“But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about it. This is one of my requests to you.”
“Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?”
“To the Senate.”
“Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in the heraldry department, and I don’t know any of the real ones. They are all some kind of Germans–Gay, Fay, Day–tout l’alphabet, or else all sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos, Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l’autre monde. Well, it is all the same. I’ll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts of people. I’ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me. Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it. C’est un parti pris, every one understands but only not he.”
At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a silver platter.
“There now, from Aline herself. You’ll have a chance of hearing Kiesewetter.”
“Who is Kiesewetter?”
“Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their knees and weep and repent.”
The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of Christianity lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled the “faithful” in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
“There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,” said the Countess. “Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a wonderful man.”
“It does not interest me, ma tante.”
“But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you may go. What else do you want of me? Videz votre sac.”
“The next is in the fortress.”
“In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron Kriegsmuth. Cest un tres brave homme. Oh, but you know him; he was a comrade of your father’s. Il donne dans le spiritisme. But that does not matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?”
“I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on Tcherviansky.”
“I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband; we might ask her. She will do it for me. Elle est tres gentille.”
“I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without knowing what for.”
“No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their hair short, like men] ones.”
“We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer. You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are so pitiless.”
“That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what is disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot bear them.”
“Why can you not bear them?”
“You ask why, after the 1st of March?” [The Emperor Alexander II was killed on the first of March, old style.]
“They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.”
“Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs. It’s not women’s business.”
“Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.”
“Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want to teach everybody.”
“Not to teach but simply to help the people.”
“One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.”
“But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are living in the greatest luxury?” said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by his aunt’s good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
“What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?”
“No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work and all eat.” He could not help smiling as he said it.
Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt look at him curiously. “Mon cher vous finirez mal,” she said.
Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky’s husband, a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
“Ah, Dmitri, how d’you do?” he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to Nekhludoff to be kissed. “When did you get here?” And he silently kissed his wife on the forehead.
“Non il est impayable,” the Countess said, turning to her husband. “He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible simpleton,” she added. “Have you heard? Kamenskaya is in such despair that they fear for her life,” she said to her husband. “You should go and call there.”
“Yes; it is dreadful,” said her husband.
“Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters.”
Hardly had Nekhludoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than she called him back.
“Shall I write to Mariette, then?”
“Please, ma tante.”
“I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he’ll do it. Do not think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but je ne leur veux pas de mal, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers. And if only you do not resist cela vous fera beaucoup de bien. I know your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these things.”
CHAPTER XV
AN AVERAGE STATESMAN
Count Ivan Michaelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Michaelovitch consisted in the belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms, to be clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it was natural for him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food, prepared by highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most expensive clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that, therefore, all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this, Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered that the more money he could get out of the treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he spoke to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it was.
All the rest Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered insignificant and uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or just the reverse. Count Ivan Michaelovitch lived and acted according to these lights for 40 years, and at the end of 40 years reached the position of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled Count Ivan Michaelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of understanding the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up, though clumsily, intelligible State papers, and of spelling them correctly; secondly, his very stately appearance, which enabled him, when necessary, to seem not only extremely proud, but unapproachable and majestic, while at other times he could be abjectly and almost passionately servile; thirdly, the absence of any general principles or rules, either of personal or administrative morality, which made it possible for him either to agree or disagree with anybody according to what was wanted at the time.
When acting thus his only endeavour was to sustain the appearance of good breeding and not to seem too plainly inconsistent. As for his actions being moral or not, in themselves, or whether they were going to result in the highest welfare or greatest evil for the whole of the Russian Empire, or even the entire world, that was quite indifferent to him. When he became minister, not only those dependent on him (and there were great many of them) and people connected with him, but many strangers and even he himself were convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after some time had elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and when in accordance with the law of the struggle for existence others, like himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not only far from clever but very limited and badly educated.
Though self-assured, his views hardly reaching the level of those in the leading articles of the Conservative papers, it became apparent that
