Note 29 — Chapter 3 The Death of Alexander I. and the Fourteenth of December—Moral Awakening—The Terrorist Bouchot—My Kortcheva Cousin

The President of the Academy proposed Araktcheyev as an honorary member. Labzin asked in what the Count’s services to the arts consisted. The President was at a loss and answered that Araktcheyev was the man who stood nearest to the Tsar. ‘If that is a sufficient reason, then I propose his coachman, Ilya Baykov,’ observed the secretary, ‘he not only stands near the Tsar, but sits in front of him.’ Labzin was a mystic and the editor of the Messenger of Zion; Alexander himself was a mystic of the same sort, but with the fall of Golitsyn’s ministry he handed over his former ‘brethren of Christ and of the inner man’ to Araktcheyev to do with as he pleased. Labzin was banished to Simbirsk.