not where to turn his eyes, when he saw a multitude of ladies
enter, dressed in silk gowns with long trains, and courtiers in
gold-embroidered coats and bag wigs. He was dazzled with the glitter
of gold, silver, and precious stones. The Zaporoghians fell with one
accord on their knees, and cried with one voice, "Mother, have mercy
upon us!" The blacksmith, too, followed their example, and stretched
himself full length on the floor.
"Rise up!" was heard above their heads, in a commanding yet soft voice.
Some of the courtiers officiously hastened to push the Zaporoghians.
"We will not arise, mother; we will die rather than arise!" cried the
Zaporoghians.
Potemkin bit his lips. At last he came himself, and whispered
imperatively to one of them. They arose. Then only did the blacksmith
venture to raise his eyes, and saw before him a lady, not tall,
somewhat stout, with powdered hair, blue eyes, and that majestic,
smiling air, which conquered every one, and could be the attribute only
of a reigning woman.
"His Highness[21] promised to make me acquainted to-day with a people
under my dominion, whom I have not yet seen," said the blue-eyed lady,
looking with curiosity at the Zaporoghians. "Are you satisfied with the
manner in which you are provided for here?" asked she, coming nearer.
"Thank thee, mother! Provisions are good, though mutton is not quite so
fine here as at home; but why should one be so very particular about
it?"
Potemkin frowned at hearing them speak in quite a different manner to
what he had told them to do.
One of the Zaporoghians stepped out from the group, and, in a dignified
manner, began the following speech:--"Mother, have mercy upon us! What
have we, thy faithful people, done to deserve thine anger? Have we
ever given assistance to the miscreant Tartars? Did we ever help the
Turks in anything? Have we betrayed thee in our acts, nay, even in our
thoughts? Wherefore, then, art thou ungracious towards us? At first
they told us thou hadst ordered fortresses to be raised against us;
then we were told thou wouldst make regular regiments of us; now, we
hear of new evils coming on us. In what were the Zaporoghians ever in
fault with regard to thee? Was it in bringing thy army across Perekop?
or in helping thy generals to get the better of the Crimean Tartars?"
Potemkin remained silent, and, with an unconcerned air, was brushing
the diamonds which sparkled on his fingers.
"What do you ask for, then?" demanded Catherine, in a solicitous tone
of voice.
The Zaporoghians looked knowingly at one another.
"Now's the time! the Czarina asks what we want!" thought the
blacksmith, and suddenly down he went on his knees. "Imperial Majesty!
Do not show me thy anger, show me thy mercy! Let me know (and let not
my question bring the wrath of thy Majesty's worship upon me!) of what
stuff are made the boots that thou wearest on thy feet? I think there
is no bootmaker in any country in the world who ever will be able to
make such pretty ones. Gracious Lord! if ever my wife had such boots to
wear!"
The empress laughed; the courtiers laughed too. Potemkin frowned and
smiled at the same time. The Zaporoghians pushed the blacksmith,
thinking he had gone mad.
"Stand up!" said the empress, kindly. "If thou wishest to have such
shoes, thy wish may be easily fulfilled. Let him have directly
my richest gold embroidered shoes. This artlessness pleases me
exceedingly." Then, turning towards a gentleman with a round pale face,
who stood a little apart from the rest, and whose plain dress, with
mother-of-pearl buttons, showed at once that he was not a courtier[22]:
"There you have," continued she, "a subject worthy of your witty pen."
"Your Imperial Majesty is too gracious! It would require a pen no less
able than that of a Lafontaine!" answered with a bow, the gentleman in
the plain dress.
"Upon my honour! I tell you I am still under the impression of your
'_Brigadier_.'[1] You read exceedingly well!" Then, speaking once more
to the Zaporoghians, she said, "I was told that you never married at
your Ssiecha?"
"How could that be, mother? Thou knowest well, by thyself, that no
man could ever do without a woman," answered the same Zaporoghian who
had conversed with the blacksmith; and the blacksmith was astonished
to hear one so well acquainted with polished language speak to the
Czarina, as if on purpose, in the coarsest accent used among peasants.
"A cunning people," thought he to himself; "he does it certainly for
some reason."
"We are no monks," continued the speaker, "we are sinful men. Every one
of us is as much inclined to forbidden fruit as a good Christian can
be. There are not a few among us who have wives, only their wives do
not live in the Ssiecha. Many have their wives in Poland; others have
wives in Ukraine;[23] there are some, too, who have wives in Turkey."
At this moment the shoes were brought to the blacksmith.
"Gracious Lord! what ornaments!" cried he, overpowered with joy,
grasping the shoes. "Imperial Majesty! if thou dost wear such shoes
upon thy feet (and thy Honour, I dare say, does use them even for
walking in the snow and the mud), what, then, must thy feet be
like?--whiter than sugar, at the least, I should think!"
The empress, who really had charming feet of an exquisite shape, could
not refrain from smiling at such a compliment from a simple-minded
blacksmith, who, notwithstanding his sunburnt features must have been
accounted a handsome lad in his Zaporoghian dress.
The blacksmith, encouraged by the condescension of the Czarina, was
already on the point of asking her some questions about all sorts of
things, whether it was true that sovereigns fed upon nothing but honey
and lard, and so on; but feeling the Zaporoghians pull the skirts of
his coat, he resolved to keep silent; and when the empress turned to
the older Cossacks, and began to ask them about their way of living,
and their manners in the Ssiecha, he stepped a little back, bent his
head towards his pocket, and said in a low voice: "Quick, carry me
hence, away!" and in no time he had left the town gate far behind.
"He is drowned! I'll swear to it, he's drowned! May I never leave this
spot alive, if he is not drowned!" said the fat weaver's wife, standing
in the middle of the street, amidst a group of the villagers' wives.
"Then I am a liar? Did I ever steal anything? Did I ever cast an
evil-eye upon any one? that I am no longer worthy of belief?" shrieked
a hag wearing a Cossack's dress, and with a violet-coloured nose,
brandishing her hands in the most violent manner: "May I never have
another drink of water if old Pereperchenko's wife did not see with her
own eyes, how that the blacksmith has hanged himself!"
"The blacksmith hanged himself? what is this I hear?" said the elder,
stepping out of Choop's cottage; and he pushed his way nearer to the
talking women.
"Say rather, mayest thou never wish to drink brandy again, old
drunkard!" answered the weaver's wife. "One must be as mad as thou art
to hang one's self. He is drowned! drowned in the ice hole! This I know
as well as that thou just now didst come from the brandy-shop!"
"Shameless creature! what meanest thou to reproach me with?" angrily
retorted the hag with the violet-coloured nose, "thou hadst better hold
thy tongue, good-for-nothing woman! Don't I know that the clerk comes
every evening to thee?"
The weaver's wife became red in the face. "What does the clerk do? to
whom does the clerk come? What lie art thou telling?"
"The clerk?" cried, in shrill voice, the clerk's wife, who, dressed in
a hare-skin cloak covered with blue nankeen, pushed her way towards the
quarrelling ones; "I will let you know about the clerk! Who is talking
here about the clerk?
"There is she to whom the clerk pays his visits!" said the violet-nosed
woman, pointing to the weaver's wife.
"So, thou art the witch," continued the clerk's wife stepping nearer
the weaver's wife; "thou art the witch who sends him out of his senses
and gives him a charmed beverage in order to bewitch him?"
"Wilt thou leave me alone, she-devil!" cried the weaver's wife, drawing
back.
"Cursed witch! Mayest thou never see thy children again,
good-for-nothing woman!" and the clerk's wife spat right into the eyes
of the weaver's wife.
The weaver's wife wished to return her the same compliment, but instead
of that, spat on the unshaven beard of the elder, who had come near the
squabblers in order to hear what was going on. "Ah! nasty creature!"
cried the elder, wiping his face with his skirt, and lifting his whip.
This motion made them all fly in different directions, scolding the
whole time. "The abominable creature" continued the elder, still wiping
his beard. "So the blacksmith is drowned! Gracious Heaven! and such a
capital painter! and what strong knives, and sickles, and ploughshares
he used to forge! How strong he was himself!"
"Yes," continued he, meditatively, "there are few such men in our
village! That was the reason of the poor fellow's ill-temper, which I
noticed while I was sitting in that confounded sack! So much for the
blacksmith! He was here, and now nothing is left of him! And I was
thinking of letting him shoe my speckled mare,".... and, full of such
Christian thoughts, the elder slowly went to his cottage.
Oxana was very downcast at hearing the news; she did not put any
faith in the evidence of Pereperchenko's wife, or in the gossiping
of the women. She knew the blacksmith to be too pious to venture on
letting his soul perish. But what if indeed he had left the village
with the resolve never to return? And scarcely could there be found
anywhere such an accomplished lad as the blacksmith. And he loved her
so intensely! He had endured her caprices longer than any one else.
All the night long, the belle turned beneath her coverlet, from right
to left, and from left to right, and could not go to sleep. Now she
scolded herself almost aloud, throwing herself into the most bewitching
attitudes, which the darkness of the night hid even from herself;
then, in silence, she resolved to think no more of anything, and still
continued thinking, and was burning with fever; and in the morning she
was quite in love with the blacksmith.
Choop was neither grieved nor rejoiced at the fate of Vakoola; all his
ideas had concentrated themselves into one: he could not for a moment
forget Solokha's want of faith; and even when asleep, ceased not to
abuse her.
The morning came; the church was crowded even before daylight. The
elderly women, in their white linen veils, their flowing robes, and
long jackets made of white cloth, piously made the sign of the cross,
standing close to the entrance of the church. The Cossacks' wives,
in green and yellow bodices, and some of them even in blue dresses,
with gold braidings behind, stood a little before them. The girls
endeavoured to get still nearer to the altar, and displayed whole
shopfuls of ribbons on their heads, and of necklaces, little crosses,
and silver coins on their necks. But right in front stood the Cossacks
and the peasants, with their mustachios, their crown-tufts, their thick
necks and their freshly-shaven chins, dressed for the most part in
cloaks with hoods, from beneath which were seen white, and sometimes
blue coats. On every face, wherever one looked, one might see it was
a holiday. The elder already licked his lips at the idea of breaking
his fast with a sausage. The girls were thinking about the pleasure of
running about with the lads, and skating upon the ice. The old women
muttered their prayers more zealously than ever. The whole church
resounded with the thumps which the Cossack Sverbygooze gave with his
forehead against the ground.
Oxana alone was out of sorts. She said her prayers, and yet could not
pray. Her heart was besieged by so many different feelings, one more
mournful than the other, one more perplexing than the other, that the
greatest dejection appeared upon her features, and tears moistened
her eyes. None of the girls could understand the reason of her state,
and none would have suspected its being occasioned by the blacksmith.
And yet Oxana was not the only one who noticed his absence; the whole
congregation remarked that there lacked something to the fulness of the
festival. Moreover, the clerk, during his journey in the sack, had got
a bad cold, and his cracked voice was hardly audible. The newly arrived
chanter had a deep bass indeed. But at all events, it would have been
much better if the blacksmith had been there, as he had so fine a
voice, and knew how to chant the tunes which were used at Poltava; and
besides, he was churchwarden.
The matins were said. The liturgy had also been brought to a close.
Well, what had indeed happened to the blacksmith?
The devil, with the blacksmith on his back, had flown with still
greater speed during the remainder of the night. Vakoola soon reached
his cottage. At the very moment he heard the crow of a cock. "Whither
away?" cried he, seeing the devil in the act of sneaking off; and he
caught him by his tail. "Wait a bit my dear fellow; I have not done
with thee; thou must get thy reward!" and, taking a stick, he gave him
three blows across his back, so that the poor devil took to his heels,
exactly as a peasant might do who had just been punished by a police
officer. So, the enemy of mankind, instead of cheating, seducing, or
leading anybody into foolishness, was made a fool of himself. After
this, Vakoola went into the passage, buried himself in the hay, and
slept till noon.
When he awoke, he was alarmed at seeing the sun high in the heavens:
"I have missed matins and liturgy!" and the pious blacksmith fell into
mournful thoughts, and decided that the sleep which had prevented him
from going to church on such a festival was certainly a punishment
inflicted by God for his sinful intention of killing himself. But he
soon quieted his mind by resolving to confess no later than next week,
and from that very day to make fifty genuflexions during his prayers
for a whole year. Then he went into the room, but nobody was there;
Solokha had not yet returned home. He cautiously drew the shoes from
his breast pocket, and once more admired their beautiful workmanship,
and marvelled at the events of the preceding night. Then he washed,
and dressed himself as fine as he could, putting on the same suit of
clothes which he had got from the Zaporoghians, took out of his box a
new cap with a blue crown and a trimming of black sheepskin, which had
never been worn since he bought it at Poltava; he took out also a new
belt, of divers brilliant colours; wrapped up these with a scourge, in
a handkerchief, and went straight to Choop's cottage.
Choop opened wide his eyes as he saw the blacksmith enter his room. He
knew not at what most to marvel, whether at the blacksmith being once
more alive, or at his having ventured to come into his house, or at
his being dressed so finely, like a Zaporoghian; but he was still more
astonished when he saw Vakoola undo his handkerchief, and set before
him an entirely new cap, and such a belt as had never before been
seen in the village; and when Vakoola fell at his knees, saying in a
deprecating voice: "Father, have mercy on me! do not be angry with me!
There, take this scourge, whip me as much as thou wilt! I give myself
up. I acknowledge all my trespasses. Whip me, but put away thine anger!
The more so that thou and my late father were like two brothers, and
shared bread, and salt, and brandy together."
Choop could not help feeling inwardly pleased at seeing at his feet the
blacksmith, the very same blacksmith who would not concede a step to
any one in the village, and who bent copper coins between his fingers,
as if they were so many buckwheat fritters. To make himself still more
important, Choop took the scourge, gave three strokes with it upon the
blacksmith's back, and then said: "Well, that will do! Stand up! Attend
to men older than thyself. I forget all that has taken place between
us. Now, speak out, what dost thou want?"
"Father, let me have Oxana!"
Choop remained thinking for a while; he looked at the cap--he looked at
the belt; the cap was beautiful--the belt not less so; he remembered
the bad faith of Solokha, and said, in a resolute voice, "Well, send me
thy marriage brokers."
"Ah!" shrieked Oxana, stepping across the threshold; and she stared at
him, with a look of joy and astonishment.
"Look at the boots I have brought thee!" said Vakoola; "they are the
very boots which the Czarina wears."
"No, no, I do not want the boots!" said Oxana, and she waved her hands,
never taking her eyes off him; "it will do without the boots." She
could speak no more, and her face turned all crimson.
The blacksmith came nearer, and took her hand. The belle cast down her
eyes. Never yet had she been so marvellously handsome; the exulting
blacksmith gently stole a kiss, and her face flushed still redder, and
she looked still prettier.
* * * * *
As the late archbishop happened to pass on a journey through Dikanka,
he greatly commended the spot on which that village stands, and driving
down the street, stopped his carriage before a new cottage. "Whose
cottage is this, so highly painted?" asked his Eminence of a handsome
woman who was standing before the gate, with an infant in her arms.
"It is the blacksmith Vakoola's cottage!" answered Oxana, for she it
was, making him a deep curtesy.
"Very good painting, indeed! Capital painting!" said the Right Eminent,
looking at the door and the windows. And, in truth, every window was
surrounded by a stripe of red paint; and the door was painted all
over with Cossacks on horseback, with pipes in their mouths. But the
archbishop bestowed still more praises on Vakoola, when he was made
acquainted with the blacksmith's having performed public penance, and
with his having painted, at his own expense, the whole of the church
choir, green, with red flowers running over it. But Vakoola had done
still more: he had painted the devil in hell, upon the wall which is
to your left when you step into the church. This devil had such an
odious face that no one could refrain from spitting, as they passed
by. The women, as soon as their children began to cry, brought them to
this picture and said, "Look! is he not an odious creature?" and the
children stopped their tears, looked sideways at the picture, and clung
more closely to their mother's bosom.
[Footnote 1: Chief town of a district in the government of Poltava.]
[Footnote 2: Every foreigner, whatever may be his station, is called a
German by Russian peasants. A dress coat is often sufficient to procure
this name for its wearer.]
[Footnote 3: A village in the government of Poltava, in which the
author places the scene of most of his stories.]
[Footnote 4: The free burghers of Little Russia, even to this day,
pride themselves on being called _Cossacks_.]
[Footnote 5: Almost every family name in Little Russia has some
meaning; the name of _Choop_ means the tuft of hair growing on the
crown of the head, which is alone left to grow by the Little Russians;
they uniformly shave the occiput and temples; in Great or Middle
Russia, peasants, on the contrary, let the hair grow on these parts,
and shave or cut it away from the crown.]
[Footnote 6: Kootia is a dish of boiled rice and plums, eaten by
Russians on Christmas Eve.]
[Footnote 7: Varenookha is corn brandy boiled with fruit and spice.]
[Footnote 8: A rank in irregular troops, corresponding to that of
captain in the army.]
[Footnote 9: Borsch is a soup made of meat, sausages, and thin slices
of beet-root and cabbage steeped in vinegar.]
[Footnote 10: Chief town of a district in the government of Poltava.]
[Footnote 11: Long coats made of sheepskins, with the fur worn inside.
They are used in Russia by common people.]
[Footnote 12: The ovens of the peasants' cottages are built in the
shape of furnaces, with a place on the top which is reserved for
sleeping.]
[Footnote 13: About eightpence a yard.]
[Footnote 14: Little Russians shave beard and whiskers, leaving only
their mustachios.]
[Footnote 15: Chief town of a district in the government of Chernigoff.]
[Footnote 16: A carriage something between a dog-cart and a tilbury.]
[Footnote 17: This, according to the laws of the Greek Church, would
prevent their children from intermarrying.]
[Footnote 18: Village clerks in Russia had their hair plaited; a
practice which still continues in some remote provinces. Many priests,
not allowed by the custom of the land to cut their hair short, wear it,
for convenience' sake, plaited when at home and only loosen it during
the performance of the duties of their office.]
[Footnote 19: Russians are much more strict in their fasts than
Papists, eating no milk or eggs. Some even go so far as to eat no fish
and no hot dishes, restricting their food to cold boiled vegetables
and bread. The author has here very happily seized a trait of the
inconsistency of a Little Russian peasant's character--swallowing a
camel in asking for communication with the devil, and straining at a
gnat in the shape of a curd dumpling in fast-time.]
[Footnote 20: This touch very characteristically exemplifies the
cunning _naïveté_ of the Little Russians, who, when deeply interested
in anything, will never come to the point at once.]
[Footnote 21: Potemkin was created by Catherine II. Prince of Tauride,
with the title of Highness, an honour rarely bestowed in Russia, and
which he had fully deserved by his exertions in rendering Russian the
provinces which, only a few years before, were under the dominion of
the Crimean Tartars. All South, or New Russia, offers at every step
records of the administrative genius of Potemkin, who, if at the outset
of his career he was indebted for the favours of his sovereign to his
personal appearance (which was remarkably handsome, notwithstanding
a cataract in one eye), succeeded in justifying those favours by his
talents, which give him an undoubted right to rank amongst the greatest
statesmen of Catherine's reign--a reign which abounded in great
statesmen.]
[Footnote 22: The author alluded to is _Von Wiessen_, who, in his
writings (particularly in two comedies, the "Brigadier," and the
"Young Nobleman without Employment,") ridiculed the then prevailing
fashion amongst the Russian nobility of despising national and blindly
following foreign (particularly French) customs.]
[Footnote 23: Ukraine, i.e., the Borders, an appellation which was of
of yore given to the country now called Little Russia, which formed,
in fact, the border between the territories of the Czar of Muscovy and
those of Poland, the Sclavonic provinces under the dominion of Austria,
of the Sultan of Turkey, of the Khans of the Tartars of the Crimea and
of the Golden Horde (residing along the Volga). The name of Ukraine
is, down to this time given to Little Russia by its natives, they
considering it derogatory to acknowledge their country to be smaller
than Great (Middle) Russia.]
TARASS BOOLBA:
FROM THE RUSSIAN OF
NICHOLAS GOGOL.
I.
"Well, son, turn round! let me see thy back! What a queer figure thou
art! What priest's cassocks have you got on? And do all of you at the
College dress like that?" These were the words with which old Boolba
greeted his two sons, who, after completing their education at Kieff,
had just returned to their father's house.
His sons had just dismounted from their horses. They were two strong
lads, who still looked from beneath their brows as young collegians are
apt to do. Their manly healthy features were covered with the first
down of hair, unacquainted as yet with the razor. Such a greeting on
the part of the father, put them to great confusion, and they stood
motionless, with their eyes bent down on the ground.
"Stay, stay a bit; give me leisure to look at you," he went on, turning
them round; "what long coats! what coats, indeed! Never in the world
were such coats! Here, let one of you just try to run! We shall soon
see if he does not fall, and get his legs entangled in his skirts."
"Don't laugh at us, father, don't laugh," said at last the elder son.
"Look at the haughty fellow! and why should I not laugh?"
"For this reason: that though thou art my father, if thou goest on
laughing, by Heavens, I'll give thee a thrashing."
"Ah, wretch of a son! thrash thy father!" exclaimed Tarass Boolba,
falling back a few steps in astonishment.
"It matters not that thou art my father. I pay regard to nobody, and
will permit nobody to insult me."
"And how are we to fight? with our fists?"
"In whatever manner it may chance."