_ORLOFF’S INTERVIEW WITH THE PRINCESS._
The words seemed to burst from her throat, and die upon her lips. She
threw herself back on the bed to the farthest side of the wall, where
with flaming eyes she looked ready to devour Orloff, who stood gazing
at her horror-stricken.
“Yes! we are married, are we not? Ha, ha, ha! we are man and wife?”
said she, but a convulsive cough cut short her indignation for the
moment. “Where have you been all this time? _You_ promised, _I_ waited.”
“Look here,” gently said Orloff, “let us forget the past, let us play
comedy no longer. You must realize by this time that I was the faithful
slave of my sovereign, and that I only obeyed her commands.”
“Treachery, deceit!” screamed the unhappy girl; “never will I believe
it.… Do you hear me? The great and powerful Russian empress would never
have had recourse to such perfidy.”
“I swear to you they were her orders.…”
“No, I do not believe one word of it, traitor,” screamed the
unfortunate girl, shaking her fists at him. “Ekaterina could command
anything--demand my surrender, burn down the town that gave me refuge,
take me by force, but not that. But _you_, you yourself, might have
pierced me with a dagger, poisoned me. You knew of poisons,--but what
have you done with me? what?”
“One moment of calmness, I implore you,” at last said Orloff. “Answer
me one word, only one--and I promise you, on my word of honour, that
you shall be set free immediately.
“What new invention is that, monster? Speak, traitor,” said the
Princess, recovering some composure, as shudderingly she drew the blue
mantilla, so well known to the count, closer around her.
“You have been questioned so long, and with such persistency,” began
Orloff, trying to give his voice a tender and convincing tone, “tell me
now all--we are alone; God only can see and hear us.”
[Illustration:
_“Peter created Russia,_
_Ekaterina gave her a soul!”_]
“_Gran Dio!_” said the unfortunate girl, “he invokes the name of God,”
added she, raising her eyes to the image of the Saviour which hung on
the wall over the head of her bed; “he! Very likely you have arranged
this slow torture, this torment! and yet you boasted that torture was
abolished here. The empress, I am sure, knows nothing of all this. In
this matter she has been deceived, as in everything else.”
“Be calm, be calm.… Tell me, who are you?” continued Orloff; “hide
nothing. I’ll implore the empress; she will be merciful to you and to
me.…”
“_Diavolo!_ he asks, ‘Who am I!’” she stammered, half stifled by a
new fit of anger. “But cannot you see I have done with the world? I
am dying; then to what end all this?” She again began to cough most
awfully, and leaning her head against the wall, was silent.
“There,--she’ll die without having confessed anything,” thought Orloff,
as he stood by her.
“In riches and in happiness,” said she, coming to herself, “in
humiliation and in prison, I repeat constantly the same thing--and you
know it well. I am the daughter of your late empress,” proudly said
she, rising. “Do you hear me, miserable, wretched slave, I am your
born grand-duchess.…” A bold idea flashed through Orloff’s mind.… “Ah!
what’s in a word?” thought he; “she won’t live long, and at one stroke
I’ll please them both.”
He bent on one knee, grasped the frail pale hand of the captive, and
ardently pressed it to his lips.
“Your Highness!” stammered he. “Elise! pardon, I swear--yes, I am
guilty,--but those were the orders. I myself was arrested. Only now
have I received my liberty.…”
The poor girl raised her big, astonished eyes to his face, covering her
mouth with her handkerchief to stop the blood.
“I implore you, I promise you, we will be really solemnly married,”
continued Orloff. “You shall be my wife--and then, your Highness--my
darling, … my own Elise, rank, riches, faithfulness, life-long
devotion.…”
“Out! away! monster!” screamed the captive, jumping up. “This bruised
hand princes, kings sought--it’s not for you to touch it, branded
traitor, inquisitor.”
“Well, she doesn’t choose her words,” thought to himself the Commandant
Tchernishoff, who, standing outside the door, could easily hear the
French abuses and the curses of the prisoner; “better take myself off.
If the count knows all this has been heard, his little vanity will
be pricked, and it is just possible he may take his revenge.” The
commandant walked off.
The jailer, standing in the long corridor, with his keys, and also
hearing the, to him, quite unintelligible cries, the stamping of
feet, and, as it seemed to him, the noise of things being thrown at
the visitor, also walked off into a corner, thinking to himself: “Ha,
ha, Mamzoulka (Mademoiselle), it seems, is asking for better food; it
seems it’s not in the articles. She’s screaming at the general, oho!
Of course it’s not for such as she, so thin, to eat _schi_ and _schi_.
Yesterday, for the first time, they gave her milk.” The furious screams
continued. Then came the sound of broken glass. The door of the dungeon
was flung open rapidly, and Orloff, humbly bending under the door, too
low for his tall person, came out. His face was purple; he lingered
for a moment in the corridor, and stared about him, as if collecting
his thoughts. Having felt under his arm for his cocked hat, passed
his fingers through his hair, and pulled down his coat, he briskly
and smartly drew himself up, and silently walked out in the pouring
rain, jumped into the carriage, and shouted to the coachman, “Général
Procureur.”
As he left the fortress behind him, Orloff began turning over in his
mind the details of the last interview.
“Well, she _is_ a serpent, a viper!” he whispered to himself, looking
out into the streets from the carriage window; “didn’t she sting!”
Very reservedly, and with plenty of self-composure, he entered the
house of the Prince Alexander Alexéeovitch Viazimski. It was already
late. The candles were lighted. Orloff shivered, and rubbed his hands
together.
“Take a seat,” said the général procureur. “What! cold?”
“Yes, prince, a little.”
Viazimski ordered a servant to bring in liqueurs. The servant soon
came, bringing a lovely decanter, and a silver basket containing ginger
biscuits.
“Pray help yourself, count.… Well! what about our usurper?” continued
the général procureur, putting aside some papers that he had just been
looking over.
“Impudent beyond all bounds; still persists.…” answered Count Alexis,
pouring himself out a wineglassful of the rich liqueur, and raising it
first to his nose, and then to his lips.
“Well, of course!” said the prince; “she has no wish to part with her
so-called titles and rights cheaply.”
“Oh! she’ll give plenty of trouble yet; other measures than those are
wanted,” said Orloff.
“But what others, Batienka? Her last minutes are drawing near.… You
would not have her strangled?”
“And why not?” whispered Orloff, as if to himself, dipping a biscuit
into a fresh glass of liqueur. “Pity for such like!”
The général procureur threw a side-long glance from behind the
green _abat-jour_ on his visitor. “And you’re not joking, Alexis
Gregorevitch? It’s your advice?”
“Oh! for the good of my country, and like a true patriot--not only
would I advise, but very much recommend,” answered Orloff, walking
backwards and forwards, munching the sweet melting biscuits.
“_Mais, c’est un assassin dans l’âme!_” thought to himself the great
judge,[40] whose personal appearance was austere and generally gloomy,
as he listened in horror to the soft, cat-like tread of Orloff on the
carpet; “_c’est en lui comme une mauvaise habitude_!”
Orloff took out his eye-glass, and, biting a fresh biscuit, began to
admire a picture of Psyche and Cupid on the wall.
“Whence came this picture?” asked he.
“It is a gift from the empress.… Count, when do you think of returning
to Moscow?”
“To-morrow morning. I shall not of course delay my information, but
shall instantly report the fresh obstinacy of that impudent liar.”
Viazimski knit his bushy eyebrows. “Do you know anything about the
information of the prisoner on your own account?” he grunted out,
turning over some papers.
Orloff let drop his half-eaten biscuit.
“Yes! Now, just fancy; you’ll not deny all this is disgusting. My
faithfulness, devotion, honour, she has spared nothing.… And let me
tell you what is more astonishing than everything else, that that
she-devil fell over head and ears in love with me, and invented,
goodness knows what; but even just now the hussy has had the impudence
to bid me acknowledge a marriage with her.”
“Well! I can only wonder,” said Viazimski; “that disguise in clerical
vestments--excuse me, what need for such sacrilege? Oh! you’ll have a
deal to answer for, to God, Batiushka Count.… All that would haunt me.”
Orloff tried to turn it all off as a joke, tried to go on talking,
but the gloomy silence of the bear-like Procureur showed him that
his credit at court had been long on the decline, and that he,
notwithstanding his late services, might, like useless old rubbish,
hope for only one thing--to be left alone and forgotten.
“My annals are finishing, it seems. I shall soon be at the bottom of
the river,” thought Orloff, on leaving Viazimski. “They’ll put me under
hatches somewhere in Moscow, or perhaps farther. We are grown old, out
of fashion; we must clear the way for new-comers.”
He was so much disturbed by his reception at the procureur’s that the
next morning he had a special service celebrated in the Church of the
Holy Virgin Mary, and before his departure for Moscow he even paid a
visit to an Armenian fortune-teller on the Litienaya.