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resolute. Poor girl! Her motive for the journey must be urgent indeed! But
though she may be brave--and she certainly is so--her strength must fail her,
and, to say nothing of dangers and obstacles, she will be unable to endure the
fatigue of such a journey. Never can she reach Irkutsk!"
Indulging in such reflections, Michael Strogoff wandered on as chance led
him; being well acquainted with the town, he knew that he could easily retrace
his steps.
Having strolled on for about an hour, he seated himself on a bench
against the wall of a large wooden cottage, which stood, with many others, on
a vast open space. He had scarcely been there five minutes when a hand was
laid heavily on his shoulder.
"What are you doing here?" roughly demanded a tall and powerful man, who
had approached unperceived.
"I am resting," replied Michael Strogoff.
"Do you mean to stay all night on the bench?"
"Yes, if I feel inclined to do so," answered Michael Strogoff, in a tone
somewhat too sharp for the simple merchant he wished to personate.
"Come forward, then, so I can see you," said the man.
Michael Strogoff, remembering that, above all, prudence was requisite,
instinctively drew back. "It is not necessary," he replied, and calmly stepped
back ten paces.
The man seemed, as Michael observed him well, to have the look of a
Bohemian, such as are met at fairs, and with whom contact, either physical or
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moral, is unpleasant. Then, as he looked more attentively through the dusk, he
perceived, near the cottage, a large caravan, the usual traveling dwelling of
the Zingaris or gypsies, who swarm in Russia wherever a few copecks can be
obtained.
As the gypsy took two or three steps forward, and was about to
interrogate Michael Strogoff more closely, the door of the cottage opened. He
could just see a woman, who spoke quickly in a language which Michael Strogoff
knew to be a mixture of Mongol and Siberian.
"Another spy! Let him alone, and come to supper. The papluka is waiting
for you."
Michael Strogoff could not help smiling at the epithet bestowed on him,
dreading spies as he did above all else.
In the same dialect, although his accent was very different, the Bohemian
replied in words which signify, "You are right, Sangarre! Besides, we start
to-morrow."
"To-morrow?" repeated the woman in surprise.
"Yes, Sangarre," replied the Bohemian; "to-morrow, and the Father himself
sends us--where we are going!"
Thereupon the man and woman entered the cottage, and carefully closed the
door.
"Good!" said Michael Strogoff, to himself; "if these gipsies do not wish
to be understood when they speak before me, they had better use some other
language."
From his Siberian origin, and because he had passed his childhood in the
Steppes, Michael Strogoff, it has been said, understood almost all the
languages in usage from Tartary to the Sea of Ice. As to the exact
signification of the words he had heard, he did not trouble his head. For why
should it interest him?
It was already late when he thought of returning to his inn to take some
repose. He followed, as he did so, the course of the Volga, whose waters were
almost hidden under the countless number of boats floating on its bosom.
An hour after, Michael Strogoff was sleeping soundly on one of those
Russian beds which always seem so hard to strangers, and on the morrow, the
17th of July, he awoke at break of day.
He had still five hours to pass in Nijni-Novgorod; it seemed to him an
age. How was he to spend the morning unless in wandering, as he had done the
evening before, through the streets? By the time he had finished his
breakfast, strapped up his bag, had his podorojna inspected at the police
office, he would have nothing to do but start. But he was not a man to lie in
bed after the sun had risen; so he rose, dressed himself, placed the letter
with the imperial arms on it carefully at the bottom of its usual pocket
within the lining of his coat, over which he fastened his belt; he then closed
his bag and threw it over his shoulder. This done, he had no wish to return to
the City of Constantinople, and intending to breakfast on the bank of the
Volga near the wharf, he settled his bill and left the inn. By way of
precaution, Michael Strogoff went first to the office of the steam-packet
company, and there made sure that the Caucasus would start at the appointed
hour. As he did so, the thought for the first time struck him that, since the
young Livonian girl was going to Perm, it was very possible that her intention
was also to embark in the Caucasus, in which case he should accompany her.
The town above with its kremlin, whose circumference measures two versts,
and which resembles that of Moscow, was altogether abandoned. Even the
governor did not reside there. But if the town above was like a city of the
dead, the town below, at all events, was alive.
Michael Strogoff, having crossed the Volga on a bridge of boats, guarded
by mounted Cossacks, reached the square where the evening before he had fallen
in with the gipsy camp. This was somewhat outside the town, where the fair of
Nijni-Novgorod was held. In a vast plain rose the temporary palace of the
governor-general, where by imperial orders that great functionary resided
during the whole of the fair, which, thanks to the people who composed it,
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required an ever-watchful surveillance. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]