XXV: MICHAUD’S REPENTANCE
WHEN we reached the street Maître le Bastien stopped, panting and wiping the cold perspiration from his forehead.
“Lack-a-day, M. le Marquis, you have undone us now!” he cried, between his gasps. “These Russians—holy Virgin! to tell the prince, to his face, that you had married this Princess Daria, and to defy him, too! And he’s on the crest of the wave, and just declared the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, in the place of Larion Ivanof!”
“Precisely, monsieur,” I replied, smiling, “and let him desert the Czarevna Sophia for the pursuit of the Princess Daria,—of my wife,—and he will find that his house is of cards and falls at a breath.”
The force of this argument struck even the goldsmith, and he was silent for a moment, but the next his equilibrium was again destroyed by the sudden appearance of a band of Streltsi at the further end of the street. He seized me by the arm, without ceremony, and hurried me into a deserted garden close at hand, and there, drawing me into the shadow of the stone wall, he began to recount the horrors of the preceding day, many of which I had witnessed, and to argue from this point that I was powerless to save the Princess Daria, and that my marriage was of as little moment as the cooing of two pigeons on the stone arch over our heads.
“The power of the Naryshkins has all crumbled to pieces; Matveief is dead, and Dolgoruky. Athanasius Naryshkin, the czarina’s brother, was betrayed by the dwarf, Homyak, and cut to pieces in the Cathedral of the Assumption. Even the patriarch barely escaped; they are determined to have Ivan Naryshkin and the Jew Von Gaden. They killed the privy councillor Ivanof, and his son, and two lieutenant-colonels on the portico, between the banqueting-hall and the Cathedral of the Annunciation; the Boyar Ramodanofsky is butchered, the Boyars Soltykof, father and son; Peter Naryshkin, and—this morning—Kirillof and Dr. Gutemensch, and there are others—by the score. They declare to-day that the serfs shall be free, and now ’tis thought that many slaves will betray their masters; it was a servant who betrayed the elder Soltykof. ’Tis just as I predicted: the devils are let loose and no man can curb them, and Sophia Alexeievna is the only one in the royal family equal to facing the crisis; she alone can plead with and influence these beasts, and yet you think to get the Princess Daria from her!” The good man threw up his hands with an expression of despair.
Outside the garden wall I heard the Streltsi screaming and singing as they passed—a tipsy crowd. About us the weeds and plants grew thickly and almost blocked the doors and windows of a deserted house. One great clump of bushes opposite choked the entrance to the cellar.
“I have seen enough, and been through enough, to realise my difficulties,” I said calmly, “but what is a man’s right arm for, Maître le Bastien, if it be not to fight in a good cause? I will not allow even Sophia to snatch my wife away, and I will not leave her in the hands of her enemies. But tell me, how fares it with you? I would not imperil you.”
“I am safe enough,” he replied at once. “Galitsyn will protect me; against me he has no quarrel, and has sent some Streltsi already to keep my house from the mob. I fear nothing for myself, but you, monsieur, you are lost!”
I laughed, although my reflections were grim enough.