# The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
IVAN'S HORIZON WIDENS.
"Behind the orphan, God himself bears a purse."—Russian Proverb.
NO child ever dreams of being grateful for food and shelter, unless taught by the sad experience of destitution. The little guest expects to be welcomed to the feast of life, and even assumes that the board has been spread on purpose for him. Ivan was no exception to the rule: hitherto he had received the devotion and tenderness of those around him as a matter of course; perhaps indeed he was in danger of exacting them as a right, and of becoming, as he grew older, proud and overbearing. But now a change had come. If he knew that he was noble, he had also gained a glimpse of the great truth that "Noblesse oblige." He had begun to reflect, and to some purpose.
"Bativshka," he said one day to the starost, "why was it you were afraid to let the lord Zoubof or the steward Dmitri know who I was?"
"Because they might have killed you, Barrinka, out of spite and jealousy, knowing that your father was our lord before Zoubof came."
"But would they have done anything to you, bativshka, for taking care of me?"
"Oh! as to that I don't know. Perhaps I might have had the knout."
Ivan bent down and kissed the old man's hand.
​The next morning, when the family rose early to begin the toils of the harvest, Ivan rose with them. "I am going to the field," he quietly observed, putting on his oldest garments.
All protested, especially mativshka, whose love for her foster-child amounted to weakness.
"Dmitri and Vasil and little Peter are going, and they are all younger than I am," said Ivan.
"But they are only little mujiks," she answered. "They must work hard for their bit of rye bread and their bowl of kasha. It was for that God made them."
"Boyars work too; I am a boyar," said Ivan, raising his fair head proudly; and he went with the rest.
To do him justice, he bore himself bravely in the field, although the unaccustomed toil wearied him quickly, and it was tantalizing to find himself so easily outdone by Michael's stronger limbs and more practised hands. Yet, after all, it was no great hardship to bind the sheaves along with Anna Popovna all the morning, and at noon to share with her his dinner of okroshka.
But harvest-time does not last for ever. At length all the sheaves were gathered in: the wheat to be sold for the profit of the lord of the soil; the rye to be transformed into the black bread, the kvass, the kasha, which were the staple of the mujik's diet;—for, as they said themselves in one of their terse though homely proverbs, "Wheat picks and chooses, but Mother Rye feeds all fools alike." Then the long blank winter settled down over Nicolofsky, which, like the rest of Russia, "lay numb beneath the snow" for many a month in the year.
During this silent, dreary season the industrious fingers of the girls and women found occupation in spinning and weaving. The lads too made lapti, wove rude baskets, and prepared firewood; and these occupations were often pursued in social gatherings, and lightened with jest and song and story. Still ​there was abundant leisure, in which the young people amused themselves with games of babshky—little pieces of mutton bone, which they used as English children use nine-pins—while their elders sat beside the stoves, and too often enlivened their gossip with much vodka. In this respect, however, Nicolofsky contrasted rather favourably with other villages, since the starost and the pope were both temperate men and set a good example.
They were great friends, and during their long confidential talks one question often came uppermost, What was to be done with Ivan when he grew up? In a country like Russia, where sons almost invariably followed the calling of their fathers, and every man's position was assigned him by the fact of his birth, it was peculiarly difficult to find a niche for a waif like Ivan. A mujik, of course, he could never be; nor a priest, since he was not a popovitch, or priest's son; nor a merchant, that would have been a terrible degradation for one who was born a boyar; nor a soldier, for his village friends had not the influence necessary to procure him a commission, while had he been drawn for a recruit they would at once have provided a substitute. But Ivan was not old enough to share these perplexities. The knowledge that he was by birth a boyar, with the desire, sincere though ignorant and wavering, to be worthy of his destiny, sufficed him for the present.
Thus two long winters passed away. A second spring had come, heralded by the eight days of drinking and carousing which the Russians call the Mässlanitza, or "Butter-week." Then the long fast went slowly by. At last came the crown of the Russian year, with Easter eggs, and joyous greetings, and manifold festivities.
One fine evening, a few weeks after, a kibitka, or rude one-horse vehicle, drove up to the starost's door. Its occupant, a well-dressed man, whose hair and beard of iron gray showed him past the prime of life, flung the rope that served him for a ​rein on the horse's neck, and entered the izba. He first made his reverence to the sacred picture in the corner, then courteously saluted the starost and his wife, who, without speaking, placed some bread and salt on a carved wooden trencher and offered them to him. He tasted both; and this indispensable ceremony performed, he began at once to make known his errand.
"God save you, Alexis Vasilovitch!" he said to the starost. "Do you chance to remember in your early youth one Feodor Petrovitch, who was born here?"
"Feodor Petrovitch?" repeated the starost, stroking his beard meditatively.
"Feodor Petrovitch?" cried his wife. "Yes, I think I remember him. Had he coal-black hair, and eyes like an eagle's?"
"That he had; but the hair is now snow-white, and the eagle eyes—well, no marvel, they served him fourscore years.—I am his eldest son, Ivan Petrovitch."
"Ah, I too remember him now!" said the starost, "though, like my wife, I was but a child when he went away. Many a time our old folk have told us how our good lord, Prince Pojarsky, the last but one, took such notice of him on account of his bright face and clever ways—how he had him taught to read and write and to count up money. At last he took him away somewhere, so that after he came to man's estate Nicolofsky knew him no more."
"All quite true. The prince sent him to Moscow, and when his education was finished he gave him a sum of money to trade with. My father quickly doubled it; and, unlike most men, he brought every kopeck honestly to his lord. 'Go on and prosper,' said the prince. 'Take that money with thee and double it again.' He did so. Then said the prince, 'Feodor Petrovitch, thou hast paid me thy last obrok. From this day thou art free.' He divided the money into two parts, declaring ​himself well satisfied with half, and leaving the other half to my father to start with on his own account. Large hearts had the Princes of Pojarsky, one and all, God rest their souls! From that day all things prospered with my father; and now he and his have silver and gold more than enough for their needs. For he has sons and sons' sons, all prosperous—one here and one there, as God wills. About fifteen days ago, tidings reached him, through Dmitri, Zoubof's steward, which filled his aged heart with joy. The grandson of our lord is living still, and among you. I am come the bearer of my father's earnest prayer that you would give the boy to him. It will be his pride and pleasure to have him taught all that a young noble ought to know, and so to maintain and provide for him that he may go without shame among his equals, and live the kind of life that is right for such as he. And I, the son of Petrovitch, say that therein my father will do well. Since every rouble and kopeck we have came from Prince Pojarsky, it is right that some should go back to his heir. But my father prays of you to send him the little lad at once, while yet he can see his face, for God's hand is fast drawing down a curtain over his aged eyes. What say you, Starost Alexis Vasilovitch?"
The starost paused. At length he said firmly, though in a broken voice—"That we love our little lord too well not to send him with you—ay, and that thankfully, though it wrings our hearts to part with him. Ah! here he comes himself.—Ivan Barrinka, this good man will take you with him to Moscow the holy, and make of you that which it is your birth-right to be."
Petrovitch gazed admiringly on the tall, graceful figure of the handsome lad, now about fourteen, and looking considerably older. "Praise be to God!" he said. "That is a goodly shoot from the old stem."
Ivan's face changed rapidly from pale to red, and from red ​again to pale. At last he said, "Bativshka, I will do what you think I ought."
"Then, dear child, you will go from us; for like should ever dwell with like."
But the old foster-mother lifted up her voice in lamentation, mingling her tears for her "little dove," her nursling, her treasure, with regrets that his shirts were not in order, that the new socks they had been knitting for him in the winter were not finished, and that his boots wanted mending.
"We will see to all that in the city, good mother," said Petrovitch, unable to repress a smile, as he pictured the extraodinary transformation Ivan's outer man would have to undergo before he could take his pleasure in the Kremlin gardens with the élite of Moscow society.
Hospitality is a plant that nourishes luxuriantly in Russian soil, and seems to find the smoky atmosphere of the izba as congenial as the clearer air of the palace. It was with great difficulty that Petrovitch could fix his departure for the next day but one; but a single day of rest for himself and of preparation for Ivan was all that the starost's importunities could obtain from him, since he knew his father's anxiety about the result of his mission.
That evening, in the starost's cottage, there was much baking of wheaten bread, of cakes called kissel, and of greasy, indigestible pastry called pirogua. There was also a great slaughter,—a sheep, a couple of sucking pigs, and quite a multitude of fowls were sacrificed on the altar of hospitality; for the whole of Nicolofsky would no doubt assist at the festival of the next day, not in the French, but in the English sense of the word. Huge buckets of kvass were of course prepared; and it might have been better if this harmless beverage had not been supplemented by a plentiful supply of vodka.
Next day began, not unworthily, with a service in the church, a kind of farewell to Ivan and compliment to Petrovitch. But ​its remaining hours were wholly given up to revelry, and it is to be feared that but few sober men went to rest that night in Nicolofsky. Meanwhile Ivan bade farewell to the friends and playfellows of his childhood. With Anna Popovna his parting was a tearful one. He kissed her again and again, and vowed that he would come back and marry her as soon as his beard was grown.
"God be praised!" said her mother, who was standing by. "See how St. Nicholas protects the innocent, and will not let him take the sin of a false vow upon his soul! He does not dream, poor child, that his beard will never grow at all, since he is born a boyar, who will have to shave it off every morning—worse luck for him."
But the saddest and most tender farewells were spoken at daybreak on the following morning, when Ivan was kissed and wept over by his foster-parents, and by all their immediate family. His own eyes were dim as he took his place in the kibitka beside Petrovitch; and when he turned to look his last upon the brown cottages of Nicolofsky, he could scarcely see them through his tears.
"But the winds of the morn blew away the tear." By-and-by Ivan cheered up a little. He roused himself to listen to his companion's stories of the great city, and began to be interested, and even to ask questions.
There was not much in the incidents of their journey to engage or rivet his attention. They crossed the Oka upon a raft—horse, kibitka, and all—but not at the spot so well remembered by Ivan as the scene of his adventure. After that came the long monotonous Moscow road, where everything seemed to Ivan always the same. Only that his senses assured him he was moving, and that rapidly, he would have fancied himself fixed in the centre of the same horizon, which was revolving around him eternally and unchangingly. Plains of sand, forests of birch or pine, went by in endless succession, merely diversified ​here and there by some pasture lands, or by a brown village built upon the pattern of Nicolofsky. On one occasion, however, they passed a company of horsemen carrying long lances, and clad in gray cloaks, with ample hoods drawn over their heads.
"Who are these?" Ivan asked with interest.
"Cossacks. I suppose they are going to join the army. They had better have stayed at home now that peace is being made with the French. That unlucky peace!" he grumbled, touching his horse rather unnecessarily with his long whip.
"Why do you say that? I thought peace was always a good thing. We have a proverb in Nicolofsky, 'A bad peace is better than a good quarrel.'"
"A bad peace with your enemies sometimes means a worse quarrel with your best friends.—On, my little pope! Now, now, my beauty, my darling, mind what you are about. Gee up, you barbarian!" This to his horse, the wheel of the kibitka having stuck fast in a deep rut. A touch of the whip, this time in earnest, and the horse bounded on, freeing the wheel with a jolt that brought Ivan to his feet, and shook peace and war alike out of his thoughts. But Petrovitch, more accustomed to the ordinary incidents of travel, presently resumed the thread of his discourse.
"What does peace with France mean? War with England, for one thing. And that—what does that mean? Our ports shut up, our trade destroyed. No market for our timber, our corn, our tallow, our furs. Ruin, ruin!" groaned the merchant.
"I have heard of France," said Ivan. "But England—what is that?"
"England is a great, rich, beautiful country, with the sea like a wall of defence built by the hand of God all around it. The King of England hates Napoleon, and has sworn before the picture of his saint never to make peace with him."
​"I have heard of Napoleon too," said Ivan. "The recruits who left our village said they were going to fight against him. Pope Nikita thinks he is a magician."
"Pope Nikita thinks truly. It is said he has for his wife a beautiful lady named Josephine, who transforms herself at will into the likeness of a white dove, flies into the midst of his enemies, hears all they say, and comes back and tells her lord. No one can resist him; the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia are both at his feet, and he has conquered all the other kings and dukes of the Nyemtzi, except the King of England."
"But the Czar—why does not the Czar send his soldiers and tell them to kill him?" queried Ivan.
"Not so easy!" Petrovitch answered with a short laugh. "However, there is little to be said after all. Russia has fought him long and well. If the devil helps his own, what can good orthodox Christians do? Think of Austerlitz, Eylau, Friedland—blood and tears have flowed in torrents. I know a widow who lost her two sons at Austerlitz. Another;—but why speak of these things? War is always terrible."
"Then why don't you wish for peace?"
"A good peace might be very desirable, but save us from a peace that will ruin our commerce!" cried Petrovitch with energy. "The Czar has evil counsellors around him who are persuading him to that sort of peace. Perhaps, indeed, Napoleon has bewitched him with his sorceries. Who knows?"
Having thus uttered, not merely his own sentiments, but those of Moscow and her merchants upon the subject of the Treaty of Tilsit, at that time in progress, Petrovitch relapsed into silence. The only part of his discourse that greatly impressed Ivan happened also to be the only part of it which had ​not at least a considerable substratum of truth—the story of the beautiful lady who could transform herself into a white dove. The rest he understood very partially.
After a journey of many days, a happy change came over the spirit of what had almost seemed to Ivan a long and dismal dream. The dreary expanse of sandy waste was succeeded by a green, fertile, well-cultivated plain, diversified by the gentle slope of wooded hills and the gleam of a winding river.
At last, one evening, they reached the summit of a lofty eminence. Petrovitch, who was on foot leading the horse, turned suddenly to Ivan, and said in a tone of solemnity, "Take off thy cap, Ivan Barrinka, take off thy cap, and thank God for thy first sight of holy Moscow!"
Any traveller might have thanked God for the beauty of that sight. Dome and cupola, minaret and tower, shone beneath them in the evening sunshine, giving back its rays with dazzling brightness from their gilded tops; and some there were which flamed like balls of fire suspended in the air. The brightest and most varied of colours—green, purple, crimson, blue—relieved and diversified the gleaming gold of the cupolas and the burnished lead of the roofs, which looked like silver. Beyond the bewildering glories of the Kremlin, whose feet were kissed by the bright waters of the winding Moskva, the great city stretched away into the distance. To the eye there was no limit: streets and squares and gardens, gardens and streets and squares; here a castle, there a blooming terrace; yonder a painted gateway, everywhere light and colour, and shining metallic surfaces that reflected the sun. "Forty times forty churches" pointed upwards with their "silent fingers," as if to remind the dwellers in that city of palaces of the yet fairer city which is eternal in the heavens, even the new Jerusalem, with its streets of gold and gates of pearl.
Ivan crossed himself. "Beautiful! beautiful!" he ​murmured, as he gazed like one entranced on the scene before him.
"Upon God's earth there is no spot like that," said Petrovitch, stretching forth his hand and pointing to the city. "'If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.' God keep Moscow the holy, Moscow the beautiful, the ancient city of the Czar, the fairest jewel of his crown, the apple of his eye!"
* ↑ A kind of cold soup made of kvass, with small pieces of meat in it.
* ↑ This fable was extensively believed in Russia, and not exclusively by the lower classes.