Ivan was impressed by the solemn tone in which these words were spoken. He waited in silence for a few moments, then he questioned in a low voice, “And who is Prince Pojarsky?”
“He and his have been the lords of Nicolofsky and the lands around it for generations and generations, even before the old times when the Poles conquered Muscovy. But in the days of the great Czarina Catherine, who rests with God, our lord and your father, being a young man, full of pride and loving pleasure, must needs go forth to travel in strange lands. For you must know, Ivan Barrinka, that there are other lands in God’s world besides holy Russia, and that the peoples thereof do not obey our lord the Czar, but have kings and rulers of their own. This is hard to believe; but Pope Nikita says so, and, moreover, the soldiers tell us of them when they come back from the wars. Besides, I have seen Nyemtzi[2] myself—Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, who had not a word of good Russian, but spoke an outlandish tongue of their own. What is sad to think, our lord and your father not only went amongst these foreigners, but gave his hand in marriage to one of them. Not that I have anything to say against the beautiful, gracious lady, your mother. The good saints rest her soul! Mativshka loved her well, and God knows she served her faithfully. But amongst her kinsfolk must have been some who were the devil’s children; for they rose against their own king, and, horrible to tell! they slew him. Moreover, they did not do it secretly and in darkness, but openly, in the face of day, on a scaffold, as if he had been a thief or a murderer. Truly they are strange people, those Nyemtzi.
“Let us hope that evil men slandered our lord to the Czarina when they said he bore part in such wickedness. But at all events she believed the tale. When he came back to St. Petersburg, and dared to show his face at the Hermitage (the great, beautiful house where our lady the Czarina lived), she scathed him with the lightning of her anger. It is even reported that she said to him, ‘Pachol!’[3]—the word you would use to a dog if you were angry with it. Straightway he was sent an exile to Siberia, and all he had was taken from him and given to Plato Zoubof. Better had they laid him in his grave at once. The beautiful young lady, your mother, quickly died of grief, and mativshka, who was your nurse, brought you home to her own people. For a long time we hid you carefully, and guarded the secret jealously amongst ourselves; for we feared the new lord Plato Zoubof, and still more the steward Dmitri—a hard man, who has no pity. But now both know you are here, and care nothing for it. ‘What is it to us?’ they say. So that now, without fear, you may call yourself, and be called by every one, by the noble name you have a right to bear. Only remember, Ivan Barrinka, that although you are the son of a boyar and a prince, the same God made us and you, and the poor man’s soul is worth as much in his sight as your own.”
Ivan answered not a word. As one overpowered, he threw himself face downwards on the earthen floor, and lay there absorbed in thought. But at last he raised his wondering, child-like face, full of the brightness of a new idea. “Bativshka, people sometimes come back from Siberia, do they not?”
The old man shook his head. “They who go are as the sand,” he said; “they who come back may be reckoned on your fingers.”
“But I remember the time of the Czar’s coronation—four—five years ago, was it? I was quite a little boy then. Many exiles came home from Siberia; and you went to the Moscow road to see them pass, and the people wept for joy, you said. I wanted to go, but you would not bring me, saying I was too young. If these exiles came back, then why not my father?”
“Ah, you cannot understand. That was quite another matter. The late Czar, Paul Petrovitch, who reigned after the Czarina Catherine, was somewhat stern and hard. Doubtless God sent him to punish the great nobles for their sins. He banished many of them to Siberia; but the Czar that now is, whom God preserve! pardoned them all, and let them return home. Yet some offences there be that find no pardon ever, except in the grave;—and to the exile’s resting-place the grave is always near.”
Ivan’s next thought was a more childish one. “Bativshka,” he said, after another silence, “I should like to tell all this to Anna Popovna and to Michael Ivanovitch. Still, although I am the son of a boyar and a prince,” he added presently, “I shall not be quite happy, not quite, until I have taken a longer journey than ever Michael did, and have had something happen to me much more wonderful than getting frozen and losing one of my ears.”