Now it was the present asserted itself.
I tried to soothe Musa, tried to put our conversation
on a more practical level. Some steps must be
taken that could not be postponed; we must find out
exactly where Baburin was; and then secure both for
him and for Musa the means of subsistence. All
this presented no inconsiderable difficulty; what
was needed was not to find money, but work, which
is, as we all know, a far more complicated problem....
I left Musa with a perfect swarm of reflections in
my head.
I soon learned that Baburin was in the fortress.
The proceedings began, ... dragged on. I saw
Musa several times every week. She had several
interviews with her husband. But just at the
moment of the decision of the whole melancholy affair,
I was not in Petersburg. Unforeseen business
had obliged me to set off to the south of Russia.
During my absence I heard that Baburin had been acquitted
at the trial; it appeared that all that could be proved
against him was, that young people regarding him as
a person unlikely to awaken suspicion, had sometimes
held meetings at his house, and he had been present
at their meetings; he was, however, by administrative
order sent into exile in one of the western provinces
of Siberia. Musa went with him.
‘Paramon Semyonitch did not wish it,’
she wrote to me; ’as, according to his ideas,
no one ought to sacrifice self for another person,
and not for a cause; but I told him there was no question
of sacrifice at all. When I said to him in Moscow
that I would be his wife, I thought to myself—for
ever, indissolubly! So indissoluble it must be
till the end of our days....’
1861
Twelve more years passed by.... Every one in
Russia knows, and will ever remember, what passed
between the years 1849 and 1861. In my personal
life, too, many changes took place, on which, however,
there is no need to enlarge. New interests came
into it, new cares.... The Baburin couple first
fell into the background, then passed out of my mind
altogether. Yet I kept up a correspondence with
Musa—at very long intervals, however.
Sometimes more than a year passed without any tidings
of her or of her husband. I heard that soon after
1855 he received permission to return to Russia; but
that he preferred to remain in the little Siberian
town, where he had been flung by destiny, and where
he had apparently made himself a home, and found a
haven and a sphere of activity....
And, lo and behold! towards the end of March in 1861,
I received the following letter from Musa:—
