“All well,” said the blacksmith; then, with a glance at the forge—“except the—; but that’s not much after all.—Come in, gentlemen, come in.”
We entered, and found Marika as neat and thrifty as ever, though with a touch of care about her pretty face which had not been there when I first met her.
A few words explained the cause of their trouble.
“Sir,” said Petroff, addressing me, but evidently speaking at Nicholas, “we unfortunate Bulgarians have hard times of it just now. The Turk has oppressed and robbed and tortured and murdered us in time past, and now the Russian who has come to deliver us is, it seems to me, completing our ruin. What between the two we poor wretches have come to a miserable pass indeed.”
He turned full on Nicholas, unable to repress a fierce look.
“Friend,” said Nicholas gently, but firmly, “the chances of war are often hard to bear, but you ought to recognise a great difference between the sufferings which are caused by wilful oppression, and those which are the unavoidable consequences of a state of warfare.”
“Unavoidable!” retorted the blacksmith bitterly. “Is it not possible for the Russians to carry supplies for their armies, instead of demanding all our cattle for beef and all our harvests for fodder?”
“Do we not pay you for such things?” asked Nicholas, in the tone of a man who wishes to propitiate his questioner.
“Yes, truly, but nothing like the worth of what you take; besides, of what value are a few gold pieces to me? My wife and children cannot eat gold, and there is little or nothing left in the land to buy. But that is not the worst. Your Cossacks receive nothing from your Government for rations, and are allowed to forage as they will. Do you suppose that, when in want of anything, they will stop to inquire whether it belongs to a Bulgarian or not? When the war broke out, and your troops crossed the river, my cattle and grain were bought up, whether I would or no, by your soldiers. They were paid for—underpaid, I say—but that I cared not for, as they left me one milch-cow and fodder enough to keep her. Immediately after that a band of your lawless and unrationed Cossacks came, killed the cow, and took the forage, without paying for either. After that, the Moldavians, who drive your waggon-supplies for you—a lawless set of brigands when there are no troops near to watch them,—cleaned my house of every scrap that was worth carrying away. What could I do? To kill a dozen of them would have been easy, but that would not have been the way to protect my wife and children.”
The man laid his great hand tenderly on Ivanka’s head, while he was speaking in his deep earnest voice; and Nicholas, who was well aware of the truth of his remarks about the Cossacks and the waggon-drivers of the army, expressed such genuine feeling and regret for the sufferings with which the household had been visited, that Petroff was somewhat appeased.