debts,--and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which was in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read; some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over the composition of this letter. "You know, Your Excellency" (so I remember the letter began), "you are so stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when a pale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I now going to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, the Supreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even than Your Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in my great-coat, and even without a cravat round my neck." Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me, with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been pleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation of epithets and amplifications à la Marlinsky, at that time in fashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to his vocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he would bear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understand him; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowd that it wore life "like a dog-collar" and clung to vice "like a burdock"--and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell the truth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I can fancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it was addressed--I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce "a worthless officer! ill weeds are cleared out of the field!" Only at the very end of the letter there was a sincere note from Tyeglev's heart. "Ah, Your Excellency," he concluded his epistle, "I am an orphan, I had no one to love me as a child--and all held aloof from me ... and I myself destroyed the only heart that gave itself to me!" Semyon found in the pocket of Tyeglev's great-coat a little album from which his master was never separated. But almost all the pages had been torn out; only one was left on which there was the following calculation: Napoleon was born Ilya Tyeglev was born on August 15th, 1769. on January 7th, 1811. 1769 1811 15 7 8*
Prev.
Back
Top