第145章

The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer, Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in the morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast. Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he could bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man. In spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of the Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to take no part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody nor any measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice, almost shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same boisterous manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but because such was his character.

"Ah, that's right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast? Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something substantial--begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass of wine," he shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. "I have been thinking of you. I will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his own hands. You may count on that, only it occurred to me that it would be best for you to call on Toporoff."

Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.

"It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may himself meet your wishes."

"If you advise it I shall go."

"That's right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?" shouted Bogatyreff. "Tell me. Eh?"

"I feel myself getting hypnotised," replied Nekhludoff.

"Hypnotised!" Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. "You won't have anything? Well, just as you please," and he wiped his moustaches with his napkin. "Then you'll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the petition to me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow." Shouting these words, he rose, crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth, and began buckling on his sword.

"And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out," said Nekhludoff, and shaking Bogatyreff's strong, broad hand, and with the sense of pleasure which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the door-steps.

Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff, following Bogatyreff's advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the sectarians' fate depended.

The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility. Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the position he occupied was this.

It was his duty to keep up and to defend, by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human institution--the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials. Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and he was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or some sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could not conquer.

Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.

A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive. In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the cookery book did not mean its words literally.

His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross superstition, but the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore the superstition must be kept up.

Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them still deeper into it.

When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates (who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion enforced on them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first.

Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study.

The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her long train trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands (with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff was not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the petition and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised by the clear and emphatic wording of it.