street, and it was while I lingered thus that a drosky arrived at the
main entrance drawn by three fleet horses, and a tall man alighted
from it, attended by a servant. At the first glance I recognised the
handsome face and fine figure of Prince Basil Galitsyn; he had been
often to Maître le Bastien’s workshop, and I could not mistake his face
or his bearing. Of all the Russian nobles he was the most Western in
his manners and tastes, and he was an unusually handsome and dignified
man. The air of familiarity with which he approached the house and the
cordiality with which he was greeted--Piotr standing bare-headed on
the step to receive him--were not at all to my taste. I stood staring
after him as he vanished into the palace and, for the first time, I
regretted having assumed a disguise. I reflected that the princess
had in her possession, at that very moment, a locket that belonged to
Prince Galitsyn, and all at once he loomed up before me as a probable
lover of the beautiful Daria. “Why not,” I reflected; “what was more
likely? And here was I, like a blockhead, in the shabby garb of an
apprentice, cooling my heels in the court-yard, while his excellency,
the prince, was doubtless taking _zakuska_ in the salon.” Yet I had no
remedy, and must even grin and bear it, for to rush back and declare
myself the Marquis de Cernay would have done little for my cause beyond
raising the ridicule of the kitchen. Neither could I hang about the
court-yard, like a menial, to catch a glimpse of the proceedings that
might be visible through the lower windows; there was nothing for it
but to curse my ill fortune and, buttoning my old taffety coat over
the princess’ bracelet, to proceed on my way back to my quarters with
no very pleasant reflections. But there was one thread of comfort: I
knew that by common report the Czarevna Sophia loved Prince Galitsyn,
and she was reputed to be a woman of no ordinary qualities and was
likely enough to be a formidable rival even for the beautiful Princess
Voronin. I tried to remember all that I had ever heard of the czarevna,
and to piece together a respectable romance between her and Prince
Galitsyn, but I confess I got very little satisfaction out of the
process, for before my mind’s eye stood always the graceful figure, the
glowing, youthful face, the sparkling eyes of Daria Kirilovna, and I
could not believe that the prince was blind.
Busied with these meditations, I traversed the streets between the
palace and our quarters quickly enough, and entering the house, with a
face as long as my arm, bethought myself of the dwarf, and intending to
call for him, I opened the door of the refectory and looked in. There
was the dwarf himself, seated on a table in the middle of the room,
busily engaged in devouring a meal that had been spread before him,
while Michaud, the apprentice, was sitting on a window-sill near at
hand, looking on with a grin.
The little creature, with his white, three-cornered face, was hunched
over his food, eating with his fingers, and devouring the stuff with
the fierce greediness of an animal, and as he ate his great ears
wagged with every motion of his jaws, and Michaud,--who was an idle
rogue,--seeing this, put his hands at each side of his own head and
wagged them to and fro, in mockery of Maluta’s ears, making his jaws go
to the same tune. The meal, too, was one to startle any but a Russian
stomach; it was a bit of sterlet,--the precious fish they love so
well,--some Muscovite rice bread, a pickled mushroom, and a tankard of
beer, with some drops of oil of cinnamon in it, a flavour that the Czar
Alexis considered a truly royal delicacy, and the dwarf ate and drank
with an avidity that could be heard in the entry, while Michaud mocked
him--eating imaginary food with the same relish.
I stood looking at the scene in silence, vastly amused thereat, and so
fierce was the dwarf’s appetite that he did not observe me until he had
gulped down the last of the beer, and then his rat-like eyes suddenly
alighted upon me. He put down the empty tankard, sighed, thrust
the whole pickled mushroom into his mouth as a parting dainty, and
wriggling off the table, he came across the room, knelt on one knee
and made an obeisance before me, as if he kissed the floor at my feet,
while Michaud hooted derisively in the background.
“Up, you little varlet,” I said impatiently, advancing toward the
only chair at the table, “come hither and tell me your history”; as I
spoke, I was about to sit down, when I discovered that that lout of an
apprentice had thrown himself into the armchair and was gazing at me
with a cool impudence that I had never seen equalled.
So amazed was I that, for the moment, I only stared and then I stirred
him with my foot.
“Be off!” I exclaimed sharply, tried beyond prudence.
“Be off, yourself!” retorted Michaud insolently.
I fairly choked with rage. “You impudent puppy,” I said, “how dare you?”
“How dare I?” said he; “and what are you? You are Raoul, the
apprentice, and I am Michaud, the apprentice, and a better goldsmith
than you, I’ll warrant!”
This was too much; my disguise had cost me too dearly already, and the
varlet’s insolence made me blaze forth into fury.
“Get up!” I said fiercely. “I am neither Raoul nor the apprentice,
sirrah, and you know it! Try not my patience too far, or I’ll break
your head for your pains.”
Something in my face cowed him, though the fellow usually was bold
enough. He rose sullenly.
“I care not!” he said gruffly; “you are one moment an apprentice and
the next moment ‘monsieur.’ How can an honest man know what you are?”
and he shot a look of suspicion at me.
I disdained to tell him who I was, although I did not fear betrayal,
or care for it, but I ordered him out of the room, and then, taking
the disputed chair, I fell to questioning my new protégé. Maluta had
watched me while I talked with Michaud, and though he understood no
French, I think the little beast read our gestures and expressions so
well that he understood the gist of the matter, and I saw him studying
my face, while we talked together, much as a mariner studies a new-made
chart of a dangerous coast. A few well-directed questions drew forth
the creature’s history, in substance, at least. He was one of the court
dwarfs, or had been, and the Czar Feodor had given him to the Boyar
Kurakin, who had virtually discarded him, and he had, for the last few
months, got his food where he could, mainly through the charity of
cooks and scullions, for these little creatures were veritable waifs of
fortune. That he might be useful to me I could not doubt, for he had,
of course, every court intrigue at his fingers’ ends; but that he would
also be a nuisance and a charge upon me was equally plain, yet I never
felt less inclined to turn a poor waif into the street. Moreover, he
was infinitely amusing, for that night while Maître le Bastien and
I supped together, he danced for us and performed a dozen monkeyish
tricks with tireless energy. And, whether I would or no, he attached
himself to me; he watched my moods, he carried my cloak and my sword,
he was even ready to change my shoes, or to run my errands, and after
a day or two I began to tolerate him and even to find him useful. I
little dreamed then, however, how useful he was to be.
Meanwhile another kettle of fish was boiling fast in the
Zemlianui-gorod, where the Streltsi were gathered. For days the storm
of discontent had been gathering, and petitions were carried back
and forth between the barracks and the palace. The very day that I
visited the Princess Daria the soldiers had seized and scourged one
of their own colonels, and no man dared gainsay them, though the
Chancellor Matveief, the uncle of the Czarina Natalia, and the old
commander of the Streltsi, had been recalled from exile in Archangel
and was in the Kremlin, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, but
deeper and yet deeper worked the intrigues of the Miloslavskys. Their
emissaries were busy among the ranks of the soldiers, pledges were
making, dissension was sowing, and loud and deep came the growl of the
mob. Men dared not walk abroad unarmed; women kept closer than ever;
even the _Gostinnoi Dvor_, the great bazaar, was almost deserted. I
walked through it at noon of a Friday, and saw scarcely fifty people
chaffering at the stands, and they were buying images and pictures
of saints, and the merchants, bearded and solemn, looked pale and
whispered apart. And the Red Place was empty, an ominous sign; it was
not crowded with courtiers and petitioners, and the Czarina Natalia
held her court with empty galleries--so Le Bastien told me--while the
Czarevna Sophia was besieged by the soldiers, who hung about her, when
she appeared in public, and thronged her ante-room at all hours. On
the outskirts of the town the mob gathered at morning and evening, and
talked and threatened; an officer riding through with an order from
the czarina had been stoned at daybreak on Thursday, and there was a
cry now for pay for the regiments and redress of all old grievances,
the affirmation of the Streltsi’s old privilege of keeping shop, and a
dozen other benefits that they had--or fancied they had--by right.
Maître le Bastien, who was an over-cautious man, began to hide much of
the gold and silver that had been given him for his work, and he bought
another pistol in the German quarter, at which I laughed; but he shook
his head.
“There’s mischief brewing, monsieur,” he said; “mischief of a black
sort. These soldiers are little better than a rabble of cut-throats
and robbers, and the Miloslavskys are stirring them up to a devil’s
business”; he shook his head again. “A child and a woman to rule,” he
added, “and a band of wolves at the door; prime your pistols, M. de
Cernay, and keep your sword loose in its scabbard. I remember hearing
my grandmother tell of the Eve of Saint Bartholomew; though she was as
good a Catholic as I am, she never forgot it, monsieur; their house was
in the district of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, and to the day of her
death she would fall to shivering when a pistol cracked in the dark or
the bell of Saint Germain tolled. Last night, when I came out of the
gate of Saint Nikolas, I passed perhaps twenty of these fellows, and if
ever I saw the devil in men’s faces, I saw it in theirs.”
“Tut, Maître le Bastien,” I said, with a laugh; “you’ve got an old
woman’s whims in your brains. They have but to pay these rogues and
give them a beating, and they will slink back to their kennels.”
But he was not to be persuaded. “When the wolf scents blood----” he
replied, with an expressive gesture, and went to the cellar to hide
more of his gold. While I laughed and set Maluta to dancing on the
table, which he did in a marvellous fashion, spinning around and
around, in constantly increasing circles, until he leaped clear over my
head and perched on the back of a chair, swinging there like an ape,
to my great diversion.
Yet the future, so swiftly approaching, was bigger with fate for me
than for Maître le Bastien, while for the Princess Daria--chut, I must
not run ahead of my own tale.
_VII: THE SUMMONS_
IT was on a Friday, scarcely three days after Kurakin saw the golden
pear in Maître le Bastien’s hands that a summons came from the palace.
The goldsmith had been modelling in wax a very beautiful little image
of the Virgin of Kazan, intending to cast it in gold with precious
stones for the little Czar Peter. He was at work on it in the forenoon
while I sat watching him, for lack of something better to do, for
he had not yet mended the bracelet for the princess, though I had
importuned him to do so; I think he delayed only to vex me, for he
would shake his head, with a sly twinkle in his eye, when I asked him
for the trinket.
The windows were open, and opposite the sun shone on Kurakin’s roof.
All the morning there had been the dull boom of distant drums, for
there was some new excitement in the quarters of the Streltsi; and
there were strange rumours afloat that the blind Czarevitch Ivan was
ill of a poison, but outwardly the city was calm, the calm that comes
before the tempest, for it was already past the middle of May, and no
one, perhaps, but Sophia Alexeievna herself knew the devil’s broth that
was boiling under our feet.
A breath of chill air blew in from the north and lifted the grey curls
on Maître le Bastien’s broad forehead. He set the little image on the
table an viewed it complacently.
“It is well,” he said, and looked at me smiling, expecting approval.
But I was not heeding him; my ear had caught the clang of the outer
door, the skurry of feet on the stairs, and the next moment Michaud
opened the door, breathless, and before he could enter, one of the
court chamberlains pushed in. A big man with a long grey beard and
a portly front, swelling with his own importance, and in his long,
gorgeously embroidered caftan and high cap, he looked like some Eastern
eunuch. Maître le Bastien was inclined to treat him civilly enough, but
he took a high tone.
“Your presence is required immediately at the palace, master
goldsmith,” he said, in a deep tone, rolling out the sonorous Russ like
a big bass drum; “my orders are not to return without your person.”
Le Bastien, ever cautious, looked startled and perplexed.
“By whose authority?” he asked, gravely polite.
The chamberlain stared, stupidly as an ox, blowing out his cheeks
angrily.
“By the order of her serene highness the Czarevna Sophia Alexeievna,”
he said, “and it behoves you to make haste, my master.”
“I have ever been ready to serve her highness,” said Maître le
Bastien, in an aggrieved tone; “these peremptory orders are uncalled
for, monsieur.”
A flash of intuition illumined the situation for me, and I determined
not to desert him.
“I will accompany you,” I said to him, in French, “and carry the image
yonder--as an excuse for my presence. It may be well to have a witness.”
His brow cleared and he thanked me hastily, the chamberlain scowling
meanwhile, for he could not follow our French, and could only reiterate
his orders to us to make haste. There seemed indeed no reasonable way
to evade him, nor cause for it, for neither of us had done anything to
merit the displeasure of the all-powerful princess, and therefore we
prepared to accompany the portly old gentleman back to the Kremlin. But
when we got to the door and found that he had a guard there of five or
six of the Streltsi, we began to fear that we were under arrest, and
said as much to each other in French, yet we could not anticipate any
legitimate reason for it, and were forced to put as good a face on the
matter as we could, trailing along in the chamberlain’s wake, with a
file of savage-looking soldiers on either hand. True to my character
of apprentice, I carried the little waxen image of our Lady of Kazan,
and Maître le Bastien, being empty-handed, plucked nervously, first at
his short velvet cloak and then at his lace cravat. I never saw the
good man so distraught over what seemed, at most, a small matter.
Meanwhile, our silent companions eyed us askance, as the Russian always
eyes the foreigner, and finding little reason to converse, we fell
silent, and there was only the tramp of our feet as we traversed the
streets. In this quarter they were deserted, but once or twice a woman
peeped cautiously out of an upper window at us, or a group of children
skurried out of our way like so many rabbits. It was broad sunshine,
and as we drew near the sacred picture of Saint Basil, on the wall, I
saw the pigeons nestling and cooing on its canopy. There was a huge
lamp, which burned perpetually, suspended before the shrine, under the
protecting roof of the canopy, and the gaunt figure and dusky face of
the saint looked grimly down upon us. Before it knelt a moujik, in
a long sheepskin caftan, his legs bound up in cloths, and his feet
in bast shoes; he was kneeling on the flint pavement praying, with
the devout indifference to the world which is common to the Russian
peasant. And as the chamberlain and his six tried friends drew near
they also humbly saluted the sacred picture and passed it with bared
heads, for these fellows were, like their humble countryman, very
zealous in their religion, and held the Pope of Rome in as little
reverence as did our brethren beyond the Loire.
Some excitement in the outskirts of the town had drawn off the people
from the Kremlin, for when we crossed the Red Place it was nearly
vacant, and only a crowd of dwarfs peeped at us as we ascended the
Red Staircase and entered the palace. We left our six ruffians in the
guard-room and, conducted by our fat friend, the chamberlain, we were
led up the back stairs to a gallery of the _terem_, where we were left
to wait, at a safe distance from the private apartments of the women.
I remember to this day seeing a dark-eyed, curly-headed boy of nine,
cross the gallery with an attendant and stop to stare at us with frank
curiosity. A large child for his years, with a bold port and keen eye.
It was the little Czar Peter, and it was said that he was ever eager
to learn new lessons, and to see strangers. While we waited, neither
Maître le Bastien nor I cared to talk, but once he turned to me.
“I fear that this concerns that trinket of yours,” he said very low,
with an anxious eye.
“So I think,” I replied and smiled.
My life in Moscow had been flat, stale, and unprofitable, and the
thought of danger was ever a sweet taste in my mouth.
The goldsmith looked troubled. He was a man whose life lay in pleasant
places, and he could not contemplate the thought of intrigue and
violence with my complacence. He shifted his position uneasily and fell
to watching the door through which the fat man had vanished. Meanwhile
I had deposited my wax model on a window ledge and, walking about the
room, stopped to examine a painting that hung on the wall at one side.
It was a picture of Saint Olga on a loose piece of canvas, and would
scarcely have held my eye long if I had not noticed a curious flutter
and movement to it, as if it was swayed by a current of air, and
lifting the end I suddenly discovered that it concealed a narrow slit
in the wall, un œil-de-boeuf, through which I could look down into the
room below. Nor was the room vacant; one glance interested me so much
that I silently signalled to Maître le Bastien to come, too, and behold
my discovery. It was a good-sized apartment, and in the centre of it
stood a woman, short, stout, singularly striking in appearance, and
before her were grouped seven or eight fierce-looking soldiers of the
guard, Streltsi; some knelt at her feet; all were eager and attentive,
and she was addressing them, her voice rising and falling, with a
thrill of eloquence, and her expression and gestures were as eloquent,
though we could not hear what she said. I glanced a question at Le
Bastien, and he nodded.
“Sophia is meddling with the Streltsi,” he said, very low
and disconsolately. “’Tis as I thought,--as most people have
feared,--there’s not a Naryshkin fit to match her, unless it is the
Chancellor Matveief, and even he----” The goldsmith shook his head
dolefully. “There is a Russian proverb,” he said, “that ‘a woman’s
hair is long, but her understanding short,’ but the saints defend me
from a manœuvring woman!”
His ejaculation was so pious and so heartfelt that I laughed and
dropped the canvas, just in time, too, for our friend the chamberlain
came waddling in again to inform us that her imperial and serene
highness would see us in five minutes. He proceeded, therefore,
to conduct us, by what seemed to me an entirely new route, to her
presence, I wondering all the while if she would receive us and
the Streltsi together. But my speculations on that point were soon
satisfied, for when we entered the ante-room we passed her friends
coming out, fierce-eyed and keen-set as a party of wolves, and when
the chamberlain opened the door of the room we had looked down upon,
and bowed low at the threshold, we found the czarevna quite alone, and
seated in a great carved chair at the further end of the apartment. The
official announced the name of Maître le Bastien, goldsmith of Paris,
with great solemnity, and then, closing the door upon us, left us to
face the daughter of the czars.
_VIII: THE GREAT CZAREVNA_
WHEN we entered the room the Czarevna Sophia remained seated, and the
light from a window at her side fell full on her face and figure,
revealing them sharply. She was twenty-five years old at this time, but
already very stout, with an enormous head, and a homely fat face, with
small, keen eyes that were alert and searching. She still wore deep
mourning for her brother Feodor, and her black robe falling loose and
straight, after the prevailing fashion, only increased her apparent
bulk. Her plump, short-fingered hands were, however, extremely white,
as they lay on her black draperies, and, unquestionably, there was
something in her glance and bearing that was imperial. The woman was a
power, and we felt it as soon as we came in contact with her. She bent
a singular look upon us as we advanced and made our salutations, and as
we drew nearer I discovered that she was holding some object concealed
in her hands. I had not long to wait before I learned what it was. She
addressed Maître le Bastien, taking no notice of me, evidently putting
me down as an apprentice.
“So, master goldsmith, you’ve come at last,” she said in Russ, her tone
as acid as vinegar. “I find that you have not been idle in Moscow.”
Le Bastien, as cautious as an old fox, felt his ground.
“I have endeavoured to labour diligently, your highness,” he said
suavely, “and I think I may venture to say that I have accomplished
something. The great vase is now nearly completed, if your highness
will but come to view it, and here is a model I have been making of a
figure of our Lady of Kazan, to be executed in gold and jewels.”
As he spoke he signed to me to advance, and display the model, which
I did with the more alacrity because I wanted a nearer view of the
princess, but I was so awkward in handling the image that the goldsmith
took it himself and displayed it. But Sophia looked at it with a cold
eye; it was plain that her thoughts were elsewhere.
“In gold with jewels; it would cost too much,” she said severely, “and
we have not paid our soldiers. I know not why the Czarina Natalia
should encourage such extravagance.”
Maître le Bastien, accustomed to consideration from all the great men
of France, and the patronage of our munificent monarch, flushed hotly
at her tone and handed the image back to me.
“The conception was altogether mine, madame,” he said, in dignified
displeasure. “In my country princes delight in all the elegancies of
art; pardon me for not considering merely the question of cost.”
He meant a rebuke, but it was lost on her highness; she merely shrugged
her shoulders. She had no conception probably of the greatness of
France, seeing nothing beyond her own horizon but the edge of the
world; the pride of these Muscovites is something truly amazing.
The display of the model coming off so poorly, the goldsmith stood
silent and, for the moment, the interview seemed a flat enough matter,
and then the czarevna suddenly struck to the root of it. She held out
her hand, and in the palm of it lay the Princess Daria’s jewelled pear.
We both started, and Maître le Bastien turned from white to green; the
good man seemed for the time chicken-hearted.
“You have recently handled the locket, master goldsmith,” Sophia said
slowly, “and for whom?”
I could hold my tongue no longer; I feared his loss of nerve.
“Tell her it was left in your absence,” I said, very low and in French.
She darted a tigress look at me, but remained silent, waiting on Maître
le Bastien. He repeated my lesson by rote.
“Who was in your house to receive it?” she demanded sharply, then
suddenly pointing at me, “that man?”
“I suppose so,” faltered the goldsmith, the cold perspiration starting
in beads on his forehead.
“Can you speak Russ?” she asked, turning on me.
“A little,” I replied, afraid to leave it in Maître le Bastien’s hands.
She held up the pear. “Who brought this to your master’s house?”
“A man, I think,” I replied stupidly, rubbing the back of my head like
a clown.
She uttered an exclamation of impatience.
“What man?” she cried fiercely. “Are there not hundreds and thousands
of men? What manner of man, stupid, and of what condition? A varlet or
a gentleman? A serf or a freedman?”
“He might have been one, and he might have been the other,” I stammered
slowly, as if the Russ tied my tongue. “I do not rightly remember, your
highness.”
She rose from her chair at this and stamped her foot at me, calling me,
_durak_, which may be interpreted as “ninny,” and then she swept up to
Maître le Bastien and opened the locket so sharply before his face that
he started back as if she had snapped a pistol under his nose. She held
up the trinket, displaying the beautiful face of the Princess Daria.
“How dared you take mine out for this?” she thundered, fixing her
little eyes on him with the fierceness of a tigress, ready to spring.
“Tell her that it was a mistake,” I whispered in French, “that it was
intended for another setting.”
“Hold your tongue, varlet,” said the czarevna, casting a fierce glance
at me, though she understood not a word.