He shrugged his shoulders. “The Streltsi reign, excellency,” he replied, “and the Czarevna Sophia. The Czarevitch Ivan and the Czar Peter will be crowned together, as lords and czars, and she, too, will rule—as the cat”—Maluta stretched out his hand like a cat’s paw—“rules the mice, and Galitsyn is a great prince and fair in her eyes, and the Naryshkins run like rats, and men dare not squeak—but the master goldsmith is safe.”
And so Maître le Bastien’s letters told me and something more. There were despatches from my cousin in France; Mme. de Montespan had fallen and Mme. de Maintenon would befriend me; the king was inclined to clemency, the scandal of the duel had blown over, more money was forwarded from my estates, and I could come home! It would have been a joyful summons two months ago, but now—I tore the letter, for the goldsmith had added some sage advice and urged M. le Marquis to go back to France.
“Peste!” I exclaimed, tossing away the fragments of the letter, “I go south to-morrow—to the land of the nightingale and the despot!”
The dwarf plucked at my coat.
“I—I also, go with you, O my master!” he said.
XXXV: THE DWARF AND I
FOR three days and nights the dwarf and I rode southward, and ever southward, and so long and tedious was the journey and so eternal the sameness of the level landscape that it seemed as if we rode and rode, without ever advancing a day’s journey. Ah! those steppes of southern Russia, wide and level and unending; sweeping away from us on every side, until they seemed to drop over the rim of the world. They were green then, for it was June, and the cattle grazed where, after a while, there would be only a dry desert swept by the south winds. Not a tree grew near us, only in the upper courses of the rivers was there timber, and the moujiks burned straw and dried dung.
And while we rode the dwarf chattered to me of the power of the great Prince Voronin, and the rumours, current on the back stairs of the palace, of Sophia’s jealousy of Prince Galitsyn, and his love for the Princess Daria. A conversation that furnished gall and wormwood in plenty for my diet, and while showing me the insignificance of my cause and my efforts, only served to make me the more obstinate; for I have that in me that will not yield. As I journeyed, however, I reflected that I was no longer a youth, nor so handsome and graceful as to please a young girl’s eye at once, and here my rank and fortune counted as nothing. I found myself examining my suit—a plain and dark one of taffeta—such as a gentleman might wear on a journey, but not fit for the great occasion of wooing a princess, yet the change of apparel, that I had provided, was scarcely more gaudy, and I grew peevish, remembered that I had grey hairs besides, and a stern cast of countenance, and was almost tempted to ask Maluta’s opinion, but forbore.
Yet, for all my ill-humour at my own appearance, which was that of a soldier rather than a courtier, I could not mend matters, and so went on, pushing forward as rapidly as I could, for something warned me not to linger on the road. We passed through the hamlets as quickly as we could, being ever assailed there by the curious and the idle, and, indeed, but for the need of supplies, I would not have troubled them. Thus we lay ever at night under the stars and found no inconvenience, save on the last night of our journey, when we were already on the outskirts of the prince’s domain. We had learned, by diligent inquiry, that his party had preceded us by two days only, and that there were women in it, so I pressed on, and when we were but a day’s journey from the great house of Voronin, we lay in a deserted hut to pass the night. Here there were trees about us, sparsely set, but gigantic, and the prince’s château was but a short distance from the village below us, where the serfs dwelt together, they who tilled the fields about us, and served him night and day.
It was that evening while we were at supper that I asked Maluta if he would follow me to France, and, at the question, his small face seemed to wither, his eyes rolled, and his great wing-like ears quivered.