THE TEMPTER
One stormy winter's day, on which not even his neighbors dared venture
out of their houses to make their customary visit to Pushkin, a sledge,
amid the tinkling of many bells, drove into the courtyard, and from out
the midst of his fur wrappings and high felt boots emerged Chevalier
Galban.
A host stifles all inimical feeling towards his guest, the more so when
he comes in such vile weather. The road was invisible from snow-drifts;
it was impossible to see where one was driving.
Pushkin welcomed Galban cordially. The pipe of peace was lighted in the
warm, cosey room. Bethsaba prepared the tea.
"But, in the name of all that's wonderful, what brought you out of St.
Petersburg in such weather?"
"H'm! My dear fellow, that your own experience can give you a good
inkling of! Your windows do not look on to Nevski Prospect either! You,
too, have your reasons for being here."
"Right you are," said Pushkin, blowing the smoke in blue rings into the
air, which rings gathered together over Bethsaba's head, as an aureole
over the head of a saint; and, ostentatiously drawing his wife towards
him, he put his arm round her waist as he said, "This is my reason!"
Galban laughed. "Well, I certainly cannot lay claim to such a reason! As
far as I am concerned, it is _Veteres migrate coloni_" (Old cottagers
take to wandering). "The world is topsy-turvy. The old set have to fly
for their lives. Even Araktseieff is smoking his pipe at Grusino."
"That surprises me. Czar Constantine was his ideal. And I know that
there is no one Araktseieff loves better than Czar Constantine."
"Yes; if Constantine were the Czar, I, too, should have known what I was
about; but he is not."
"Not Czar?" said Pushkin, amazed. "But the papers give his name in all
proclamations."
"But, my dear Alexander Sergievitch! You a writer yourself, and yet are
naïve enough to believe what is in the papers?"
"The devil! But one must believe them when they announce that the Senate
has proclaimed Constantine to be Czar, and that the household troops
have sworn the oath of allegiance to him."
"All the same, Constantine is not Czar. We live, my friend, in an age of
miracles and absurdities. Official papers do not publish everything;
still, in St. Petersburg people pretty well know what is happening. When
Constantine was proclaimed Czar, and from Grand Dukes to guards all had
duly sworn the oath of allegiance to him, the President of the Senate,
Lapukhin, produces a sealed packet, upon which was inscribed, in the
late Czar's handwriting--'To be opened in cabinet council after my
death.' The seals were broken, and within was found a document in which
Grand Duke Constantine, the Czarevitch, renounced his succession to the
throne in favor of his younger brother, Grand Duke Nicholas. A second
document contained in the packet was Alexander's will, wherein he
states that he had accepted Constantine's renunciation of the throne,
and naming Grand Duke Nicholas as his heir."
"So, then, Constantine is not Czar, but Nicholas. That is plain."
Pushkin said this in a tone from which it was easy to infer that it was
a matter of indifference to him.
"Not quite so plain as you think. Grand Duke Nicholas refuses to accept
the succession. He is a follower of the old régime, which suffers no
changes, and now the war of high-mindedness runs high between St.
Petersburg and Warsaw. Grand Duke Michael, the third brother, acting as
intermediary, goes from one brother to the other with the request that
he should accept the crown."
"Anyway, a display of great brotherly love, unexampled in the world's
history. Up to now princes have been more apt to dispute a crown!"
"And what makes the farce complete is that two accomplished facts,
contradictory to each other, have to be surmounted. It is an
accomplished fact that Constantine has been proclaimed Czar and cannot
relinquish the throne; and, equally so, that he has taken to wife
Johanna Grudzinska, a Pole, a Catholic, and only of aristocratic birth,
three circumstances which render it impossible for her husband to wear
the crown. And so, on the one hand, Constantine _cannot_ relinquish the
throne; on the other, he _cannot_ ascend it."
"For all I care, let him stay where he is."
"You, in your Tusculum, can afford to make cheap jokes; but what are all
the poor devils about the court to do in such an imbroglio?"
"Especially as his wife is more to the Czarevitch than his crown!"
"No more of that! With that overdrawn conjugal love we do not throw sand
into other people's eyes. I had opportunity of putting that love to the
proof. I assure you that it needed no magic to have led Frau Johanna to
forget her Grand Ducal lover for a _knightly_ one. At that time she had
not the right to call him husband. Ah! had not a more powerful feeling
swayed my heart"--a suppressed sigh and secret side-glance at Bethsaba
here explained his words--"truly in my hands would have lain the power
to present Grand Duke Constantine the nineteen crowns of Russia--even a
twentieth. It only needed me to have stayed one day longer in the
gardens of the lovely Lazienka."
Pushkin was disgusted at this bragging. He knocked the ashes out of his
pipe. Galban's boasting he valued at the same rate as those ashes.
"I happen to know, however, that the Czarevitch and his wife are so
devotedly attached to each other that Constantine would not exchange
Johanna's head-dress for Rurik's crown."
"But what if that is not due to Johanna's head-dress, but is the fault
of Rurik's crown? A sensible man does not shelter from the storm under a
fir-tree if he means to keep dry, and of all fir-trees the crown of a
Russian fir is the most dangerous in a storm. Every one knows--even the
sparrows twitter it--that the late Czar was only saved by the kind
agency of Caucasian fever from the fatality which awaits every Russian
czar. There are many rumors, even, about his end. People talk of poison.
The _bon-mot_ of Talleyrand is going the round: 'It is really time that
Russian czars changed their manner of dying.' One shudders to say it,
how assassination, treachery, conspiracy, await him who sits upon
Rurik's throne. The very kneeling-chair, the altar, the church wherein
he prays, are undermined. Is not this explanation enough why one brother
vies with another in refusing the throne? The most open expression of
feeling was that which caused the Czarevitch to explain the reason of
his hesitation to the Queen Dowager of Saxony in these words: 'Russian
czars need to have very strong necks, and I am not fond of having my
neck tickled.'"
So outspoken! Only _agents provocateurs_ venture to say such audacious
things.
Pushkin shoved the amber mouth-piece so far into his mouth that he could
not bring out a word. Bethsaba saw that her husband was on thorns, and
left the room. She had divined his wish, and ordered three sledges to be
horsed and despatched to fetch their neighbors, hindered from coming by
the snow-storm.
Galban, meanwhile, continued the conversation.
"You know very well who I was and what I am. My whole life long I have
been a courtier. I loved to serve, to obey, to intrigue. Never did I
have the least inclination to join a league of conspirators. I tell the
truth. But under the present circumstances a man's ordinary loyalty is
of no account whatever. The whole country is at sixes and sevens. Even
political leagues are disrupted. By the death of the Czar the ground has
been cut from under their feet. There is no Czar. Against whom should
they conspire? They have split up into two parties. If Constantine take
the crown, Nicholas will immediately be proclaimed Czar as well; if
Nicholas, Constantine will be set up against him. The soldiers are ready
to fire upon each other; each party will fight for their legitimate
head. Under the counter battle-cry, 'Long live the Czar!' we shall have
a fine revolution breaking out. Nor can one tell who will come out
conqueror. If Constantine's party win the day, Nicholas's followers will
be the rebels; if Nicholas's party gain the upperhand, it will be
Constantine's followers who will suffer. The position of a man like
myself is simply terrible. Whichever side I take to-day, how am I to
tell if, with all my loyal devotion, I shall not to-morrow be proscribed
as a rebel? Under such circumstances a wise man cannot do better than to
leave the chaos to take care of itself and flee to the woods to hunt
wolves. And, I trust, Alexander Sergievitch, that we shall often join in
that healthful pursuit together."
"I am not allowed to go a day's journey from Pleskow."
"Well, then, my estate lies within your boundary--just a short winter
day's distance. Let us get all the enjoyment out of it we can as long as
this chaotic world endures."
Pushkin promised to return the visit shortly.
"Then, now we are friends and companions," continued Galban,
garrulously. "You may imagine the lamentations under the tsinovniks in
St. Petersburg. Next March Czar Alexander was to have celebrated his
five-and-twentieth year of accession. Every man about the court was
congratulating himself on the prospect of ascending a step on this
ladder of rank; instead of being 'vasé blagorodié' that he would become
'vasé vomszkoblagorodié.' Numbers of them had had their uniforms made
beforehand, and had prepared their answers for the forthcoming
examinations. You are aware that all of us, when we get preferment, have
to undergo an examination? Luckily for us the professors give out the
papers in good time; a golden key lets them out the sooner. And now all
this has come to naught. I myself stood on the list, in the third rank
of nobility, as director of the St. Petersburg Theatre, and you figured
in it in the rank of major. Three thousand aspirants! most of whom had
paid pretty heavily for their chances into Daimona's fair hands. Money
thrown away now."
This dangerous conversation was brought to an end by the noisy entrance
of the three neighbors. Never had doors opened to more welcome guests.
They had not, moreover, come to quarrel over involved questions of
succession, but to play tarok; and it is an acknowledged axiom--tarok
before everything!
Chevalier Galban excused himself on the plea that he only played hazard,
and that for high stakes.
"Well, then, sit down and have a game of chess with my wife. But look to
your laurels; Bethsaba plays a good game."
Thus Chevalier Galban settled to a game that is the greatest hazard in
all the world, and is played for the highest stakes of all.