The rebellion of the Princess

THE stairs down which the Boyar Kurakin fell were entirely dark, and I could not see what was happening, so I was the more surprised to hear, on top of the crash of his fall, a woman’s shrill screams, a man’s curses, and the sound of a scrimmage down there in the dark. I snatched up a taper and, lighting it, held it high over my head, and was looking down the stairs when Maître le Bastien and Michaud hurried in, summoned by the outcry, and running to me, peeped under my uplifted arm into the abyss below. Then it was that we were all convulsed with a merriment that Le Bastien and I smothered for caution’s sake, but Michaud, the apprentice, knowing no reason for prudence, gave way to, and doubled up and rocked with laughter, holding his sides, for the light of my taper revealed a ridiculous scene. We had in our employ, as cook, an enormously fat old Russian woman named Advotia, and it was evident that she had either been listening—after the fashion of servants—at the foot of the stair, or had started up with a skillet of soup, when M. Kurakin started down on his unceremonious trip, and the result was that the hot soup had been spilled on both, and the infuriated boyar, whose fall had been broken by her mountain of flesh, was so little grateful that he had evidently punched her head, and she, in her turn, enraged at the double injury, fell to beating him with her skillet, and the two were dancing about on the stairs, showering blows and curses upon each other, while the savoury odor of the wasted broth rose to our nostrils.

Maître le Bastien was the first to recover from his amusement and recognise the serious side of the scene, and he called out to Advotia to go about her business, while he begged M. Kurakin to ascend and permit him to attend to his hurts in a suitable manner. But the boyar was in no mood for apologies and, having shaken his fist in Advotia’s face, he came up the stairs, cursing at every step, and accused me of throwing him down, while I bowed and smiled blandly, making signs that the fall was due to his own misfortune, and Maître le Bastien, quick at taking a cue, apologised for me and declared that I was a good fellow, quite incapable of such villainy. Kurakin was far from convinced of my goodness, but for some reason it suited him to conceal from Le Bastien his attempt to get the pear, and he contented himself with a scowl at me that was equal to a threat, and a few curt remarks to the goldsmith.

“Your servants, sir, male and female, are only fit for the gallows,” he said fiercely, “and the sooner they hang the better. Such a varlet as that big ruffian of yours would get the pravezh here!”

“You do not know his good qualities, monsieur,” said my master suavely; “he has been a faithful servant to me. Your misstep was distressing, but it might have had even worse consequences, for the stairs are steep.”

“Yes, it might have broken my neck,” replied the boyar, casting a dark look at his host, “but for that fat beast at the bottom.”

“Exactly,” said Maître le Bastien; “so, after all, she served a good purpose in breaking your excellency’s fall.”

But Kurakin would not be appeased; he had been balked, and he knew it; but we were too many for one, and he took himself off, with such ill-concealed rage and malice that I saw that the goldsmith was uneasy. When he was gone, and I had related the whole incident and began to laugh at it, Maître le Bastien held up his hand.

“He laughs longest who laughs last,” he said gravely. “Have a care, M. le Marquis; these Russians are fiery creatures, and this man has all the fierce pride of his class. ’Tis as I feared; there is some mystery behind that bauble, and, please the saints, I’ll get it out of my house as soon as I may; therefore give it to me, monsieur, and let me secure the miniature and return it to this princess of yours.”

Willing enough to hasten the chance of seeing the beauty again, I gave him the locket with alacrity, and he lost no time in going to work at it. But it proved a more delicate task than he had expected, and it was well on into the evening before it was completed and far too late to return it to the palace of Prince Voronin. So we had an opportunity to discuss the matter again at supper, and the master told me the little he knew of the prince and of the Boyar Kurakin.

“Voronin belongs to the oldest and proudest class of the nobility, and was deeply offended, as they all were, at the Czar Feodor for burning the Books of Precedence,” Le Bastien said, while we were eating a stew of sterlet, the famous fish of the Volga. “All these men were firmly established by these very books; the recorded deeds of their illustrious ancestors and their rank on those singular pages decided their own position in the state. No man would take a lower place than that of his ancestors, and Dr. Von Gaden, the court physician, tells me that many a campaign has been lost because of this fierce scramble for place. When Feodor, therefore, weary of choosing a fool for a servant because his father had been wise, burned these books, he insulted the old aristocracy, and they all hate his memory and his mother’s family, the Miloslavskys, as they hate the devil, and are ready to uphold little Peter and the Naryshkins. It is only those who are identified by interests of some kind with the Miloslavskys—like Prince Galitsyn—who uphold the cause of the Czarevitch Ivan. Kurakin is one of these; he was mixed up in all the intrigues of the late czar’s reign, and he is Miloslavsky to the backbone. Here, then, is the probable key to the situation; the Voronins are Naryshkins, Kurakin and Galitsyn are Miloslavskys, and this trinket has some mysterious importance.”

But quite another thought was clouding my horizon.

“And the Princess Daria,” I said; “is she the wife, or the daughter, of Prince Voronin?”

Maître le Bastien’s eyes twinkled and he shook a warning finger at me.

“Have a care, monsieur,” he said; “she is the prince’s only child,—and heiress,—and I doubt not there is some intrigue afoot.”

“I grow interested,” I said gaily. “I must solve the problem.”

“The saints forbid!” exclaimed the goldsmith piously; “you are already in trouble enough, M. le Marquis; do not, therefore, thrust your hand into a hornet’s nest.”

I laughed, with no thought of following this prudent advice; instead, I lay awake half the night, puzzling over the trinket, and when I finally fell asleep, it was to dream—hothead that I was—of the most beautiful face in the world, the face of the Princess Daria.

Next morning, as soon as we had finished breakfast, I prepared to set out for the palace of Prince Voronin, to return the locket to the princess of my dreams.

I remember well—as if it had been yesterday—the pains I took with my toilet, and how hard I stared at myself in the mirror that Maître le Bastien had brought from Paris. Yet I was no longer a callow youth to have my head turned by such folly; it only goes to show what a fool a man can be over a beautiful face. But if I hoped for satisfaction in my own image, I got but little. I saw in Le Bastien’s mirror a tall man with wide shoulders and long, strong arms, but I was not handsome, and I sighed at the contrast between my irregular features and my bold, blue eyes, and M. Kurakin’s classical beauty. I had a scar, too, on my forehead from a sword cut at Seneffe, and my chestnut hair, which I wore without a peruke, was beginning to show threads of silver, and I had the air of a fighter and no courtier, though I was well enough born and bred, too, for that matter, but I was no fop. My dress, too, had to suit my supposed condition, and being simple and even shabby in the matter of a blue taffety coat, did not set off either my face or figure, and I confess that—longing for the first time to pose as a squire of dames—I was in no very good humour either with myself or the world when I set out at last with the pear in the bosom of my doublet, and some directions from Maître le Bastien in my ears. Moreover, to add to my discomfiture, he had called after me, with a twinkle in his eye, that no man would be allowed to visit the terem of Voronin’s palace, and I had best ask for old Piotr, the steward, at once and trust my errand to him. I shrugged my shoulders and tossed back a defiance, but I was far from feeling sanguine myself, as I left our quarters and began to thread the narrow lanes between them and the prince’s palace, which stood much nearer the banks of the Moskva.

As I left the bazaars behind me the streets seemed unusually quiet, and I had traversed perhaps a hundred yards and turned into a lonely lane, flanked on either side by the rear walls of two old houses, when I heard a shrill squeal of agony, so intense and so piercing that it seemed scarcely human, and followed by a silence as ominous. I stopped to listen and heard a shutter open on my right and close again; evidently some woman had peeped out to see what it was, but she would venture no more, and the stillness awakened my suspicions. What mischief was afoot now? I loosened my sword in its scabbard and felt for my pistol, and advancing quickly, I peered under the edge of a low vaulted gateway. It opened into the garden of a vacant house to the left; the yard was nearly choked with weeds—nearly, not quite—in the centre there was an open space, and in it I saw a burly fellow, red-headed and red-bearded, crushing some creature, child or beast, I knew not, under his knee. As I advanced my footsteps struck an echo from the stone pavement at the gateway and the man looked over his shoulder. It was my acquaintance, Kurakin’s steward, and, in a flash, it dawned on me that he was taking his vengeance on the unhappy dwarf. The next moment I had the great brute by the collar and put my pistol to his head, and he, recoiling as far as he could, let his victim fall on the pavement. With a kick and the threat of the pistol I got the big fellow to his feet; it was in my mind to make an end of him, but he was too contemptible.

“Get out!” I said to him in Russ; “be off to your kennel or——” I flourished my weapon.

He cursed me, his great bloated face purple and his eyes like blood, but he dared not linger, for he read that in my glance which cowed him. He slunk off like the coward he was, and then I looked at the dwarf, who lay in a heap on the ground, and marvelled that a creature so tiny could have resisted him a moment. The poor little wretch was stripped almost naked and had been lashed until he was covered with blood. A bloody thong lay near to tell the tale, and his throat had two purple marks on it where the steward’s fingers had been pressing the breath out of his body. Yet, nearly spent as he was, he crawled to my feet and fell to mumbling over them and kissing them, until it turned my stomach.

“Up, you little rogue,” I said bluntly, “and go home; ’tis your monkey tricks that have brought you to this. Learn a lesson, and leave such brutes alone.”

But he was not to be drawn off so easily; he clung to my knees, begging to serve me, vowing fidelity to death, and such an abject picture of misery and gratitude that I had not the heart to send him away. Indeed, he was afraid to venture two yards from my feet, and, as he was too weak to travel far, I was in a pleasant dilemma. The prospect of taking such a follower to the Voronin palace was certainly worse than the wearing of the old taffety jacket.

“What is your name, varlet, and your home?” I asked with impatience, and yet a little amused.

“My name is Maluta, excellency,” he said, kissing my shoes for the fiftieth time, “and my home is your home.”

“Holy Virgin!” I ejaculated, somewhat aghast, and then I laughed, too heartily amused to be vexed: here, certainly, was an acquisition to our household.

But it turned out no jest, and, try as I would, I could not shake the little wretch off, and was forced, at last, to convoy him back to our quarters and order Advotia to dress his wounds, while Maître le Bastien promised to keep him close until my return from my errand, laughing all the while at my adventure, as if at the richest joke in the world. So, by a strange intervention of fate, I was the patron of a miserable little dwarf and I had a mortal enemy in the kitchen next door; besides I was an hour late on my errand to the Princess Daria.