The Forged Coupon, and Other Stories
The Forged Coupon, and Other Stories-11
Again the guide touched the head of the young Tsar, who again lost
consciousness. This time he found himself in a peasant’s cottage. The
peasant—a man of forty, with red face and blood-shot eyes—was
furiously striking the face of an old man, who tried in vain to protect
himself from the blows. The younger peasant seized the beard of the old
man and held it fast.
“For shame! To strike your father—!”
“I don’t care, I’ll kill him! Let them send me to Siberia, I don’t care!”
The women were screaming. Drunken officials rushed into the cottage and
separated father and son. The father had an arm broken and the son’s beard
was torn out. In the doorway a drunken girl was making violent love to an
old besotted peasant.
“They are beasts!” said the young Tsar.
Another touch of his guide’s hand and the young Tsar awoke in a new place.
It was the office of the justice of the peace. A fat, bald-headed man,
with a double chin and a chain round his neck, had just risen from his
seat, and was reading the sentence in a loud voice, while a crowd of
peasants stood behind the grating. There was a woman in rags in the crowd
who did not rise. The guard gave her a push.
“Asleep! I tell you to stand up!” The woman rose.
“According to the decree of his Imperial Majesty—” the judge began
reading the sentence. The case concerned that very woman. She had taken
away half a bundle of oats as she was passing the thrashing-floor of a
landowner. The justice of the peace sentenced her to two months’
imprisonment. The landowner whose oats had been stolen was among the
audience. When the judge adjourned the court the landowner approached, and
shook hands, and the judge entered into conversation with him. The next
case was about a stolen samovar. Then there was a trial about some timber
which had been cut, to the detriment of the landowner. Some peasants were
being tried for having assaulted the constable of the district.
When the young Tsar again lost consciousness, he awoke to find himself in
the middle of a village, where he saw hungry, half-frozen children and the
wife of the man who had assaulted the constable broken down from overwork.
Then came a new scene. In Siberia, a tramp is being flogged with the lash,
the direct result of an order issued by the Minister of justice. Again
oblivion, and another scene. The family of a Jewish watchmaker is evicted
for being too poor. The children are crying, and the Jew, Isaaks, is
greatly distressed. At last they come to an arrangement, and he is allowed
to stay on in the lodgings.
The chief of police takes a bribe. The governor of the province also
secretly accepts a bribe. Taxes are being collected. In the village, while
a cow is sold for payment, the police inspector is bribed by a factory
owner, who thus escapes taxes altogether. And again a village court scene,
and a sentence carried into execution—the lash!
“Ilia Vasilievich, could you not spare me that?”
“No.”
The peasant burst into tears. “Well, of course, Christ suffered, and He
bids us suffer too.”
Then other scenes. The Stundists—a sect—being broken up and
dispersed; the clergy refusing first to marry, then to bury a Protestant.
Orders given concerning the passage of the Imperial railway train.
Soldiers kept sitting in the mud—cold, hungry, and cursing. Decrees
issued relating to the educational institutions of the Empress Mary
Department. Corruption rampant in the foundling homes. An undeserved
monument. Thieving among the clergy. The reinforcement of the political
police. A woman being searched. A prison for convicts who are sentenced to
be deported. A man being hanged for murdering a shop assistant.
Then the result of military discipline: soldiers wearing uniform and
scoffing at it. A gipsy encampment. The son of a millionaire exempted from
military duty, while the only support of a large family is forced to
serve. The university: a teacher relieved of military service, while the
most gifted musicians are compelled to perform it. Soldiers and their
debauchery—and the spreading of disease.
Then a soldier who has made an attempt to desert. He is being tried.
Another is on trial for striking an officer who has insulted his mother.
He is put to death. Others, again, are tried for having refused to shoot.
The runaway soldier sent to a disciplinary battalion and flogged to death.
Another, who is guiltless, flogged, and his wounds sprinkled with salt
till he dies. One of the superior officers stealing money belonging to the
soldiers. Nothing but drunkenness, debauchery, gambling, and arrogance on
the part of the authorities.
What is the general condition of the people: the children are
half-starving and degenerate; the houses are full of vermin; an
everlasting dull round of labour, of submission, and of sadness. On the
other hand: ministers, governors of provinces, covetous, ambitious, full
of vanity, and anxious to inspire fear.
“But where are men with human feelings?”
“I will show you where they are.”
Here is the cell of a woman in solitary confinement at Schlusselburg. She
is going mad. Here is another woman—a girl—indisposed,
violated by soldiers. A man in exile, alone, embittered, half-dead. A
prison for convicts condemned to hard labour, and women flogged. They are
many.
Tens of thousands of the best people. Some shut up in prisons, others
ruined by false education, by the vain desire to bring them up as we wish.
But not succeeding in this, whatever might have been is ruined as well,
for it is made impossible. It is as if we were trying to make buckwheat
out of corn sprouts by splitting the ears. One may spoil the corn, but one
could never change it to buckwheat. Thus all the youth of the world, the
entire younger generation, is being ruined.
But woe to those who destroy one of these little ones, woe to you if you
destroy even one of them. On your soul, however, are hosts of them, who
have been ruined in your name, all of those over whom your power extends.
“But what can I do?” exclaimed the Tsar in despair. “I do not wish to
torture, to flog, to corrupt, to kill any one! I only want the welfare of
all. Just as I yearn for happiness myself, so I want the world to be happy
as well. Am I actually responsible for everything that is done in my name?
What can I do? What am I to do to rid myself of such a responsibility?
What can I do? I do not admit that the responsibility for all this is
mine. If I felt myself responsible for one-hundredth part of it, I would
shoot myself on the spot. It would not be possible to live if that were
true. But how can I put an end, to all this evil? It is bound up with the
very existence of the State. I am the head of the State! What am I to do?
Kill myself? Or abdicate? But that would mean renouncing my duty. O God, O
God, God, help me!” He burst into tears and awoke.
“How glad I am that it was only a dream,” was his first thought. But when
he began to recollect what he had seen in his dream, and to compare it
with actuality, he realised that the problem propounded to him in dream
remained just as important and as insoluble now that he was awake. For the
first time the young Tsar became aware of the heavy responsibility
weighing on him, and was aghast. His thoughts no longer turned to the
young Queen and to the happiness he had anticipated for that evening, but
became centred on the unanswerable question which hung over him: “What was
to be done?”
In a state of great agitation he arose and went into the next room. An old
courtier, a co-worker and friend of his father’s, was standing there in
the middle of the room in conversation with the young Queen, who was on
her way to join her husband. The young Tsar approached them, and
addressing his conversation principally to the old courtier, told him what
he had seen in his dream and what doubts the dream had left in his mind.
“That is a noble idea. It proves the rare nobility of your spirit,” said
the old man. “But forgive me for speaking frankly—you are too kind
to be an emperor, and you exaggerate your responsibility. In the first
place, the state of things is not as you imagine it to be. The people are
not poor. They are well-to-do. Those who are poor are poor through their
own fault. Only the guilty are punished, and if an unavoidable mistake
does sometimes occur, it is like a thunderbolt—an accident, or the
will of God. You have but one responsibility: to fulfil your task
courageously and to retain the power that is given to you. You wish the
best for your people and God sees that. As for the errors which you have
committed unwittingly, you can pray for forgiveness, and God will guide
you and pardon you. All the more because you have done nothing that
demands forgiveness, and there never have been and never will be men
possessed of such extraordinary qualities as you and your father.
Therefore all we implore you to do is to live, and to reward our endless
devotion and love with your favour, and every one, save scoundrels who
deserve no happiness, will be happy.”
“What do you think about that?” the young Tsar asked his wife.
“I have a different opinion,” said the clever young woman, who had been
brought up in a free country. “I am glad you had that dream, and I agree
with you that there are grave responsibilities resting upon you. I have
often thought about it with great anxiety, and I think there is a simple
means of casting off a part of the responsibility you are unable to bear,
if not all of it. A large proportion of the power which is too heavy for
you, you should delegate to the people, to its representatives, reserving
for yourself only the supreme control, that is, the general direction of
the affairs of State.”
The Queen had hardly ceased to expound her views, when the old courtier
began eagerly to refute her arguments, and they started a polite but very
heated discussion.
For a time the young Tsar followed their arguments, but presently he
ceased to be aware of what they said, listening only to the voice of him
who had been his guide in the dream, and who was now speaking audibly in
his heart.
“You are not only the Tsar,” said the voice, “but more. You are a human
being, who only yesterday came into this world, and will perchance
to-morrow depart out of it. Apart from your duties as a Tsar, of which
that old man is now speaking, you have more immediate duties not by any
means to be disregarded; human duties, not the duties of a Tsar towards
his subjects, which are only accidental, but an eternal duty, the duty of
a man in his relation to God, the duty toward your own soul, which is to
save it, and also, to serve God in establishing his kingdom on earth. You
are not to be guarded in your actions either by what has been or what will
be, but only by what it is your own duty to do.”
He opened his eyes—his wife was awakening him. Which of the three
courses the young Tsar chose, will be told in fifty years.