“No, Natalie, weep no more! Quick, dry your tears. Let not my
executioner see that we can feel pain or weep for sorrow!”
Drying her tears, she attempted a smile, but it was an unnatural,
painful smile.
“Ivan,” said she, “we will forget, forget all, excepting that we love
each other, and thus only can I become cheerful. And tell me, Ivan, have
I not always been in good spirits? Have not these long eight years in
Siberia passed away like a pleasant summer day? Have not our hearts
remained warm, and has not our love continued undisturbed by the
inclement Siberian cold? You may, therefore, well see that I have the
courage to bear all that can be borne. But you, my beloved, you my
husband, to see you die, without being able to save you, without being
permitted to die with you, is a cruel and unnatural sacrifice! Ivan, let
me weep; let your murderer see that I yet have tears. Oh, my God, I have
no longer any pride, I am nothing but a poor heart-broken woman! Your
widow, I weep over the yet living corpse of my husband!” With convulsive
sobs the trembling young wife fell upon her knees and with frantic grief
clung to her husband’s feet.
Count Ivan Dolgorucki no long felt the ability to stand aloof from her
sorrow. He bent down to his wife, raised her in his arms, and with her
he wept for his youth, his lost life, the vanishing happiness of his
love, and the shame of his fatherhood.
“I should joyfully go to my death, were it for the benefit of my
country,” said he. “But to fall a sacrifice to a cabal, to the jealousy
of an insidious, knavish favorite, is what makes the death-hour fearful.
Ah, I die for naught, I die that Munnich, Ostermann, and Biron may
remain securely in power. It is horrible thus to die!”
Natalie’s eyes flashed with a fanatic glow. “You die,” said she, “and
I shall live, will live, to see how God will avenge you upon these
evil-doers. I will live, that I may constantly think of you, and in
every hour of the day address to God my prayers for vengeance and
retribution!”
“Live and pray for our fatherland!” said Ivan.
“No,” she angrily cried, “rather let God’s curse rest upon this Russia,
which delivers over its noblest men to the executioner, and raises its
ignoblest women to the throne. No blessing for Russia, which is cursed
in all generations and for all time--no blessing for Russia, whose
bloodthirsty czarina permits the slaughter of the noble Ivan and his
brothers!”
“Ah,” said Ivan, “how beautiful you are now--how flash your eyes, and
how radiantly glow your cheeks! Would that my executioner were now
come, that he might see in you the heroine, Natalie, and not the
sorrow-stricken woman!”
“Ah, your prayer is granted; hear you not the rattling of the bolts, the
roll of the drum? They are coming, Ivan, they are coming!”
“Farewell, Natalie--farewell, forever!”
And, mutually embracing, they took one last, long kiss, but wept not.
“Hear me, Natalie! when they bind me upon the wheel, weep not. Be
resolute, my wife, and pray that their torments may not render me weak,
and that no cry may escape my lips!”
“I will pray, Ivan.”
In half an hour all was over. The noble and virtuous Count Ivan
Dolgorucki had been broken upon the wheel, and three of his brothers
beheaded, and for what?--Because Count Munnich, fearing that the noble
and respected brothers Dolgorucki might dispossess him of his usurped
power, had persuaded the Czarina Anna that they were plotting her
overthrow for the purpose of raising Katharina Ivanovna to the imperial
throne. No proof or conviction was required; Munnich had said it, and
that sufficed; the Dolgoruckis were annihilated!
But Natalie Dolgorucki still lived, and from the bloody scene of her
husband’s execution she repaired to Kiew. There would she live in the
cloister of the Penitents, preserving the memory of the being she loved,
and imploring the vengeance of Heaven upon his murderers!
It was in the twilight of a clear summer night when Natalie reached the
cloister in which she was on the next day to take the vows and exchange
her ordinary dress for the robe of hair-cloth and the nun’s veil.
Foaming rushed the Dnieper within its steep banks, hissing broke the
waves upon the gigantic boulders, and in the air was heard the sound as
of howling thunder and a roaring storm.
“I will take my leave of nature and of the world,” murmured Natalie,
motioning her attendants to remain at a distance, and with firm feet
climbing the steep rocky bank of the rushing Dnieper. Upon their knees
her servants prayed below, glancing up to the rock upon which they saw
the tall form of their mistress in the moonlight, which surrounded it
with a halo; the stars laid a radiant crown upon her pure brow, and her
locks, floating in the wind, resembled wings; to her servants she seemed
an angel borne upon air and light and love upward to her heavenly home!
Natalie stood there tranquil and tearless. The thoughtful glances of her
large eyes swept over the whole surrounding region. She took leave
of the world, of the trees and flowers, of the heavens and the earth.
Below, at her feet, lay the cloister, and Natalie, stretching forth her
arms toward it, exclaimed: “That is my grave! Happy, blessed Ivan, thou
diedst ere being coffined; but I shall be coffined while yet alive! I
stand here by thy tomb, mine Ivan. They have bedded thy noble form in
the cold waves of the Dnieper, whose rushing and roaring was thy funeral
knell, mine Ivan! I shall dwell by thy grave, and in the deathlike
stillness of my cell shall hear the tones of the solemn hymn with which
the impetuous stream will rock thee to thine eternal rest! Receive,
then, ye sacred waves of the Dnieper, receive thou, mine Ivan, in thy
cold grave, thy wife’s vow of fidelity to thee. Again will I espouse
thee--in life as in death, am I thine!”
And drawing from her finger the wedding-ring which her beloved husband
had once placed upon it, she threw it into the foaming waves.
Bending down, she saw the ring sinking in the waters and murmured: “I
greet thee, Ivan, I greet thee! Take my ring--forever am I thine!”
Then, rising proudly up, and stretching forth her arms toward heaven,
she exclaimed aloud: “I now go to pray that God may send thee vengeance.
Woe to Russia, woe!” and the stream with its boisterous waves howled and
thundered after her the words: “Woe to Russia, woe!”