VI.
Andrew could hardly move with his sacks in the dark and narrow subterranean passage, through which he closely followed the Tartar. "We shall soon see our way," said the guide; "we are near the place where I left my lamp." A ray of light soon stole over the dark earthen wall. They reached a small square, which seemed to have been a chapel; at least a narrow table, like an altar, stood against the wall, and over it hung a Latin image of the Madonna, the painting of which had faded away and could hardly be traced. A email silver lamp, which hung before it, threw over it an uncertain light. The Tartar bent down and took up from the floor a brass candlestick, on a high thin foot, with snuffers, a nail for trimming the wick, and an extinguisher hung round it on chains. Taking up the candlestick, she lighted the candle at the lamp. The light grew brighter and they proceeded, lighted at one time by a blaze of the candle, at others enshrouded in a coal-black shadow, like the figures to be seen in the paintings of Girardo della Nette. The robust, fine features of Andrew, beaming with health and youth, offered a strong contrast to the emaciated pallid face of his companion. The passage had grown wider, so that Andrew could now hold himself erect. He looked with curiosity at the earthen walls. As in those of Kieff,[28] there were excavations, and coffins stood in them from distance to distance; at some places, even human bones were to be met with, grown soft by the dampness of the air and mouldered into powder. Here, too, seemed to have lived holy men, who had sought a refuge from the tempests of the world, from pain and temptation. At times the dampness was very perceptible, and sometimes they even had their feet in water. Andrew was often obliged to stop to give rest to his companion, whose lassitude immediately returned. A little morsel of bread which she had swallowed only caused pain to her stomach, which had become unaccustomed to food, and she often remained motionless for some minutes. At last they saw before them a small iron door. "Thanks be to Heaven! we are there!" said the Tartar in a fainting voice; she tried to raise her hand to knock and had not the strength to do it. Andrew, in her stead, gave a heavy blow on the door; it resounded with a rumbling noise, which indicated that there was a wide empty space behind the door, the sound changing its tones as if met by high arches. At length the door was opened; they were admitted by a monk, who stood on a narrow staircase with the key and a light in his hand. Andrew involuntarily stopped at the sight of a Latin monk, whose garb aroused the most bitter feelings of hatred and contempt in the Cossacks, who behaved towards them with still greater cruelty than towards the Jews. The monk also drew back a step at seeing a Zaporoghian Cossack. But a word indistinctly muttered by the Tartar quieted his fear. He shut the door after them, lighted them up the staircase, and they found themselves under the dark vaulted roof of the cloister church.
At one of the altars, decked with tapers in high candlesticks, knelt a priest in the attitude of prayer; on either side of him, also kneeling, were two young choristers, clad in violet mantles, with white lace capes, holding censers in their hands. The priest was imploring a miracle from Heaven: he prayed that God would preserve the city, strengthen the failing courage, send down patience and resignation to the hearts of the timid and pusillanimous, to support them under the misery He had sent. Some women, like so many phantoms, were on their knees, reclining and even drooping their heads on the backs of the stools and of the dark wooden benches before them. Some men, leaning against the columns which sustained the side arches, mournfully knelt also. A window with coloured glass, which was over the altar, was now lighted by the pink hue of morning, and from it fell, down upon the floor, blue, yellow, and variegated circles of light, which suddenly brightened the darkness of the church. The whole of the altar in its distant niche, seem drowned in light; the smoke of the incense hung in the air like a cloud beaming with all the hues of the rainbow. Andrew was fain to look from the dark corner where he was standing, on this remarkable phenomenon produced by light. At this moment the sublime pealing of the organ suddenly filled the whole of the church; it grew deeper and deeper, increased by degrees into the heavy rollings of thunder, and then, all at once, turning into a heavenly melody, sent up, higher and higher beneath the vaulted roof, its warbling notes, which recalled the delicate voices of maidens; then once more it changed into the deep bellow of thunder, and then it was silent; but the rollings of the thunder long after tremulously vibrated along the aisles, and Andrew with open mouth stood marvelling at the sublime music.
And now he felt somebody pull the skirt of his coat. "It is time," said the Tartar. They went across the church without any one paying attention to them, and came out on the square which was in front of it. The dawn had long ago spread its rosy tint over the sky; everything showed that the sun was about to rise. There was nobody in the square; in the middle of it remained some tables, which showed that, not longer than perhaps a week before, there had here been a market of victuals. As pavements were not used in those times, the ground was nothing but dried mud. The square was surrounded by small stone and clay houses, one story high, with walls, in which might be seen from top to bottom, the wooden piles and pillars, across which projected the wooden beams: houses such as used to be built then, may till now be seen in some towns of Lithuania and Poland. Almost all of them were covered by disproportionately high roofs, pierced all over with numbers of dormer windows. On one side, almost next to the church, rising above the other buildings, was an edifice quite distinct from the others, which seemed to be the town-hall of the city, or some other public establishment. It was two stories high, and above it rose a two-arched belvidere, where stood a sentry; a large sun-dial was fixed in the roof. The square seemed dead; but Andrew thought he heard a faint moaning. Looking on the other side, he saw a group of two or three men, who were lying quite motionless on the ground. He looked more attentively, to see if they were asleep or dead, and at the same time his foot stumbled against something which lay in his way. It was the corpse of a woman, who seemed to have been a Jewess. Her figure bespoke her to have been still young, though the macerated disfigured outlines of her face did not show it. Her head was covered with a red silk handkerchief; a double row of pearls or beads adorned the coverings of her ears;[29] two or three curling locks fell from under them on her shrivelled neck, on which the tightly drawn veins showed like sinews. Beside her lay a child, whose hand convulsively grasped her lank breast and twisted it with his fingers, in vain anger at finding there no milk. The child had ceased weeping and crying, and the slow heaving of its chest alone showed that it was not yet dead or, at least, that its last breath was yet to be drawn. Andrew and his companion turned into a street, and were suddenly stopped by a frantic man, who, seeing the precious burthen of Andrew, flew at him like a tiger and grasped him in his arms, shrieking aloud for bread; but his strength was not equal to his frenzy. Andrew shook off his grasp, and he fell on the ground. Moved by compassion, he threw him a loaf; the other darted like a mad dog upon it, gnawed and bit it, and, at the same moment and on the very spot, died in horrible convulsions from long disuse of taking food. Almost at every step they were shocked by the sight of hideous victims of hunger. It seemed that many could not endure their sufferings in their houses, and had run out into the streets, as if in hope to find something strengthening in the open air. At the doorway of a house sat an old woman, and one could not tell whether she were dead, asleep, or swooning; at least, she neither heard nor saw anything, but, with her head bent down over her chest, sat motionless on the same spot. From the roof of another house there was hanging from a rope a stretched and dried corpse. The miserable man had not been able to endure to the last the sufferings of hunger, and had chosen rather to quicken his end by voluntary suicide.
At seeing such horrifying evidences of the famine, Andrew could not refrain from asking the Tartar, "Had they, indeed, found nothing to lengthen their lives? When man comes to the last extremity, when nothing more remains, well, then he must feed upon what, till then, had appeared disgusting to him; he may even feed upon animals forbidden by the law—everything is then to be used for food."
"All is eaten up," answered the Tartar; "thou wilt not find a horse, a dog—no, not even a mouse left in the town. We never kept any provisions in town; everything was brought from the country."
"How, then, dying such fearful deaths, can they think of defending the town?"
"May be the voevoda would have surrendered it; but yesterday the colonel who garrisons Boodjiang sent a hawk into the town with a note saying not to surrender, as he is coming with his regiment to relieve it, and is only waiting for another colonel that they may come together. Now, we are expecting them every minute—but here we have reached the house."
Andrew had already noticed from a distance a house unlike the others, and which seemed to have been built by an Italian architect; it was two stories high and constructed of fine thin bricks. The windows of the lower story were encompassed in lofty granite projections; the whole of the upper story consisted of arches, which formed a gallery; between the arches were to be seen gratings with armorial bearings; the corners of the house were also adorned with coats of arms. An external wide staircase, built with painted bricks, came down to the very square. Beneath the staircase were sitting two sentries, who picturesquely and symmetrically held with one hand a halberd, and leaned their heads on the other, more like statues than living beings. They neither slept nor slumbered, but seemed to have lost all feeling; they did not even pay any attention to those who went upstairs. At the top of the staircase Andrew and the Tartar found a soldier, clad from head to foot in a rich dress, who held a prayer-book in his hand. He raised his heavy eyes on them; but the Tartar whispered a word to him and he dropped them again on the open pages of his prayer-book. They entered the first room, which was tolerably spacious and seemed to be the hall for the reception of petitioners, or, perhaps, simply the ante-room; it was crowded with soldiers, servants, huntsmen, cup-bearers, and other officials whose presence was necessary to denote the rank of a high nobleman, and who were sitting in different postures along the walls. There was the smell of a candle which had burned down in its socket, and, although the morning light had long since peeped in at the railed windows, two more candles were burning in enormous candelabras almost the size of a man.