Between Two Worlds

Abstract

Michael Bakunin did not allow the tidings of Stankevich’s death to damp his determined optimism. Such an end, he declared, was “a complete victory over death—a blessed revelation of immortality”; and Varvara wrote that she was “once more hopeful, calm and full of love and benediction”. Varvara, now once more alone in the world with her child, came to Berlin to join her brother; and she and Michael set up housekeeping together in furnished lodgings. Old Alexander Bakunin, who had not been initiated into the secret of Varvara’s last journey with Stankevich, was firmly convinced that her meeting with Michael in Berlin was part of a pre-arranged plan which had been deliberately concealed from him; and he wrote bitterly reproaching Michael with his lack of frankness. It was the old man’s fate to be deceived when he suspected nothing, and to suspect deception where none existed.¹