Chapter XXII: 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.”

_“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.