Chapter 27

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT—I AM UNDER MY OWN SUPERVISION—THE DUHOBORS AND PAUL—THE PATERNAL RULE OF THE LANDOWNERS—COUNT ARAKTCHEYEV AND THE MILITARY SETTLEMENTS—A FEROCIOUS INVESTIGATION—RETIREMENT

Before I went away Count Strogonov told me that the military governor of Novgorod, Elpidifor Antihovitch Zurov was in Petersburg, that he had spoken to him about my appointment, and advised me to call upon him. I found him a rather friendly and good-natured general, short, middle-aged, and of very military appearance. We talked for half an hour, he graciously escorted me to the door, and there we parted.

When I arrived in Novgorod I went to see him and the change of scene was amazing. In Petersburg the governor had been a visitor, here he was at home; he actually seemed to me to be taller in Novgorod. Without any provocation on my part, he thought fit to inform me that he would not permit councillors to give their opinions and put their views in writing, that it delayed business, and that, if anything were not right, they could talk it over, but that if it came to giving opinions, one or the other would have to take his discharge. I observed, smiling, that it was hard to frighten me with that prospect, since the sole object of my service was to get my discharge from it, and added that while bitter necessity forced me to serve in Novgorod I should probably have no occasion for giving my opinion.

This conversation was quite enough for both of us. As I went away I made up my mind to avoid getting into closer contact with him. So far as I could observe, the impression I made on the governor was much the same as that which he made upon me, _i.e._, we disliked each other as much as we possibly could on so brief and superficial an acquaintance.

When I looked a little into the work of the provincial government I saw that my position was not only extremely disagreeable but very risky. Every councillor was responsible for his section and shared the responsibility for all the rest. To read the papers in all the sections was absolutely impossible, one had to sign them on trust. The governor, in accordance with his theory that a councillor should never give counsel, put his signature, contrary to the law and good sense, next after that of the councillor in whose section the case was. This was excellent for me personally; in this signature I found some guarantee, as he shared the responsibility, and because he often with a peculiar expression talked of his lofty honesty and Robespierre-like incorruptibility. As for the signatures of the other councillors they were very little comfort to me. They were hardened old clerks who by dozens of years of service had worked their way up to being councillors, and lived only by the service, that is, by bribes. It is useless to blame them for that; a councillor, I remember, received twelve thousand paper roubles a year; a man with a family could not possibly exist in comfort on that. When they perceived that I was not going to share with them in dividing the booty, nor going to plunder on my own account, they began to look upon me as an uninvited guest and dangerous witness. They did not become very intimate with me, especially when they had discovered that between the governor and me there existed an affection of a very lukewarm character. They stood by one another and watched over one another’s interests, but they did not care what became of me. Moreover, my worthy colleagues were not afraid of getting into trouble, or of being fined or of having to refund even large sums of money, because they had nothing. They could risk it, and the more readily the more important the case was; whether the deficit was of five hundred roubles or of five hundred thousand did not matter to them. In case of a deficit, a fraction of their salary went to the reimbursement of the Treasury, and the repayment could be spread over two or three hundred years if the official lasted so long. Usually either the official died or the Tsar did, and then in the rejoicings at his accession the heir forgave the debts. Manifestoes remitting such debts were also published on occasions such as a Royal birth or coming of age; the officials reckoned upon them. In my case, on the contrary, they would have taken my money and the part of the family estate which my father had assigned to me.

If I could have relied on my own head-clerks, things would have been easier. I did a great deal to gain their attachment, treated them politely and helped them with money, but my efforts only resulted in their ceasing to obey me—they only stood in awe of the councillors who treated them as though they were schoolboys—and they took to coming to the office half-drunk. They were very poor men with no education and with no expectations. All the imaginative side of their lives was confined to wretched little taverns and strong drink. So I had to be on my guard in my own section too.

At first the governor gave me Section Four, in which all business dealing with contracts and money matters took place. I asked him to make a change, he would not, saying that he had no right to make a change without the consent of the other councillor. In the governor’s presence I asked the councillor in charge of Section Two, he consented and we exchanged. The new section was less alluring; its work was concerned with passports, circulars of all sorts, cases of the abuse of power by landowners, of dissenters, forgers of counterfeit coin, and people under the supervision of the police.

Anything sillier and more absurd cannot be imagined; I am certain that three-fourths of the people who read this will not believe it,[47] and yet it is the bare truth that I, as councillor of the provincial government, in control of the Second Section, every three months signed the report of the police-master upon myself as a man under police supervision. The police-master from politeness made no entry under the heading ‘behaviour,’ and under that of ‘occupation’ wrote: ‘Engaged in the government service.’ Such are the prodigies of absurdity that can be reached by having two or three police departments antagonistic to each other, official formalities instead of laws, and a field corporal’s conception of discipline in place of a governing intelligence.

This absurdity reminds me of an incident that occurred at Tobolsk some years ago. The civil governor was on bad terms with the vice-governor, a quarrel was carried on on paper, they wrote each other all sorts of biting and sarcastic things in official form. The vice-governor was a ponderous pedant, a formalist, a good-natured specimen of the divinity student; he composed his malignant answers himself with immense labour and, of course, made this feat the object of his life. It happened that the governor went away to Petersburg for a time. The vice-governor took over his duties and in the character of governor received an impudent document from himself sent the day before; without hesitation he ordered the secretary to answer it, signed the answer and, receiving it as vice-governor, set to work again, racking his brains and scribbling an insulting letter to himself. He regarded this as a proof of his disinterested honesty.

For six months I was in harness in the provincial government. It was disagreeable and extremely tedious. Every morning at eleven o’clock I put on my uniform, buckled on my civilian sword, and went to the office. At twelve o’clock the military governor arrived; taking no notice of the councillors, he walked straight to the corner and put down his sabre there. Then, looking out of the window and straightening his hair, he went towards his easy-chair and bowed to those present. Scarcely had the sergeant with fierce, grey moustaches that stood up at right angles to his lips solemnly opened the door and the clank of the sabre become audible in the office, when the councillors got up and remained standing with backs bent until the governor had bowed to them. One of my first actions, by way of protest, was taking no part in this collective rising and reverential expectation, but sitting quietly and only bowing when he bowed to us.

There were no great discussions or heated arguments; it rarely happened that a councillor asked the governor’s opinion, still more rarely that the governor put some business question to the councillors. Before every one lay a heap of papers and every one signed his name, it was a signature factory.

Remembering Talleyrand’s celebrated injunction, I did not try to distinguish myself by my zeal and attended to business only so far as was necessary to escape reprimand or avoid getting into trouble. But there were two classes of work in my section towards which I considered I had no right to take so superficial an attitude; these were matters relating to the dissenters and to the abuse of power by the landowners.

Dissenters are not consistently persecuted in Russia, but something comes over the Synod, or the Ministry of Home Affairs, all of a sudden, and they make a raid on some dissenting convent, or some community, plunder it, and then subside again. The dissenters usually have intelligent agents in Petersburg who warn them of coming danger; the others at once collect money, hide their books and their ikons, stand drink to the orthodox priests, and stand drink to the orthodox police-captain and buy themselves off; with that, the matter rests for ten years or so.

In the reign of Catherine there were a great many Duhobors[48] in the Novgorod Province. Their leader, the old head of the posting drivers, in Zaitsevo, I think it was, enjoyed immense respect.

When Paul was on his way to his coronation at Moscow he ordered the old man to be summoned before him, probably with the idea of converting him. The Duhobors, like the Quakers, do not take off their caps, and the grey-headed old man went up to the Emperor of Gatchina with head covered. This was more than the Tsar could put up with. A petty and meticulous readiness to take offence was a particularly striking characteristic of Paul and is, indeed, of all his sons except Alexander; having a monstrous power in their hands, they have not even the wild beast’s sense of power which keeps the big dog from attacking the little one.

‘Before whom are you standing in your cap?’ shouted Paul, puffing and showing every sign of frenzied rage: ‘do you know me?’

‘I do,’ answered the dissenter calmly, ‘you are Pavel Petrovitch.’

‘Put him in chains: to penal servitude with him! to the mines!’ the chivalrous Paul exclaimed.

The old man was seized and the Tsar ordered the village to be set fire to on four sides and the inhabitants to be sent to exile in Siberia. At the next station some one in attendance on the Tsar threw himself at his feet and said that he had ventured to delay the carrying out of the will of the Most High, and was waiting for him to repeat it. Paul was somewhat more sober and perceived that setting fire to villages and sending men to the mines without a trial was a queer way of recommending himself to the people. He commanded the Synod to investigate the peasants’ case and ordered the old man to be incarcerated for life in the Spasso-Yefimyevsky Monastery; he thought that the orthodox monks would torment him worse than penal servitude; but he forgot that our monks are not merely good orthodox Christians but also men who are very fond of money and vodka; while the dissenters drink no vodka and are not sparing of their money.

The old man had the reputation of a saint among the Duhobors. They came from all parts of Russia to do homage to him and paid with gold for admission to see him. The old man sat in his cell, dressed all in white, and his friends draped the walls and the ceiling with linen. After his death they gained permission to bury his body with his kindred and carried him in triumph upon their shoulders from Vladimir to the province of Novgorod. Only the Duhobors know where he is buried. They are persuaded that he had the gift of working miracles in his lifetime and that his body is untouched by decay.

I heard all this partly from the governor of Vladimir, I. E. Kuruta, partly from the post-drivers in Novgorod, and partly from a lay-brother in the Spasso-Yefimyevsky Monastery. Now there are no more political prisoners in the monastery, though the prison is full of priests and church servants of all kinds, disobedient sons of whom their parents have complained, and so on. The archimandrite, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a fur cap, showed us the prison yard. When he went in, a non-commissioned officer with a gun went up to him and reported: ‘I have the honour to report to your Reverence that all is well in the prison and that the prisoners are so many.’ The archimandrite in answer gave him his blessing—what a mix-up!

The business relating to the dissenters was of such a nature that it was best not to raise the subject again. I looked through the documents referring to them and left them in peace.... On the other hand, those relating to the abuse of the landowners’ power needed a thorough overhauling. I did all I could and scored a few victories in that boggy path; set one young girl free from persecution and put one naval officer under arrest. These I believe were the only things I can boast of in my official career.

A certain lady was keeping a servant-girl in her house without any documentary evidence of ownership; the girl petitioned that her claims to freedom should be inquired into. My predecessor had very sagaciously thought fit to leave her until her case was decided in complete bondage with the lady who claimed her. I had to sign the documents; I turned to the governor and observed that the girl would not be in a very enviable position in her mistress’s house after lodging this petition.

‘What’s to be done with her?’

‘Keep her in the police-station.’

‘At whose expense?’

‘At the expense of the lady, if the case is decided against her.’

‘And if it is not?’

Luckily at that moment the provincial prosecutor came in. A prosecutor from his social position, from his official relations, from the very buttons on his uniform, is bound to be an enemy of the governor, or at least to thwart him in everything. I purposely continued the conversation in his presence. The governor began to get angry and said that the whole question was not worth wasting a couple of words on. The prosecutor cared not a straw what became of the girl or how she was treated, but he immediately took my side and advanced a dozen different points from the code of laws in support of it. The governor, who in reality cared as little, said to me, smiling ironically, that it was much the same whether she went to her mistress or to the prison.

‘Of course she will be better off in prison,’ I observed.

‘It will be more consistent with the intention expressed in the code,’ observed the prosecutor.

‘Let it be as you like,’ the governor said, laughing more than ever. ‘You’ve done a service to your protégée: when she has been in prison for a few months she will thank you for it.’

I did not continue the argument, my object was to save the girl from domestic persecution; I remember that two months later she was released and received her legal freedom.

Among the unsettled questions in my department there was a complicated correspondence lasting over several years, concerning the acts of violence of a retired naval officer called Strugovshtchikov and his various misdeeds in the management of his estate. The question was raised on the petition of his mother, afterwards the peasants made complaints. He had come to some arrangement with his mother, and himself charged the peasants with intending to kill him, without, however, adducing any serious proofs. Meanwhile it was clear from the evidence of his mother and his house-serfs that the man was guilty of all sorts of lawless violence. The business had been sleeping the sleep of the just for more than a year; it is always possible to drag a case out with inquiries and unnecessary correspondence and then, recording it settled, to file it on the archives of the office. A recommendation had to be made to the Senate that he should be put under restraint, but for this purpose the assent of the Marshal of Nobility was necessary. As a rule, the Marshal of Nobility evades giving it, being disinclined to lose a vote. It rested entirely with me whether the case was pushed forward, but a _coup de grâce_ from the marshal was essential.

The marshal of the Novgorod Province, a nobleman with a Vladimir medal who had served in the militia in 1812, tried to show that he was a well-read man when he met me, by talking in the bookish language of the period before Karamzin; on one occasion, pointing to a monument which the nobility of Novgorod had raised _to itself_ in recognition of its patriotism in 1812, he alluded with feeling to the severe and sacred character of a marshal’s duties, and the flattering honour of so weighty a trust.

All that was to the good. The marshal came to the office in connection with certifying the insanity of some church servitor; after all the presidents of all the courts had exhausted their whole store of foolish questions, from which the lunatic might well have concluded that they too were a little deranged, and had finally certified him as insane, I drew the marshal aside and described the case to him. The marshal shrugged his shoulders, assumed an air of horror and indignation, and ended by referring to the naval officer as an arrant scoundrel ‘who cast a black shadow on the stainless reputation of the nobility of Novgorod.’

‘You would, of course,’ said I, ‘give us the same answer in writing, if we appealed to you?’

The marshal, caught unawares, promised to answer conscientiously, adding that ‘honour and uprightness were the invariable attributes of the nobility of Russia.’

Though I had some doubts of the invariability of those attributes, I pushed the case forward and the marshal kept his word. The case was brought before the Senate, and I well remember the sweet moment when the decree of the Senate reached my section, appointing trustees to superintend the naval officer’s estate and putting him under the supervision of the police. The naval officer was persuaded that the case had been shelved, and, thunderstruck at the decree, came to Novgorod. He was at once told how it had happened; the infuriated officer threatened to fall upon me from behind a corner, to engage ruffians and lie in wait, but, being unaccustomed to strategy on land, quietly disappeared from sight in some distant town.

Unfortunately the ‘attributes’ of brutality, debauchery, and violence with house-serfs and peasants appear to be more ‘invariable’ than those of ‘honour and uprightness’ among the nobility of Russia. Of course there is a small group of cultured landowners who are not knocking their servants about from morning to night, are not thrashing them every day, but even among them there are ‘Pyenotchkins’[49]; the rest have not yet advanced beyond the stage of ‘Saltytchiha’[50] and the American planters.

Rummaging about, I found the correspondence of the provincial government of Pskov concerning a certain Madame Yaryzhkin. She flogged two of her maids to death, was tried on account of a third, and was almost completely acquitted by the Criminal Court, who based their verdict among other things on the fact that the third one did not die. This woman invented the most surprising punishments, beating with a flat iron, with gnarled sticks, or with a washing bat.

I do not know what the girl in question had done, but her mistress surpassed herself. She made the girl kneel down on some boards into which nails had been driven; in this position she beat her about the back and the head with a washing bat, and when she was exhausted, called the coachman to take her place; luckily he was not at hand and she went out to find him, while the girl, half frantic with pain and covered with blood, rushed out into the street with nothing on but her smock and ran to the police-station. The police-inspector took her evidence and the case went its regular course. The police and the department of justice were busy over it for a year; finally the court, obviously bribed, very sagaciously decided to call the lady’s husband and to admonish him to restrain his wife from such punishments, while, leaving her under suspicion of having brought about the death of two servants, they forced her to sign an undertaking not to punish the maids for the future. On this understanding the unfortunate girl, who had been kept somewhere else while the case was going on, was handed over to her mistress again.

The girl, in terror of the future, began writing one petition after another; the matter reached the ears of the Tsar; he ordered it to be investigated, and sent an official from Petersburg. Probably the Yaryzhkins’ means were not equal to bribing the Petersburg gendarmes and officials from the various Ministries, and the case took a different turn. The lady was exiled to Siberia, her husband was put under restraint. All the members of the Criminal Court were sent for trial; how their trial ended I don’t know.

In another place[51] I have told the story of the man flogged to death by Prince Trubetskoy and of the _Kammerherr_ Bazilevsky who was thrashed by his own servants. I will add one more story of a lady.

A serf-girl in the family of a colonel of gendarmes at Penza was carrying a kettle full of boiling water. Her mistress’s child ran against the servant, who spilt the boiling water, and the child was scalded. The mistress to suit the punishment to the offence ordered the servant’s child to be brought and scalded its hand from the samovar....

Pantchulidzev, the governor, hearing of this monstrous incident, expressed his heartfelt regret that he was in somewhat strained relations with the colonel of the gendarmes and consequently felt it improper to take proceedings which might seem to be instigated by personal motives!

And then sensitive hearts wonder at the peasants murdering their landowners with their whole families, or at the soldiers of the military settlement of Staraya Russa massacring all the Russian Germans and all the German Russians.

In the servants’ quarters and in the maids’ rooms, in the villages and the police-cells, perfect martyrologies of terrible crimes lie buried; the memory of them haunts the soul and in course of generations matures into bloody and merciless vengeance _which it is easy to prevent_ now, but it will hardly be possible to stop when it has begun.

Staraya Russa, the military settlements! Terrible words! Can it be that history (bought beforehand by Araktcheyev’s bribe[52]) will never pull away the shroud under which the government has concealed the series of crimes coldly and systematically perpetrated in establishing the military settlements. There have been plenty of horrors everywhere, but in that case they were marked by the peculiar imprint of Petersburg and Gatchina, of German and Tatar influence. The beating with sticks and scourging with lashes for the insubordinate went on for months together ... the blood was never dry on the floors of the rural offices ... every crime that may be committed by the people against their torturers on that tract of land is justified beforehand.

The Mongolian side of the Moscow period which distorted the Slav character of the Russians, the inhumanity of army discipline which distorted the Petersburg period, are embodied in the full perfection of their hideousness in Count Araktcheyev. Araktcheyev was undoubtedly one of the most loathsome figures that rose to the surface of the Russian government after Peter the Great. That ‘flunkey of a crowned soldier,’ as Pushkin said of him, was the model of an ideal corporal as seen in the dreams of the father of Frederick the Second; he was made up of inhuman devotion, mechanical accuracy, the exactitude of a chronometer, routine and energy, a complete lack of feeling, as much intelligence as was necessary to carry out orders, and enough ambition, spite, and envy to prefer power to money. Such men are a real treasure to Tsars. Only the petty resentment of Nicholas can explain the fact that he made no use of Araktcheyev, but only employed his underlings.

Paul discovered Araktcheyev through sympathy. So long as Alexander’s sense of shame lasted he kept him at some distance; but, carried away by the family passion for discipline and drill, he entrusted him with the secretariat of the army. Of the victories of this general of artillery we have heard little[53]; for the most part he performed civilian duties in the military service, his battles were fought on the soldiers’ backs, his enemies were brought him in chains, they were already conquered. In the latter years of Alexander I. Araktcheyev governed all Russia. He interfered in everything, he had a blank cheque giving him a right to everything. As Alexander grew feebler and sank into gloomy melancholy, he hesitated a little between Prince A. N. Golitsyn and Araktcheyev and in the end naturally inclined towards the latter.

At the time of Alexander’s Taganrog visit the house-serfs on Araktcheyev’s estate in Gruzino killed the Count’s mistress; this murder gave rise to the investigation of which to this day, _i.e._, seventeen years later, the officials and inhabitants of Novgorod speak with horror. The mistress of Araktcheyev, an old man of sixty, was one of his serf-girls; she oppressed the servants, quarrelled and told tales, while the Count thrashed them according to the stories she brought him. When their patience was completely exhausted, the cook killed her. The crime was so cleverly carried out that no clue to the guilty party could be found.

But a guilty party was essential for the vengeance of the doting old man; he laid aside the affairs of the Empire and galloped off to Gruzino. In the midst of tortures and blood, in the midst of groans and dying shrieks, Araktcheyev, with the blood-stained kerchief which had been taken from his mistress’s body tied round him, wrote touching letters to Alexander, and Alexander replied: ‘Come and find rest from your unhappiness in the bosom of your friend.’ Alexander’s doctor must have been right when he declared that the Emperor had water on the brain before his death.

But the guilty parties were not discovered. The Russian has a wonderful power of holding his tongue.

Then, utterly infuriated, Araktcheyev made his appearance in Novgorod, where a crowd of victims was brought. With his face yellow and livid, with frenzied eyes, and still wearing the blood-stained kerchief, he began a new investigation and the affair began to assume monstrous proportions. Eighty persons were seized again, people were arrested in the town on the strength of one word, on the slightest suspicion, for a remote rumour. Persons passing through the town were seized and flung into prison. Merchants and clerks were kept waiting for weeks to be questioned.... The inhabitants hid in their houses and were afraid to go out into the streets; no one dared to refer to the case.

Kleinmihel, who served under Araktcheyev, took part in this investigation....

The governor transformed his house into a torture chamber; people were tortured near his study from morning till night. The police-captain of Staraya Russa, a man accustomed to horrors, broke down at last, and when he was ordered to question under the rods a young woman who was several months gone with child he was not equal to the task. He went in to the governor (it took place before old Popov, who told me about it) and told him that the woman could not be flogged, that it was directly contrary to the law; the governor leapt up from his seat and, mad with fury, rushed to the police-captain brandishing his fist: ‘I order you to be arrested at once, I will have you brought to trial, you are a traitor.’ The police-captain was arrested and resigned his commission; I am truly sorry I do not know his surname, but may his previous sins be forgiven him for the sake of that minute—I say it in all seriousness—of heroism; in dealing with these ruffians it was no trifling matter to show human feeling.

The woman was put to the torture, she knew nothing about the crime ... but she died.

And Alexander ‘of blessed memory’ died too. Not knowing what was coming, these monsters made one last effort, and succeeded in finding the guilty party; he, of course, was condemned to the knout. In the midst of this judicial triumph came a command from Nicholas putting them all under arrest and stopping the whole case.

Orders were given that the governor[54] should be tried by the Senate ... even by them he could not be acquitted. Nicholas issued a gracious manifesto remitting sentences after his coronation. The friends of Pestel and Muravyov were not included under it, but this scoundrel was. Two or three years later, he was condemned at Tambov for the abuse of power on his own property.

At the beginning of the year 1842 I was hopelessly weary of provincial government and was trying to invent an excuse to get out of it. While I was hesitating between one means and another, a quite external chance decided for me.

One cold, winter morning as I reached the office I found a peasant woman about thirty standing in the vestibule; seeing me in uniform, she fell on her knees before me and bursting into tears besought my protection. Her master, Mussin-Pushkin, was sending her with her husband to a settlement, while their son, a boy of ten, was to remain behind; she implored permission to take the child with her. While she was telling me this, the military governor came in; I motioned her towards him and repeated her petition. The governor explained to her that children of ten or over may be kept by the landowners. The mother, not understanding the stupid law, went on entreating him; he was bored, while the woman, sobbing, clutched at his legs, and, roughly pushing her away, he said: ‘What a fool you are, don’t I tell you in plain Russian that I can do nothing? Why do you persist?’ After that he went with a firm and resolute step to the corner, where he put down his sabre.

And I went too.... I had had enough.... Did not that woman take me for one of _them_? It was high time to end the farce.

‘Are you unwell?’ asked a councillor called Hlopin, who had been transferred from Siberia for some shortcoming or other.

‘I am ill,’ I answered, and I got up, made my bows and went out. The same day I sent in a declaration that I was ill, and never set foot again in the office of the provincial government. Then I asked for my discharge on the ground ‘of illness.’ The Senate gave me my discharge accompanying it with promotion to the grade of Court Councillor; but Benckendorf at the same time informed the governor that I was forbidden to visit Petersburg or Moscow and required to live in Novgorod.

When Ogaryov returned from his first tour abroad, he did his utmost in Petersburg to procure permission for us to return to Moscow. I had little faith in the success of such a patron and was fearfully bored in the wretched little town with the great historical name. Meanwhile Ogaryov managed our business for us. On the 1st of July 1842 the Empress, on the occasion of some family festivity, besought the Tsar’s permission for me to live in Moscow in consideration of my wife’s illness and her desire to return there. Nicholas gave his consent, and three days later my wife received from Benckendorf a letter in which he informed her that I was permitted to accompany her to Moscow in consequence of the Tsarina’s intervention. He concluded the letter with the agreeable announcement that I should remain under police supervision there also.

I felt no regret at leaving Novgorod and made haste to get away as soon as possible. Before I left it, however, almost the only agreeable incident of my sojourn there occurred.

I had no money! I did not want to wait for a remittance from Moscow and so I commissioned Matvey to try and borrow fifteen hundred roubles for me. Within an hour Matvey returned with an innkeeper called Gibin, whom I knew, and at whose hotel I had stayed for a week. Gibin, a stout merchant with a good-natured expression, handed me a roll of notes with a bow.

‘What rate of interest do you ask?’ I inquired.

‘Well, you see,’ answered Gibin, ‘I am not a money-lender and I won’t take interest, but since I heard from Matvey Savelyevitch that you are in want of money for a month or two, and we are very much pleased with you, and thank God have the money to spare, I have brought it along.’

I thanked him and asked him if he would like a simple receipt for the money or an I O U, but to this, too, Gibin answered: ‘That is quite unnecessary, I trust your word more than a piece of stamped paper.’

‘Upon my word, but I may die you know.’

‘Well then, in my distress at your decease I shouldn’t worry much about the loss of the money.’

I was touched and pressed his hand warmly instead of giving him a receipt. Gibin embraced me in the Russian fashion and said: ‘We see it all of course, we know you were not serving of your own will and didn’t behave yourself like the others, God forgive them, but stood up for us and for the ignorant people, so I am glad of a chance to do you a good turn too.’

As we were driving out of the town late in the evening our driver pulled up the horses at the inn and Gibin gave me a cake the size of a cart-wheel as provision for the journey....

That was my ‘medal for good service.’