“Who was Pugachev?”
“Who knows, we are dark people. We heard from our fathers and grandfathers nothing but Pugachev and Pugachev.... You know the old story. My father died forty years ago and he was ninety years old when he died.... And he was still a boy when Pugachev appeared. Count now, how long ago it was.”
“A hundred and twenty years, grandsir.”
“Yes, a hundred and twenty,—and more!... Pugachev was a stern man. Oh, so stern. You know, he didn’t love the landowners. He’d go into a village. ‘Give me your lords!’ If the peasants hid them,—God forbid! Cruel.... My father, God bless him, once told me there were two villages side by side. The people of one guessed right. They took the ikon and went to meet him, ringing the bells. He pardoned them, rewarded them, gave them a charter of his favor.... Ours didn’t; the fools didn’t meet him and he burned the whole village.”
The old man suddenly looked at me, saw my watchchain and the notebook in which I began to jot down the main points of his story,—and he suddenly took off his cap and said:
“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake!”
“What’s the matter, grandsir?”
“That wasn’t so, perhaps.... We’re dark people; how should we know?... Perhaps he never said it.... But it is true that he was stern.... He loved order....”
The old man seemed to be afraid that the gentleman would condemn him for familiar stories about the high qualities of Pugachev, who “loved order” and issued “charters of his favor”....
I succeeded in calming his anxiety, and we continued to talk. The old man proved communicative. His memory kept much curious lore and his simple answers revealed that same vague atmosphere which filled the place: a feeling of pardoning and timid lack of comprehension, of vague questioning and of prayer for those who lie here, under the earth, and perchance had been executed as punishment for crime or perchance had laid down their lives for a cause punishable here on earth but counted holy and righteous there.