Chapter XIX: The Historiographer, Miller

The obstinacy of the captive astonished and angered Ekaterina very much.

“How is this?” she reasoned. “I have conquered Turkey; Pougachoff has been caught, has acknowledged his imposture, and been publicly executed; … and that miserable, puny woman, that adventuress, … will not acknowledge anything, and dares to threaten me, from her cellar … from her den.”

Potemkin, after having heard from Christianok all the details of the arrest of the Princess, was very morose and silent. Ekaterina ascribed it to his frequent fits of melancholy.

Soon it became known to many of those about the empress, what means Orloff had employed to entice and then betray the unfortunate captive, and these were soon communicated to the empress through the medium of her maid Perekousikhin. At first Ekaterina would not believe any of these rumours, and severely reprimanded her maid on this account. The secret report of the honest and incorruptible Galitzin concerning the position and condition of the captive, all the courtiers had made known to the empress. The womanly heart of Ekaterina was moved with indignation. “Not Radzivill,” she said; “he, threatened with confiscation of his enormous estates, did not betray the devoted woman!”

“Betrayer by nature!” shot through the brain of Ekaterina, when she recollected the services of Orloff; … “ready for anything, unscrupulous in all; stopping at nothing in his own interests,” and then Ekaterina remembered the phrase, “Matoushka Tzaritza, pardon. You didn’t think, you did not guess--”[38]

“Not for nothing do they call him butcher,” contemptuously murmured Ekaterina. “Oh! he’ll just say that, out of devotion, he ‘oversalted it.’ … Well! he’ll soon be here. He must be made to mend that affair. That fallen one, without family, nameless, tribeless; a toy in the hands of the wicked, in his arms she’ll be powerless.… And she, after selling beer at Prague, well! how dares she disdain Russian dignitary or count? Where’s--the _mésalliance_?”

The calm village scenes of Tzaritzin and Kolomenski, began to weary Ekaterina. The forests, the lakelets, the birds and the butterflies no longer brought her peaceful dreams.

The empress suddenly started for Moscow alone.

There, in the Chinese city, or Kitaï-Gorod, she visited the archives of the Minister of the Interior, where several important papers had been sent for revision. The director of the archives was the celebrated author of the “History of Russia” and of “The Description of the Empire of Siberia;” late editor of the academical journal, “Monthly Compositions;” traveller and Russian historiographer;--the academician Miller. He was then already seventy. The empress herself was very fond of history, and knew him very well, having often had very long conversations with him about his works, and in general about history. She found him in his room, near the archives, busily turning over a heap of old Muscovite manuscripts.

Miller was very fond of flowers and birds. The rooms of his governmental department, not very lofty, were hung all around with cages of blackbirds, bullfinches, and others of the feathered tribe, which quite deafened Ekaterina with their loud whistling and twittering. A glass door opened from the study of the master of the house into another room, ornamented with large plants set in green tubs. The windows were open, but a net which covered them prevented the birds, which were flying about, from taking their departure. The neat and pretty, although simple, room was filled with the perfume of roses and heliotropes. The greatest cleanliness reigned everywhere. The floors were as polished as a mirror. Miller was writing at his table near the glass door leading to his aviary. The empress, passing by, motioned the officious servant away, and came up to him unnoticed.

“I have come to you, Gerard Feodorovitch, with a request,” said Ekaterina, on entering the room.

Miller jumped up, apologising for his morning costume.

“Command me, your Majesty,” said he, hastily arranging his dress, and searching with his eyes for his spectacles, which he missed.

The empress took a seat, invited him to do the same, and the conversation began.

“Is it true,” she began, after having made several gracious inquiries after his health, and that of his large family, “is it true?--it is said that you have collected evidence, that you are convinced that it was not a usurper, a pretender who ascended the throne of Moscow; that Grishka Otropieff was the real Tzarevitch Dimitri? You said something about it--to the English traveller, Cox.”

The good-natured, absent-minded Miller, always lost in his researches, was very much puzzled at this question of the empress.

“Where on earth could she have heard that?” thought he. “Could Cox have blundered it out?”

“Let us be candid; I’ll help you,” continued Ekaterina. “You possess a wonderful memory, and withal you are so very perspicacious in deciphering and comparing manuscripts. Give me openly and boldly your opinion. We are alone; no one can hear us. Is it true that the evidence for the condemnation of the Pretender was weak, almost nothing?”

Miller became thoughtful. His grey hair was ruffled, and his good-natured, intelligent mouth, which just before the entrance of the empress had held a half-finished cigar in an amber mouth-piece, was now unconsciously nervously twitching.

“Yes, it is true,” he answered, hesitating; “but, excuse me, that is quite my own personal opinion, nothing more.”

“But if so, then why do you not publish such a very important judgment?”

“But, your Majesty,” stammered Miller, looking about him with a bewildered gaze, pulling at his waistcoat, “I read the account of the researches made by Vassili Shouiski at Ouglitch. He made those researches by order of Godounoff. It was to his interest to please Boris, and he did this by bringing to him the evidence only of those who affirmed that the Tzarevitch had really been killed. Of course, any one can see that all other evidence which might have been disagreeable to Godounoff he would suppress.”

“Which other?” asked Ekaterina.

“That another one was killed, and that the former was hidden; but of course, you know yourself, that this very same Shouiski publicly acknowledged the resuscitated Dimitri.”

“A very witty proof,” said Ekaterina. “Not for nothing does General Potemkin, great amateur historian, advise me to have all that published, if you are really convinced of its truth?”

“Excuse me, your Majesty,” stammered Miller; “the will of the empress--is an important guide; but there’s another, a power still higher--Russia. I am a Lutheran; the body of the recognised Dimitri lies in the cathedral of the Kremlin. What would become of all my researches, what would become of my own person, amidst your own nation, if I dared to assert that not Grishka Otropieff had ascended the Muscovite throne, but the real Tzarevitch Dimitri?”