Chapter XXIV: 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?”