"I wish to take my part in it."
"What wilfulness! Of course you imagine lives are going to be risked, and must needs stake yours for sake of the glory. Well, stay here. You shall see. Herr Pushkin!" And she turned her back upon him, as if in anger, while making the introduction.
Zeneida was the accredited agent of the whole union. Whom she invited to her palace was received as a "Brother"; to whom she confided any work was ranked among the "Men"; but to take part in secret conferences and to be promoted to be a "Bojar" required a further recommendation.
"Who else stands security for him?" asked Prince Ghedimin.
"I," answered Ryleieff.
Upon which room was at once made for Pushkin at the table.
His was a fine head. The curly hair and form of the nose recalled the African blood which ran in his veins, one of his forefathers having taken to wife a daughter of Hannibal, the negro slave promoted by Peter the Great to be a general. His eyes were dark and deep-set, yet, despite the irregular features, one could trace in the expression a resemblance to Byron. Pushkin was in love with Zeneida—that is, he raved about her. Zeneida was deeply in love with Pushkin, therefore she did not want him really to love her.
A word will clear up this seeming paradox. Zeneida knew too well that he who united his fate to hers must inevitably meet some dark doom, in the background of which loomed the scaffold. Finland had been reduced to subjection by the same power against which these secret societies were waging war, and Zeneida could still remember her mother's tears, and the plain black coffin brought by stealth to her home one dark night, wherein lay the corpse of a headless man for whom they dared not even mourn. Only when she was grown up had she learned that that man was her father. She loved Pushkin far too dearly to lead him on that perilous path on which men risk their heads. She had dreamed of a happier, sunnier lot for him. She had long detected in the wild, restless youth that genius that had not been given him to make the lion of a lady's boudoir—a genius which belonged, not to Russia only, but to the whole world. A poet was not thus to be wasted. Why load the gun with a charge of diamonds when common lead would answer the purpose equally well, nay, better!
"Gentlemen," said Zeneida, addressing those assembled. "I will first request our brother Ryleieff to read to us the verses we are to spread among the people. To prepare the minds of the people is, indeed, the main object." (General applause.)
Ryleieff, the poet, a fair, slim, handsome young man, here rising, produced the verses he had written.