Three o’clock in the night. My confession is ended. The bottle is ready; and if there’s no hope of being saved, I’ll throw it in the sea.
One word more. I should like to let Irena——my last greeting; my last wish.—She ought to know—Good God! what is that? Impossible! Already the end? What an awful crash!—The frigate has struck something. Ah! screams.—I must run to my crew.—His Holy Will be done.
The bottle was thrown overboard, with thediary and a note. The last was written in French: “Whoever finds this diary is requested to forward it to Livorno, to the Russian lady, Mistress Pchelkina. Should she not be found, to Russia, Chernigoff, Brigadier Leon Rakitin, for his daughter, Irena Rakitin. May 15th, 1775. Pavel Konsov, lieutenant of the Russian fleet.”
END OF PART I.
The Empress Ekaterina spent the summer of 1775 in thealentoursof Moscow, honouring with her presence the village of Kolomensk, and then that of Chërnaya-griaz, which she had bought from Prince Kantomir. It had been named in honour of its new mistress Tzaritzin. She, in buying it, intended it to take the place of the Muscovite Tzarskoë-selo.
On the borders of a dark forest, in the midst of fallen maples, a two-storied wooden palace had been hastily erected, with a few outhouses, some stables and a poultry yard.
From the windows of her new palace the empress could admire the extensive and deep clear lakelets shaded by wooded hills, the boundless newly-mown plains, with, scattered here and there, the white shirts of the mowers, and theblue and redsarafansof the hay-makers. Beyond these plains others could be seen, yet untouched by the sickle, sparkling in all their emerald beauty; and again, beyond these, the newly-ploughed corn-fields, and behind these, as far as the eye could reach, green plains and wooded hills; all this coloured and warmed by a lovely sun in a blue cloudless sky.
Life here was simple and free. Through the constantly open windows the scent of the newly-mown hay and of the forest depths penetrated everywhere. Often would a blackbird fly in from the river, and from the plains came the grasshoppers and the moths. From the early morning the whole Court would be scattered in the forest, picking flowers, looking for mushrooms, fishing or sailing on the lakes, riding and driving in the neighbourhood. Ekaterina, for the time being clothed in a simple white morning robe, and wearing a cap over her simply twisted hair, would be seated at her writing table, writing out schemes and drafts of various ukases, or letters to the Parisian philosopher andpublicisteBaron Grimme. She complained to him that her servants would not give her more than two quills a day, as they knew very well that she could not regard with indifference a piece of white paperand a well-trimmed quill, but must sit down and indulge her mania for paper soiling.
At the very time when all the world were tiring their brains over the politics of the Russian empress, as to what she would undertake in regard to Turkey, which she had desolated, or were discussing the delayed news of that recently-stifled insurrection on the Volga, the late execution of Pougachoff, and of the mysterious Princess Tarakanova arrested lately at Livorno, Ekaterina was describing to the Baron Grimme the lives of her pet dogs.
These dogs were called at Court “Sir Tom Anderson, and his consort” (by second marriage) “Mimi, Lady Anderson.” They were such tiny, shaggy little things, with sharp, intelligent noses, and comical wiry tails, just like brooms. These dogs had nice little soft mattresses and wadded silk counterpanes, stitched by the hands of the Empress herself. Ekaterina wrote to Grimme, how fond she and Sir Tom were of sitting at the open window, and how Tom, with his fore-paws on the window-sill, notwithstanding his contemplation of nature, would bark and snarl at the horses towing the barges up the river. “The views around are lovely, though a trifle monotonous, and Sir Tom is delighted with the woods,the hills, and with the lovely quiet gardens and manors, half buried in bright green, beyond which, in the far-off blue, you can just distinguish the tops of the golden Muscovite churches. This village wilderness and solitude just suit the hearts of Sir Anderson and his consort. Forgetting the noise of the city and its gaiety, they admire the beauties around them, and it is only at a late hour that they allow themselves to be persuaded to seek their warm wadded coverlets. The mistress of the house also likes these solitary Russian hamlets, forests and plains. I love these unploughed new places,” wrote Ekaterina to Grimme, “and I must say that I feel from my heart that I only fit in where all is untouched and unspoilt.”
The fresh and clear atmosphere of the Muscovite environs began to be foggy. Clouds were gathering, lightning darting, thunder rolling. The Court also had its storms. Ekaterina had no easy task in investigating the insurrection of Pougachoff. He astonished every one by preserving to the very last minute the firm conviction that he would be pardoned, that they would never execute him. “The wretch has not much sense—he still hopes!” wrote the empress, after reading the interrogation of the Pretender. “Human nature is unfathomable.”
Pougachoff was executed in January.[35]
About the middle of May Ekaterina received information that the squadron under the command of Greig had anchored at Cronstadt. The empress sent her whole correspondence with Orloff about the Pretender to the governor-generalof Petersburg, Prince Galitzin, and gave him the following order:—“Have thevoyageurstransferred secretly from the ship, and submit them to the severest interrogation.”
Prince Alexandre Michaelovitch Galitzin, defeated by Frederick the Great, and afterwards for his victories over the Turks elected to the post of field-marshal, seemed a very imposing personage; but in reality he was the best-hearted and most modest and just of men, and an entire stranger to all Court intrigues. He was loved and respected by all.
On the 24th May the prince summoned an officer of the Préobrajenski regiment, by name Tolstoï, made him take an oath of secrecy, and ordered him to start for Cronstadt to receive the prisoner who would be given over to him, and carefully hand her over to the commandant of the Petropavlovski fortress, André Gavrilovitch Tchernishoff.
Tolstoï fulfilled his mission on the night of the 25th of May. In a specially manned yacht, he sailed down the Neva very gently to the fortress, where he gave up his prisoner. At first she was lodged hastily in a room just under the apartment of the commandant. Afterwards she was transferred to the Ravelin Alexéef. Oushakoff, secretaryto the Prince Galitzin, had already prepared a report about her from the papers sent by the empress. Oushakoff was brisk, paunchy, stout, and always panting and repeating with a knavish smile in his eyes—“Oh! my dear fellow, so much to do, so much to do! I only serve the prince for the honour of it, but I ought long ago to have taken myabshiede,[36]I am literally worn out.”
The Prince Galitzin pondered long over the report of Oushakoff, drew up a whole list of questions, and with a very important mien, which did not in the least become his good-natured face, entered the prison of the captive. He was very much put out by the news which he had just heard, that on the journey, not far from England, the captive had nearly escaped; that at Plymouth she had all at once thrown herself overboard into a small vessel, which was in readiness for her (as was easily to be seen), and that it was with great difficulty and disregard for her cries and groans that they had managed to get her on board again. The prince was afraid that some one might attempt to effect her escape here. The captive, terrified, confused by all that had happened, by her gloomy and dismal prison, did not deny that she was called and was looked upon asa Russian grand-duchess. She even went so far as to declare that, recollecting her childhood, she, on the strength of circumstances, believed herself to be the grand-duchess of whom mention was made in the will of the Emperor Peter I., which, she said, she had found among her papers, and which was all in favour of the late Empress Elizabeth, and by the will of Elizabeth made in favour of her daughter. A copy of this interrogation was sent to Moscow to the Empress Ekaterina, who was very indignant at the impudence of the captive, and especially when she found a letter addressed to herself, signed “Elizabeth.” “Well, that woman is afieffée canaille,”[37]exclaimed Ekaterina, crumpling the letter in her hands, after having read it. Potemkin was at that time sitting in the study of the empress. “Of whom are you speaking?” he asked.
“Oh! always about the same vagrant, Batiushka; about that Italian vagabond.”
Potemkin,—who really pitied Tarakanova, for two reasons: first, because she was a woman; and then, because she was the prey of Orloff, to him hateful,—began to speak in her favour. The empress, without a word, handed him a whole parcel of German and French newspapers, andthen told him that he would do better to look and see for himself all the calumnies spread about her and this Pretender; whereupon he, snuffling and grumbling, began to scan the papers with his short-sighted eyes.
“Well!” asked Ekaterina, looking up from some papers she had been glancing at.
“Incredible.—So much slander! It’s difficult to give an opinion.”
“To me, it’s all clear,” said Ekaterina. “Just a second edition of the Marquis Pougachoff; and you must agree, prince, with me, that it is impossible to have any pity for this ‘victim,’ if you like, ‘of foreign intrigues.’”
Galitzin received another order. He was to put down the impudence of the adventuress, especially, as in the words of the English ambassador, “she was no princess, but the daughter of an innkeeper of Prague.”
The information of the ambassador regarding her was told to the Princess, at which she was very indignant.
“If I only knew who slandered me thus,” she exclaimed furiously, “I would scratch his eyes out.”
“Good God! what can all this mean?” she would cry out, horrified at her position. “I soardently, so blindly believed in myself, in my mission. Can it be that they are right? Is it possible that under the load of these horrible proofs which are constantly cropping up, I shall have to bid adieu to all my convictions, to all my hopes? Never, that shall never be. I will rise above all; I will never give in!” That her pride might be taken down, the captive was treated much more severely. She was deprived for some time of the services of her maid, and of many other little comforts. Her food was much more simple, almost coarse; but all in vain. Neither prayers, nor threats to take away from her her own garments and furnish her with prison clothes could awaken any repentance in her, or extort from her the confession that she was an impostor and not a princess.
“I am not a pretender, do you hear?” she would scream in furious indignation to Galitzin. “You are a prince; I only a feeble woman.… In the name of the All-Merciful God, do not torment me; have pity upon me.”
The prince, forgetting his orders, would begin consoling her.
“I am pregnant,” inadvertently said the captive, crying. “I shall perish, but not alone.… Send me where you like—to the Eskimos, to thesnows of Siberia, to a convent.… No, on my word of honour, I’m innocent.…”
Galitzin became thoughtful.
“Who is the father of your unborn child?” he asked at last.
“Count Alexis Orloff.”
“Again a lie,” said Galitzin. “And why, what for? Are you not ashamed to answer like that? To a man whom the empress trusts so highly, to an old man?”
“It is only the truth. Before God!” answered the captive, sobbing. “The admiral, the officers, the whole fleet can bear witness to it.…”
The bewildered Galitzin put a stop to his interrogation, and sent a report of the new confession to the empress at Moscow.
“Miserable, impudent wretch!” screamed out Ekaterina, after reading this report to Potemkin. “See how this new edition of Pougachoff, sent to us by the Poles—how she knows how to slander and calumniate others!”
“Well; but if there should be some truth in it,” slowly said Potemkin. “It’s so easy to betray a poor, weak, confiding woman.”
“Oh, that’s impossible!” answered Ekaterina. “At any rate, Orloff will soon be here. He’llsoon tell us all about this false Elizabeth.… And you, prince, in your knightly defence of a woman, do not forget the most important thing—the peace of the kingdom. We went through enough in the last insurrection.”
Potemkin was silent.
From day to day Orloff was expected. He was hastening from Italy to be present at the celebration of the peace with Turkey. At this time Galitzin had received other orders,—to deprive the captive of everything except what was strictly necessary, to make her put on prison clothes, and having sent her maid away, to put two sentinels as a constant watch over her.
The obstinacy of the captive astonished and angered Ekaterina very much.
“How is this?” she reasoned. “I have conquered Turkey; Pougachoff has been caught, has acknowledged his imposture, and been publicly executed; … and that miserable, puny woman, that adventuress, … will not acknowledge anything, and dares to threaten me, from her cellar … from her den.”
Potemkin, after having heard from Christianok all the details of the arrest of the Princess, was very morose and silent. Ekaterina ascribed it to his frequent fits of melancholy.
Soon it became known to many of those about the empress, what means Orloff had employed to entice and then betray the unfortunate captive, and these were soon communicated to the empress through the medium of her maid Perekousikhin. At first Ekaterina would not believe any of these rumours, and severely reprimandedher maid on this account. The secret report of the honest and incorruptible Galitzin concerning the position and condition of the captive, all the courtiers had made known to the empress. The womanly heart of Ekaterina was moved with indignation. “Not Radzivill,” she said; “he, threatened with confiscation of his enormous estates, did not betray the devoted woman!”
“Betrayer by nature!” shot through the brain of Ekaterina, when she recollected the services of Orloff; … “ready for anything, unscrupulous in all; stopping at nothing in his own interests,” and then Ekaterina remembered the phrase, “Matoushka Tzaritza, pardon. You didn’t think, you did not guess—”[38]
“Not for nothing do they call him butcher,” contemptuously murmured Ekaterina. “Oh! he’ll just say that, out of devotion, he ‘oversalted it.’ … Well! he’ll soon be here. He must be made to mend that affair. That fallen one, without family, nameless, tribeless; a toy in the hands of the wicked, in his arms she’ll be powerless.… And she, after selling beer at Prague, well! how dares she disdain Russian dignitary or count? Where’s—themésalliance?”
The calm village scenes of Tzaritzin and Kolomenski, began to weary Ekaterina. The forests, the lakelets, the birds and the butterflies no longer brought her peaceful dreams.
The empress suddenly started for Moscow alone.
There, in the Chinese city, or Kitaï-Gorod, she visited the archives of the Minister of the Interior, where several important papers had been sent for revision. The director of the archives was the celebrated author of the “History of Russia” and of “The Description of the Empire of Siberia;” late editor of the academical journal, “Monthly Compositions;” traveller and Russian historiographer;—the academician Miller. He was then already seventy. The empress herself was very fond of history, and knew him very well, having often had very long conversations with him about his works, and in general about history. She found him in his room, near the archives, busily turning over a heap of old Muscovite manuscripts.
Miller was very fond of flowers and birds. The rooms of his governmental department, not very lofty, were hung all around with cages of blackbirds, bullfinches, and others of the feathered tribe, which quite deafened Ekaterina with theirloud whistling and twittering. A glass door opened from the study of the master of the house into another room, ornamented with large plants set in green tubs. The windows were open, but a net which covered them prevented the birds, which were flying about, from taking their departure. The neat and pretty, although simple, room was filled with the perfume of roses and heliotropes. The greatest cleanliness reigned everywhere. The floors were as polished as a mirror. Miller was writing at his table near the glass door leading to his aviary. The empress, passing by, motioned the officious servant away, and came up to him unnoticed.
“I have come to you, Gerard Feodorovitch, with a request,” said Ekaterina, on entering the room.
Miller jumped up, apologising for his morning costume.
“Command me, your Majesty,” said he, hastily arranging his dress, and searching with his eyes for his spectacles, which he missed.
The empress took a seat, invited him to do the same, and the conversation began.
“Is it true,” she began, after having made several gracious inquiries after his health, and that of his large family, “is it true?—it is saidthat you have collected evidence, that you are convinced that it was not a usurper, a pretender who ascended the throne of Moscow; that Grishka Otropieff was the real Tzarevitch Dimitri? You said something about it—to the English traveller, Cox.”
The good-natured, absent-minded Miller, always lost in his researches, was very much puzzled at this question of the empress.
“Where on earth could she have heard that?” thought he. “Could Cox have blundered it out?”
“Let us be candid; I’ll help you,” continued Ekaterina. “You possess a wonderful memory, and withal you are so very perspicacious in deciphering and comparing manuscripts. Give me openly and boldly your opinion. We are alone; no one can hear us. Is it true that the evidence for the condemnation of the Pretender was weak, almost nothing?”
Miller became thoughtful. His grey hair was ruffled, and his good-natured, intelligent mouth, which just before the entrance of the empress had held a half-finished cigar in an amber mouth-piece, was now unconsciously nervously twitching.
“Yes, it is true,” he answered, hesitating;“but, excuse me, that is quite my own personal opinion, nothing more.”
“But if so, then why do you not publish such a very important judgment?”
“But, your Majesty,” stammered Miller, looking about him with a bewildered gaze, pulling at his waistcoat, “I read the account of the researches made by Vassili Shouiski at Ouglitch. He made those researches by order of Godounoff. It was to his interest to please Boris, and he did this by bringing to him the evidence only of those who affirmed that the Tzarevitch had really been killed. Of course, any one can see that all other evidence which might have been disagreeable to Godounoff he would suppress.”
“Which other?” asked Ekaterina.
“That another one was killed, and that the former was hidden; but of course, you know yourself, that this very same Shouiski publicly acknowledged the resuscitated Dimitri.”
“A very witty proof,” said Ekaterina. “Not for nothing does General Potemkin, great amateur historian, advise me to have all that published, if you are really convinced of its truth?”
“Excuse me, your Majesty,” stammered Miller; “the will of the empress—is an importantguide; but there’s another, a power still higher—Russia. I am a Lutheran; the body of the recognised Dimitri lies in the cathedral of the Kremlin. What would become of all my researches, what would become of my own person, amidst your own nation, if I dared to assert that not Grishka Otropieff had ascended the Muscovite throne, but the real Tzarevitch Dimitri?”
The words of Miller disturbed Ekaterina very much.
“Well, candid at any rate,” thought she; “just like a philosopher.”
“Very well,” said the empress; “let the dead rest in peace; we will talk about the living. I think General Potemkin has sent you the examination, and the evidence taken in respect of that impudent Pretender, the arrest of whom you have heard about, I suppose?”
“Yes, he sent them,” answered Miller, remembering at last that the spectacles for which he had been constantly searching with his eyes were on his forehead, and wondering how he could have forgotten that.
“Well, and what have you to say of that worthy sister of the Marquis Pougachoff?” asked Ekaterina.
Miller at that very moment caught sight, through the glass door, of one of his canaries, a very quarrelsome bird, who had just flowninto another’s nest, the mistress of which was twittering, flying round, and trying to turn her out. His eyes also wandered to a sick blackbird with its leg bound up.
Miller, recollecting himself, and colouring at his own timidity and absent-mindedness, answered,—
“The Princess, if she is Russian, learnt Russian history very insufficiently; that’s the main thing I have to say, after reading her papers; but of course, that would be more her teacher’s fault.”
“Well, what do you think? Can it be that there is a spark of truth in her tale?” asked Ekaterina. “Do you suppose for one moment that the Empress Elizabeth might have had such a daughter, and hidden her from all eyes?”
Miller was just on the point of answering: “Oh! yes, of course; what is there in all that so very improbable?” but he remembered at that minute about the mysterious youth, Alexis Shkourin, travelling now in foreign parts, and in his confusion fixed his eyes on the glass door of his aviary.
“Well, and why do you not answer?” said Ekaterina, smiling. “Your Lutheranism does not stand in the way here.”
“Well, everything is possible, your Majesty,”said Miller, shaking his grey curly head. “People do say all sorts of things; some of them may be true.”
“Look here—would it not be strange?” said Ekaterina. “The late Razoumovski was a very good man, and although secretly, still he was the lawful, husband of Elizabeth. Why trample under foot all the laws of nature? Why this heartless denial of their own daughter?”
“Then it was one century, now it’s another,” answered Miller. “Morals differ; if the new Shouiski-Shouvalovi could hide for so many years in solitary confinement the, to them, dangerous Prince John, proclaimed in his infancy emperor, what is there here so very strange, if, in their thirst after influence and power, they should have sent to the end of the earth, or, at any rate, hidden another infant, this unfortunate Princess?”
“But, Gerard Feodorovitch, you forget the most important thing—the mother! How could the empress have borne that? You cannot deny her heart was in the right place; and then, all this was not about a strange child, like Ivanushka, but about her own forsaken daughter.”
“Well! oh, it is very simple,” answered Miller. “Razoumovski, I should think, had nothing at all to do with it. The whole intriguewas brought to bear on the empress—not on the mother.… Very likely, many reasons were brought forward, and she consented. This secret daughter was hidden, sent to the South, and then over the Urals. In the papers of the Princess she speaks of poison, of flight from Siberia to Persia, afterwards to Germany, and then to France.… The Shouiskis of our days have repeated the old tragedy. In guarding the empress, they still kept in readiness for any emergency, a new refugee, saved by them from another world.”
Ekaterina here remembered that Orloff, in one of his letters, had spoken of a Russian traveller, Ivan Shouvaloff, who was even now in foreign parts.
“With you, one might go on talking for ever,” said Ekaterina, rising. “Your memory in itself is a whole archive, and a priceless one, too; and Russian history, is it not true? like Russia itself, is richest virgin-soil. How lovely our boundless corn-fields! But then, again, the weeds. Ah,àpropos! I do always admire your flowers and your birds. Now, do pay me a visit at Tzaritzin. Grimme has sent me a whole family of the loveliest cockatoos. One of them is always repeating ‘où est la vérité?’”
Having with special graciousness thanked Miller for his information, the empress returned to the palace. Soon after this event, the hero of Chesma, Orloff, made his appearance.
Alexis Gregorevitch failed to recognise the court. With new faces, a new order of things had been introduced. The count did not at once receive the honour of an interview with the empress. He was told she was not quite well. This made him feel very anxious. Well versed in court life, he scented disfavour in the air. It became urgent to take measures. Very diffidently, Alexis Gregorevitch turned to some of the courtiers to try and get an audience with the new sun, Potemkin. The interview took place with great politeness on both sides, but no geniality. Their old friendship and fraternity had been left far behind. They conversed till midnight, but the guest felt he had learnt very little.
“Yes, now it’s all without measure, all overflowing,” said Potemkinen passant, speaking about something. Orloff long pondered over those words. “Overflowing!”—well, had not he also filled the measure too full?
In the morning he was invited to go to the empress, whom he found bathing her dogs.“Sir Tom Anderson,” who had already been taken out of the bath and wiped dry, was warming himself under his coverlet. His consort, “Mimi,” was still in the water. Ekaterina sat near, holding ready the warm coverlet. Perekousikhin, in a large apron, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, was very energetically rubbing the little dog with a sponge and soap. Quite wet, and white from the soap, Mimi, on seeing the big goggle-eyed stranger, began barking most furiously and straining to get at him.
“Ah! from water to water,” said Ekaterina jokingly. “Welcome back to your native land. We shall soon be ready.”
Having wrapped Mimi up warmly and put her in the basket, the empress dried her hands, and remarked:—
“As you see, friends first of all!” She took a seat, pointed out a chair to Orloff, and began questioning him about his journeys, about Italy, and the Turkish affairs.
“But, oh! Batiushka Alexis Gregorevitch, you oversalted, oversalted it,” said the empress, producing her snuff-box, and slowly taking a pinch.
“In what, your Majesty?”
“In that certain little affair,” smilinglyanswered Ekaterina, menacing him with her finger.
Orloff noticed the smile, but at the same time, in that very same joke, he noticed a well-known—to him—bad sign. The round, strong chin of Ekaterina trembled slightly.
“In what? Matoushka Tzaritza, and in what is my crime?” he asked, stammering.
“Comment donc, Monsieur?Yes, really oversalted it,” continued Ekaterina, slowly taking another pinch from her snuff-box.
At this, Orloff, like a child, lost all self-possession; his eyes wandered timorously round the room.
“You know; our captive,” said the empress,—“Oh, I suppose you’ve heard it; she’ll soon be two.…”
The athlete Orloff knew not what to do in his confusion.
“I am lost, completely lost!” thought he; and his disgrace, his downfall arose before his eyes. “Mercy, oh God!”
“But that we may arrange, matters may be mended,” continued Ekaterina. “You might go to Petersburg, see the captive. To celebrate the peace, you have returned to her as her bridegroom.”
Orloff knit his brows, bent one knee to the ground, kissed the hand that was held out to him, and silently left the room. At the door, he regained his self-composure.
“Well! what! the empress! What did she say?” asked the courtiers.
“I have been honoured with a special invitation to the fêtes,” answered the count, “and now I am going to Petersburg to arrange my brother’s affairs.”
Count Orloff tried to seem very elated, very proud.… He understood that it was better for him to make haste. It was clear that the empress was not joking. Under pretence of an interview with his brother, he hastened the preparations for his journey, and was soon on his way to Petersburg.
Worn out with her long sea voyage and imprisonment, the captive dragged on a miserable existence in the fortress. An acute fever, a sharp cough, accompanied by frequent hemorrhage, had developed into rapid consumption.
The frequent visits and questions of the field-marshal Galitzin always threw the Princess into fits of passion.
“What right have you to treat me like this?” she would say in an imperative voice. “What reason have I given for such treatment?”
“Written orders from a higher power—the will of the empress!” answered, panting and puffing, the secretary, Oushakoff.
In the capacity of secretary to the Commission which had been appointed, he had large means placed at his disposal. Therefore, continually complaining of fatigue, of a mass of occupations, and even of pains in his spine, he lingered over the evidence, brought forward a multitude offacts, began a long correspondence about her affairs, and in general led the good-natured Galitzin by the nose, and on the savings made from the money allotted for the keep of the captive managed to buy a nice little house in the courtyard already belonging to him in the Gorokhoviya.[39]
In the interval, the false testament found among the papers of Tarakanova was shown to her.
“Well, what have you to say to that?” asked Galitzin.
“I swear by the Almighty God, by eternal damnation, that I am the author of none of those unfortunate papers. I was told all that.”
“But they are in your own handwriting.”
“Perhaps—it interested me.”
“Then you do not wish to confess to anything, or explain the truth?”
“I’ve nothing to confess. I lived in freedom, I did harm to no one. I was betrayed, made prisoner by treason.”
Galitzin began to lose patience. “What a she-devil they’ve handed over to me!” thought he. “Extract a secret from a stone like that!” The prince groaned aloud and rubbed his nose.
“But, your Grace, recollect,” once whispered the officious Oushakoff, “your hands are unfettered. In the last ukase it makes mention of the utmost severity, of investigation without partiality.”
“Well, of course, one might try,” muttered the bewildered prince, who was in general averse to any severe measure. “Shall I try? It won’t be worse than it is.”
“In the name of the empress,” severely said the field-marshal to the commandant, in the presence of the captive, “in view of her obstinacy—deprive her of everything, except the strictly necessary clothing and bedding. You hear, everything—books, and other things, there; and then, if that does not answer, put her on common prison food.”
The orders of the prince were carried out. The poor, ailing girl, brought up in luxury and comfort, began to receive nothing but black bread, soldier’skasha(porridge), andschi(sour cabbage soup). Although hungry, she would sit for hours shedding bitter tears over the wooden bowl, but not touching it. On the way to Russia, near the shores of Holland, where the squadron had anchored to take in provisions, she had read in a newspaper, which had fallen by accident intoher cabin, all the past life of Orloff, and trembling with passion, she had cursed her folly in having believed in such a man. But worse misery awaited her. Two soldiers were assigned to the captive, and kept watch in her room, night and day. All this would throw the prisoner into fits of passion.
“Repent,” Galitzin would say to her. “I pity you from my heart, but without repentance, don’t expect forgiveness.”
“I’ll accept every torment, even death, Sir Marshal; I’ll accept everything,” said the captive. “But you are mistaken.… Nothing can make me withdraw my evidence.”
“Think over it.…”
“God is my witness.… My torments will fall on the heads of my tormentors.”
“She’ll think over it, your Grace!” whispered Oushakoff, turning over some papers. “One more experiment. She’ll come round all right.”
The experiment was tried. Her Venetian silk nightdress was exchanged for one of sackcloth.
“Almighty God! be witness of my most secret thoughts,” prayed the captive. “What am I to do, what shall I undertake? I believed in my past. It all seemed so plain. I was accustomed to think of it all, to live in that idea. Neitherthe treason of that monster, nor my captivity, has been able to shake my conviction. No, and not even this iron dungeon, which seems to crush me, can do that. Death is not far off. Oh! Mother of God, oh! lowly Jesus, help me. Who will give me strength, who will guide me, who will save me—from all these horrors, from this prison?”
One cold rainy evening, a hired carriage with the blinds drawn down drove up to theperronof the commandant of the fortress of Petropavlovski, André Gavrilovitch Tchernishoff. Half an hour afterwards, Orloff and the commandant walked in the direction of the Ravelin Alexéef.
“Failing,” said the commandant, walking on, “failing rapidly, especially with this dampness. Yesterday, your Grace, she begged for her own clothes and books; they were returned to her.”
The sentinels were called out of the room of the Princess. Orloff entered the room alone. Tchernishoff remained outside the door. In the dusk, the count could hardly see the low-ceilinged room, with two deeply set windows with thick iron gratings. Between the two windows stood a small table with two chairs. A few books were scattered on the table together with some otherthings, and, covered with a coarse cloth, stood the untouched food. On the right-hand side stood a screen. Behind the screen was a small table with a water-bottle, a glass, and a cup, and surrounded by chintz curtains, a small iron bedstead. On the bed, in a white dressing gown and cap, lay a girl, so pale, one might think she was dead, covered with a blue velvet mantilla.
Orloff was struck by the frail look of her, who such a short time ago had been so stately, and so charmingly beautiful. There flashed across his mind remembrances of Italy, tender letters, the ardent courtship, the journey to Livorno, the feast on the ship, Ribas and Christianok travestied in the old clerical vestments. “Oh! why did I play that comedy with the marriage ceremony?” thought he. “She was really on board my ship, in my hands.” And vividly there flashed through his mind the picture of the arrest of the Princess. He remembered her cries on deck, and the next day his message to her through Konsov, a letter in German, describing his own false sorrow, oaths of faithfulness till death, and assurances of love. “What sorrow has fallen upon us”—trying to write the most tender words, he had said. “We are both arrested, in chains; but God, the All-merciful, will not forsake us. Let us put our trustin Him. As soon as I get my liberty, I’ll search the whole world till I find you, to guard and serve you all my life.” “And I have found her; here she is!” thought Orloff, involuntarily shuddering, not daring to cross the threshold. At last he ventured near her, close to the screen. At the sound, the unfortunate girl opened her eyes, looked at her visitor, and rose. Her auburn hair, at one time so luxuriant, fell from under her cap, and half-covered her poor pale face, distorted by illness and passion.
“You? You—in this room—near me!” screamed out the Princess, recognising her visitor, and stretching out both her hands in front of her, as though driving away some awful apparition.
Orloff stood motionless.
The words seemed to burst from her throat, and die upon her lips. She threw herself back on the bed to the farthest side of the wall, where with flaming eyes she looked ready to devour Orloff, who stood gazing at her horror-stricken.
“Yes! we are married, are we not? Ha, ha, ha! we are man and wife?” said she, but a convulsive cough cut short her indignation for the moment. “Where have you been all this time?Youpromised,Iwaited.”
“Look here,” gently said Orloff, “let us forget the past, let us play comedy no longer. You must realize by this time that I was the faithful slave of my sovereign, and that I only obeyed her commands.”
“Treachery, deceit!” screamed the unhappy girl; “never will I believe it.… Do you hear me? The great and powerful Russian empress would never have had recourse to such perfidy.”
“I swear to you they were her orders.…”
“No, I do not believe one word of it, traitor,” screamed the unfortunate girl, shaking her fists at him. “Ekaterina could command anything—demand my surrender, burn down the town that gave me refuge, take me by force, but not that. Butyou, you yourself, might have pierced me with a dagger, poisoned me. You knew of poisons,—but what have you done with me? what?”
“One moment of calmness, I implore you,” at last said Orloff. “Answer me one word, only one—and I promise you, on my word of honour, that you shall be set free immediately.
“What new invention is that, monster? Speak, traitor,” said the Princess, recovering some composure, as shudderingly she drew the blue mantilla, so well known to the count, closer around her.
“You have been questioned so long, and with such persistency,” began Orloff, trying to give his voice a tender and convincing tone, “tell me now all—we are alone; God only can see and hear us.”