I fell down on the shore. Oh! my God! what anguish! Tears blinded me. Sobs stifled me. I hated, I cursed the whole world. “How,” thought I, “could such a dastardly, godless deed be perpetrated, and I all the while a partaker in the crime?” My whole frame shook with indignation, with madness, as with horror I turned over in my mind every little detail; thought over all the disgusting and dastardly meanness, the fiendish calculation, the treachery of him to whom I had been so faithful and so devoted, and who had not scrupled to sport with that most sacred feeling—love. I could fancy to myself at that very minute that poor deserted woman, half killed with misery. I could picture her in my mind sitting in her dark prison, her soul torn with anguish; who knows, perhaps chained and watched over by coarse, brutal soldiers. “And when did all that take place?” I repeated to myself. “When all seemed so smiling, when all her golden dreams seemed ready to be fulfilled.” The obscure daughter of the late empress had seen at her feet the highest dignitary of the new empress. The whole fleet had met her with cries of joy, with roars of cannon. What must she have felt? what must she have experienced? From under the rock where I was lying I could see the lovely sunset, gilding with its last rays the top of the hills, the crosses on the town churches, and, fading almost entirely, the outlines of the ships at sea. “Oh! infamy! infamy!” I whispered. “Count Orloff has sullied his soul with an action still darker than all the rest. No laurels, not even the laurels of Chesma, will now be able to shield him from the justice of God or man. And also, according to our services, shall justice be meted out to us—his accomplices in that dark deed.”
My despair was so strong that I was ready to have done with life.
“No; repent all thy life, repent,” seemed to whisper an inner voice. “Search for means to redeem thy dark crime.”
A gun was fired from the flag-ship, and on all the other ships nearer were heard the strains of the vesper music, and then the prayers rose on the still air. The sable veil of night descended on the sea; on the guard-ship, and along the shore, the watch-fires began to be lighted. I rose, and, hardly able to drag my feet along, crawled home. There I found the orderly of the count waiting for me. I followed him.
“Well! Konsov! now confess you were a little astonished,” said the count coming to meet me.
My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. Well, what could I have said in answer to him? He, gifted with all the blessings of life; this preux chevalier; this dignitary, brave, bold, daring, courageous, loaded with honours, a short time ago my idol, was now to me loathsome, unbearable.
“Do you think that I don’t remember? that I have forgotten?” he continued, avoiding looking me straight in the face. “Oh! I know well that for the most important part I am indebted to you.… Had it not been her faith in you, and in your interest, it would not have been so easy to cage the bird.…”
The words of the count literally stung me. I stood confused, bewildered.
“But, perhaps you do not know, you have not heard,” as if to console me, said the count—“do not take on so—we had received from Petersburg the most formal and detailed instructions concerning this usurper, this person who had taken to herself a name and lineage not belonging to her. The order was to arrest her at any cost, and bring her there. Well, now have you understood?”
In my confusion and trouble I could make no answer.