Chapter VIII: I Deliver a Letter

I landed at Ancona. From there I started for Bologna, which I had heard the commander had chosen for his headquarters. The Count Alexis Orloff, although the hero of Chesma, hated the sea from the bottom of his heart, and having given over the command of the squadron to his vice-admiral, the first flag-officer, Vice-Admiral Samuel Greig, he spent most of his time on land.

To those beneath him he was ever amiable and good. He was very fond of simple jokes, and surrounded as he was by almost Imperial luxury, was always attentive and easy of access. The life of the count at Moscow, before the campaign in the Greek waters, which had covered his name with glory, had remained graven on my mind. The Orloffs were no strangers to our family. My late father in days gone by had been their companion-in-arms, and I, in going backwards and forwards from the naval schools to my birthplace, used very often to spend long holidays in their Muscovite house. The Count Alexis especially was a favourite of bright Moscow; the gigantic and splendid figure of Count Alexana, as all Moscow called him, full of robust health, his fine Grecian eyes, his gay and careless manners, his enormous wealth, all tended to attract to his hospitable halls all that Moscow could boast of as regards aristocracy, nobility, and also almost all other classes.

The house of the Count Alexis, as I well remember it now, stood not far from the gates of Moscow, and not far from the “Crimean Ford,” and very near to his property in the environs of Moscow, the village Niaskouchnavo (the “not gloomy” village).

The Muscovites could admire in the house of the count the splendid gobelin tapestries on the walls; the marvellous, graceful Dutch-tile stoves on gilt pedestals; the magnificent collection of old arms and armour. His town garden was ornamented with ponds, lakes, arbours, cascades, a menagerie, and an aviary. At the princely gates, in one of the windows of the lodge-keeper’s cottage, hung a golden cage with a parrot in it, who would scream at the idlers, “Long live our little Mother Empress!” At the fabulous feasts of the Count Alexis, very often under the costly lemon and orange trees, brought from his hothouses, tables would be spread, at which more than 300 people would sit down. A true Russian at heart, the count used to like giving his guests the pleasure of looking on at boxings, wrestlings, minstrelsies, himself often not disdaining to take part in them. With his hand he could bend a horseshoe, tie a poker in a knot, or catch a bull by the horns and throw him down; and to these sights he would sometimes invite all Moscow.

On one occasion, to have a good laugh at the rising passion of the fops for _pince-nez_ and spectacles, on the 1st of May he sent on the public promenade at Sokolnika one of his attendants, dressed in a riding costume, and leading amongst the crowd of young dandies a poor, crippled, and half-blind cur, with great _tin_ spectacles on his nose, and a card hung round his neck with the following sentence in large letters, “And look, he’s only three years old!”

But it was his splendidly arranged hunting meets and horse races which made him a centre of attraction to all classes of society. Not one horse in all Moscow could be compared to his “Rissak,”[22] a mixed breed of Arabian, English, and Frisian horses. At the races held in front of the house at the “Crimean Ford” I can even now remember how the Count Alexano, in the winter in his tiny sleighs, and in summer in his racing _droskies_ would lead with his own hands his spotlessly white horse “Smitanka,” or her rival, the dapple-grey “Amazonka.” Crowds would be running after the count when he, gathering the reins in his hand in his _romanovski touloup_,[23] or his damask coat, would appear at the gates on his snorting, white-maned beauty, calling out to his three Simeons--to his first jockey, Sainka the White, to arrange the bit; to his second, Sainka the Black, to tighten the stirrups; to his third, Sainka the Dresdenite, to moisten the horse’s mane with _kvas_.

The count was also playful in his correspondence. Who does not know the letter he wrote to his brother Gregory after the celebrated victory of Chesma?

“Sir, my brother, good day! We marched on the enemy, we went up to him, we caught him, we felled him, we broke him, we conquered him, we drowned him, we burnt him, and turned him into ashes. And I, your humble servant, am in good health.--ALEXIS ORLOFF.”

Copies of this letter were in the hands of every one. A born jester, a reveller, a boxer, this pleasure-loving count in his young years before the war had never even dreamt of being a sailor. Even to take the command of the fleet in Italy he went by land! He was very much talked about on the accession of the empress to the throne; after the battle of Chesma he was still more talked about; but to a good many he remained an enigma. At the reviews and parades, at his own princely _levées_, Count Alexis always appeared surrounded with great pomp, covered with gold, diamonds, and orders of all sorts; but in his walks in Paris he would go out amongst the elegant and fastidious crowd of promenaders sometimes with his head unpowdered, with a little round _bourgeois_ hat, and a coat of the coarsest and commonest grey cloth. I, of course, like others, could not very well guess the motives which prompted him to do all this. Very often even his words would bewilder you. Yes, he was a man of great mind and subtle wit. I burned with impatience again to see him, after so long a separation, although the commission entrusted to me by the Princess troubled me very much. Before my departure from Ragusa I had let the count know by letter of my escape from the Turks, and also that I was bringing him news of a very important person, whom I had discovered by accident and had met.

My journey through Italy lasted a long time. I managed to get a chill on the mountains, fell ill, and was obliged to stay for some time at the house of a charitable magnate. At length I arrived at Bologna. After having rested from my journey a little, I changed my dress, and, feeling rather agitated, I approached the beautiful palace of the count at Bologna. I learnt that the count was at home, and sent to announce my presence. After my long imprisonment, I had every reason to expect a warm welcome and reward; but I was rather doubtful how the count would take my audience and conference with the dangerous and mysterious pretender, held without the permission of my chief. There were two sides to the question. If I had been asked to say conscientiously exactly what I thought of the Princess, I should have found it very difficult to give a truthful answer. At Ragusa I had heard many doubtful things of her past life, about mysterious ties she had formed. But what did her past life matter to any one? Who knows what ties she might have been induced to make to escape from her gloomy fate? And who knows if such ties really existed?

The count received me directly. I was led through a long suite of richly-decorated drawing-rooms and salons, first on the ground-floor and then upstairs.

At this time the handsome hero of Chesma, Count Alexis, was in his thirty-eighth year. Not only at home, but in a strange land, he loved to spend his time with doves, being passionately fond of these birds. On my arrival he was sitting at the very top of his house, where he ordered the footman at once to bring me. What a sight met my eyes! This celebrated man--so clever, so strong and so stately, before whom all other men seemed but pigmies--was seated on a common wooden chair at the dusty little window. Having run away from the heat, he was seated with only his shirt on! and was drinking out of a mug some iced wine, at the same time waving his handkerchief at a brood of doves, who were pirouetting about the roof. “Ah! Konchic;[24] how are you?” said he, turning for a minute towards me. “Well, what? run away, eh? Well, congratulate you, old fellow. Sit down. Oh! look there; are they not a lovely couple? What do you think of them? Ah! the rascals; there they are turning and twisting. Ah, _tourmelins_[25] ah!”

Again he waved his handkerchief, and I, not finding any chair to sit upon, began looking at him with curiosity.

The count in these last years of peace had grown stouter, his neck was quite like a bull’s, his shoulders like Jupiter’s or Bacchus’s, his face quite striking, with its look of health and dauntlessness.

“Well! what are you staring at?” said he, standing and looking at me. “I was amusing myself with birds, while you were sitting with the Turks. Here they are all clay-coloured and black, but the tuberous ones, like ours, old fellow, are few, and not common. Yes, they can take letters for a longer distance than 100 _versts_. Marvellous! If we could but breed them in Russia! Well now, tell me everything about the prison and about the travels.”

I began my narration. The count listened to me at first very inattentively, all the while looking out of the window, but afterwards he grew more interested; and when I touched upon the subject of the person whom I had met at Ragusa, and handed him the letter, the count threw a handful of seed from a plate at the assembled doves, and when they all flew off in a crowd up on the roof, stood up.

“This news, my dear fellow, is such that we must talk seriously. Let’s get down from this mast into the company cabin.” We went downstairs and afterwards into the garden. The count on the way had dressed himself, and given orders that no one was to be received. We walked a long while backwards and forwards in the avenues. While I answered his questions I looked attentively into the expressive and often dreamy eyes of the count. He listened to me with very great attention.

“Ah! art scheming?” said he, all at once; “why, suppose she is a pretender, an adventuress. Now explain,” added he, sitting down on a bench. “Art repeating the words of others or thine own?”

I felt confused, and did not quite know what to answer.

“All the tales of her past life are so strange,” said I, “so much like a fairy-tale--Siberia, poison, escape from Persia, correspondence with all the crowned heads of Europe--that I have conscientiously acted as a faithful servant of the empress, looked well about me, as I cannot, I must say, hide my doubts.…”

“Agreed,” said the count, “Of course, you can look at it in two ways; but the most important fact is that _she_ is known of at St. Petersburg. They have written to me about her, speaking of her as a ‘vagabond,’ who has taken to herself a name and genealogy to which she has no right.”

The count was silent for some time.

“H’m! nice vagabond!” added he, as if to himself. “Puzzling, of course. Let it be so; I do not dispute it.… But why have they decided on exacting her extradition? and, in case it should be refused, on taking her by force, even if it is necessary to bombard the citadel of Ragusa? No one acts like that with a common vagabond. Such a person you just catch--a stone on the neck and in the water.”

I felt as if cold water were running down my back at these words of the count. I vividly remember that eventful June day.…

“Well, what, old man--you see yourself it’s no vagabond--what do you think about it? No, straight out with it, hide nothing.”