Said they: "We do not ourselves know, as yet, what thing we shall undertake; only, trust in God, and perchance the Imperial word will not be put to shame through us." And thus did Platoff use crafty mental shifts, and the men of Tula likewise.
Platoff shifted and shuffled, shifted and shuffled, and perceived, at last, that to out-shift and out-shuffle a Tula man was beyond his powers; so he gave them the snuff-box with the nymfozoria, and said: "Well, there's nothing else to be done; be it according to your will. I know you—what sort of fellows ye are—but there's nothing else to be done; I trust you, only look to it that you will not exchange the diamond, and will not spoil the delicate English work, and that you will not be long about the job, for I travel fast; two weeks will not have passed before I shall return from the quiet Don to Petrograd, and then you must, without fail, let me have something to show to the Emperor."
The gunsmiths reassured him fully.
"We will not injure the delicate work," said they, "and we will not exchange the diamond, and two weeks is time enough for us; and against that occasion of your return you shall have something worthy to show to the Emperor's Magnificence." But, all the same, they did not say precisely what that something was to be.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] An untranslatable word, but frequently rendered as "dear little father." Count L. N. Tolstoy said to me that there were only two genuine Russian titles—"batiushka" and "matushka." In ordinary life, nowadays, they are the special titles of priests and their wives. But the Tzar and Tzaritza are so called in ceremonious national songs, and are so addressed, by peasants, as in the olden days.
VI
Platoff departed from Tula; and three of the gunsmiths, the most skilful of them all—one a squint-eyed, left-handed smith with a birth-mark on his cheek and the hair upon his temples plucked out in the course of his apprenticeship—bade their comrades and their households farewell, and saying nothing to any one, took their wallets, placed therein the necessary food, and disappeared from the town. The only point about them which was remarked was, that they did not proceed towards the Moscow barrier, but in the opposite direction, towards Kieff; and it was supposed that they had betaken themselves to Kieff in order to do reverence to the departed Saints, or to take counsel there with some of the living holy men who are always present in Kieff, in vast abundance.
But this was only approximately true, not the truth itself. Neither the time nor the distance allowed of the Tula artisans making the three weeks' trip on foot to Kieff, and afterwards executing a piece of work which should put the English nation to shame. Better would it have been to go to Moscow, which is distant only "twice ninety versts," to pray, since departed Saints not a few repose there, also. But in the other direction, Oryol lies another "twice ninety versts," and from Oryol to Kieff is a good five hundred versts more. Such a road is not to be speedily traversed, and having traversed it, one recovers not quickly—the feet will remain like glass, and the hands will tremble for a long time thereafter.