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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Emigrant
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Title: The Emigrant

Author: L. F. Dostoevskaia

Translator: Vera Margolies

Author of introduction, etc.: Stephen Graham

Release date: September 28, 2018 [eBook #57986]

Language: English

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Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMIGRANT

***
THE EMIGRANT

THE EMIGRANT

BY
L. F. DOSTOIEFFSKAYA

TRANSLATED BY
VERA MARGOLIES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM

NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
1916
 PREFACE
“The Emigrant” (Emigranta), by L. F. Dostoieffskaya, a daughter of
Dostoieffsky the novelist, was published in 1913, and obtained
considerable success in Russia. It is a study of the life of a Russian
girl (or should we say woman? for she is not young) in Italy. It is a
deeply interesting study of contemporary types. In truth, only two
Russians take part in the story, the hero and heroine, Prince
Gzhatsky and Irene. But the long struggle which is portrayed is a
Russian struggle.
These Russians, however, are not the Russians of Dostoieffsky’s
time. They are clearly of to-day.

Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant

future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people
seemed to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready to
fight for truth and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the
persecuted. When the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself,
with the sincerest astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever
could have declared war on such indomitable knights. She even
pitied the Japanese for having fallen victims to such madness! Her
despair and suffering at the news of our first failures is therefore
easy to imagine. None of Irene’s near relations were at the war,
but each of our losses, nevertheless, found its echo in her heart,
like a personal misfortune. Overwhelmed with grief, she attached
no importance either to the Russian revolution, or to the reforms
that followed. Like all passionate idealists when their ideal is
shattered, Irene rushed to the other extreme—that of a profound
contempt for Russia.

And it is in contempt of Russia that the heroine finds consolation

in Italy, and is even ready to throw over the Orthodox Church to
which she belongs and enter a convent of sœurs mauves.
 The chief interest in the book is the conflict between the influence
of a certain Père Etienne and the influence of a compatriot of
handsome looks and robust mind, Prince Gzhatsky. Irene is in a
pension “teeming with old maids.” She is herself forty and
unmarried. She is apparently without near of kin, and is lonely
beyond words, but also selfish and extremely condemnatory in her
outlook. But she is vivacious, spontaneous, engaging, and always
asking pertinent questions.
The high demands she made of her ideal hero, the man she might
marry, give one the idea that there is a certain amount of
autobiography in this volume, for no doubt ideals ranged high in the
home of Dostoieffsky. It is strange, however, that the question of
selfishness and unselfishness does not arise in this enthralling study
of an unsatisfied soul. Dostoieffsky himself was never tired of a
certain Gospel sentence, the thought of which might have given
calm to Irene: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it
abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” The whole
book, however, has a haunting suggestion of Dostoieffsky—the ghost
of the father is somewhere about.
This poor Russian woman has, however, lost herself in going to
Rome. One sees how much happier she would have been if she had
remained at home. It is common in Russians to go into ecstasy
about Italy when they see it first.
“In Italy, amidst the brilliance and magnificence of Nature, in the
magnificent chaos of cities buzzing with automobiles, humming with
factories, you feel at least that Man is not losing himself; you feel he
is the master, the centre. But in Moscow …” wrote Gorky, another
unhappy exile; and it is a characteristic expression. The exile
admires the West, but he must return to Russia.
A word should be said as to the discussion of the relative merits or
demerits of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. It is not
very competently handled by the authoress, but there is at least one
most effective comment on ecclesiasticism as such:
 “In your place I would go a little further still,” exclaimed Irene’s
inner soul with malicious sarcasm. “I would destroy every New
Testament in the world, except one—and that one I would put in a
golden, jewel-studded box, and would bury it deep in the earth,
forbidding its disinterment on pain of death. Over it, I would build a
splendid golden shrine, and in this shrine I would celebrate night
and day magnificent services with gorgeous processions. That would
be entirely in accordance with the spirit of your Christianity.”
And she yearns for a Christianity freed from the prison walls of
churches and forms.
Irene, however, thinks that if the Orthodox Russian Church elected
a Patriarch it might recover its ancient power, and utter a “new
word.” And there once more we see vaguely the ghost of
Dostoieffsky. The great Russian, however, would not have spoken so
kindly of the Roman Church (which he regarded as a sort of political
conspiracy against Christianity).
STEPHEN GRAHAM.
London,
April, 1916.

THE EMIGRANT
 I
Il n’y a qu’un héroisme au monde: c’est de voir le monde tel
qu’il est—et de l’aimer.—Romain Rolland.

On the 15th of October, 19—, at four o’clock in the afternoon, in

the garden of the Monte Pincio in Rome, sat a girl, no longer in the
first flush of youth, Irene Mstinskaia. She held a book in her hand,
having come to the park with the object of reading in the fresh air;
but, as had always been the case since her arrival in Rome, she
could not concentrate her thoughts on the English novel open before
her. Her glance glided across the blue autumnal sky, lingered
caressingly on the magnificent southern pines and palms, rested on
the statues gleaming white among the verdure, and always returned
to the Eternal City, as it lay spread out before her, at the feet of the
Pincio.
Irene had travelled much and seen much, but no town had yet
produced so deep an impression on her. She tried in vain to define
this power that Rome wielded over her, and, finding no explanation,
she invented one of her own: “Who knows,” thought Irene dreamily,
“perhaps people never really quite die, but remain for ever hovering
in spirit round those places where they have most forcibly lived and
suffered. It may be that Rome is full of the ghosts of ancient
Romans, of early Christians, of Renaissance painters, of nineteenth-
century Italians, who died nobly in the struggle for Italy’s freedom
and unity. All these phantoms are unable to tear themselves away
from their beloved Eternal City. They are the rulers of Rome to-day,
as much as in their own time, and we, foreigners, fall under their
influence and cannot dissociate our thoughts from them.”
On the whole, the influence of Rome was not only overwhelming—
it was also soothing. Wandering in museums, among ruins, through
churches and catacombs, Irene felt, day by day, stealing into her
soul a profound, indescribable sense of peace, such as that which
unconsciously comes over one as one enters a convent. And it was
just for this holy stillness and peace that her tired soul was thirsting.
Let not the reader think, however, that my heroine had passed
through the storm of some great misfortune, or the suffering of
some severe illness. On the contrary, her life and circumstances
were such, that many a short-sighted and superficial observer envied
her exceedingly.
At the death of her parents, Irene had remained entirely free, with
plenty of money, a good name, and a good position in society. She
enjoyed excellent health, in spite of the fact that she had been born
and had passed all her life in Petrograd; she was clever and well
educated. What more, one asks oneself, could anyone desire of the
Fates?
But, somehow, it is an unfortunate fact in dear Russia, that even
the most precious gifts of the gods seem never to be of any benefit
to our people. How is one to explain this curious circumstance? Does
it arise from some peculiarity in the Russian temperament, or from
the general disorder and purposelessness of our way of living? The
French, in the similar case of “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” have laid
all the blame at the door of the wicked fairy who was offended at
not being invited to the christening. I think I shall not go far wrong if
I say that in Russia the part of the wicked fairy is played by the
parents of the infant themselves. Oh, of course not intentionally, but
simply as a consequence of our Russian laziness and the absence of
organized and formulated ideas in the bringing up of our children.
Irene Mstinskaia lost her mother early and was brought up by her
father, a scientist who spent all his life in his laboratory, disliked
society, and received nobody but an occasional friend, as jealously
devoted to science as himself. He adored his little Irene, petted and
spoiled her; but, like most Russian parents, took very little interest in
her spiritual development. The child grew up, lonely, silent, pensive.
Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish
games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination,
and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims
and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality,
and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from
even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood
after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in
books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her
hero was an exceedingly complicated character. He united in himself
the stoicism of an ancient Roman, the romanticism of a mediæval
knight, the gallantry of a powdered marquis, and the dignified
chivalry of the hero of an English novel.
Do not laugh, reader! Irene was not stupid; she was only young
and inexperienced, knew little or nothing of life, and sincerely
believed in her fantastic dream hero. Most pathetic of all was the
fact that she set about looking for him among the relations and
friends of her late mother, who had belonged by birth to the higher
government circles—i.e., the most unromantic circles of Russian
society. The proximity of the court, the glitter of wealth and social
position, transforms almost every young Petrograd official into a
mere hunter after honours, money, decorations, caring for nothing
but his career and the chance of some brilliant appointment. The
distance that separates Petrograd from the rest of Russia destroys in
these young people what should be the fundamental idea at the root
of all conscientious government service—the good of the country.
Their service becomes simply a ladder by which they can mount
upwards towards the making of a career, and any means seems
justifiable to attain this end. Already in childhood these young
people are familiar with conversations about promotions and
honours, and their souls early imbibe the poison that makes
worldlings and cynics. Their wives also cannot influence them for
good, since they, too, in the majority of cases grow up in the same
official circles, and see nothing blameworthy in career-hunting. On
the contrary, they intrigue and help and encourage their husbands in
the rush for advantageous appointments.
To a fresh young soul, such as Irene’s the cynicism of
“officialdom’s” conversations and ideals could not but stand out in all
its true ugliness, causing her to turn away, sick with disillusionment
and disgust. She regarded this whole spirit of self-advancement-at-
any-price with the profoundest contempt, and considered it low and
vulgar and worthy only of menials. Her father, holding his noble birth
in high honour, had instilled into his daughter the assurance that her
aristocratic antecedents placed her on a level with all the de Rohans
and de Montmorencys in the world. She regarded decorations and
titles and social honours with contempt, and could not understand
how anybody could attach importance to such toys. Her means were
sufficient to ensure lifelong freedom from care; luxury, however, did
not attract her, for Irene was an idealist, who looked upon love,
pure, sanctified love, as the greatest happiness life could offer.
Had she been English or American, this lonely girl would not have
been content with her limited circle of acquaintances, and would
have gone in search of her hero through the length and breadth not
only of Russia, but of all Europe.
Irene, however, was Russian, and therefore placid and
unenterprising! So she not only did not travel, but had not the
energy, even at home in Petrograd, to look round and make sure
that her hero was not concealed somewhere in the social circles of
the capital. She profoundly despised the pitiful types she met in
society, and though sick at heart, waited patiently and untiringly for
the one man before whom she was destined some day to bow her
head. Her own individual faith was largely responsible for this
patient, confident expectation. Already in her early childhood, Irene
had worked out for herself her own personal credo, in the place of
which, without understanding it in the least, most people
unthinkingly accept the religion officially adopted by the State. Her
faith, of course, rested upon a Christian basis—but her Christianity
was of the kind that shapes itself according to the varying
idiosyncrasies of every individual believer’s soul and mind.
Irene firmly believed that in spite of the perpetual struggle
between good and evil, good is incomparably the stronger of the
two, and must always triumph. Therefore, people desirous of
attaining happiness, must as a first step be just and honourable, and
never offend nor hurt anyone. Then, and then only, can God send
them peace and success in all their undertakings, and then only can
they be happy without the smallest struggle or effort to attain this
natural happiness. Irene believed in this so firmly and deeply, that it
always amazed her to see people winning success and worldly goods
by means of intrigue and dishonesty.
“The madmen!”—she thought to herself—“how can they not
realize that they are building up their well-being on sand, and that
each dishonest action may turn out to be the one rotten beam
through which the whole edifice will fall to pieces?”
Irene often endeavoured to explain her theory to other people,
and was always astonished at their lack of trust in God’s help, and
their incomparably greater faith in their own “smartness” and
roguery. How did these blind mules manage not to see what was, to
her, clear as day? And Irene profoundly regretted that she was not
endowed with oratorical gifts, by means of which she might have
helped to save these people from needlessly wasting and
misdirecting their energies.
The silent, dreamy girl carefully observed the lives of her
acquaintances, and every time that any of them achieved some
success, or suffered some misfortune, she tried to account for this
circumstance by one or other of their preceding actions. I am afraid
that in her eagerness to prove, even to herself, the justice of her
theory, she often deceived herself, and dragged in irrelevant facts.
She was sincerely happy at the sight of virtue rewarded, and, though
naturally anything but cruel or revengeful, she nevertheless rejoiced
triumphantly when wickedness was laid low! It is true that
occasionally, under the influence of scientific books, which, as the
years passed, held an ever-increasing attraction for Irene, she said
to herself that people were wicked owing to the particular
construction of their skulls or spinal cords, and were as innocent of
their own vice as the tiger is innocent of his carnivorous nature. In
the same way, it followed that it was not only natural and easy for
good people to be good, but that it would be exceedingly difficult for
them to act dishonestly, or in any way contrary to their natures.
There was, indeed, according to this theory, no such thing as the
eternal struggle between good and evil—there were only on the one
side healthy and therefore honest natures, and on the other, morally
diseased and, therefore, cruel or vicious ones. But when Irene began
to meditate on these ideas, there arose in her poor head such a
confused chaos of tangled thoughts, that she hastily banished all
scientific propositions, and returned to her old faith, in which
everything was clear and simple.
Irene worked carefully and untiringly at herself and her own moral
and mental development. She not only did not admit of any
dishonourable action, but severely admonished and persecuted
herself for every bad thought, every shade of feeling, that tended
towards envy or revenge. And so, as always happens when one
works long and obstinately for the achievement of a certain result,
Irene really succeeded in raising her own honour and integrity to a
point beyond reproach. The loftier grew her own ideal, however, the
more difficult she found it to reconcile herself to the weaknesses of
others. Day by day, her requirements in connection with her
unknown hero increased, and day by day he became always more
difficult to find. She submitted every man who crossed her path to
so severe an examination that not one passed through it
successfully. The young married women of her acquaintance,
noticing how wistfully she looked at their children, advised her to
marry, even without love, only to become a mother and thus attain
the one real aim, the one true happiness that life can give to a
woman. Irene listened to their advice with amazement. According to
her ideas, a woman had no right to bring a new life into the world
unless she had found a man who could pass on to the child only the
highest and most irreproachable moral qualities. Such an idea is, of
course, fundamentally good and logical—but, unfortunately, it is also
somewhat difficult to carry out! Nature is so fantastic and capricious,
that sometimes a child may bear no likeness whatever to its ideal
parents, but may bear a striking and very unwelcome resemblance
to some long-forgotten black sheep great-grandfather! On the
whole, indeed, resignation, and faith in God’s mercy, are the most
suitable frames of mind in this connection; but these are frames of
mind that one could hardly expect from Irene! Idealists who
passionately believe in their ideals, hypnotize themselves and
become the slaves of their own thoughts.
At thirty, in order to avoid any future moral torment at the
appearance of a grey hair or a decayed tooth, Irene decided that she
was an old woman, and that there was no longer any occasion to
think about love. She began to dress always in black, and assumed
with men the air of an old maiden aunt. Her dream now was only of
friendship, and she longed for the warmth of a friendly hearth.
Her women friends, however, did not believe in her sincerity, did
not consider her as old as she imagined herself to be, and were
afraid for their husbands. Year by year, Irene felt herself to be
always increasingly lonely and isolated, and then, suddenly, came
the Japanese War.
Pride in Russia, and in Russia’s might and wealth and brilliant
future, was one of Irene’s greatest joys. The Russian people seemed
to her to be a race of chivalrous knights, ever ready to fight for truth
and Christianity, and to defend the weak and the persecuted. When
the Japanese War broke out, she asked herself, with the sincerest
astonishment, how such pitiful monkeys ever could have declared
war on such indomitable knights. She even pitied the Japanese for
having fallen victims to such madness! Her despair and suffering at
the news of our first failures is therefore easy to imagine. None of
Irene’s near relations were at the war, but each of our losses,
nevertheless, found its echo in her heart, like a personal misfortune.
Overwhelmed with grief, she attached no importance either to the
Russian revolution, or to the reforms that followed. Like all
passionate idealists when their ideal is shattered, Irene rushed to
the other extreme—that of a profound contempt for Russia.
Everything became cold and indifferent to her in her homeland.
She no longer believed in anybody; she trusted neither the masses
nor the educated classes. They were all cowards, they were all
narrow, lazy, and ignorant. She began to go abroad more frequently.
There, in contrast, everything pleased her immensely. She admired
the German peasants for their love of work, the Swiss for their
orderliness, the French for their wit. In old days, after having passed
three months abroad, she had always grown homesick, and on
reaching the Russian frontier, had felt inclined to embrace the very
railway porters for their good-humoured Slavonic faces! Now, she
returned home with regret, found fault with Russian arrangements,
and looked with disgust at the endless, monotonous fields, at the
dull, slumbering type of life and nature that slipped placidly along
outside the windows of the sleepy train.
Her contempt for Russia was encouraged by the countless critical
and scathing articles that appeared in the newspapers as a result of
the newly granted freedom of the Press. According to these articles
all Russia’s resources had been used up by drink and by robbery,
and the whole country was in a state of ruin and primitive savagery.
They did not attempt to explain why, all this being so, Russia had
not, long ago, died of starvation and famine, why our government
stock stood higher than before the war, and why Europe set as much
value as ever on Russian opinion. But Irene, like most women, did
not measure the rights and wrongs of the newspaper accusations.
They were in tune with her pessimistic mood, and she no longer
believed in Russia, just as she no longer believed in her own
happiness.
The most cruel pain of all, however, was that occasioned by a
gradually awakening doubt about the justice of her own beliefs. It
seemed to her that, logically, it was time God rewarded her in some
way for her scrupulous honesty, and she suffered at the absence of
this reward. In observing the lives of others, Irene could persuade
herself that if they had no outward success, they enjoyed the
greater blessing of inner peace and happiness. It was difficult,
however, to deceive her own self in this matter; for, indeed, poor
Irene not only had no happiness, but the boon of inner peace had
not even been granted to her. Her soul had been wounded, torn,
immersed in darkness and despair, from which there seemed no
escape. And yet there, before her very eyes, wicked and
dishonourable people triumphed and rejoiced. How was this to be
explained? Could her credo have been a mistake, could she have
been struggling and wandering all her life along the wrong path?
Such an admission would have been, for Irene, equal to suicide—for
she could never have reconciled herself to a world in which only
wickedness and deceit triumph.
Life in Russia grew at last so unbearable that she decided to
emigrate. Her first idea was to go and live in England, with which
country she was acquainted through the medium of her beloved
English novels. By chance, however, Zola’s “Rome,” with its
magnificent descriptions of Roman life, fell into her hands, and she
suddenly felt drawn towards Italy. It is for this reason that we find
her, on this warm autumn day, sitting in the garden of the Monte
Pincio.
 II
Irene’s first impression on arriving in Rome was one of
disappointment. Her imagination was impregnated with visions of
the Roman Forum, of proud Romans in togas, of fighting gladiators,
of the splendour of the Emperors and the dazzling luxury of the
papal court. What wonder, then, if she almost resented the many-
storied houses, the shops, the tramways, and the prosaic crowd in
its ugly, contemporary attire?
Her disappointment, however, was only transitory, and in spite of
her depressed and gloomy state of mind, the magic charm of Rome
soon won the day over her low spirits. It is always, indeed, difficult
for a northerner to resist the sparkling and effervescent sense of
gaiety which awakens in his heart under the rays of the southern
sun.
At first, only the mediæval portion of the town absorbed and
attracted Irene. She spent days in wandering through labyrinths of
narrow, dirty, unpaved streets, where people, horses, donkeys,
tramways, and bicycles moved along, an apparently inextricable
mass, in the uneven roadway. She felt sad and sick at heart at sight
of the miserable dwellings—rather hovels than houses—in which, till
the present day, the poor of Rome find shelter. What a contrast
between these wretched abodes and the magnificence of the
neighbouring Palazzos, with their splendid courtyards and marble
colonnades enclosing little gardens overgrown with palms and
orange-trees! Even the luxury of the Palazzos, however, depressed
Irene. Her mind wandered back to the Middle Ages, and it seemed
to her that she had found the key to all the cruelty and injustice of
those dark, bygone days. How could kindness and honour and mercy
flourish in such gloomy palaces, in such dismal narrow alleys where
God’s sunlight never penetrated? No wonder, indeed, if humanity,
having at last thrown off the mediæval régime, hastened,
immediately after the French Revolution, to escape from these
labyrinths of dark and crooked alleys, and invented a new type of
towns, whose streets were broad and flooded with sunshine.
The only bright spots that relieved, to Irene, the gloom of
mediæval Rome, were the Piazzas, with their gorgeous fountains.
Here was the best place for observing the Roman crowd, a crowd
always interesting and characteristic, even though robbed, in these
days, of its picturesque national costume.
There is a woman, hatless and coatless, in spite of the cold
winter’s day, sitting by the fountain with a child in her arms, drawing
water and finishing her bambino’s toilet in the open air. Opposite her,
on the doorstep of someone’s house, a young carpenter is resting,
having left the new table he was carrying to a customer in the
middle of the road, in everyone’s way. The slight frown on his pink,
dirty face distinctly says: “Gone are the good old times! Where are
the bandits that used to hide among the ruins of the Campagna, and
receive with open arms fellows like me, who love a gay, careless life,
and have no mission for hard work?”
His brothers in spirit, healthy, happy, lazy, young scamps, are
loitering about the Piazza, with boxes of cheap mosaic trinkets,
smiling caressingly at passing Englishwomen, and saucily offering
them their goods: “Des mosaïques, madame? Très jolies et pas
chères!” There is a passing vetturino (cabman) raising his finger, and
gazing fixedly at the forestiere (foreigner), implying with look and
gesture an obliging readiness to drive him to the end of the earth.
Leaning against a column, there stands the plague of contemporary
Rome: a middle-aged guide, with the face of a benevolent old father
who has had no luck in life. He is muffled up in a brightly coloured
scarf, and with a massive walking-stick in his hand, he lingers beside
a historical monument and awaits his victim, the next unsuspecting
and simple passing tourist. He stares gloomily at a crowd of
shrieking street urchins, who have just emerged from a
neighbouring alley. They are supposed to be selling newspapers, but
actually they are eternally fighting, rolling in the dust, throwing
about and soiling the newly printed journals. They are dispersed and
driven away with a stick by a tall, bent old man, picturesquely
draped in an enormous grey cloth cloak with a fur collar. This
garment the old man has dragged as a remembrance from the
shoulders of a late faithful lodger, recently deceased at an extreme
old age. The inconsolable landlord is going to a festa, one of those
solemn Masses, with a Cardinal officiating, which are celebrated
almost every day in one or other of Rome’s innumerable churches.
Behind his indescribably dirty ear, that has never been washed since
his birth, he has tucked a red carnation, as a sign of respect to the
saint whose memory he is going to honour.
Suddenly, a group of wandering musicians show themselves on
the Piazza. One plays the violin, another blows a trumpet, while a
third, in a broken top-hat and a rusty overcoat, sings canzonettas,
and dances. Immediately, a crowd collects. At all the open windows
appear signoras with black eyes and raven tresses, pushing away
with their hands the rags hung out to dry. They are all laughing and
screaming and chattering, they are all happy. This is still the same
pleasure-loving ancient-Roman crowd, living more in the street than
at home, and revelling in anything in the nature of a pageant.
Arrange a gladiator’s fight to-morrow in the Colosseum, and they will
all rush to the spot, and applaud the victor as passionately as ever
did their ancestors.
Sometimes these Piazzas are the scenes of antiquarian markets.
Light wooden booths are erected for the sale of old cassocks and
other priestly vestments, pieces of material, embroideries, lace, old
brooches, bracelets, fans, candlesticks in the shape of antique
lamps, books printed on faded yellow parchment, pictures, and
statuettes. All this is bought up fast and feverishly by Englishwomen
and Americans, whom the wily Romans deceive in the most ungodly
manner.
On one such occasion, Irene, to her cost, asked the price of a
piece of lace. The vendor, having asked a hundred lire, followed her
twice round the Piazza, lowering his price at each step, and setting
out in detail all the tragic circumstances that were forcing him to
part with such a treasure. He had received the lace as a present
from the Marquise Abrakadabra-Abrakadabrini. This highly
aristocratic name was undoubtedly familiar to the signora? His
“mamma” had been the wet-nurse of the young Marchesina, so that
he, Beppo, was her foster-brother. He had hoped to mend his
fortunes for life by selling this priceless lace, but poverty (he spoke
with great pathos, tragically smiting his chest)—poverty, signora,
was obliging him to act hurriedly, and to abandon his last hope. At
least, he had the one consolation of knowing that this family
treasure was falling into the hands of such a sympathetic signora
—“Look out!” he screamed suddenly, clutching hold of the shafts of
a cab that threatened to run them over. He was only too happy to
have been able to render the signora two services: first, that of
saving her life, since, but for his intervention, the vetturino would
undoubtedly have run over her; and second, that of selling her, for a
song, a priceless piece of lace, in which the signora would look as
beautiful as a queen.
When he had dropped his price from a hundred lire to twenty,
Irene, only too anxious to be rid of her irksome follower, paid him,
and hurried away with her purchase, for which she had not only lost
all interest, but which she by that time positively detested. On her
return home, she showed it to the landlord of her pension. He shook
his head pityingly, twirled his finger in front of his nose, smacked his
lips, and announced that “la pauvre signorina a été volée comme
dans un bois.”
Irene began to think that old, mediæval Rome had bewitched her.
On many occasions, she started out with the intention of visiting
some museum or picture gallery, but always it was as if some magic
power was drawing her towards those dingy streets, with their
stench and their dirt, and their smell of cookery, where the poor of
Rome were preparing their unceremonious dinners out-of-doors.
Perhaps, indeed, she may have felt that there was something in
common between those gloomy localities and her own joyless life.
 She was greatly attracted by one grim-looking palace, situated at
a particularly dingy, dirty spot, in the neighbourhood of the Ghetto.
A terrible deed had once been perpetrated in this palace. Its owner,
that famous Cenci, so noted for his depravity, had fallen in love with
Beatrice, the daughter of his first marriage, and persecuted her with
his shameful desires. The whole family rose against the mad old
villain, and, under the influence of her brothers and her step-mother,
Beatrice poisoned her father. The crime was discovered, Beatrice
was imprisoned, made a full confession, and was executed.
Having heard by chance that a famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci,
the work of Guido Reni, is preserved at the Palazzo Barberini, Irene
went to see it. She expected to see a queenly, tragic beauty, and
found, instead, a simple girl, almost a child, in the very springtime of
life—an innocent young soul to whom love and passion can as yet
have had no meaning. The artist has represented her in prison,
dressed in the white prisoners’ attire. Her little face is worn and
drawn through sleepless nights, her beautiful eyes are red with
tears, her little childish lips are swollen, just as all children’s lips are
swollen when they cry. The whole touching little face seemed to say
quite clearly: “Yes—I am a criminal! Everyone tells me that I must
pay for my crime with my life; that I must leave the lovely world that
I love so much, leave the sunshine and the birds and the flowers,
and go away into a cold tomb. What can I do? I have no strength to
protest! But you, who will live instead of me, do not curse poor
Beatrice! Love her! Pity her!”
Irene’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at this martyred child,
and she hid her face under her veil to hide her emotion. Other
visitors to the Palazzo Barberini were also weeping and trying to
conceal their tears.
“You are revenged, little Beatrice!” thought Irene. “Thousands are
weeping at your sad fate, and are cursing your tyrants.”
Irene soon became known in her pension as the tourist who had
been living in Rome for three months and had not seen the Forum.
All the Englishwomen in the house, deeply shocked at this omission,
persuaded, implored, and at last forcibly dragged her there. From
that moment, the charms of the mediæval city vanished for her, and
she lost herself entirely in the antique world.
The weather was warm and sunny. The colossal walls of ruined
ancient palaces and shrines, that must surely have been built for
giants, stood out in relief against the blue sky. The silence was
intense, the Roman season had not yet begun. Unknown crowds of
English travellers had not yet descended from the Swiss mountains,
nor sailed across the waters from Egypt. Irene felt quite at home
among the ruins. She wandered for days among the ruins of the
Forum and the Palatine, trying to imagine the life of the past, when
the sun shone down not on the crumbling stones before her but on
a world of glistening marble and pagan luxury; when the immense
sculptured gods, sheltered at present in the galleries of the Vatican,
rose on their pedestals high above the heads of the gorgeous crowd
with its classic draperies and its garlands of flowers, worshipping,
offering sacrifices, burning incense. What a beautiful, gay,
triumphant picture! Why did it all end? What could have driven these
people away from their beloved green hills, down to the unhealthy
banks of the Tiber and those dirty, dark alleys? And why are people
now in their turn moving away from these alleys and returning to
the hills and the sunshine, and a new, healthier life?
For the first time the thought occurred to Irene that the world, like
each individual human being, must gradually pass through all the
different periods of life. First, the early years, with their faltering
steps and their uncertain memory. Then, at about five years old, the
beginning of gay, happy, early childhood, white raiment, crowns and
garlands and flowers, dance and song and laughter and summer-
time. Dolls are indispensable at this age—modelled of clay, hewn out
of stone, carved in wood, at first very primitive and clumsy like those
of the Egyptians, then always more and more lifelike, and finally
perfected by the Greeks. And like a child who, having made itself a
rag doll, takes it seriously and endows it with all sorts of qualities, so
the Greeks and Romans place the gods they have made on
pedestals, and call them Jupiter the terrible, Venus the passionate,
Amor the little rogue, Minerva the wise, etc.
They dance around their gods with the careless gaiety of
childhood; they love gorgeous processions, banquets, chariot-racing,
and gladiators’ fights for life or death, upon which they look with
laughter, since pity is to them, as to all children, a thing unknown.
But time passes, and the child grows older. New ideas and
requirements awaken in him; games and gaiety lose their interest.
He grows pensive, pale, and thin, and he feels the need of suffering
and tears. Irene remembered how, at the age of seven, she had
suddenly experienced a great desire to fast during all the seven
weeks of Lent. Pale, fragile child as she had been, such privation had
weakened her terribly; but incredible as it may seem, with a strength
gleaned Heaven knows from where, she had actually held out to the
end! She remembered also certain religious pilgrimages in the small
provincial town, near which she had sometimes passed the summer
with her father. Many a time in the torrid heat of a sultry July day
had she walked for four or five hours through clouds of dust, along a
rough, uneven road, in a procession behind an ikon, returning home
half dead with fatigue, but unable to sleep, through sheer religious
exaltation. Her thoughts, too, wandered back to the neighbouring
convent, whither she had often gone to pray, and where, having
attended vespers, she had sometimes stood through the whole night
in prayer, soaring on the wings of a religious ecstasy, and feeling no
fatigue. Her young soul had needed these raptures, fasts, and
prayers. It had needed also the food of legends, and the more
wonderful, the more supernatural these legends the dearer had they
grown to her imagination. Her mind had acknowledged no logic, and
had needed none.
Did not the same thing happen to the world in the Middle Ages,
that period of Humanity’s later childhood? Christianity, or rather its
rites and ceremonies (since its real meaning was unattainable to
these children), was accepted with enthusiasm, because these rites
and ceremonies exactly answered the requirements of the age:
ecstasy, martyrdom, torture rapturously borne, naïve and lovely
legends. Humanity would have no more of dolls and toys, and
wrathfully destroyed the statues of the gods. Later on, in more
recent times, those same people tenderly and lovingly collected the
broken fragments of the statues and preserved them in their
museums as cherished remembrances of childhood. It is thus that a
grown-up man will pay a large sum for a broken doll, or for a faded
coloured print that amused him in his early days.
Just as modelling is the heritage of babyhood, so painting is the
delight of childhood. First come naïve little drawings, like the work of
the Primitives, in which the figures of saints of high religious rank
are made twice as large as those of their inferiors, or like the
pictures of Perugino and his school, in which the infant Christ is
depicted wearing a coral ornament similar to those put round the
necks of Italian children to save them from the evil eye!
Day by day, art develops and grows more perfect, reaching its
apotheosis almost simultaneously in all the countries of Europe. Yet
in all their magnificence and perfection, something naïve and
childlike remains even in the works of the great masters. They draw
pictures from the life of Christ, for instance, with background and
accessories of the Middle Ages. They represent some Pope in all his
Catholic vestments and with his papal tiara kneeling humbly before
the Virgin, with the Child in her arms. They are not in the least
disturbed by the thought that if a Roman Pope exists at all, it is only
because this Christ Child grew up, and because His Apostles founded
the Church. Their childish mind does not occupy itself with such
contradictions, and Michael Angelo gives to the world his famous
Pièta, a magnificent marble group, in which the Virgin Mother is
younger than her Son.
The defenceless child, unable to revenge himself on his tyrants
and tormentors, loves to console himself with dreams of how the
Divine Power—God and His angels, the Archangel Michael with a
sword in his hand—will descend from heaven to help him. The
wicked will be burnt in hell, and he, the offended and insulted one,
will receive his reward in Paradise. Had he not this dream and this
consolation, life would indeed be too heavy a burden.
But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on
the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School
has taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary
information. But he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine
the solid foundations on which the world rests. He begins to apply
his logic to everything, and when he approaches religion, doubt
trembles in his soul. The absurd improbability of the legends of the
Middle Ages disgusts him, and at the same time he is obsessed by
the fear of remaining without a religion, a fear which has been
inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing. Calm and cold-
blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed Atheists. Not
so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls! Poor Tolstoy,
in the wrath of his old age, destroys and insults the very elements
on which he has founded and formed his life, and, having insulted
them, goes to church as before, prays humbly among beggars,
throws himself into a monastery, and dies of despair on the highway.
How many such martyrs are there in our days! With tears and
sobs they fall on their knees, stretch forth their hands to Heaven,
and cry from the depths of their souls: “God! show me some miracle
that I may again believe in Thee! It is only through Thy wonders and
miracles worked in the early days of Christianity that people turned
to Thee and believed. Why were these early Christians dearer to
Thee than I? I love thee; it is hard for me to tear myself away from
Thee! A miracle, a miracle, I beseech Thee! I will then believe
anything, even what is against all reason and logic—only come to
my help I implore Thee! Give me a sign or a miracle!”
But there are no more miracles, and death and despair enter like
iron into the soul of the sufferer.
 III
Like most Roman pensions, that in which Irene was staying was
teeming with old maids of all nationalities. There must be some
mysterious wind that blows them from all corners of the earth to the
Eternal City. They go there in the hope of finding peace and spiritual
rest, and their hope is almost always justified. What wonder indeed?
For Rome is not a town; it is a picturesque cemetery, glorified by a
golden sunset. On active, life-loving people it produces a gloomy
impression; but to those who let life slip past them this cemetery is
dear and precious. In other towns these lifeless people feel strange
and out of place; the storm and stress, the feverish rush of life in a
modern city shocks and angers them. In Rome one cannot think
either of the present or the future. One’s thoughts linger in the past,
and one is interested only in those who have long ago crumbled into
dust in their graves.
Irene did not like old maids. She saw in these “brides of Christ”
something incomplete, something eternally expectant. She avoided
their society, and associated preferably with married women, calling
herself jokingly an “old bachelor,” an appellation that struck her as
less disagreeable than the more usual one, which she refused to
admit.
However, having unavoidably come into contact with most of her
fellow visitors at the pension, she discovered that the maiden ladies
of Rome were unlike their sisters elsewhere. They had peculiarly
bright, gay, sometimes even radiant faces. Irene also noticed that
between four and five o’clock in the afternoon some of them daily
began to show signs of agitation. They blushed, made attempts at
personal elegance, smartened up their modest black dresses by the
addition of a lace collar or a bunch of fresh violets, solicitously saw
to the arrangements of their little tea-tables, and constantly threw
impatient glances at the door. The anxiously expected guests always
turned out to be severe and majestic Catholic priests, before whom
the ladies were tremulously shy. Irene assumed that the latter were
probably newly converted Catholics, and her supposition was
confirmed by a charming middle-aged English lady of an
impoverished but famous old family, to whom Irene felt greatly
drawn. Lady Muriel related that she had, the previous year, during a
stay with relations in Ireland, made the acquaintance of a Catholic
priest, “a most remarkable man,” and that now she was happy to
say she had been converted to the Catholic faith.
“I had thought,” she murmured, “that life was over for me, but
now I see that it is only just beginning, and that happiness is before
me. The Catholic faith is so warm, so tender, so consoling!”
After this, Irene observed the Fathers and their spiritual daughters
with redoubled interest. She was particularly attracted to an old
French Dominican, called Père Etienne. His mother had been an
Italian, and he had inherited from her the Roman type. “The face of
a proud patrician,” thought Irene to herself. Like all Romans, Père
Etienne was severe and forbidding, but when he laughed, which
happened often, and always unexpectedly, his face became
astonishingly kind and sympathetic, and almost childlike.
Lady Muriel introduced him to Irene, and from her very first
conversation with him Irene felt such a sympathy for Père Etienne,
that, to her own astonishment, she poured out to him the whole
story of her life, with all its doubts and fears and disappointments.
The priest listened attentively, but evidently with disapproval, and
when, in answer, he laughed a little at her faith—not the orthodox
faith, of course, but her own personal ideas—Irene felt like a silly
little girl who has received a scolding.
“You have invented this faith yourself,” he said. “It has nothing in
common with Christianity. You Russians are all revolutionaries. Your
priests do not teach you the principal thing, the love and fear of God
and of His divine wisdom and might. Your attitude towards God is
quite unceremonious. You make conditions and contracts with Him
as if He were a simple mortal. You have not advanced far beyond
the ideas of your fellow-countrymen the Samoyedes, who first make
sacrifices to their wooden gods and then beat them if they do not
grant their prayers. When you Russians think you are passing from
Orthodoxy to Catholicism, you are actually passing from paganism to
Christianity.”
“And where did you get the notion,” he asked on another occasion,
“that Christ promised His followers happiness in this life? On the
contrary, Christ said repeatedly, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’
And, indeed, how could He reign here, among the pitiful creatures
who people this earth, worms that strive only for empty, worldly
pleasures, and cannot raise their eyes to the stars? Were He to
appear anew among them, with His mild humility and saintliness,
would the vulgar mind understand Him? No; our present-day
Christians would laugh Him to scorn, and though they would not,
perhaps, lead Him to Golgotha, they would certainly turn away with
a mocking smile. The kingdom of Christ is indeed beyond the grave,
in another and more perfect world, to be attained only by purified
souls who, already during their lifetime, have renounced earthly
joys, and, by means of meditation, fasting, and prayer, have
conquered the body, and their lower natures. Great joy and
happiness awaits them in Heaven, and it is thither, my daughter, that
your hopes must be directed. It is in the Kingdom of the Future that
you must expect justice, and not in this vain world, from which but
few will succeed in saving their souls.”
The priest spoke with enthusiasm. His face shone with the light of
inspiration. It was as though his eyes already saw the bliss of
Christ’s kingdom and those Heavenly joys of which he was so firmly
convinced.
His words made a great impression on Irene. Until that time, she
had never thought much about the future life. “Why trouble oneself,”
her common sense had argued, “about something that no one has
ever seen? What must be, will be, and premature curiosity is
useless.”
 Now, however, hearing these burning words of Père Etienne, she
involuntarily thought to herself: “Is it possible that he really believes
what he says?” And at the same time, she felt that the inspired
enthusiasm of the kind old priest was beginning to influence her.
Like most people of our day, Irene was interested in hypnotism, and
it had not infrequently, in moments of despair, occurred to her to
apply for help to some famous hypnotist. She had been restrained
only through fear of the consequences that might accrue from
putting herself under the power of a perfect stranger. Supposing,
having cured her of her gloomy state of mind, he should turn her
into a criminal, and make her steal or murder?
Now, however, looking into the noble face of the old priest, Irene
understood and felt that he could lead her along the right path. Oh!
if he could succeed in giving her back her former faith! He had
convinced other poor girls. And what happiness shone from their
pale faces!
Irene caught at Père Etienne as a drowning man at a straw. It is
thus that a man suffering from an incurable disease flies to some
quack or self-styled magician, gazes excitedly at mysterious herbs,
and is already half assured that in them, and only in them, lies
salvation. As for Père Etienne, the kind-hearted old man
enthusiastically and zealously threw himself into the work of saving
Irene’s soul, and arranging her life.
“You are deeply mistaken,” he assured her, “when you think that
you have lost time uselessly, and have lived your life in vain. On the
contrary, you have achieved much. You have passed through all your
troubles with a pure heart. You have not made compromises with
your conscience. You have looked on sadly while goodness and
justice suffered, and sin was loaded with honours; but the idea has
never occurred to you—as it does, alas! to many—that if sin is so
successful, why not join its followers? You have resisted the
temptation of such a thought. Your soul was dearer to you than the
glitter of worldly success. You struggled with wicked thoughts, and
emerged victoriously from the struggle. This is a great happiness,
my daughter. Thank God for giving you a strong will and a pure
heart. It is a sign that you are one of His chosen ones. But you must
not stop half-way. Throw off that spirit of despair! Forget all earthly
cares! Draw yourself apart from the world and its ways, and
consecrate yourself to God. It is necessary for you, without losing
more time, to enter a convent.”
“A convent?” exclaimed Irene.
“Yes, a convent. You need silence and rest. With your nature, life
will always perturb and dismay you. You do not understand that the
triumph of the wicked is temporary, and that they are all on the eve
of their undoing. You are unable to realize this. It is necessary for
you to cut yourself off once and for all from every contact with
them, to withdraw yourself into silence, and to occupy yourself with
prayer and the reading of sacred books. You are proud to call
yourself a Christian, but do you intimately know the Holy Writ? Have
you often in your life read the Gospel? Be sincere—confess!”
Irene was obliged to confess, with a blush, that she had never
once read it through in its entirety, and had contented herself with
what religious instruction she had received at school, and with the
extracts from the Gospel that she had heard read out at church.
“There! That’s just it. I had foreseen that,” exclaimed the priest.
“And yet it is only on reading and studying the Gospel that many
things become clear. Read it, and a divine peace will steal into your
heart. This great Holy Book will take, for you, the place of all others.
Day by day, your former despair will be replaced by hope, and your
soul will be filled with joy and rapture. You have suffered agonies of
doubt, and you well know how unbearable they are. Now you stand
on the threshold of that incomparable bliss that only true faith can
give. Et Dieu viendra causer avec vous, ma fille. Vous serez une de
ses élues, et Il vous honorera de Sa Parole. Remember the elect in
the Bible, who were found worthy of intercourse with God, but who
nevertheless remained human.”
 “But how can I?” said Irene reflectively “Leave the world? Leave
all human ties and associations for ever? But that is terrible!”
“What has that world, what have those human ties given you? Can
you call to mind a single hour, a single moment of real happiness,
even the shadow of happiness?”
Irene had to admit the absence even of that shadow.
“There! You see it yourself. You are afraid of a convent; but, do
you know? you have been a nun for a long time.”
Irene opened her eyes wide.
“Yes; it is so. Look round at your own life. You live virtuously, you
hardly associate with men at all. Balls and theatres have long ceased
to interest you. You dress in dark colours, and you yourself told me
only recently that you eat very little meat, but prefer living mostly on
vegetable diets. You have no specially near and dear relations, and
feel a contempt even for your country. What, then, can attach you to
the world?”
“Really—I don’t know. Liberty, independence⸺”
“Yes; but in a convent, also, you will retain the liberty to think, to
read, to enjoy and love nature—and your requirements do not go
beyond this. If, for instance, you were in love, and were dreaming of
someone, this would be a great obstacle to convent life, and I
should, in such a case, be the first to dissuade you from it. But I
believe such is not the case?”
And Père Etienne gazed scrutinizingly into her face.
“Oh! you can set your heart at rest about that,” laughed Irene.
“Men never played a great part in my life, and lately I have left off
paying any attention to them at all. Besides, I really don’t think I
have any temperament.”
“Perhaps you may be greatly mistaken!” The exclamation fell from
the lips of Père Etienne accidentally. He was evidently provoked at
his own careless words, and hastened to add that he had little
acquaintance with Northern natures.
“But,” he continued, “if man’s love does not attract you, that is
evidently a special grace of God, and it shows His particular mercy to
you. Now is the time to flee to a convent, while yet no human
influence can disturb your peace. A late love would be a great
misfortune for you. To be happy in the married state, one must enter
it in early youth, before the character of the girl is completely
formed. Only on these conditions does the young wife submit to all
the requirements of married life, and grow gradually accustomed to
them. She understands the character of her husband, adjusts herself
to it, and so finds her happiness. You, having passed all your youth
on coldly polite terms with men, have estranged yourself too much
from them. You know nothing about their characters, and neither
they nor you could ever give happiness, one to the other. There
would only be mutual misunderstanding and great suffering. Pray
that this cup may be for ever removed from you.”
“Oh! I assure you, the question does not interest me in the least.
Absence of faith troubles me infinitely more. How can I enter a
convent, when I do not, perhaps, believe what is most important of
all?”
Père Etienne smiled indulgently.
“Faith,” he answered, “like everything else in the world, is not
given to us all at once, but only after long and patient effort. Carry
out your monastic duties, go to church and pray at the given times,
read sacred books, and, little by little, faith will penetrate into your
heart.”
“But, allow me! How is this? Do you advise me to pray at first
mechanically, almost without believing?” asked Irene incredulously.
“But that would be hypocrisy, a mockery of religion!”
“Do not children begin by praying mechanically? This does not
prevent their praying consciously and sincerely later on. It will be so
with you also. Do not let this dismay you.”