CHAPTER XXIII.
ORLOFF AT MOSCOW.
The peace with Turkey was publicly celebrated at Moscow on July 13th. Galitzin was not forgotten, and, for having cleared Moldavia of the Turks, received from Petersburg a rich sword studded with diamonds. Orloff received a testimonial, a rich dinner service, one of the Imperial properties near Petersburg, and the title of “Chesmenski.”
“Put up on the shelves of the archives, wholly thrown over!” thought Alexis Gregorevitch. He was not allowed to follow the court to Petersburg. From this time Moscow was assigned to him as a residence, as also to many of the other supporters of Ekaterina. It would have seemed that the days of Chesmenski flowed on peacefully and pleasantly in his splendid Muscovite palace; but the retainers of the count began to notice that he often had fits of melancholy—that very often, without any reason whatever, he would have funeral masses celebrated, or a special service with Acathistus,[41] or would call in the gipsy fortune-tellers, and they would hear him often murmur and complain of the “Traitress Fortune,” who in former times had so spoilt him with her favours.
If Count Alexana would drive out his fleet steeds on a beautiful frosty evening, flying along the streets, glancing at the passers-by from under his rich fur cap, thickly studded with frosty diamonds, his thoughts would carry him back to other blue, but warm skies, to the azure shores of the Morea and the Adriatic, to the Roman and Venetian marble palaces. If in autumn the sleet were driving, promising a splendid hunt, the count would ride in the neighbourhood of Otradi or Niaskouchnavo, and, after having driven the mother hare out of the birch copse, and started his favourite harehounds on her track, would gallop on his gallant Kabardinetz furiously in pursuit, but all at once he would rein in his steed and stop. The rain might brush the wet branches of the birch in his face, the horse might splash through the pools and mud, but the count’s thoughts had wandered far away, to that far-off Italy, to Rome, Livorno, to the unfortunate, by him betrayed, Tarakanova.
“Where is she? What has become of her?” he would think. “Has she survived her child’s birth? Is she still there, or have they hidden her even farther away?”
After the fall of the favourite, Prince Gregory, his brother, Count Alexis Chesmenski, retired so quickly from court that he not only knew nothing positive, but even dared not try to know anything positive about the unfortunate beauty whom he had carried off and betrayed.
That same year, in autumn, rumours were spread in Moscow that a very important mysterious personage had been brought over from Petersburg, and sequestered in the Novo Spaski Nunnery; that she had been compelled to take the veil, and had been named Docifé,[42] and was now locked up in a secluded cell.