[1] An allusion to the customary form of speech on presenting a petition to the Czar: “I strike the earth with my forehead, and present my petition to your lucid eyes.”
CHAPTER X.
THE SIEGE.
In approaching Orenburg, we saw a crowd of convicts, with shaven heads, and with faces disfigured by the hangman’s pincers. They were at work on the fortifications, under the direction of the soldiers of the garrison. Some were carrying away in wheel-barrows the earth and refuse which filled the moat, others with shovels were digging up the ground; on the rampart the masons were carrying stones and repairing the walls. The sentinels stopped us at the gate and demanded our passports. As soon as the sergeant heard that I came from Bailogorsk, he took me straight to the General’s house.
I found him in the garden. He was inspecting the apple-trees, which the autumn winds had stripped of their leaves, and, with the help of an old gardener, was carefully covering them with straw. His face expressed tranquillity, health, and good-nature. He was much pleased to see me, and began questioning me about the terrible events of which I had been an eye-witness. I related everything to him. The old man listened to me with attention, and continued the meantime to lop off the dry twigs.
“Poor Mironoff!” said he, when I had finished my sad story; “I feel very sorry for him, he was a good officer; and Madame Mironoff was a good woman,—how clever she was at pickling mushrooms! And what has become of Masha, the Captain’s daughter?”
I replied that she was still at the fortress in the hands of the pope and his wife.
“That is bad, very bad. Nobody can place any dependence upon the discipline of robbers. What will become of the poor girl?”