Ramodanofsky rose too, and a look of deep trouble swept over his hard features, refuting my momentary thought that all natural feeling was dead within him. While we stood thus, the door was flung open, and Pierrot, with a disordered and mud-splashed dress, stood upon the threshold.
“M. le Vicomte,” he said in a tone of great excitement, addressing me in French, and unconscious that both the other two understood him, “we have trapped the steward, and if you do not come down at once, that Russian devil will fricassee him alive before we can extract any information from him!”
Feodor laughed, startling Pierrot so that he stood staring.
“My good fellow,” the boyar said to him in French, “you would fricassee the steward too, if you had as heavy a debt against him as poor Michael has.”
Knowing Michael’s proclivities, neither Von Gaden nor I delayed, but hurried down the stairs, followed by the boyar. Pierrot directed us to a low room on the ground floor; and before we reached the door, sounds like suppressed groans, greeting our ears, hastened our steps. When we arrived, a curious scene met our eyes. It was a low, bare room, which had probably been used as a dungeon before; there was a fire burning on the hearth, and over it hung the white-faced Michael, heating a poker red-hot. Tied in a chair before the fire was the cringing figure of the steward, a miserable heap of cowardice. His shoes and stockings having been removed, I had no doubt about his enemy’s intentions; the abject fear on one face and the fierce exultation on the other were both suggestive, not of men, but of beasts. Von Gaden and I paused on the threshold, arrested by the curious and revolting spectacle; but Ramodanofsky passed us, and going over to the hearth, checked his servant by a gesture. Michael stood transfixed at his order; but his fingers still clung lovingly to the handle of the red-hot poker, and his small, cruel eyes never left his enemy, seeming to feast on his agony. Feodor Sergheievitch took his position in front of the prisoner, and standing with his hands behind him, viewed him with cold contempt.
“Make a full confession, knave,” he said scornfully, “for equivocation will avail nothing now. Where has your master hidden my daughter? Answer, for you are at our mercy!”
“Ay!” ejaculated the steward, sullenly, and without looking up; “your hour has come, and it will be as easy to die one way as another, so you are quick.”
“But we will not be quick,” replied the Russian, calmly; “we will be slow,—extremely slow, Polotsky. You shall die as traitors ought to die—as thieves and assassins always die! And be sure it will be ten times more slow—more agonizing—more terrific—if you do not confess. Every moment that you delay adds an hour to your torture, delays just so long the blessed relief of death, which is too good for you!”
Von Gaden and I said nothing, but stood there, silent witnesses of a scene which suggested to both of us the barbarism of the Tartar. We could not doubt, looking at the Russian’s cold, composed face, that he would torture his victim if he thought that it was necessary to do so, to extract information,—would torture him as readily as he would look at him. Polotsky lay there before him, cringing like a stricken beast. There was no doubt of his making a full confession, if it was possible for him to tell the truth at all before such a tribunal: his old master looking at him without mercy, and behind him his bitterest foe with a livid face, as ferocious in its longing for his blood as any wolf’s.
“Speak, brute!” exclaimed the boyar, harshly, glancing aside at the red-hot poker in his servant’s hand.