CHAPTER XVIII.
ZUPI.
Ivan Carlovitch, he resumed, was a soldier insensible alike to pity and to danger. His cold and rigid sternness had first brought him under the notice of his imperial master, who raised him from the humblest rank in the army. He had a strict and almost absurd idea of the implicit obedience which should be rendered by the soldier to his superior; and wild as I was then with passion and grief on finding that I had only saved Basilia from one degrading condition to deliver her over to one still more cruel and terrible—to be the mistress, the plaything of a wretched Russian—I had sufficient tact to see that resistance would only serve to destroy my own hopes of a dreadful vengeance, and of achieving her freedom. On the first symptom of disobedience, Carlovitch would have brought me before a general court-martial. From this tribunal in Russia, the way to the knout or the grave is short and rapid, especially to a poor Pole, or a captive Tcherkesse warrior.
It is related that early in life, Ivan Carlovitch, the son of Carl, a porter of Moscow, was a soldier in General Ouchterlony's battalion of the Imperial Guard, and was one day a sentinel on the private gate of the palace at St. Petersburg, when a sudden inundation of the Neva spread terror among the inmates of the edifice, and forced them to retreat to the upper stories.
The Empress Alexandrina was surveying the rising waters from a balcony, when she perceived Carlovitch standing at his post motionless, and mid leg in the water. In great alarm she desired him to retire within doors. He "presented arms" when Her Majesty addressed him, but respectfully declined. The flood increased. Trees were swept away, railings and balustrades, vases of flowers, dead cattle, boats, and logs of wood were surged and dashed against the palace walls; again and again the Empress and her ladies called in great agitation to the sentinel, desiring him to abandon a post so perilous; but with admirable coolness he replied, that he "dared not until properly relieved or withdrawn by an order from the captain of the guard." That officer had by this time clambered to the roof of the guard-house, from whence he sent the corporal, a good swimmer, to bring off this obstinate sentinel, who was now up to his neck in water.
For this act of bravado or insensibility to danger, Carlovitch was appointed a captain in the Infantry Regiment of Tenginski, and marched with it against the Circassians. In due time he was appointed colonel of the Tenginski Hussars (for there are two corps, one of horse and the other of foot, so named), and as such I found him when misfortune cast me in his way.
He was a man without mercy, and often brought his bravest soldiers to the knout for the most trivial fault; but he never broke into gusts of passion, and though constantly using among the soldiers, the serfs, and prisoners a heavy rattan, every blow of which brought away a stripe of flesh, he always addressed them with a cold and cruel smile, which filled those who knew him with fear and repugnance.
Oh, how I loathe his memory and the recollection of that fiendish leer, which I can picture so distinctly at this moment!
But what of Basilia, you would ask me?
Fain would I draw a veil over her fate; but a few words will relate it.
The insulting advances, the bold declarations of a love the most repugnant to a heart so pure, the caresses and the presents of Carlovitch she received with disdain. For three days and three nights tears were her only protection; entreaties for mercy her only weapon; but at last even they failed her. One night Carlovitch, flushed with wine and fury on leaving a banquet given by Prince Merischikoff, assailed her in his own tent, and to escape him, the miserable Basilia pierced her throat with a poniard, and died at his feet!