Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [312]
And who could blame her if she turned with bitterness upon those she feared might weaken the state in these dangerous times? When Radishchev the radical was foolish enough to publish a book – at such a moment! – calling openly for the ending of serfdom, she was so angry that he was lucky only to be sent to Siberia. What, she demanded, were the Freemasons up to, with their secret activities? Were they conniving with her son? Were they Jacobins of some kind? It seemed not, but she had ordered that the professor be questioned carefully, just to find out. ‘Russia is looking,’ she made clear, ‘for loyalty.’
In all St Petersburg, in the autumn years of Catherine the Great, there was no more loyal man than Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov.
‘The Jacobins are traitors,’ he often said. On the Enlightenment, he was in total agreement with the empress. ‘Freedom of speech, like reform, is only possible when things are stable,’ he would declare firmly. ‘We must be very careful.’
For in all St Petersburg, there was no more careful man than he. He lived in a modest house, no longer in the First Admiralty quarter but in the less fashionable Second. He kept only thirty servants and seldom gave dinner to more than a dozen guests. His carriage and equipage were modest; even his debts were modest. Indeed, he almost lived within his income.
He was still a State Councillor. For some reason his career had come to a halt. And with his old patron Potemkin gone, it seemed unlikely that he would rise higher. ‘He’s a very nice man,’ people now said: and a wise fellow knows he is going no further when they say that. Yet he appeared to be content. He still had hopes of minor appointments in the future which might supplement his income; and if he had such hopes, it was because people these days said something else about him too. ‘Bobrov,’ they would agree, ‘is sound.’
He had worked hard at that. From the very moment of the Revolution, he had severed his ties with all radicals. When Radishchev had been arrested, he had even submitted a brief article to a journal exposing the monstrous errors of his former acquaintance. By good luck, also, he had never had any contact with the Rosicrucians since the day he had sent his resignation to the professor. Indeed, he had even avoided the ordinary Masonic lodges. If his life was duller, it was also very safe. And how else should it be, for a cautious family man?
For if Alexander had struck a bargain with God, that terrible day in 1789 when Tatiana lay near death, the Almighty had kept His side of it. Tatiana had lived. Not only that, she had produced a fine baby boy and then, two years later, another. For his part, Alexander still saw Adelaide de Ronville as a friend, but no longer as a lover. He was a model husband: a little paunchy now, but dependable, so that his old friends said with a smile: ‘Ah, Bobrov – a very married man.’
There had been one unexpected set-back: Tatiana’s father had died and, to everyone’s surprise, left only a pittance. It seemed that, unknown even to Tatiana, the Baltic nobleman had been speculating in the grain from his southern estates and had lost heavily. Alexander and the family were not ruined: the estates were only about half-mortgaged now. ‘But thank God for the countess,’ he remarked to Tatiana. ‘Without her, there’d be almost nothing to leave the children.’ They both visited the old woman regularly, and she had long ago promised them that their legacy was secure. ‘God knows,’ Alexander would say, ‘she can’t last much longer now.’
This then, in the autumn years of Catherine the Great, was the modest family life