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Page 20
'It was so with Kasghine. It was a very noble action which drove him,
an exile, from his country. Thrown upon the streets of Paris, without
friends, without money, he had not the stuff in him to stand up
against the forces that were in operation to drag him down. Which of
us can be sure that he would have that stuff? From begging for work
whereby to earn money, Kasghine fell to begging for money itself. His
pride receiving a thousand wounds, instead of being strengthened by
them, was killed. Cleanliness is a luxury, a labour; he began to
neglect his person; and, in the case of a gentleman, neglect of the
person is generally the first step towards neglect of the spirit.
Little by little he lost his civilised character, and reverted to the
primitive beast. He was feral.
'But thirty, thirty-five years ago, there were few young men in St.
Petersburg with better positions, brighter prospects, than Kasghine's.
He belonged to an excellent family; he was intelligent, good-looking,
popular; he was a Captain in a good regiment. One of his uncles had
been minister of war, and stood high in the favour of the Tsar.
'In the spring of 1847, Kasghine's regiment was ordered to Warsaw, and
garrisoned in the fortress there. Twenty Polish patriots were confined
in the casemates, awaiting execution; men of education, honourable
men, men with wives and children, condemned to be hanged because they
had conspired together--a foolish, ineffectual conspiracy--against
what they regarded as the tyranny of Russia, for the liberty of their
country. They had struck no blow, but they had written and talked; and
they were to be hanged.
'The fate of these men seemed to Kasghine very unjust, very inhuman.
It preyed upon his mind. He took it into his head to rescue them, to
contrive their escape. I do not say that this was wise or right; but
it was certainly generous. No doubt he had a period of hesitation. On
the one hand was his _consigne_ as a Russian soldier; on the other,
what he conceived to be his duty as a man. He knew that the act he
contemplated spelt ruin for himself, that it spelt death; and he had
every reason to hold life sweet.
'However, he opened communications with the prisoners in the
casemates, and with their friends in the town. And one night he got
them all safely out,--by daybreak they were secure in hiding. Kasghine
himself remained behind. Some one would have to be punished. If the
guilty man fled, an innocent man would be punished.
'Well, he was tried by Court Martial, and sentenced to be shot. But
the Emperor, out of consideration for Kasghine's family, commuted the
sentence to one of hard labour for life in the mines of Kara,--a cruel
kindness. After eight years in the mines, with blunted faculties,
broken health, disfigured by the loss of an eye, and already no doubt
in some measure demoralised by the hardships he had suffered, he was
pardoned,--another cruel kindness. He was pardoned on condition that
he would leave Russian territory, and never enter it again. There are
periodic wholesale pardonings, you know, at Kara, to clear the prisons
and make room for fresh convicts.
'Kasghine's private fortune had been confiscated. His family had
ceased all relations with him, and would do nothing for him. He came
to Paris, and had to engage in the struggle for existence, a struggle
with which he was totally unfamiliar, for which he was totally
unequipped. The only profession he knew was soldiering. He tried to
obtain a commission in the French army. International considerations,
if no others, put that out of the question. He tried to get
work,--teaching, translating. He was not a good teacher; his
translations did not please his employers. Remember, his health was
enfeebled, he was disfigured by the loss of an eye; he had spent eight
years in the mines at Kara. He began to sink. Let those blame him who
know how hard it is to swim. From borrowing, from begging, he sank to
I dare not guess what. I am afraid there can be no doubt that for a
while he served the Russian secret police as a spy; but he proved an
unremunerative spy; they turned him off. He took to drink, he sank
lower and lower, he became whatever is lowest. I had not seen him or
heard of him for years, when, yesterday, I read the announcement of
his death in the _Figaro_.'
The old man set me down at the corner of the Rue Racine. I have never
met him again; I have never learned who he was.
The other day, being in Paris, I made a pilgrimage to the Cemetery of
Montparnasse, to look at Bibi's grave. The wooden cross we had erected
over it was pied with weather-stains, the inscription more than half
obliterated--
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