Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Irina Reyfman (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📕

distinctions. The same also happens now. But if the custom of the Romans was introduced so that young people could learn through their courting of experienced individuals, I doubt that the goal of this custom has always been preserved uncorrupted. In our times, in visiting distinguished lords nobody has education rather than the attainment of favor as a goal. And thus may your foot never cross the boundary separating obsequiousness from the discharging of a duty. Never visit the antechamber of an important lord if it is not in the performance of your duty. Then even the one whom the contemptible crowd adulates with servility will, in the depths of his soul, not confuse you with the rest, even if he does so with umbrage.

“If it should happen that death truncates my days before you are firmly established on the good path, and the passions lure you off the path of reason while you are still young—do not despair when you see your sometimes misguided course. In your error, in your obliviousness to yourself, love the good. A debauched life, limitless ambition, arrogance, and all the vices of youth leave intact a hope for correction since they glide on the surface of the heart, not wounding it. I would prefer that you be debauched in your young years, spendthrift, arrogant, than tightfisted or even excessively frugal, foppish, more concerned with your appearance than anything else. A disposition we might call systematic to foppishness always indicates a closed mind. If it is recounted that Julius Caesar was a fop then his foppishness had a goal. A passion for women in his youth was the stimulus to this. But from a fop he would have clad himself in a flash in the vilest rag if that had facilitated the attainment of his desires.

“In a young person not only is passing foppishness forgivable, but so is practically every kind of foolishness. If, however, you are going to camouflage treachery, mendacity, perfidy, avarice, pride, vengefulness, beastliness with dazzling actions then while you will blind your contemporaries with the brilliance of your shiny appearance (although you will find nobody who loves you sufficiently to hold up the mirror of truth to you) do not think, however, that it will dull the gaze of perspicacity.—It will penetrate the shiny raiment of cunning, and virtue will expose the blackness of your soul. Your heart will start to hate virtue, and like a sensitive plant will wither at your touch, its arrows will wound and torment you not immediately, but from afar.

“Farewell, my dear ones, farewell, friends of my soul. Today, helped by a fair wind cast your boat off from shores of someone else’s experience, course along the waves of human life so you may learn to govern yourselves. Blessed you will be if, having avoided disaster, you reach the berth we crave. Have a happy voyage, that is my sincere wish. My vital forces, exhausted by activity and life, will grow weak and will peter out. I shall leave you for evermore. But this now is my testament to you. If inimical fate exhausts all its arrows on you, if your virtue no longer can find a refuge on earth, if pushed to the last extreme you have no protection from oppression, remember then that you are a person, recall your majesty, seize the crown of beatitude though others attempt to filch it from you.—Die.—I bequeath you the words of the dying Cato.—But if you know how to die in virtue, then know how to die in vice as well, and be, one might say, virtuous in evil itself.—If you hasten after bad deeds, having forgotten my prescriptions, your soul accustomed to virtue will be alarmed, and I shall appear to you in a dream.—Rise, then, from your bedstead, follow in your soul my apparition.—If a tear flows from your eyes, you go back to sleep, you will wake up ready for improvement. But if amidst your bad initiatives, your soul remains unmoved and your eye remains dry…. Here is the steel, here is the poison.—Spare me the grief, spare the earth this shameful burden.—Remain, still, my son.—Die for virtue.”

While the old man was speaking, a youthful blush covered his wrinkled cheeks; his glance emitted rays of hopeful rejoicing, the features of his face shone with a supernatural substance.—He kissed his children and, conducting them to the carriage, remained firm to the final farewell. But scarcely had the ring of the little postal bell announced to him that they had begun to withdraw from him, this resolute soul softened. Tears filled his eyes, his breast heaved; he reached out his arms for the departing and seemingly wanted to stop the horses in their rush. The youths, spotting from afar that their progenitor was in such a state of sorrow, began to sob so loudly that the breeze carried their pitiful groan to our hearing. They likewise stretched out their arms to their father and seemingly called him to them. The old man was unable to bear the spectacle, his strength waned, and he fell into my embrace. In the meanwhile a hillock screened the youths as they departed from our sight, and once the old man revived, he stood on his knees and raised his arms and eyes to the sky. “Lord,” he cried out, “I beseech You to strengthen them in the ways of virtue, pray that they will be blessed. Thou knowest, munificent Father, that I have never bothered You with a pointless supplication. I am certain in my soul how good and just You are. In us what is dearest to You is virtue; the actions of a pure heart are for You the best sacrifice…. Today I have separated my sons from myself…. Lord, may Your will be done upon them.” Troubled but resolved in his hope, he left for his home.

The speech of the nobleman from Kresttsy would not leave my head. His arguments on the futility of the power of