Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories Part 32

FIRST FRAGMENT

I.

This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II., in our days of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of vodka, and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had distributed tea, other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded, without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in all branches of human activities, great men--generals, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial calling or purpose--sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when, at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion, confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals,--when menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,--when in all the cities dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's eloquence,--when in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion of public matters,--when periodicals sprang up under the most diversified standards,--periodicals that evolved European principles on a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world conception,--when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all names seemed to be exhausted,--"The Messenger," and "The Word," and "The Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star," and "The Eagle," and many more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time, when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden, and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the year '56 they called every concourse of circ.u.mstances, of which no one could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities, censors.h.i.+p, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emanc.i.p.ation, and many more:--everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in indescribable ecstasy.

That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia of the nineteenth century,--the first time, when in the year '12 we repulsed Napoleon I., and the second time, when in the year '56 we were repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he has not lived who has not lived through the great French Revolution, I venture to say that he who has not lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived through that time, but was one of the actors of that period. Not only did he pa.s.s several weeks in one of the blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a work on the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in which he described clearly and minutely how the soldiers fired their guns from the bastions, how the wounds were dressed at the ambulance, and how they buried people in the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,--a rocket establishment,--where he cut the laurels for his deeds. He saw the transports of the two capitals and of the whole nation, and experienced in his person to what extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The mighty of this world sought his friends.h.i.+p, pressed his hands, gave him dinners, urged him to come to their houses, and, in order to learn the details of the war from him, informed him of their own sentimentalities.

Consequently the writer of these lines can appreciate that great and memorable time. But that is another matter.

At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh were standing at the entrance of the best Moscow hotel. A young man ran through the door, to find out about quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with two ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith Bridge in the days of the French. It was the continuation of a conversation started as they entered Moscow, and now the old man with the white beard, in his unb.u.t.toned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation in the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight. His wife and daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door with some impatience. The young man emerged from the door with the porter and room servant.

"Well, Sergyey," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated face out into the glare of the lamplight.

Either because it was his habit, or because he did not wish the porter to take him for a lackey on account of the short fur coat which he wore, Sergyey replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else concerned him:

"There was no theatre then."

"Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:

"Madame Chalme was in Tverskaya Street--"

Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh.

"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."

The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked around him.

"Do step out!"

He pulled his cap down, and submissively pa.s.sed through the door. The porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either side, Natalya Nikolaevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her laughing and by her calling the old man father.

"Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."

On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her."

Their son, Sergyey, had attended to all the material conditions on the road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran up-stairs again, s.h.i.+vering in the cold and taking two or three steps at a time with his long, youthful legs. Natalya Nikolaevna asked him not to catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.

"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he asked.

His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.

"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."

The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated steps, and seated himself in a chair.

"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them up, and to-morrow we shall send Serezha with a note to sister Marya Ivanovna, to the Nikitins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right, Natasha? But now, fix things!"

"To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all you will go to ma.s.s," said his wife, kneeling in front of a trunk and opening it.

"That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all of us go to the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption. Thus will our return begin. O Lord! When I think of the day when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption! Do you remember, Natasha? But that is another matter."

And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair, on which he had just seated himself.

"Now we must settle down!"

And without doing anything, he kept walking from one room to another.

"Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and do you want to rest?"

"Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from the trunk. "You wanted to go to the bath-house, did you not?"

"Yes--in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Serezha, go and find out whether there is still a bath-house near Stone Bridge. This room here Serezha and I shall occupy. Serezha! Will you be comfortable here?"

But Serezha had gone to find out about the bath-house.

"No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not have a straight pa.s.sage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Natasha?"

"Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right," Natasha said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things.

But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the arrival had evoked in him.

"Look there,--don't mix up Serezha's things! You have thrown his snow-shoes down in the drawing-room." And he himself picked them up and with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters depended upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to make them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick to it, and, the moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door.

Natalya Nikolaevna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the fall, she said:

"Sonya, darling, pick them up!"

"Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I will go to the landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with him."

"You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?"

Pierre a.s.sented.

"Sonya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything."

"Chevalier, papa," said Sonya, ready to go out.

Natalya Nikolaevna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage, in pa.s.sing Sonya, had time to whisper to her:

"Do not go yourself, but send a man!"

While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under the pretext of aiding his consort, in crus.h.i.+ng a garment of hers and in stumbling against an empty box. Steadying himself with his hand against the wall, the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but Sonya was looking at him with such smiling eyes that she seemed to be waiting for permission to laugh. He readily granted her that permission, and himself burst out into such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with him. This laughter animated the old man still more. He discovered that the divan in the room for his wife and daughter was not standing very conveniently for them, although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to calm himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands to help a peasant to change the position of that piece of furniture, the landlord, a Frenchman, entered the room.

"You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in proof of his indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out his handkerchief, slowly unfolded it, and slowly cleared his nose.

"Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Ivanovich, stepping up toward him, "you see, we do not know ourselves how long we are going to stay here, I and my wife--" and Peter Ivanovich, who had the weakness of seeing a neighbour in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs to him.

M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and was not interested in the information communicated to him by Peter Ivanovich, but the good French which Peter Ivanovich spoke (the French language, as is known, is something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner somewhat raised the landlord's opinion about the newcomers.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.