By Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé
Part Five of five.
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I HOPE I SHALL be forgiven if, before finishing this sketch, I add some of my own recollections which may help the reader to realize the personality of the man and give a better idea of the power of his influence.
Man of the House.
I chanced to meet Dostoyevsky many times during the last three years of his life. His personal appearance had the same effect as that of the most striking scenes of his novels – once seen never forgotten. To look at he was indeed the very man for such a work and such a life. Short, lean, neurotic, worn and bowed down by his sixty years of misfortune; faded rather than aged, with a look of an invalid of uncertain age, with a long beard and hair still fair, and for all that still breathing forth the “cat-life” already referred to. The face was that of a Russian peasant; a real Moscow mujik, with a flat nose, small, sharp eyes deeply set, sometimes dark and gloomy, sometimes gentle and mild. The forehead was large and bumpy, the temples very hollow as if hammered in. His drawn, twitching features seemed to press down on his sad-looking mouth. I have never before seen such a sad expression on any face. All the harrowing terrors of the soul, and the sufferings of the body had left their mark. No book of his could better convey the memories of the House of the Dead, or the long periods of terror, suspicion and torture he had undergone. Eyelids, lips and every muscle of his face twitched nervously the whole time. When he became excited on a certain point, one could have sworn that one had seen him before seated on a bench in a police court awaiting trial, or among the vagabonds who passed their time begging before the prison doors. At all other times he carried that look of sad and gentle meekness seen on the images of old Slavonic saints.
