. The sick people among the peasants came from the neighboring villages, and my father was proud 58 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST of the success of his dispensary. But this condition of things did not last. One winter, my father came to Nikol- skoye, stayed there for a few days, and left. That night SAsha the Doctor shot himself, — by accident, it was re- ported; but there was a love-story at the bottom of it. He was in love with a girl whom he could not marry, as she belonged to another landowner.
The case of another young man, Gherasim Kroglotf whom my father educated at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, was almost equally sad: He passed his examina- tions most brilliantly, getting a gold medal, and the director of the Institute made all possible endeavors to induce my father to give him freedom and to let him go to the uni- versity, — serfs not being allowed to enter there. He is sure to become a remarkable man,” the director said, ‘‘ per- haps one of the glories of Russia, and it will be an honor | for you to have recognized his capacities and to have given © such a man to Russian science.”
‘‘T need him for my own estate,’? my father replied to the many applications made on the young man’s behalf. In reality, with the primitive methods of agriculture which were then in use, and from which my father would never _ have departed, Gherdsim Krugldff was absolutely useless. 5 He made a survey of the estate, but when that was done he was ordered to sit in the servants’ room and to stand with a plate at dinner-time. Of course Gherdsim resented — it very much; his dreams carried him to the university, to scientific work. His looks betrayed his discontent, ~ and our stepmother seemed to find an especial pleasure in offending him at every opportunity. One day in the autumn, a rush of wind having opened the entrance gate, she called out to him, “Gardska, go and shut the gate.”: That was the last drop. He answered, ‘‘ You have a porter for that,” and went his way. ‘ A SUCCESSFUL SERF a9 My stepmother ran into father’s room, crying, ‘ Your servants insult me in your house! ” Immediately Gherdsim was put under arrest and chained, to be sent away as a soldier. The parting of his old father and mother with him was one of the most heart-rending scenes J ever saw. | This time, however, fate took its revenge. Nicholas I. died, and military service became more tolerable. Gheré- sim’s great ability was soon remarked, and in a few years he was one of the chief clerks, and the real working force in one of the departments of the ministry of war. Mean- while, my father, who was absolutely honest, and, at a time when almost every one was receiving bribes and mak- ing fortunes, had never let himself be bribed, departed once from the strict rules of the service, in order to oblige the commander of the corps to which he belonged, and consented to allow an irregularity of some kind. It nearly cost him his promotion to the rank of general; the only object of his thirty-five years’ service in the army seemed on the point of being lost. My stepmother went to St, Petersburg to remove the difficulty, and one day, after many applications, she was told that the only way to obtain what she wanted was to address herself to a particular clerk in a certain department of the ministry. Although he was a mere clerk, he was the real head of his superiors, and could do everything. This man’s name was — Gheré- sim Ivdnovich Krugl6ff!
“Imagine, our Gardska!” she said to me afterward. “T always knew that he had great capacity. I went to see him, and spoke to him about this affair, and he said, ‘I have nothing against the old prince, and I will do all I can for him.’ ” Gherdsim kept his word: he made a favorable report, md my father got his promotion. At last he could put on the long-coveted red trousers and the red-lined overcoat, md could wear the plumage on his helmet.
60 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST These were things which I myself saw in my childhood. If, however, I were to relate what I heard of in those years, it would be a much more gruesome narrative: stories of men and women torn from their families and their villages, and sold, or lost in gambling, or exchanged for a couple of hunting dogs, and then transported to some re- mote part of Russia for the sake of creating a new estate; of children taken from their parents and sold to cruel or dissolute masters; of flogging “in the stables,” which occurred every day with unheard-of cruelty; of a girl who found her only salvation in drowning herself; of an old man who had grown gray-haired in his master’s service, and at last hanged himself under his master’s window; and of revolts of serfs, which were suppressed by Nicholas I.’s generals by flogging to death each tenth or fifth man taken out of the ranks, and by laying waste the village, whose inhabitants, after a military execution, went begging for bread in the neighboring provinces. As to the poverty which I saw during our journeys in certain villages, espe- cially in those which belonged to the imperial family, no words would be adequate to describe the misery to readers who have not seen it.
To become free was the constant dream of the serfs, — a dream not easily realized, for a heavy sum of money was required to induce a landowner to part with a serf.; “Do you know,” my father said to me, once, “ that your mother appeared to me after her death? You young peo- ple do not believe in these things, but it was so. I sat one night very late in this chair, ab my writing-table, and slumbered, when I saw her enter from behind, all in white, quite pale, and with her eyes gleaming. When she was dying she begged me to promise that I would give liberty to her maid, Mdsha, and I did promise; but then, what with one thing and another, nearly a whole year passed | : : N p: MM é b: fF i ‘ i iY HOW MASHA SECURED HER FREEDOM 61 without my having fulfilled my intention. Then she ap- peared, and said to me in a low voice, ‘ Alexis, you pro- mised me to give liberty to Masha; have you forgotten it?’ I was quite terrified; I jumped out of my chair, but she had vanished. I called the servants, but no one had seen anything. Next morning I went to her grave and had a litany sung, and immediately gave liberty to Masha.” | When my father died, Masha came to his burial, and I spoke to her. She was married, and quite happy in her family life. My brother Alexander, in his jocose way, told her what my father had said, and we asked her what she knew of it.
“‘ These things,” she replied, ‘‘ happened a long time ago, so I may tell you the truth. I saw that your father had quite forgotten his promise, so I dressed up in white and spoke like your mother. I recalled the promise he had made to her, — you won’t bear a grudge against me, will wou? ’?
“Of course not!”
Ten or twelve years after the scenes described in the early part of this chapter, I sat one night in my father’s room, and we talked of things past. Serfdom had been abolished, and my father complained of the new conditions, though not very severely; he had accepted them without much grumbling.
* You must agree, father,” I said, ‘that you often pun- ished your servants cruelly, and even without reason.”
“With the people,” he replied, ‘it was impossible to do otherwise;’’? and, leaning back in his easy-chair, he re- mained plunged in thought. But what I did was nothing worth speaking of,” he said, after a long pause. ‘ Take that same Sableff: he looks so soft, and talks in such a thin Voice; but he was really terrible with his serfs. How many 62 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST times they plotted to kill him! I, at least, never took ~ advantage of my maids, whereas that old devil T went on in such a way that the peasant women were going ta inflict a terrible punishment upon him...Good-by, bonne nuit!”’
IX I wELL remember the Crimean war. At Moscow it afe fected people but little. Of course, in every house lint and bandages for the wounded were made at evening parties: not much of it, however, reached the Russian armies, im- mense quantities being stolen and sold to the armies of the enemy. My sister Héléne and other young ladies sang patriotic songs, but the general tone of life in society was hardly influenced by the great struggle that was going on. In the country, on the contrary, the war catsed terrible gloominess. The levies of recruits followed one another rapidly, and we continually heard the peasant women sing- ing their funereal songs. The Russian people look upon war as a calamity which is being sent upon them by Provi- dence, and they accepted this war with a solemnity that contrasted strangely with the levity I saw elsewhere under similar circumstances. Young though I was, I realized that feeling of solemn resignation which pervaded our villages.
My brother Nicholas was smitten like many others by the war fever, and before he had ended his course at the corps he joined the army in the Caucasus. I never saw him again.
In the autumn of 1854 our family was increased by the arrival of two sisters of our stepmother. They had had their own house and some vineyards at Sebastopol, but now they were homeless, and came to stay with us. When the allies landed in the Crimea, the inhabitants of Sebastopol were told that they need not be afraid, and had only to stay where they were; but after the defeat at the Alma, they were ordered to leave with all haste, as the city would be 64 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST invested within a few days. There were few conveyances, and there was no way of moving along the roads in face of the troops which were marching southward. To hire a cart was almost impossible, and the ladies, having abandoned all they had on the road, had a very hard time of it before they reached Moscow.
I soon made friends with the younger of the two sisters, a lady of about thirty, who used to smoke one cigarette after another, and to tell me of all the horrors of their journey. She spoke with tears in her eyes of the beautiful battle-ships which had to be sunk at the entrance of the harbor of Sebastopol, and she could not understand how the Russians would be able to defend Sebastopol from the land; there was no wall even worth speaking of.
I was in my thirteenth year when Nicholas I. died. It was late in the afternoon, the 18th of February (2d of March), that the policemen distributed in all the houses ) of Moscow a bulletin announcing the illness of the Tsar,. and inviting the inhabitants to pray in the churches for his | recovery. At that time he was already dead, and the au- thorities knew it, as there was telegraphic communication - between Moscow and St. Petersburg; but not a word having been previously uttered about his illness, they thought that | the people must be gradually prepared for the announce- | ment of his death. We all went to church and prayed | most piously.
Next day, Saturday, the same thing was done, and even | on Sunday morning bulletins about the Tsar’s health were | distributed. The news of the death of Nicholas reached us! only about midday, through some servants who had been to| the market. A real terror reigned in our house and in the! houses of our relatives, as the information spread. It was| said that the people in the market behaved in a strange way, showing no regret, but indulging in dangerous talk. Full- grown people spoke in whispers, and our stepmother kept DEATH OF NICHOLAS I 65 repeating, ‘“ Don’t talk before the men;” while the servants whispered among themselves, probably about the coming “freedom.”” The nobles expected at every moment a revolt of the serfs, —a new uprising of Pugachdéff.
At St. Petersburg, in the meantime, men of the educated classes, as they communicated to one another the news, em- braced in the streets. Every one felt that the end of the war and the end of the terrible conditions which prevailed under the “iron despot”? were near at hand. Poisoning was talked about, the more so as the Tsar’s body decom- posed very rapidly, but the true reason only gradually leaked out: a too strong dose of an invigorating medicine that Nicholas had taken.
In the country, during the summer of 1855, the heroic truggle which was going on in Sebastopol for every yard of ground and every bit of its dismantled bastions was followed vith a solemn interest. <A messenger was sent regularly wice a week from our house to the district town to get the apers; and on his return, even before he had dismounted, he papers were taken from his hands and opened. Héléne r I read them aloud to the family, and the news was at nce transmitted to the servants’ room, and thence to the itchen, the office, the priest’s house, and the houses of the - easants. ‘The reports which came of the last days of ebastopol, of the awful bombardment, and finally of the vacuation of the town by our troops were received with ars. In every country-house round about, the loss of ebastopol was mourned over with as much grief as the ss of a near relative would have been, although every one nderstood that now the terrible war would soon come ta n end.
x Ir was in August, 1857, when I was nearly fifteen, that my turn came to enter the corps of pages, and I was taken to St. Petersburg. When I left home I was still a child; but human character is usually settled in a definite way at an earlier age than is generally supposed, and it is evident to me that under my childish appearance I was then very much what I was to be later on. My tastes, my inclina- tions, were already determined.
The first impulse to my intellectual development was given, as I have said, by my Russian teacher. It is an excellent habit in Russian families —a habit now, unhap- pily, on the decline—to have in the house a student who aids the boys and the girls with their lessons, even when they are at a gymnasium. For a better assimila- tion of what they learn at school, and fora widening of their conceptions about what they learn, his aid is invalu- able. Moreover, he introduces an intellectual element into the family, and becomes an elder brother to the young people, — often something better than an elder brother, because the student has a certain responsibility for the progress of his pupils; and as the methods of teaching change rapidly, from one generation to another, he can assist his pupils much better than the best educated parents could.; Nikol4i P4vlovich Smirndff had literary tastes. At that time, under the wild censorship of Nicholas L, many quite inoffensive works by our best writers could not be published; others were so mutilated as to deprive some passages in them of any meaning. In the genial comedy by Griboyé INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 67 doff, “‘ Misfortune from Intelligence,” which ranks with the best comedies of Moliére, Colonel Skaloztib had to be named “Mr. Skalozub,” to the detriment of the sense and even of the verses; for the representation of a colonel in a comical light would have been considered an insult to the army. Of so innocent a book as Gégol’s “ Dead Souls” the second part was not allowed to appear, nor the first part to be re- printed, although it had long been out of print. Numer- ous verses of Pushkin, Lérmontoff, A. K. Tolstdi, Ryléeff, and other poets were not permitted to see the light; to say nothing of such verses as had any political meaning or con- tained a criticism of the prevailing conditions, All these circulated in manuscript, and Smirndff used to copy whole books of Gdgol and Pushkin for himself and his friends, a task in which I occasionally helped him. As a true child of Moscow he was also imbued with the deepest veneration for those of our writers who lived in Moscow, —some of them in the Old Equerries’ Quarter. He pointed out to me with respect the house of the Countess Salias (Eugénie Tour), who was our near neighbor, while the house of the “noted exile Alexander Hérzen always was associated with a certain mysterious feeling of respect and awe. The house ‘where Gédgol lived was for us an object of deep respect, and ‘though I was not nine when he died (in 1851), and had read none of his works, I remember well the sadness his death produced at Moscow. Turguéneff well expressed ‘that feeling in a note, for which Nicholas I. ordered him to ‘be put under arrest and sent into exile to his estate. Pushkin’s great poem, “‘ Evghéniy Onyéghin,” made but little impression upon me, and I still admire the marvelous simplicity and beauty of his style in that poem more than itscontents. But Gédgol’s works, which I read when I was eleven or twelve, had a powerful effect on my mind, and y first literary essays were in imitation of his humorous manner. An historical novel by Zagéskin, ‘‘ Yuriy Milosldv- 68 WkiMUInS OF A REVOLUTIONIST skiy,” about the times of the great uprising of 1612, Push- kin’s “The Captain’s Daughter,” dealing with the Puga- chéff uprising, and Dumas’s “‘ Queen Marguerite” awakened - in me a lasting interest in history. As to other French > novels, I have only begun to read them since Daudet and - Zola came to the front. Nekrdsoff’s poetry was my favorite from early years; I knew many of his verses by heart. Nikoléi P4vlovich early began to make me write, and with his aid I wrote a long “ History of a Sixpence,” for which we invented all sorts of characters, into whose possession the sixpence fell. My brother Alexander had at that time a much more poetical turn of mind. He wrote most roman- tic stories, and began early to make verses, which he did with wonderful facility and in a most musical and easy style. If his mind had not subsequently been taken up by natural history and philosophical studies, he undoubtedly would have become a poet of mark. In those years his favorite resort for finding poetical inspiration was the gently slooping roof underneath our window. ‘This aroused in me a constant desire to tease him. ‘There is the poet sit- ting under the chimney-pot, trying to write his verses,” I used to say;.and the teasing ended in a fierce scrimmage, ’ which brought our sister Héléne to a state of despair. But Alexander was so devoid of revengefulness that peace was soon concluded, and we loved each other immensely. Among. boys, scrimmage and love seem to go hand in hand.
I had even then taken to journalism. In my twelfth year I began to edit a daily journal. Paper was not to be had at will in our house, and my journal was in 32° onlys As the Crimean war had not yet broken out, and the only newspaper which my father used to receive was the Gazette of the Moscow police, I had not a great choice of models, As a result my own Gazette consisted merely of short para: graphs announcing the news of the day: as, ‘¢ Went out tc the woods. N. P. Smirnoif shot two thrushes,” and so on EARLY EXPERIENCE IN JOURNALISM 69 This soon ceased to satisfy me, and in 1855 I started a monthly review, which contained Alexander’s verses, my novelettes, and some sort of “varieties.”? The material existence of this review was fully guaranteed, for it had plenty of subscribers; that is, the editor himself and Smirnéff, who regularly paid his subscription, of so many sheets of paper, even after he had left our house. In return, I accurately wrote out for my faithful subscriber a second copy.
When Smirnéff left us, and a student of medicine, N. M. Pavloff, took his place, the latter helped me in-my editorial duties. He obtained for the review a poem by one of his friends, and — still more important — the introductory lec- ture on physical geography by one of the Moscow professors. Of course this had not been printed before: a reproduction would never have found its way into the review.
Alexander, I need not say, took a lively interest in the paper, and its renown soon reached the corps of cadets, Some young writers on the way to fame undertook the publication of a rival. The matter was serious: in poems and novels we could hold our own; but they had a “ critic,” and a “ critic’? who writes, in connection with the charac- ters of some new novel, all sorts of things about the condi- tions of life, and touches upon a thousand questions which (could not be touched upon anywhere else, makes the soul of a Russian review. They had a critic, and we had none! He wrote an article for the first number, and his article ‘was shown to my brother. It was rather pretentious and weak. Alexander at once wrote an anti-criticism, ridiculing and demolishing the critic in a violent manner. There was great consternation in the rival camp when they learned that this anti-criticism would appear in our next issue; they gave up publishing their paper, their best writers joined our staff, and we triumphantly announced the future “ ex. tlusive collaboration” of so many distinguished writers.
70 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST In August, 1857, the review had to be suspended, after nearly two years’ existence. New surroundings and a quite new life were before me. I went away from home with regret, the more so because the whole distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg would be between me and Alexander, and I already considered it a misfortune that I had to enter a military school. / PART SECOND THE CORPS OF PAGES I TE long-cherished ambition of my father was thus real. ized. There was a vacancy in the corps of pages which I could fill before I had got beyond the age to which admis- sion was limited, and I was taken to St. Petersburg and entered the school. Only a hundred and fifty boys — mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court — received education in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution attached to the imperial house- hold. After a stay of four or five years in the corps of pages, those who had passed the final examinations were received as officers in any regiment of the guard or of the army they chose, irrespective of the number of vacancies in that regiment; and each year the first sixteen pupils of the highest form were nominated pages de chambre; that is, they were personally attached to the several members of the imperial family, —the emperor, the empress, the grand duchesses, and the grand dukes. That was considered, of sourse, a great honor; and, moreover, the young men upon Whom this honor was bestowed became known at the court, ind had afterward every chance of being nominated aides- le-camp of the emperor or of one of the grand dukes, and onsequently had every facility for making a brilliant career n the service of the state. Fathers and mothers of families Onnected with the court took due care, therefore, that their ys should not miss entering the corps of pages, even 72 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST though entrance had to be secured at the expense of othet candidates who never saw a vacancy opening for them. Now that I was in the select corps my father could give free play to his ambitious dreams.
The corps was divided into five forms, of which the highest was the first, and the lowest the fifth, and the inten- tion was that I should enter the fourth form. However, as it appeared at the examinations that I was not sufficiently familiar with decimal fractions, and as the fourth form contained that year over forty pupils, while only twenty had been mustered for the fifth form, I was enrolled in the latter.
I felt extremely vexed at this decision. It was with re- luctance that I entered a military school, and now I should have to stay in it five years instead of four. What should T do in the fifth form, when I knew already all that would | be taught in it? With tears in my eyes I spoke of it to. the inspector (the head of the educational department), but. he answered me with a joke. ‘‘ You know,” he remarked, ‘‘ what Cesar said, — better to be the first in a village than | the second in Rome.” To which I warmly replied that I should prefer to be the very last, if only I could leave the military school as soon as possible. ‘ Perhaps, after some time, you will like the school,” he remarked, and from that day he became friendly to me. | To the teacher of arithmetic, who also tried to console me, I gave my word of honor that I would never cast a glance into his textbook; “and nevertheless you will have to give me the highest marks.” I kept my word; but thinking now of this scene, I fancy that the pupil was not of a very docile disposition.
And yet, as I look back upon that remote past, I conn but feel grateful for having been put in the lower form. Having only to repeat during the first year what I already knew, I got into the habit of learning my lessons by merely a a THE CORPS OF PAGES 73 listening to what the teachers said in the class-room; and, the lessons over, I had plenty of time to read and to write to my heart’s content. I never prepared for the examina- tions, and used to spend the time which was allowed for that in reading aloud, to a few friends, dramas of Shake- speare or of Ostrévsky. When I reached the higher “special ”’ forms, I was also better prepared to master the variety of subjects we had to study. Besides, I spent more than half of the first winter in the hospital. Like all children who are not born at St. Petersburg, I had to pay a heavy tribute to ‘the capital on the swamps of Finland,” in the shape of several attacks of local cholera, and finally one of typhoid fever.
When I entered the corps of pages, its inner life was undergoing a profound change. All Russia awakened at that time from the heavy slumber and the terrible night- mare of Nicholas I.’s reign. Our school also felt the effects of that revival. I do not know, in fact, what would have become of me, had I entered the corps of pages one or two years sooner. Hither my will would have been totally broken, or I should have been excluded from the school with no one knows what consequences. Happily, the tran- sition period was already in full sway in the year 1857.
The director of the corps was an excellent old man, Gen- eral Zheltuikhin. But he was the nominal head only. The real master of the school was ‘the Colonel,’ — Colonel _ Girardot, a Frenchman in the Russian service. People said ee he was a Jesuit, and so he was, I believe. His ways, at any rate, were thoroughly imbued with the teachings of Loyola, and his educational methods were those of the French Jesuit colleges.
Imagine a short, extremely thin man, with dark, piercing, and furtive eyes, wearing short clipped mustaches, which ' gave him the expression of a cat; very quiet and firm; not 74 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST remarkably intelligent, but exceedingly cunning; a despot at the bottom of his heart, who was capable of hating — intensely hating —the boy who would not fall under his fascination, and of expressing that hatred, not by silly per- secutions, but unceasingly, by his general behavior, — by an occasionally dropped word, a gesture, a smile, an inter- jection. His walk was more like gliding along, and the exploring glances he used to cast round without turning his head completed the illusion. A stamp of cold dryness was impressed on his lips, even when he tried to look well dis- posed, and that expression became still more harsh when his mouth was contorted by a smile of discontent or of con- tempt. With all this there was nothing of a commander in him; you would rather think, at first sight, of a benevolent — father who talks to his children as if they were full-grown people. And yet, you soon felt that every one and every- thing had to bend before his will. Woe to the boy who would not feel happy or unhappy according to the degree of good disposition shown toward him by the Colonel.
The words “the Colonel” were continually on all lips. Other officers went by their nicknames, but no one dared to give a nickname to Girardot. A sort of mystery hung about him, as if he were omniscient and everywhere present. — True, he spent all the day and part of the night in the school. Even when we were in the classes he prowled about, visiting our drawers, which he opened with his own _ keys. As to the night, he gave a good portion of it to the _ task of inscribing in small books, — of which he had quite — a library, —in separate columns, by special signs and in inks of different colors, all the faults and virtues of each — boy..
Play, jokes, and conversaticn stopped when we saw him slowly moving along through our spacious rooms, hand ‘ in hand with one of his favorites, balancing his body for- + ward and backward; smiling at one boy, keenly looking — INNER LIFE OF THE CORPS OF PAGES 75