_THE PRINCESS WRITES TO THE EMPRESS._
Meanwhile, the position of the Princess Tarakanova had remained the
same. During the celebration of the peace with Turkey, in Moscow,
she had been forgotten. However, when all had become quiet again,
new points of condemnation were found against her. She was again
cross-examined. Even Sheshkovski was called, and let loose on her, and
the cross-examinations were more frequent. Worn out by her illness and
mental anguish, as well as by her miserable and unusual surroundings,
and by the presence of the two sentinels in her room, she began fading
rapidly. There were even days when her end was expected every minute.
After one of these terrible days, the unfortunate captive seized a pen,
and wrote a letter to the empress.
“Snatching myself from the arms of death,” she wrote, “I throw myself
at your feet. You ask, who I am? but can the fact of birth be made a
crime of, for any one? Night and day men are in my room. My sufferings
are such that my whole being is shaken. In refusing me mercy, it’s not
to me alone you refuse it.” The empress was very much troubled that
she could not leave Moscow herself and personally see the captive, who
excited in her by turns the deepest anger, and, involuntarily, the most
profound pity.
In the month of August, Field-Marshal Galitzin paid the Princess
another visit.
“You called yourself a Persian. Then you said you were born in Arabia;
you gave yourself out next as a Tcherkeshenka; and at last as our
grand-duchess,” he said. “You stated that you knew the Oriental
languages; we gave your letters to persons who know those languages,
but they could make nothing out of them. Is it possible--excuse
me--that this is also deceit on your part?”
“Oh! how stupid all that is!” answered Tarakanova, with a contemptuous
smile, and again coughing. “Do Persians and Arabs teach their wives
to read or write? In my childhood I learnt a little by myself, and
therefore I ought to be believed more than your readers.”
Galitzin was too sorry for her to go on questioning her on all the
points written down by Oushakoff.
“Look here,” said he, dashing away a tear, seeming to recollect
something which was a great deal more serious and important, “there’s
no time for disputes now … your strength is failing you.… I have not
received permission; yet I will give orders for you to be transferred
into a better and more spacious apartment, and your food shall be
brought you from the table of the commandant.… Would you not like a
priest … you understand … we are all in the hands of God … to prepare
you … for.…”
“For death … is it not true?” interrupted the captive, shaking her head.
“Yes!” answered Galitzin.
“Yes, I feel myself it is true.”
“Whom would you like?” asked the prince, leaning over her. “A Catholic,
a Protestant, or one of our own faith?”
“I am Russian,” said the Princess, “therefore send me one of our own
faith, if you please.”
“So, everything is finished!” thought she the next night, sleepless as
always; “darkness without dawn, anguish without end, death … there it
comes. It will soon be here, soon--perhaps to-morrow. And they’re not
yet tired of questioning.…”
The captive arose, leaned her head on the side of the bed. “But who
am I after all?” she asked herself, raising her eyes to the image of
the Saviour. “Is it so difficult to sum up everything in these my
last minutes? Perhaps.--Is it possible that I am not really the one I
thought myself to be? No, I do not acknowledge that! But why not? Is it
from a feeling of disgust towards them, or from too great a passion; or
is it revenge for a name disgraced, for a woman crushed?”
And then she tried again to remember all her past, to recollect its
smallest details. Days long past crowded her memory. Her luxurious
gay life, her successes, her triumphs, her visits and her levées, her
balls. “Courtiers, _diplomâts_, counts, even reigning princes; how many
adorers I have had,” thought she. “There must have been some reason
why they should all have courted me so, offered me their hearts, their
riches, sought my hand.… For what? for my beauty, for my power of
pleasing, for my talents? But there are many beautiful, talented women
far more wily than I; why did not the Prince Limbourski go mad over
them? Why did he not give them, as he gave me, his lands, his castles?
Why didn’t he make these over to them instead of to me, as ‘granted’
estates? Why only to me did all the ‘Radzivills’ and ‘Pototskis’ cling?
Even the powerful favourite of the Russian Court, Shouvaloff, sought
an interview with me. Why was I surrounded with such profound, almost
devotional respect? Why was my past history so eagerly searched out?
Yes, I was selected by Providence for some special end, of which I
myself am ignorant.
“Childhood!--there alone lies the key to it all,” whispered the poor
captive, grasping at her earliest recollections; “there alone lie the
proofs.”
But it was just that very childhood which was so bewildering to her own
mind. She recollected the isolated hamlet somewhere in the South, in
a desert, the large shady trees, the low cottage, the kitchen garden,
and beyond, the boundless fields. A good, kind old woman dressed and
took care of her. Then came the journey in the comfortably balanced
cart, filled with fresh, perfumed hay, other boundless fields, rivers,
mountains, forests. “But who am I?” she would cry in anguish, sobbing
and striking her poor senseless head! “They want proofs!--but where are
these to be found? What can I add to what I have already said? How
can I myself separate the truth from the fiction which life has mixed
up together? And how could a poor, weak, deserted, helpless child know
that one day she would be called to account for her own birth? The
judgment concerning me is unjust, illegal. It’s not for me to help to
convince my persecutors. Let them disgrace me; let them hunt me down;
let them finish their work; I am not answerable, either for my birth,
or for my name.… I am the only living witness of my past; there is no
other. Why are they so furious? God does many wonders. Is it possible
that He, to avenge a poor, persecuted creature, will not perform a
miracle, will not open the door of this stone coffin, of this awful
fatal dungeon?”