The aged face quivered with suppressed emotion, yet Petrovitch drew his hand away. “You cannot love me, Prince Ivan Pojarsky,” he said, “if you love not the land of your fathers.”
“The land of my fathers!” repeated Ivan in surprise. “What can you mean?”
“Stand up, Prince Ivan,” continued the old man, still speaking with sternness; “the posture of a suppliant does not become you. Do you think it is anything to me that you have lost a few thousand roubles at play? Do you think that if you needed my whole fortune I would heave a sigh or shed a tear as I gave it into your hands? But it is a grief to me, beyond sighs and tears, that trifles such as these should occupy the heir of Pojarsky when the foot of the enemy is on the soil of holy Russia.”
“What?” cried Ivan, springing to his feet in amazement.
“Can it be possible you have not heard?” asked Petrovitch, the heavy cloud of displeasure beginning to clear from his brow. “At daybreak this morning the tidings came. They have crossed the Niemen, those barbarous hosts that own no God in heaven, no king on earth save that monster from the abyss they call Napoleon. They come—in the stillness and darkness I seem to hear their footsteps across plain, and forest, and river. They come to trample down the soil of our fatherland, to water it with blood, to waste our fields, to burn our villages with fire, to make our wives widows, our children orphans; ay, and to do yet darker deeds than these, deeds which I have no words to tell. The storm has been gathering long; and now, at last, the thunder-cloud has burst upon us! My country, O God, my country!”
“But our cause is just,” said Ivan. “Surely every Russian will fight to the death.”
“This, indeed, will be a death-struggle,” Petrovitch resumed. “Do you not understand? It is all the world against holy Russia—all the world, except England and Spain: England, far away, safe within her God-given rampart of crested foam; Spain already bleeding beneath the talons of the vulture. Russia, Russia only, stands upright, and refuses, as Pope Yefim expresses it, to bow the knee to the Baal, or rather to the Moloch of France. Therefore, the conqueror has forced the conquered to join his standard, and it is not only the legions of France who are pouring across the Niemen, but Prussians, Austrians, Saxons, Westphalians, all the men of Germany who are Napoleon’s subservient though unwilling slaves; Poles, ever eager to trample on our pride and profit by our misfortunes; ay, even Spaniards, dragged from their vines and their olives to fight for the tyrant they detest.” He paused, then went on again in a sadder tone and with even deeper feeling—“If in this dark hour God had but been gracious to us, and given us a bearded Czar!”
“A bearded Czar!” Ivan repeated in perplexed surprise.
“Yes. Do you not remember the words of the great Czar Peter? ‘If ever again a bearded Czar shall sit upon the throne of Russia, all Europe may tremble.’ He meant a true Muscovite Czar—stern, hard, and strong, like Ivan the Terrible long ago, somewhat like Count Rostopchine now. But instead of such a hero as the Czars of old—with the world in arms against us, God in his inscrutable providence has seen fit to send us Alexander Paulovitch.”
“But, dädushka, the people love him.”