Read Ebook: The Prose Tales of Alexander Pushkin by Pushkin Aleksandr Sergeevich Keane T Translator

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Ebook has 1815 lines and 94258 words, and 37 pages

"I was going to the fortress of Bailogorsk to rescue an orphan who is oppressed there."

Pougatcheff's eyes sparkled.

"Which of my people dares to oppress the orphan?" cried he. "Were he seven feet high he should not escape my judgment. Speak! who is the culprit?"

"I will soon put Shvabrin in his right place," said Pougatcheff fiercely. "He shall learn what it is to oppress my people according to his own will and pleasure. I will have him hanged."

"Allow me to speak a word," said Khlopousha in a hoarse; voice. "You were in too great a hurry in appointing Shvabrin to the command of the fortress, and now you are in too great a hurry to hang him. You have already offended the Cossacks by placing a nobleman over them as their chief; do not now alarm the nobles by hanging them at the first accusation."

"They ought neither to be pitied nor favoured," said the little old man with the blue riband. "To hang Shvabrin would be no great misfortune, neither would it be amiss to put this officer through a regular course of questions. Why has he deigned to pay us a visit? If he does not recognize you as Czar, he cannot come to seek justice from you; and if he does recognize you, why has he remained up to the present time in Orenburg along with your enemies? Will you not order him to be conducted to the court-house, and have a fire lit there? It seems to me that his Grace is sent to us from the generals in Orenburg."

The logic of the old rascal seemed to me to be plausible enough. A shudder passed through the whole of my body, when I thought into whose hands I had fallen. Pougatcheff observed my agitation.

"Well, your lordship," said he to me, winking his eyes; "my Field-Marshal, it seems to me, speaks to the point. What do you think?"

Pougatcheff's raillery restored my courage. I calmly replied that I was in his power, and that he could deal with me in whatever way he pleased.

"Good," said Pougatcheff. "Now tell me, in what condition is your town?"

"Thank God!" I replied, "everything is all right."

"All right!" repeated Pougatcheff, "and the people are dying of hunger!"

The impostor spoke the truth; but in accordance with the duty imposed upon me by my oath, I assured him that what he had heard were only idle reports, and that in Orenburg there was a sufficiency of all kinds of provisions.

"You see," observed the little old man, "that he deceives you to your face. All the deserters unanimously declare that famine and sickness are rife in Orenburg, that they are eating carrion there and think themselves fortunate to get it to eat; and yet his Grace assures us that there is plenty of everything there. If you wish to hang Shvabrin, then hang this young fellow on the same gallows, that they may have nothing to reproach each other with."

The words of the accursed old man seemed to produce an effect upon Pougatcheff. Fortunately, Khlopousha began to contradict his companion.

"That will do, Naoumitch," said he to him: "you only think of strangling and hanging. What sort of a hero are you? To look at you, one is puzzled to imagine how your body and soul contrive to hang together. You have one foot in the grave yourself, and you want to kill others. Haven't you enough blood on your conscience?"

"And what sort of a saint are you?" replied Bailoborodoff. "Whence this compassion on your side?"

"Without doubt," replied Khlopousha, "I also am a sinner, and this hand"--here he clenched his bony fist and, pushing back his sleeve, disclosed his hairy arm--"and this hand is guilty of having shed Christian blood. But I killed my enemy, and not my guest; on the open highway or in a dark wood, and not in the house, sitting behind the stove; with the axe and club, and not with old woman's chatter."

The old man turned round and muttered the words: "Slit nostrils!"

"What are you muttering, you old greybeard?" cried Khlopousha. "I will give you slit nostrils. Just wait a little, and your turn will come too. Heaven grant that your nose may smell the pincers.... In the meantime, take care that I don't pull out your ugly beard by the roots." "Gentlemen, generals!" said Pougatcheff loftily, "there has been enough of this quarrelling between you. It would be no great misfortune if all the Orenburg dogs were hanging by the heels from the same crossbeam; but it would be a very great misfortune if our own dogs were to begin devouring each other. So now make it up and be friends again."

Khlopousha and Bailoborodoff said not a word, but glared furiously at each other. I felt the necessity of changing the subject of a conversation which might end in a very disagreeable manner for me, and turning to Pougatcheff, I said to him with a cheerful look:

"Ah! I had almost forgotten to thank you for the horse and pelisse. Without you I should never have reached the town, and I should have been frozen to death on the road."

My stratagem succeeded. Pougatcheff became good-humoured again.

"The payment of a debt is its beauty," said he, winking his eyes. "And now tell me, what have you to do with this young girl whom Shvabrin persecutes? Has she kindled a flame in your young heart, eh?"

"She is my betrothed," I replied, observing a favourable change in the storm, and hot deeming it necessary to conceal the truth.

"Your betrothed!" exclaimed Pougatcheff. "Why did you not say so before? We will marry you, then, and have some merriment at your wedding!"

Then turning to Bailoborodoff:

"Listen, Field-Marshal!" said he to him: "his lordship and I are old friends; let us sit down to supper; morning's judgment is wiser than that of evening--so we will see to-morrow what is to be done with him."

I would gladly have declined the proposed honour, but there was no help for it. Two young Cossack girls, daughters of the owner of the cottage, covered the table with a white cloth, and brought in some bread, fish-soup, and several bottles of wine and beer, and for the second time I found myself seated at the same table with Pougatcheff and his terrible companions.

We took our seats.

"Stop! stop!" cried a voice which I knew only too well, and I saw Savelitch running towards us.

Pougatcheff ordered the driver to stop.

"Ah, old greybeard!" said Pougatcheff to him. "It is God's will that we should meet again. Well, spring up behind."

"Thanks, Czar, thanks, my own father!" replied Savelitch, taking his seat. "May God give you a hundred years of life and good health for deigning to cast your eyes upon and console an old man. I will pray to God for you all the days of my life, and I will never again speak about the hareskin pelisse."

This allusion to the hareskin pelisse might have made Pougatcheff seriously angry. Fortunately, the usurper did not hear, or pretended not to hear, the misplaced remark. The horses again broke into a gallop; the people in the streets stood still and made obeisance. Pougatcheff bowed his head from side to side. In about a minute we had left the village behind us and were flying along over the smooth surface of the road.

One can easily imagine what my feelings were at that moment. In a few hours I should again set eyes upon her whom I had already considered as lost to me for ever. I pictured to myself the moment of our meeting.... I thought also of the man in whose hands lay my fate, and who, by a strange concourse of circumstances, had become mysteriously connected with me. I remembered the thoughtless cruelty and the bloodthirsty habits of him, who now constituted himself the deliverer of my beloved. Pougatcheff did not know that she was the daughter of Captain Mironoff; the exasperated Shvabrin might reveal everything to him; it was also possible that Pougatcheff might find out the truth in some other way.... Then what would become of Maria Ivanovna? A shudder passed through my frame, and my hair stood on end.

Suddenly Pougatcheff interrupted my meditations, by turning to me with the question:

"What is your lordship thinking of?"

"What should I not be thinking of," I replied. "I am an officer and a gentleman; only yesterday I was fighting against you, and now to-day I am riding side by side with you in the same carriage, and the happiness of my whole life depends upon you."

"How so?" asked Pougatcheff. "Are you afraid?"

I replied that, having already had my life spared by him,

I hoped, not only for his mercy, but even for his assistance.

"And you are right; by God, you are right!" said the impostor. "You saw that my fellows looked askant at you; and this morning the old man persisted in his statement that you were a spy, and that it was necessary that you should be interrogated by means of torture and then hanged. But I would not consent to it," he added, lowering his voice, so that Savelitch and the Tartar should not be able to hear him, "because I remembered your glass of wine and hareskin pelisse. You see now that I am not such a bloodthirsty creature as your brethren maintain."

I recalled to mind the capture of the fortress of Bailogorsk but I did not think it advisable to contradict him, and so I made no reply.

"What do they say of me in Orenburg?" asked Pougatcheff, after a short interval of silence.

"They say that it will be no easy matter to get the upper hand of you; and there is no denying that you have made yourself felt."

The face of the impostor betokened how much his vanity was gratified by this remark.

"Yes," said he, with a look of self-satisfaction, "I wage war to some purpose. Do you people in Orenburg know about the battle of Youzeiff? Forty general officers killed, four armies taken captive. Do you think the King of Prussia could do as well as that?"

The boasting of the brigand appeared to me to be somewhat amusing.

"What do you think about it yourself?" I said to him: "do you think that you could beat Frederick?"

"Fedor Fedorovitch? And why not? I beat your generals, and they have beaten him. My arms have always been successful up till now. But only wait awhile, you will see something very different when I march to Moscow."

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