with shaking hands. On the floor a lanthorn burned low, casting a dim
light, and the house--with its tight-closed shutters--was as dark
as pitch. There was a settle in the hall and, overcome with fasting
and exertion, I walked over to it and sat down in pure weariness and
dejection. Maluta meanwhile shied off from me and cowered behind the
lanthorn; for some reason the creature seemed to expect a beating
whenever I was displeased or disappointed. But I regarded him as little
at the time as a toad; I looked at him with dull eyes. The event had
only justified my fears.
“Where has the princess gone?” I asked slowly; “do you even know that?”
“No,” he answered, shaking his head forlornly. “I came here last night
and found the house barred and silent, and yet I saw a light under
one of the shutters. I knocked and scratched there, and at last the
Princess Daria came and spoke to me; she thought you had returned;
she had been alone an hour or more, and she had heard cries in the
stable-yard.” He stopped and looked at me anxiously.
I nodded. “Go on,” I said briefly.
“She let me in,” he continued more quietly, seeing that I was not
angry, “and I gave her the message from her father.”
“Ah! you saw the prince?” I interrupted.
“Yes, I saw him and delivered your message,” he replied meekly.
“How did you escape the rioters in the palace?” I asked sharply. “I
thought you were surely trailing them to your death.”
He smiled, his little face puckering. “No,” he rejoined, “I ran down
the gallery--I am light of foot. I outran them and leaped out of a
window and left them to bay at the air. Then I found Prince Voronin
hidden in the Church of Saint Basil the Blessed, and I told him of his
daughter, but”--Maluta hesitated--“but not of you, O my master!”
“Your wit is as long as your ears,” I said approvingly; “go on, you
little rogue.”
“He bade me tell her to meet him at Troïtsa; he dared not leave his
hiding-place till night.”
“And he did not think of her peril?” I asked drily.
The dwarf shrugged his shoulders. “She is only a daughter, excellency;
the prince divorced her mother because she bore him no sons, and he has
wedded since, and will wed again.”
“Is that four times?” I asked absently, my mind dwelling on the
princess.
“Nay,” said Maluta, “four times can no Russian marry; even if he
presents himself before the priest he receives punishment, he----”
“And you found the princess here?” I said, cutting him short. “What
then? There has been no struggle here, no housebreaking--where is she?”
Maluta’s face showed white in the dim light of the lanthorn.
“I gave her the message and she sent me to the stable to look for a
trace of you. I was gone scarcely twenty minutes, and when I returned
she was gone--gone as completely as though the earth had swallowed her.”
I sat staring at the feeble flame of the lanthorn; burning low. She
had gone, then--as I had felt from the first--of her own free will,
but where and how? She had seemed to shrink from me; she probably
distrusted me, and she had fled--but whither? The wild disorder of the
city, the perils that beset her on every side, would have stayed the
most intrepid, and how could she go, alone, in the darkness of that
night? The atmosphere of the house suddenly grew choking. I rose and,
opening a shutter, let in the light of morning and the chill spring
air. Then I fell to pacing the floor, pondering upon it, and taking
no notice of the dwarf. I was, indeed, half frantic at the thought
of the girl alone and unprotected, fleeing from me into such awful
danger. It might be that she had friends near at hand, but it was
unlikely; the Russian girl--kept behind “the twenty-eight bolts” of
the _terem_--made few friends, and though I knew the Princess Daria
had enjoyed a greater freedom than others and that old-time rules were
everywhere relaxing, it was not at a time like this. Even while I
meditated I heard the roll of drums, the shouts of soldiers, and a man
lay in his blood in the very stable, and yet she had gone alone!
I went into the room where I had seen her last, weeping so bitterly,
and I opened a shutter there and looked about me for some sign of
her. The room was just as she had left it, and lacking her presence
it was bare and sombre: a candle had burned out and guttered in the
candlestick upon the table; beside it stood her chair, pushed aside,
and the whole aspect of the place spoke of her presence. I stood and
looked at it with a heavy heart. She despised me, and I was still her
husband. The miracle of it made my brain swim, but, nevertheless, my
heart was very heavy. I sat down in her chair and leaned upon the
table, thinking, thinking of her, and of what fate had befallen her,
and as I sat there I saw something lying on the table--a little sprig
of rue, broken, doubtless, from her wedding crown and caught in her
hair to fall here. I took it up sadly and was looking at it, when
Maluta came sidling into the room and, approaching me cautiously, laid
a curious buckle on the table and looked up at me with a wrinkled
forehead. I glanced at the buckle and then at him with some impatience.
“Well,” I said sharply, too weary and heartsore for trifles, “what ails
it?”
“’Tis such as the guards at the palace wear,” said he, an expression of
rare intelligence in his sharp eyes.
“Where did you find it?” I asked quickly.
“In the lobby, O my master,” he replied.
I rose and looked about me for some weapons, but as I did it I turned
dizzy, and remembered that, in twenty-four hours, I had eaten nothing
but a piece of bread. The dwarf had been watching me and, with
his usual singular penetration, he divined my need and ran toward
the kitchen. I stood leaning on the window, glad of the air, and
pondering on many things, while I put that bit of rue into my bosom,
a keepsake--and a sad one. I was still standing there, in strange
perplexity, when Maluta came back with some rice bread and a little
cold meat and wine, all that he could find in the desolate larder,
which he had doubtless visited heavily on his own account. He set the
food on the table and I ate hurriedly and in silence, for I was sad
enough. If the palace guards had been there, if Sophia had entrapped
the princess, what fate might not befall her? Yet, the mystery of her
disappearance was wholly unsolved. I could not believe that she would
go willingly with the czarevna’s emissaries, and there could scarcely
have been a forced entrance where no trace of violence appeared.
At last I spoke my thought aloud.
“I must go to Sophia Alexeievna,” I said; “she shall tell me where the
princess is.”
I had scarcely spoken before Maluta fell on his knees beside me and
clasped my ankles, with every sign of terror.
“Never!” he cried; “oh, never go to her, my master; she would hang you.
She never forgets or forgives--not she!”
“But the Princess Daria?” I said sharply.
“There are other ways,” he pleaded; “let your servant find her, let----”
I rose, casting him aside. “Let you find her,” I cried, with passion;
“you little fool, do you take me for a man of stone?”
And I went, searching for a sword and pistol, to another room, and had
found them and fastened them at my belt, and chosen a long cloak that
would muffle me, when I found him again on his knees at my feet.
“You little rogue,” I said kindly, “why beset me? Do you think a man
fears to risk his neck?”
He shook his head and, laying both hands over his heart, besought me
with mute gestures.
“You will kill her also,” he protested, “the Princess Daria!”
At this I paused; the little creature’s wisdom had been almost equal to
his devotion. I could not afford to spurn either the one or the other.
“What, then, can I do?”
“Let me go,” he pleaded.
“Ay, go, by all means,” I said promptly, “but I also must be stirring.
But content you, I will not go to the czarevna until all else fails,
but I will find the princess if she is still on the face of this old
earth of ours--that I swear, on the honour of a French gentleman!”
His face lighted a little at the opening of my speech, but clouded at
the end, and I saw that he feared that I would blunder, and, touched by
the creature’s devotion, I laid my hand kindly on his head and thanked
him for his courage and his wit in saving us in the palace and for his
willingness to serve me. It pleased him; a strange light flickered
in his eyes, he touched my coat hurriedly, and kissed his own hand
afterwards.
“You saved my life,” he said; “I am yours, O my master!”
And after that we went out together into the streets, where the glare
of day shone horridly upon a scene of death and turmoil, and those
things that night had cloaked with charity glared at noonday and sent a
shudder even to a strong man’s heart.
_XXIV: GALITSYN_
WHEN I left our quarters I had made no plans, and was only determined
to find the Princess Daria, and to save her from the dangers that
encompassed her at every step. A wild enough design for one man--and
a foreigner at that--to form at such a time in Moscow, and the aspect
of the deserted streets smote me with a sharp sense of the desperate
nature of my enterprise. Fear crept here, behind the close-shuttered
windows, the grim, double-bolted doors--fear and silence. Once or
twice, as I passed, a grille opened and I saw a white face peep out
and vanish again at the sound of my footstep, and here and there,
notably among the houses of the better sort, doors and windows gaped
wide, and a heap of refuse, of broken furniture and torn clothing, lay
piled in the court-yard, showing that this house and that had been
gutted by the mob, and across more than one threshold lay something
that was neither furniture, nor clothing, nor a sack of meal, though
it lay as helpless, still for evermore. Where I walked it was silent,
so silent that my tread woke the echoes, but the city was not so;
it was full of confused noises, of shouting and crying, of drum and
musket, and now and then, of the deep voices of the bells of Moscow’s
many churches and cathedrals. Riot and murder and robbery were loose
there, and as I drew nearer to the Kremlin I saw ever more bodies and
more bodies, lying in the sunlight with upturned faces and helpless
hands that would fight no more forever. I turned aside thrice to avoid
parties of rioters in pursuit of some wretched victim, but through all
my devious turns I kept on toward the palace. If the princess lived,
if my wife lived, she was there, of that I was convinced. But before
I entered the Red Place I heard the trampling of horses, the shouts
of men approaching, and stepped back into the shadow of a friendly
doorway and waited to see who passed that way with such an escort. And
presently, at the end of the street, appeared a band of serfs, running
ahead of a carriage, as they always ran before a great nobleman; they
came swiftly toward me, two and two, clad in long crimson tunics, with
collars and belts of white and high green caps; and as they advanced
I counted twenty before the horses and behind the carriage there were
twenty more, and with all their splendid dress their feet were bare,
as had been the feet of the Prince Voronin’s slaves. The horses,
three splendid creatures, were hung with fox-tails that floated as
they moved, and in the carriage sat a noble figure, in a magnificent
dress of gold and silver brocade; his handsome face was but slightly
concealed by his high collar, and jewels flashed on his breast. It was
Prince Basil Galitsyn himself, the rising star of the new order of
things, the favourite of Sophia, and the lover of the Princess Daria.
And at his feet sat Maître le Bastien. I stepped out of my concealment
and called aloud for them to stop. The driver, a fierce Cossack,
cracked his whip and would have driven over me, but for Le Bastien, who
saw me and cried out to Prince Galitsyn. At a nod from him the whole
procession halted, the horses plunging and rearing on their haunches,
and the serfs crowding about me, as if they waited orders to seize and
carry me away. But I walked up to the carriage itself, and demanded
speech with his excellency the Boyar Prince Galitsyn, aware, all the
while, of the master goldsmith’s perplexed amazement, but the prince
was bent on benevolence. It was an hour, indeed, when he had need of
all his diplomacy and suavity to hold his supremacy, and he bade me
follow to his palace, where I should have an audience. His air of
patronage stuck in my throat, but reflecting that he knew me only as
the French goldsmith, I swallowed my pride and followed at a distance
to his house.
Galitsyn was noted for his magnificence and his foreign tastes, and
his palace was furnished more in the style of Europe than any other in
Moscow. I had been there before as Maître le Bastien’s apprentice and
knew it well. The carriage of the prince and his attendants arriving in
advance, I found the court-yard thronged with his scarlet tunics, and
the wide doors of the great house stood open as I approached, and in
the lobby, too, were serfs in scarlet, and then I saw the prince very
gracefully and graciously offer Maître le Bastien the bread and salt,
and when the goldsmith had tasted both, they were extended to me and,
happily, I took them also. Then his excellency led the way, and Maître
le Bastien and I followed into a grand salon, where the prince seated
himself in a chair, carved with his arms and covered with cloth of
gold, and signing to the master goldsmith to sit in a lower and humbler
seat, he turned to me and asked my business, while a slave brought in
the salver laden with vodka and caviare--the _zakuska_.
I was in no mood to mince matters, and, despite various frowns and
grimaces from Maître le Bastien, I came bluntly to the point, speaking
in Russ; for the prince knew only his own language and Latin.
“Can your excellency tell where the Czarevna Sophia has hidden the
Princess Daria?” I asked, fixing my eyes sternly on him, for I was not
without suspicions of the man himself, but my doubts were instantly
dispelled by the change that swept over his face.
The prince was a proud man, haughty and reserved, as all these
Muscovite aristocrats were, but he could not disguise his discomfiture
at the mention of those two names together.
“The Princess Daria!” he repeated blankly. “I was told that she and her
cousin, Vassalissa, were safe in Troïtsa yesterday morning.”
I could not doubt that he spoke the truth; his manner was full of a
noble sincerity, and, indeed, I think the man’s worst fault was the
common one of a not over-scrupulous ambition.
“The Princess Daria was in the palace yesterday,” I said deliberately,
“and imprisoned there by the Czarevna Sophia, who would have forced her
to marry the Boyar Kurakin.”
Galitsyn sprang from his chair; his face was as white as ashes, but
with wrath rather than dismay. He turned fiercely on Maître le Bastien.
“This is your man,” he said thickly, for something seemed to choke him;
“does he speak the truth?”
The goldsmith caught my eye and understood my gesture; he rose with a
dignified composure that became him well.
“My prince,” he said gravely, “you deserve my confidence and my
service; I will disguise nothing from you. This man is not an
apprentice, but a patron of mine, a French nobleman, M. le Marquis de
Cernay, and his honour and your excellency’s are one.”
The prince bowed gracefully; but the strenuous expression of his face
did not relax. He asked my Christian name of Maître le Bastien, and
addressed me after the manner of the Russians.
“Ivan Feodorvitch,” he said, which was my name, being translated;
“did you see the princess in the--the power of Sophia Alexeievna?”
he stammered, in spite of himself; one woman he loved, the other he
courted for ambition’s sake, and I have seen this a hundred times in
Paris.
I looked down the long room, and across the end of it stood a double
row of scarlet tunics, thirty-seven, I thought, and before the only
other entrance stood the major-domo, leaning on a wand of ivory and
gold. I counted the cost and smiled.
“M. le Prince,” I said quietly, “I saw and heard the Czarevna Sophia
threaten and compel the Princess Daria Voronin to wed Kurakin, in the
private chapel by the painted gallery.”
He drew a deep breath, his eyes blazed, his whole figure seemed to
dilate with passion. Maître le Bastien leaned forward, listening
eagerly; I even caught a flicker on the face of the old steward, who
was otherwise as motionless as stone.
“Did she marry Kurakin?” the prince demanded, in a low voice, but in a
tone that might well strike terror to a weak heart; “did Sophia force
her to that?”
“No,” I replied, “no, your excellency, for I prevented it----”
He broke in upon me with a kind of fierce joy.
“You prevented it--and how, sir?”
“I married the Princess Daria myself,” I said.
A pause followed, a pause so deadly that I heard Maître le Bastien
breathing like a man spent with running. I believe that Galitsyn
thought me mad; he looked at me as if he doubted his own senses, and
that doubt alone stayed his hand. I think, on the first impulse, he
would have struck me dead--if he could. He wore the look men wear
when they strike to kill; I saw just such a look on the face of M.
d’Argenson that morning in Easter week, on the Place Royale. And
Galitsyn meant to kill me, but after a moment, a moment of sharp
suspense, he laughed harshly.
“I think you jest, sir,” he said, with bitter pleasantry, “but ’tis a
dangerous jest--here.”
Saint Denis! who could doubt it, with that fierce eye of his upon me
and that row of scowling savage faces below me in the hall? It was like
to be a sorry jest indeed. But I cared neither for him nor for his
menials, now that I was sure that the princess was not in his power,
yet I meant to let him know that she was mine--and mine she should
be--in spite of him.
“I jest so little, M. le Prince,” I said, “that he who dares to
contradict my statement will do it at his peril. The Princess Daria is
my wife.”
“Your wife,” he replied bitterly, measuring me with a fierce eye, “by
Saint Nikolas of Mojaïsk, she shall be your widow, then!” and he raised
his right hand sharply, but Maître le Bastien flung himself upon that
arm and held it.
“Hold your hand, Prince Galitsyn!” he cried hoarsely, “and remember the
sacred bond of hospitality--the marquis has eaten of your bread and
salt.”
The prince paused; his breast heaving with passion, his eyes kindling
with a savage triumph, his face deeply flushed, Maître le Bastien
holding his right arm by main force. Below, at the end of the hall, I
heard the serfs stirring restlessly and the clash of swords. I folded
my arms on my breast and waited. I had never been more indifferent; let
the barbarian do his worst!
“The bond of bread and salt, M. le Prince, remember it,” said the
goldsmith gravely. “The last of our Valois kings permitted his guest to
be murdered, and he also fell by the murderer’s hand. As you sow, so
will you reap!”
Galitsyn looked at me with eyes that devoured every detail of my face
and figure; scorn and rage were mingled on his countenance.
“‘Her husband,’ he calls himself,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “This
foreigner, this soldier of fortune--the mate for one of Russia’s
noblest born--for the Princess Daria. Why, master goldsmith, the man is
mad!”
“You forget to whom you speak, M. le Prince,” I retorted hotly. “A
gentleman of France, and the head of one of its noble houses, is your
equal--ay, and something more,” I added, as truculent as he, though I
saw Le Bastien’s warning gesture.
“‘And something more’--I thank you, sir,” he said, with bitter disdain,
“and the czarevna--did she plan this marriage also?”
“No,” I answered promptly, “a thousand times no--she did not know of
the exchange of bridegrooms----”
He interrupted me at this; he shook off the goldsmith and came nearer
to me.
“Did the Princess Daria choose you--instead of Kurakin?” he asked in a
deep voice, and I saw that the man was shaken to the soul.
“What it that to you?” I retorted scornfully; “the princess is my wife,
and hark ye, M. le Prince, mine she shall be--against the world, and no
man shall put asunder.”
Again he half raised his hand to deliver me to his slaves, and again he
desisted, but his face was distorted with contending passions, and he
pointed to the door with a quivering finger.
“Go, sir!” he said hoarsely; “go, before I violate the bond of host and
guest--but, beyond my gates, look to yourself!”
“Nay, M. le Prince,” I said courteously. “Beyond your gates I am at
your service. In France we settle these matters on the field of honour.
I should be happy, monsieur, I----”
But the goldsmith had me by the arm.
“Saint Denis, man!” he cried in French, “tempt him no more, unless you
would imperil the princess as well as your own head and mine!”
And I yielded to this reasoning the more easily because I saw that
Galitsyn did not heed my challenge; his ideas of settling the matter
differed from mine, as vastly as the customs of his country and mine.
He stood there, pointing steadily at the door, and his face was so
distorted with passion that I marvelled to see so great a change
wrought in a handsome countenance.
I bowed profoundly.
“M. le Prince will find me ready when and where he pleases,” I said
pleasantly, “and he will remember that the Princess Daria is my wife.”
I could say no more, for Maître le Bastien was dragging me away by main
force, and the serfs, parting to let us go through, closed up behind us
like a wall and eyed us so viciously that I saw the goldsmith wipe his
brow twice before we reached the gate of the court-yard. The good man
was nothing of a fighter, and yet too stout to run.
_XXV: MICHAUD’S REPENTANCE_
WHEN we reached the street Maître le Bastien stopped, panting and
wiping the cold perspiration from his forehead.
“Lack-a-day, M. le Marquis, you have undone us now!” he cried, between
his gasps. “These Russians--holy Virgin! to tell the prince, to his
face, that you had married this Princess Daria, and to defy him, too!
And he’s on the crest of the wave, and just declared the head of the
Department of Foreign Affairs, in the place of Larion Ivanof!”
“Precisely, monsieur,” I replied, smiling, “and let him desert
the Czarevna Sophia for the pursuit of the Princess Daria,--of my
wife,--and he will find that his house is of cards and falls at a
breath.”
The force of this argument struck even the goldsmith, and he was silent
for a moment, but the next his equilibrium was again destroyed by the
sudden appearance of a band of Streltsi at the further end of the
street. He seized me by the arm, without ceremony, and hurried me into
a deserted garden close at hand, and there, drawing me into the shadow
of the stone wall, he began to recount the horrors of the preceding
day, many of which I had witnessed, and to argue from this point that
I was powerless to save the Princess Daria, and that my marriage was
of as little moment as the cooing of two pigeons on the stone arch over
our heads.
“The power of the Naryshkins has all crumbled to pieces; Matveief is
dead, and Dolgoruky. Athanasius Naryshkin, the czarina’s brother, was
betrayed by the dwarf, Homyak, and cut to pieces in the Cathedral
of the Assumption. Even the patriarch barely escaped; they are
determined to have Ivan Naryshkin and the Jew Von Gaden. They killed
the privy councillor Ivanof, and his son, and two lieutenant-colonels
on the portico, between the banqueting-hall and the Cathedral of the
Annunciation; the Boyar Ramodanofsky is butchered, the Boyars Soltykof,
father and son; Peter Naryshkin, and--this morning--Kirillof and Dr.
Gutemensch, and there are others--by the score. They declare to-day
that the serfs shall be free, and now ’tis thought that many slaves
will betray their masters; it was a servant who betrayed the elder
Soltykof. ’Tis just as I predicted: the devils are let loose and
no man can curb them, and Sophia Alexeievna is the only one in the
royal family equal to facing the crisis; she alone can plead with and
influence these beasts, and yet you think to get the Princess Daria
from her!” The good man threw up his hands with an expression of
despair.
Outside the garden wall I heard the Streltsi screaming and singing as
they passed--a tipsy crowd. About us the weeds and plants grew thickly
and almost blocked the doors and windows of a deserted house. One great
clump of bushes opposite choked the entrance to the cellar.
“I have seen enough, and been through enough, to realise my
difficulties,” I said calmly, “but what is a man’s right arm for,
Maître le Bastien, if it be not to fight in a good cause? I will not
allow even Sophia to snatch my wife away, and I will not leave her in
the hands of her enemies. But tell me, how fares it with you? I would
not imperil you.”
“I am safe enough,” he replied at once. “Galitsyn will protect me;
against me he has no quarrel, and has sent some Streltsi already
to keep my house from the mob. I fear nothing for myself, but you,
monsieur, you are lost!”