by Leo Tolstoy
‘Forgive me!’ said the bearded man in a weak voice, when he saw that the King was awake and was looking at him.
‘I do not know you, and have nothing to forgive you for,’ said the King.
‘You do not know me, but I know you. I am that enemy of yours who swore to revenge himself on you, because you executed his brother and seized his property. I knew you had gone alone to see the hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But the day passed and you did not return. So I came out from my ambush to find you, and I came upon your bodyguard, and they recognized me, and wounded me. I escaped from them, but should have bled to death had you not dressed my wound. I wished to kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful slave, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!’
The King was very glad to have made peace with his enemy so easily, and to have gained him for a friend, and he not only forgave him, but said he would send his servants and his own physician to attend him, and promised to restore his property.
Having taken leave of the wounded man, the King went out into the porch and looked around for the hermit. Before going away he wished once more to beg an answer to the questions he had put. The hermit was outside, on his knees, sowing seeds in the beds that had been dug the day before.
The King approached him, and said:
‘For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man.’
‘You have already been answered!’ said the hermit still crouching on his thin legs, and looking up at the King, who stood before him.
‘How answered? What do you mean?’ asked the King.
‘Do you not see?’ replied the hermit. ‘If you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug these beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards, when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!’
FËDOR KUZMÍCH
[Posthumous notes of the hermit, Fëdor Kuzmích, who died in Siberia in a hut belonging to Khrómov, the merchant, near the town of Tomsk, on the 20th January 1864]
DURING the lifetime of the hermit Fëdor Kuzmích, who appeared in Siberia in 1836 and lived there in different parts for twenty-seven years, strange rumours were rife that he – concealing his real name and rank – was none other than Alexander I. After his death these rumours became more definite and widespread. That he really was Alexander I was believed during the reign of Alexander III not only by the people, but also in Court circles and even by members of the Imperial family. Among others, the historian Schilder, who wrote a history of Alexander’s reign, believed it.
These rumours were occasioned by the following facts: first, Alexander died quite unexpectedly without any previous serious illness; secondly, he died far from his family in the out-of-the-way town of Taganróg.1 Thirdly, those who saw him placed in his coffin said he had so changed as to be unrecognizable, and he was therefore covered up and not shown to anyone. Fourthly, Alexander had repeatedly said and written – especially of late years – that he only desired to be free from his position and retire from the world. Fifthly – a little-known fact – in the official report describing his body it is mentioned that his back and loins were purple-brown and red, which the Emperor’s pampered body would certainly not have been.
The reasons why Kuzmích was suspected of being Alexander I in hiding were, in the first place, that the hermit resembled the Emperor in height, figure, and countenance so much that those who had seen Alexander and his portraits (a palace footman, for instance, who recognized Kuzmích as Alexander) noticed a striking resemblance between the two. They were of the same age and had the same characteristic stoop. Secondly, Kuzmích, who gave himself out as a tramp who had forgotten his parentage, knew foreign languages and by his dignified affability showed himself to be a man accustomed to the highest position. Thirdly, the hermit never disclosed his name or calling to anyone, yet by expressions that escaped him involuntarily, betrayed himself as one who had once ranked above everybody else. Fourthly, shortly before his death he destroyed some papers of which a single sheet remained with strange ciphers and the initials A. P.2 Fifthly, notwithstanding his great piety the hermit never went to confession, and when a bishop who visited him tried to persuade him to fulfil that Christian duty, he replied, ‘If I did not tell the truth about myself at confession the heavens would be amazed, but if I told who I am the earth would be amazed.’
All these guesses and doubts ceased to be doubts and became certainties as a result of the finding of Kuzmích’s diary. This diary is here given. It begins as follows:
God bless my invaluable friend Iván Grigórevich3 for this delightful retreat. I do not deserve his kindness and God’s mercy. Here I am at peace. Fewer people come and I am alone with my guilty memories and with God. I will try to avail myself of the solitude to give a close description of my life. It may be of use to others.
I was born and spent forty-seven years of my life amid most terrible temptations. I not only did not resist them but revelled in them, was tempted and tempted others, sinned and caused others to sin. But God turned his eyes on me, and the whole vileness of my life, which I had tried to justify to myself by laying the blame on others, revealed itself to me at last in its full horror. And God helped me to liberate myself, not from evil – I am still full of it though I struggle against it – but from participation in it. What mental sufferings I endured and what went on in my soul when I understood my whole sinfulness and the necessity of atonement – not a belief in atonement, but real atonement for sins by my own suffering – I will describe in due course. At present I will only describe my actions: how I managed to escape from my position, leaving in place of my body the corpse of a soldier I had tormented to death; and I will begin the description of my life from its very commencement.
My flight occurred in this way:
In Taganróg I lived in the same mad way in which I had been living for the last twenty-four years. I – the greatest of criminals, the murderer of my father, the murderer of hundreds of thousands of men in wars I had occasioned, an abominable debauchee and a miscreant – believed what people told me about myself and considered myself the saviour of Europe, a benefactor of mankind, an exceptionally perfect man, un heureux hasard,4 as I once expressed it to Madame de Staël. I considered myself such, but God had not quite forsaken me and the never-sleeping voice of conscience troubled me unceasingly. Nothing pleased me, everyone was to blame. I alone was good and no one understood it. I turned to God, prayed to the Orthodox God with Fóti,5 then to the Roman Catholic God, then to the Protestant God with Parrot,6 then to the God of the Illuminati with Krüdener;7 but even to God I only turned in the sight of men, that they might admire me. I despised everybody, and yet the opinion of the peoples despised was the only thing important to me; I lived and acted for its sake alone. It was terrible for me to be alone. Still more terrible was it to be with her – my wife, narrow-minded, deceitful, capricious, malicious, consumptive, and full of pretence. She poisoned my life more than anything else. We were supposed to be spending a second honeymoon, but it was a hell in forms of respectability – false and terrible.
Once I felt particularly wretched. I had received a letter from Arakchéev8 the evening before about the assassination o
f his mistress. He described to me his desperate grief. Strange to say, his continual subtle flattery, and not only flattery but real dog-like devotion – which had begun while my father was alive and when we both swore allegiance to him in secret from my grandmother9 – that dog-like devotion of his made me love him, if indeed latterly I loved any man – and though to use the word love of such a monster is wrong. Another thing that bound me to him was his not having taken part in the murder of my father, as many others did who became hateful to me just because they were my accomplices in that crime, but he not only took no part in it but was devoted both to my father and to me; of that later, however.
I slept badly. Strange to say, the murder of that beauty – the spiteful Nastásya (she was extraordinarily voluptuously beautiful) – aroused desire in me, and I could not sleep all night. The fact that my consumptive, abhorrent, and undesired wife lay in the next room but one vexed and tormented me still more. The memory of Márya,10 who deserted me for an insignificant diplomat, also tormented me. It seemed that both my father and I were fated to be jealous of a Gagárin.11 But I am again letting myself be carried away by reminiscences. I did not sleep all night. Dawn began to break. I drew the curtain, put on my white dressing-gown, and called my valet. All were still asleep. I donned a frock-coat, a civilian overcoat and cap, and went out past the sentinels and into the street.
The sun was just rising over the sea. It was a cool autumn morning, and in the fresh air I immediately felt better and my sombre thoughts vanished. I walked towards the sun-flecked sea. Before reaching the green-coloured house at the corner I heard the sounds of drums and flutes from the square. I listened, and realized that someone was being made to run the gauntlet. I, who had so often sanctioned that form of punishment, had never seen it executed. And strange to say – evidently at the devil’s instigation – the thought of the murdered, voluptuously beautiful Nastásya and of the soldier’s body being lashed by rods, merged into one stimulating sensation. I remembered the men of the Semënov Regiment and the military exiles, hundreds of whom were flogged to death in this way, and the strange idea of witnessing that spectacle suddenly occurred to me. As I was in civilian clothes this was possible.
The nearer I drew the clearer came the rattling of the drums and the sound of the flutes. Being short-sighted I could not see clearly without my lorgnette, but could already make out the rows of soldiers and a tall, white-backed figure moving between them. When I got among the crowd that stood behind the rows watching the spectacle, I drew out my lorgnette and was able to see all that was being done. A tall, round-shouldered man, his bare arms tied to a bayonet, and his bare back here and there already growing red with blood, was advancing between rows of soldiers who held rods. That man was I: he was my double. The same height, the same round shoulders, the same bald head, the same whiskers without a moustache, the same cheek-bones, the same mouth and blue eyes; but his mouth did not smile; it kept opening and twisting as he screamed at the blows, and his eyes, now closing and now opening, were not tender and caressing but started terribly from his head.
When I had looked well at this man I recognized him. It was Struménski, a left-flank non-commissioned officer of the 3rd Company of the Semënov Regiment, at one time well known to all the Guards on account of his likeness to me. They used jokingly to call him Alexander II.
I knew that he had been transferred to garrison-duty with other rioters of the Semënov Regiment, and I guessed that here, in garrison, he had done something – probably deserted – had been recaptured, and was now being punished. I learnt later that this was so.
I stood as one spellbound, watching how the unfortunate man moved and how they flogged him, and I felt that something was going on within me. But I suddenly noticed that the people standing beside me, the spectators, were looking at me, and that some drew back from me while others approached. I had evidently been recognized. Having realized this I turned to hurry home. The drums still beat and the flutes played – so the tortures were still going on. My chief feeling was that I ought to approve of what was being done to this double of mine; or if not approve at least acknowledge that it was the proper thing to do, but I could not. Yet I felt that if I did not admit it to be necessary and right, I should have to admit that my whole life and all my actions were bad, and should have to do what I had long wished to: abandon everything, go away, and disappear.
I struggled against this feeling that seized me: now admitting that the thing was right – a melancholy necessity – and now admitting that I ought myself to have been in the place of that wretched man. But strangely enough I felt no pity for him, and instead of stopping the torture I went home, fearing only lest I should be recognized.
Soon the sounds of the drums ceased, and on reaching home I seemed to have shaken off the feeling that had come over me. There I drank tea and received a report from Volkónski.12 Then came the usual lunch, the usual burdensome and insincere relations with my wife; then Diebitsch13 with a report confirming information we had had of a secret society. In due time, when I write the whole story of my life, I will, God willing, recount it all in detail; but now I will only say that I received that report too with outward composure. But this lasted only till after dinner, when I went to my study, lay down on the couch, and immediately fell asleep.
I had hardly been asleep five minutes when a shock passing through my whole body seemed to awake me, and I heard the rattling of the drums, the flutes, the sound of the blows, the screams of Struménski, and saw him or myself – I could not tell which of us was I; I saw his look of suffering and the gloomy faces of the soldiers and officers. This delusion did not last long. I jumped up, buttoned my coat, put on my hat and sword, and went out, saying I was going for a walk.
I knew where the military hospital was and went straight to it. My appearance as usual caused a commotion. The head doctor and the head of the staff came running up breathless. I said I wished to go through the wards. In the second ward I saw Struménski’s bald head. He was lying prone with his head on his arms, moaning pitifully. ‘He has been punished for trying to desert,’ I was told.
I said ‘Ah!’ and made my usual gesture of approval at what I heard, and I walked on.
Next day I sent to inquire how Struménski was, and was told that he had received the sacrament and was dying.
It was my brother Michael’s name-day,14 and there was to be a parade and a special service. I said I was unwell after my journey through the Crimea, and I did not attend the Mass. Diebitsch returned, and again reported about the plot in the Second Army, reminding me of what Count Witte had told me before my visit to the Crimea, and of the report of the non-commissioned officer Sherwood.
Only while listening to the report of Diebitsch, who attached such immense importance to all these attempted conspiracies, did I suddenly feel the full significance and strength of the change that had taken place within me. They were conspiring in order to alter our system of government and introduce a Constitution – the very thing that I had wanted to do twenty years back. I had made and unmade Constitutions in Europe, and what and who is any the better for it? And above all who was I that I should do it? All external life, all arrangements of external affairs and all participation in them – had I not participated in them and rearranged the life of the peoples of Europe? – seemed unimportant, unnecessary, and not at all my business. I suddenly realized that none of it was my business, that my business was with myself – my soul. All my old desires to abdicate – formerly ostentatious, with a wish to reveal the grandeur of my soul and to astonish people and make them regret me – now returned with fresh force and complete sincerity. I no longer thought of what other people would think, but only of myself, my soul. It was as if my whole life, a brilliant one in the worldly sense, had been lived only that I might return to that youthful desire – evoked by repentance – to abandon everything; but to abandon it without vanity, without thought of human fame, only for my own soul’s sake and for God. Then it had been a vague desire, no
w it was the impossibility of continuing to live as I had done.
But how? Not so as to astonish people and to be praised, but on the contrary, to go away with suffering and with no one’s knowledge. And this thought so pleased and delighted me that I began to think of how to accomplish it. I employed all the powers of my mind and all my characteristic cunning to effect it. But the execution of my intention was surprisingly easier than I had expected. My plan was to pretend to be ill and dying, and having persuaded and bribed a doctor to have the dying Struménski put in my place, to go away, to fly – concealing my identity from everyone.
It was as if everything happened expressly for the success of my project. On the 9th,15 as if on purpose, I fell ill with intermittent fever. I was ill for about a week, during which my intention became stronger and stronger and I considered my plan thoroughly. On the 16th I got up feeling well.
That day I shaved as usual, and being deep in thought, cut myself badly near the chin. I lost much blood and, feeling faint, fell down. People came running and lifted me. I saw at once that this would help the execution of my plan, and though I felt quite well I pretended to be very weak, went to bed, and had Dr Vimier’s assistant called. Vimier would not have agreed to any deception, but I hoped to be able to bribe this young man. I disclosed my intention and plan to him, and offered him eighty thousand rubles if he would do what I demanded. My plan was this: Struménski, as I had learnt that morning, was near death and not expected to live beyond the evening. I went to bed and, pretending to be vexed with everybody, would not let anyone in except the physician I had bribed. That night he was to bring Struménski’s body in a bath, put it in my place, and announce my sudden death. Strange to say, everything happened as we had planned, and on the 17th of November16 I was a free man. Struménski’s body, in its closed coffin, was buried with the greatest pomp, and my brother Nicholas ascended the throne, having banished the conspirators to forced labour in Siberia. I afterwards met some of them there. I experienced sufferings trifling in comparison with my crimes, and the greatest and quite undeserved happiness of which I will speak in due course.