he had been asked how far his wife and his six eldest sons shared the habitual order of his thoughts in his old age, he would have been greatly embarrassed to give any reply; for, if he had moments of effusion with the nobility who were invited to his feasts and festivals, he never indulged in any in the bosom of his happy family. “My family,” he might have answered, “must love and honour me, because I am its head, just as I love my country, just as I love and honour the Czar, because he is my chief and my master. Neither the emperor nor I demand an account of our mutual opinions or our mutual affections. We do not even know each other. It is the same with my sons and me; they have the honour of being my sons. I do not allow them to want for anything, as is my duty as a father and a gentleman. What necessity is there, after that, of our knowing each other?”

A heavy wager might be laid to-day that Tchitchikoff no longer belongs to this lower world. Probably he is dead. But who knows? Who can tell what became of Ninus, Romulus, Belisarius, the mother of the Pious Æneas, and Andrei Kurbsky, Prince of Yaroslav, of the blood of Rurik?

Nevertheless, our duty as an impartial historian requires that we should report what has come down to us in relation to this sad subject; without, however, guaranteeing anything, and without attaching more importance than is necessary to the conjectures of an idolatrous public. However, many people maintain that our hero is still living, and that, octogenarian and decrepit though this noble personification of ancient Russia may be, he appears to enjoy marvellously good health for his age. Folks whisper in covert words into the ears which care to listen that Tchitchikoff is in his province the secret chief, the real soul of that venerable faction which is called the party of the Immovables: men who gravely protest against changing the old system of a government, which may have its faults,⁷ but which has in its favour the sanction of time. They argue that it should not be demolished under the pretext of making reparation to a class which has been held for centuries under a ban, and under the pretext of effecting eclectic progress in humanitarian, social, and Christian civilisation. According to this party, people must neither imitate nor tolerate any of those accursed revolutions which do violence to the past, upset the future, and deliver it over to adventurers. Tchitchikoff has never proffered one word of recrimination against any man, or any part of the legal or extra-legal system established in the country. That must be said for him in justice; in that respect he has held his place as a son, a nephew, a scholar, a parishioner, a scribe, an employé, a clerk, a custom-house official, and a partner with the sons of Israel; also as a gentleman’s steward, as a gentleman traveller, as a speculator, as a prisoner, as a lover—if he ever was one, even in imagination—as a man prosecuted and condemned, as a land and serf-owner, as an elector of magistrates, and as a candidate, who, after being scoffed at, was finally elected from necessity.

The revenue service, the finances, the church, the organisation of the army, the navy, the courts of justice, and the prisons; the salaries of the functionaries and clerks, the educational system, the police, the serfdom of the masses, the general simony—these he has never protested against; he has accepted them all, approved of them all, by his silence and his submission. And yet, as the reader has seen, our hero suffered horribly until his marriage. But this did not prevent him becoming the possessor of a considerable fortune, an orderly man, a marshal of the nobility of his district, and of enjoying in his green old age general esteem and respect.

To our mind, the whole secret of his special policy (which in the eyes of many persons will possess the merit of being eminently practical) consisted in turning obstacles, and in making use at all times and in every situation, of evil to further his especial benefit.

Alas! generations follow each other like days; and, like days, they do not resemble each other. All Tchitchikoff’s youthful family is now notoriously in favour of liberal and sweeping reforms. And their mother, in the privacy of the family, willingly recognises, in company with her children, this simple moral truth, that monstrous abuses do not gain in respectability simply because they are old and remarkably tenacious of life. For ourselves, we will not permit our admiration for the exploits of the father to blind us to the very different merits of the sons, who vie with each other in contending and proclaiming that for the general good all private interests should hold their peace, and that the happiness of a great people can only be the outcome of sacrifice in high spheres.