Platoff replies: "I know not to what to attribute it, but I dare not to
dispute and must needs hold my tongue."
But the Englishmen, beholding such a discussion between him and the
Emperor, immediately led them to the Abolo Polveder himself, and took
from one of his hands a Mortimer gun, and from the other a pistol.[9]
"Here," said they, "this is the sort of manufactures we have," and they
gave him the gun.
The Emperor gazed calmly on the Mortimer gun, because he has such in
Tzarskoe Selo,[10] and then they gave him the pistol, and said: "This
pistol is of unknown, inimitable workmanship--our Admiral plucked it
from the belt of a bandit chief in Candelabria."
The Emperor looked at the pistol, and could not tear his eyes from it.
He gave vent to terrible "ahs!"
"Ah, ah, ah!" says he, "what a weapon is this!... how is it possible
to work so delicately?" And he turns to Platoff and says in Russian:
"There now, if I had but one such artisan in Russia, I should be
extremely happy and proud, and I would instantly make that man a noble."
But the very minute Platoff hears these words, he thrusts his hands
into his voluminous trousers and draws thence a gunsmith's screw-driver.
"This does not unscrew," say the Englishmen. But he, paying no heed,
picks away at the lock. He gives it one turn, he gives it another,--and
takes out the lock. Platoff shows the catch to the Emperor, and there,
on the curve, stands a Russian inscription: "Ivan Moskvin in the town
of Tula."
The Englishmen marvelled, and nudged one another: "Oh, alas! we have
blundered!"
But the Emperor says sadly to Platoff: "Why hast thou covered them
with such confusion? Now I am very sorry for them. Let us go."
They took their places again in the same two-seated carriage, and drove
away; and that day the Emperor went to a ball, but Platoff gulped down
a still mightier bumper of kizil vodka, and slept a mighty Cossack
sleep.
He rejoiced that he had put the Englishmen to confusion, and had placed
the Tula artisan in the proper light, but he was also vexed. Why had
the Emperor felt pity for the Englishmen on such an occasion?
"For what reason did the Emperor grieve?" thought Platoff. "I don't
understand it at all;" and, engaged in this meditation, he twice arose,
crossed himself, and drank vodka until, by sheer force, he brought upon
himself a profound sleep.
But the Englishmen were not asleep at that time, either, because
their heads were whirling round with dizziness. While the Emperor was
enjoying himself at the ball, they prepared for him such a fresh marvel
that they deprived Platoff of all his fantasy.