Episodes
The Rescued Poet
The revolution was entirely suppressed. The last body of insurgents, under the leadership of Jakuskin, had thrown themselves into a palace and defended it with the heroism of despair until it had been attacked on all sides. This ended the St. Petersburg attempt.
Equally disastrous was the Southern insurrection. The two brothers Muravieff Apostol,1 being taken prisoners, were rescued by some officers belonging to the republican “League of United Serfs.” Then, placing themselves at the head of the Southern Army, they proclaimed a republic in Vasilkov, its priest blessing their arms. But the blessing bore no fruit. The soldiers had nothing to urge against a republic; but who would be its Czar? For a republic must necessarily have a Czar! Upon the hills of Ustinoskai they lie buried, where they were shot down in whole companies and trodden under the horses’ feet. Upon the grave which covers their remains a gallows has been erected as their memorial.
The dead of the Northern Union did not even receive a memorial such as that. From the beginning of the fight they were hustled under the ice of the Neva, and the Neva retains its coating of ice for five whole months. Jakuskin was taken prisoner; but in his prison he dashed his brains out against the stone walls of his cell.
Pushkin was miraculously saved. The hearts of two women accomplished the miracle—two women who united so perfectly in their love for him that to both, equally, he owed his life.
The digression he had made in going first to Galban’s delayed his arrival on time at St. Petersburg on the eventful day. Before he had even reached Czarskoje Zelo his horses had broken down under the strain of the long journey, on the road he met Battenkoff, fleeing from the St. Petersburg slaughter, and learned from him that all was lost, that Prince Ghedimin was exiled to Siberia, whither Zeneida was voluntarily accompanying him.
Pushkin was free to turn back to his wife. There was no longer an Eleutheria. She was dead and buried.
There was no one to accuse him of having belonged to the League of the Partisans of Freedom. His name had been inscribed among that ten thousand whom the “demoniacal” whim of an actress had saved from the scaffold and from banishment to Siberia.
After that came enough of the hard times beloved by Pushkin’s muse.
And, that he might belong entirely to his muse, Bethsaba, too, forsook him.
She went—to rejoin Sophie. She could no longer endure this cold prison-world of ours. And Pushkin then remained alone in his desolate castle, with no other confidante than old Helenka. To her he read his verses.
In the spring of the following year he received a command from Czar Nicholas to present himself at St. Petersburg.
His imprisoned friends at that time were to be executed.
That, too, was a tragic episode! It would need the pen of a Victor Hugo to describe how, at the very moment of execution, the whole bloody holocaust broke down, and condemned, executioners, and officers of justice were alike buried beneath it.
It was then that the Czar commanded Pushkin in audience before him. Pushkin was wearing mourning.
“For whom do you mourn?” the Czar asked.
“For my wife, sire.”
“So, not for your dead friends? Now, confess. On which side would you have stood had you been here in St. Petersburg?”
Pushkin felt the cold edge of the executioner’s sword at his throat. Dare one answer such a question with a lie? According to the world’s ethics, one may—one does. The conspirator is not in duty bound to accuse himself, to make confession of what cannot be proved against him, is not required to open out the secrets of his heart. And yet Pushkin could not bring a lie to his lips. Reason dictated it, but his proud heart went counter to it.
“Had I been present,” he answered the Czar, “I should have taken my place by the side of my friends.”
“I am glad that you have answered me thus,” returned the Czar. “I am about to have the period of Peter the Great written, and seek a man for the purpose who can poetize, but who cannot lie. That man I have found! I commit the writing of that epoch to you. Go back to your home and begin; and to all that you from henceforth write I will myself be censor.”
Thus did one of Russia’s greatest poets and personalities escape the fatal catastrophe.
At the Bear’s Paw they certainly proscribed him as a traitor; for although all other secret societies had paid for their opinions with their blood, that of the Bear’s Paw still existed, and did not cease even then to thirst for Freedom.
Ghedimin and Zeneida
Ghedimin was no longer a prince, but became, in Tobolsk, the happiest of men.
Five children, all sons, were born to him there, not one of whom has become a prince. One is a tanner, another a furrier; but they are prosperous, and know nothing of the ancestral palace in St. Petersburg.
This, it is true, is a prosaic ending; but we may not observe silence upon it, for it is true to history, and, moreover, no exceptional case. How many a descendant of princely families tans and works the skins of that ermine once worn by his ancestors!
The eldest of the three brothers Turgenieff, Michael, who presided at that memorable “green-book” conference, was, although absent in a foreign country at the time of the insurrection, condemned to death, and his property confiscated. The news of this sentence broke the heart of his younger brother Sergius. His other brother, Alexander, followed the condemned man into exile and shared his own fortune with him.
Such hearts as these, too, the fatherland of ice can bring forth!
The Romance of Constantine
Krizsanowski was perfectly right when he maintained that the Poles had no reason to unite their fate with any schemes of Russian aspirants after freedom.
The Polish people needed no explanation of the meaning of “Constitution.”
But this, too, is true—that to a Pole the wife of Constantine was wellnigh the equivalent. She was their Providence—turning evil into good, wrath into gentleness, remitting punishments—a Providence bringing blessings in its train.
The famous Nie pozwolim! (“I will not have it!”) had certainly never so often swayed the wills of the kings of Poland as had the gentle “I should so like it” the will of the Viceroy.
And when time and opportunity were ripe, and the necessary strength had been attained, the whole nation rose in its might—five months after the flight of the French king, Charles X.
One night the Polish youths broke open the gates of Belvedere and pressed, armed to a man, to the Grand Duke’s bedchamber. But first they had to break into Johanna’s room.
She started from sleep as the dagger was already pointed at her heart.
“Keep silence! Not a sound!”
“What!” she cried, “a Pole turning assassin! Infamous!” And, springing from the other side of her bed, she rushed into her husband’s room, not even feeling the dagger-thrust in her back. Hastily bolting the tapestried door through which she had passed, she flew to the heavily sleeping Viceroy.
“Wake! we are surprised!”
“What! Assassins?” exclaimed the Viceroy, seizing his weapons.
“Not assassins,” returned his wife, proudly concealing her indignation, “but heroes of liberty! The Polish people have risen against you. Fly!”
“What! The Polish people risen? And you, a daughter of Poland, not siding with your own people? You protecting me? Is it a miracle?”
“Husband, I love you! I will save you!”
And with these words, pressing a spring in a corner of the room, she disclosed the secret passage by which the veteran Krizsanowski had come to her, and of which Constantine knew nothing.
“We must be quick! These stairs lead down to the garden gate.”
The tapestried door was backed with iron; the assailants could not force it. Johanna threw a cloak about her, not mentioning her wound, and seizing her husband’s hand led him hurriedly through the familiar passage until they had reached the gate of the subterranean way under the garden.
They were saved. But only for a brief period. From the adjacent city of Warsaw resounded the clang of alarm-bells: the insurrection had triumphed.
Outside the walls of Lazienka they met with a mounted lancer. Calling to him, the Viceroy bade him dismount and give him his horse, and, springing on to it, he lifted Johanna behind him and galloped away.
But the lancer making haste to inform the insurgents of the Viceroy’s flight, he was quickly followed.
A division of lancers reached the fugitives in the forest of Bjelograd. The double burden was too much for the horse. The leader of the troops was Krizsanowski himself.
As they came up to her husband Johanna encircled him with her arms.
“Only through my body do you reach his!”
Krizsanowski replaced his sword in its scabbard.
“Good! So let it be! There’s not a man who could injure your husband! We will form Constantine’s escort.”
And the troop of Polish cavalry gave escort to the fugitive Viceroy until he had reached the encampment just assembled for manœuvres.
An enemy protecting a fugitive!
Magnanimity is sometimes contagious, not always; but occasionally people are carried away by it.
It was only in camp that Constantine knew that Johanna, in saving his life, had been wounded. It touched him to the heart. Only such deep emotion as he then experienced makes it intelligible that a Russian Grand Duke, viceroy and field-marshal, could rise to the unexampled magnanimity of uttering in camp such words as these to the troops ranged before him in battle-array:
“He who is a Pole, and loves his fatherland more than he does me, may step forth from the ranks and go free.”
And, with arms and banners, he suffered every Polish regiment under his command to march out, and then with his remaining Russian troops withdrew from Poland, and, at their head, returned to Russian territory.
Could such immense magnanimity be forgiven?
Never!
Upon arrival at Minsk the Grand Duke Constantine died suddenly.
By whose hand?
No other than that of the man with the green eyes. Only that this time it was not he of the Tsatir Dagh, but he of the banks of the Ganges—cholera.
It was said, too, that he was buried—that his coffin had been lowered into the vault in the Church of Peter-Paul at St. Petersburg. But the people would not believe it.
Tradition has it that he was taken prisoner and conveyed to “Holy Island.”
Not many years after there was a peasant rising, and it was rumored that their leader was Constantine. The rising was suppressed, but the leader was not captured; the people had hidden him too securely.
And to this day the belief is that Grand Duke Constantine is still alive.
The fishermen of Lapland, when at nights their boats beat about off Solowetshk Monastery, often see the figure of a tall, gray-headed man wandering about the bastions. It is attended by two armed sentinels; and ever and anon the spectre raises its clasped hands to heaven, as if in supplication.
Then they whisper to one another that the mysterious prisoner of Holy Island is none other than the vanished Constantine, though forty years have passed since his disappearance.
Snow lies deep all around—so deep that no roads are visible. A gray, leaden firmament spans the horizon. All is intense silence.
But beneath the deep snow something is still growing, and the roots of which will never die.
The End
In Chapter VIII, a quotation mark was removed after “before going to bed”.
In Chapter IX, a quotation mark was added after “the yoke that is bowing down its neck”, and “Krizsanowski, the delegate of the Polish ‘Kosyniery’” was changed to “Krizsanowski, the delegate of the Polish ‘Kosynyery’”.
In Chapter X, “Commandant Diebitsh prisoners” was changed to “Commandant Diebitsch prisoners”.
In Chapter XII, a quotation mark was removed after “put a good face on it”, and a quotation mark was added after “paid them twice over in interest”.
In Chapter XXIV, a question mark was changed to a period after “I can understand their being angry with him”.
In Chapter XXVI, a quotation mark was added before “Relate again”.
In Chapter XXVII, “Araktsejeff vied” was changed to “Araktseieff vied”.
In Chapter XXVIII, “Banish Araktsejeff” was changed to “Banish Araktseieff”.
In Chapter XXXI, “Helenka’s husband, old Ihnasco” was changed to “Helenka’s husband, old Ihnasko”.
In Chapter XXXIII, a quotation mark was added after “desirable to keep them secret”.
In Chapter XXXVI, a quotation mark was added before “Just what you directed”.
In Chapter XXXVIII, “wrote the letter to Jukuskin” was changed to “wrote the letter to Jakuskin”.
In Chapter XL, a quotation mark was removed after “Who knows into whose hands they may fall?”, and “the Kalevains have more reason to weep” was changed to “the Kalevaines have more reason to weep”.
In Chapter XLI, “as Jukuskin has planned” was changed to “as Jakuskin has planned”, and “plenipotentiary of the Szojusz Blagodenztoga” was changed to “plenipotentiary of the Szojusz Blagodenztoiga”.
In Chapter XLII, a quotation mark was added before “No harm to her!”, “their breasts literally sown with orders” was changed to “their breasts liberally sown with orders”, and “with naive, unconscious expression” was changed to “with naïve, unconscious expression”.
In Chapter XLIII, “the matadores of the Szojusz Blagodenztoga” was changed to “the matadores of the Szojusz Blagodenztoiga”.
In “The Romance of Constantine”, “Outside the walls of Lazienska” was changed to “Outside the walls of Lazienka”, and “off Solowesk Monastery” was changed to “off Solowetshk Monastery”.
Notes
1 Apostol was the family name.