“That must certainly be the surest way.”
A sudden rending of the branches and the underbrush, and the thicket
parted above them, so quickly and in so feline a way that Tartarin, his
head now full of hunting adventures, might have thought himself still on
the watch in the Zaccar. But Manilof sprang from the slope, noiselessly,
and close to the carriage. His small, cunning eyes were shining in a
face that was flayed by the briers; his beard and his long lank hair
were streaming with water from the branches. Breathless, holding with
his coarse, hairy hands to the doorway, he spoke in Russian to Sonia,
who turned instantly to Tartarin and said in a curt voice:--
“Your rope... quick...”
“My... my rope?..” stammered the hero.
“Quick, quick... you shall have it again in half an hour.”
Offering no other explanation, she helped him with her little gloved
hands to divest himself of his famous rope made in Avignon. Manilof
took the coil, grunting with joy; in two bounds he sprang, with the
elasticity of a wild-cat, into the thicket and disappeared.
“What has happened? What are they going to do?.. He looked ferocious...”
murmured Tartaric not daring to utter his whole thought.
Ferocious, Manilof! Ah! how plain it was he did not know him. No human
being was ever better, gentler, more compassionate; and to show Tartarin
a trait of that exceptionally kind nature, Sonia, with her clear, blue
glance, told him how her friend, having executed a dangerous mandate of
the Revolutionary Committee and jumped into the sledge which awaited him
for escape, had threatened the driver to get out, cost what it might, if
he persisted in whipping the horse whose fleetness alone could save him.
Tartarin thought the act worthy of antiquity. Then, having reflected on
all the human lives sacrificed by that same Manilof, as conscienceless
as an earthquake or a volcano in eruption, who yet would not let others
hurt an animal in his presence, he questioned the young girl with an
ingenuous air:--
“Were there many killed by the explosion at the Winter Palace?”
“Too many,” replied Sonia, sadly; “and the only one that ought to have
died escaped.”
She remained silent, as if displeased, looking so pretty, her head
lowered, with her long auburn eyelashes sweeping her pale rose cheeks.
Tartarin, angry with himself for having pained her, was caught once more
by that charm of youth and freshness which the strange little creature
shed around her.
“So, monsieur, the war that we are making seems to you unjust, inhuman?”
She said it quite close to him in a caress, as it were, of her breath
and her eye; the hero felt himself weakening...
“You do not see that all means are good and legitimate to deliver a
people who groan and suffocate?..”
“No doubt, no doubt...”