“My dear Mr. Stroganoff,” I expostulated, “your czars believed in icons. My grandmother believed in werewolves and banshees, and we burned blessed candles and sprinkled holy water in our houses on All Souls’ night to keep away demons. I have seen a clergyman, educated in Paris and Louvain, exorcising devils with bell, book, and candle in Maryland, in one of the oldest and proudest cities of the United States. I have seen the American Governor-General of the Philippines carrying a candle in a procession in honor of a mannikin from a shrine at Antipolo, near Manila. Why, I could tell you—”
“Please, please, let me talk,” Ivan Stroganoff interrupted. “What I say is true, nevertheless. The Tahitian has not one good quality. He is not to be compared with the American negro for any desirable trait.”
“Do you know the negro?” I asked.
The old man grunted. He relit his cigar, now only an inch long, and said:
“I was on the Merrimac when she fought the Monitor in two engagements. I was a sailor on other Confederate men-of-war. I was one of Colonel Mosby’s guerillas, and was wounded with them. I have lived thirteen years in the United States. I know the coon well. I fought to keep him a slave.”
“You are not an American?”
“I am a Russian, an anarchist once, and now I am for Root and Lodge, the stand-pats. I lived in Russia in its darkest days, under several czars, when your life was the forfeit of a wink. I was a lawyer there, a politician, an intrigant. I knew Bebel and Jaurès and the men before them. I lived in Germany many years, in France, in England, anywhere, everywhere. I first came to New York from Siberia. I was broke. The Civil War was on. There were agents of Lee and Jeff Davis in New York seeking sailors. They offered lots of money,—thousands,—and I went along, smuggled into the South by an underground road.”
Stroganoff threw away the shreds of tobacco, now a mere fiery wafer that threatened his mouth’s seine of silver strands. He put his hand in his Prince Albert and scratched his stomach.
“Mr. Stroganoff,” I queried, with a moral tide rising, “how could you join in a life-and-death issue like that of the Civil War, and kill men without hatred of their cause in your heart?”
He patted my shoulder.