CROP-EARED JACQUOT

  Translated by Alfred Allinson

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTORY

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  INTRODUCTORY

  THE tale I am going to tell you is the life history of the Chief Huntsman of a Boyar, or great Russian Feudatory, the very last representative perhaps of the old Muscovite manners and customs of the days of Peter the Great and Riren.

  True, my story will have more to say about the master and the mistress than about the man, and might be entitled The Princess Varvara or The Prince Groubenski equally as well as Crop-eared Jacquot. But what would you have? In an age when an author’s first preoccupation is to discover a name for his novel or play, even before he has found a subject, and when more than half his chance of success depends upon the title, Crop-eared Jacquot really seems to me to be startling and original enough duly to arouse my readers’ curiosity. So Crop-eared Jacquot it shall be!

  I had often heard talk both at St. Petersburg and Moscow, and still more at Nijni-Novgorod, of the Prince Alexis Ivanovitch Groubenski. The most incrediblc eccentricities were related of him; but these eccentricities, pronounced enough to shock the maddest of Englishmen, were, even as pieces of rough humour, over-shadowed by a sinister cloud of gloom and horror, that seemed to brood over all this nobleman’s strange life. You felt that, albeit half effaced by time and by the efforts of interested persons whose wish it was to remove the stain altogether, the life of the Last of the Boyars, as he was generally called in the Government of Nijni-Novgorod, was disfigured by one of those grim blotches of dark red,

  such as they show dyeing the floor of the Galérie aux Cerfs at Fontainebleau and the Royal Closet at Blois — the signs-manual of ancient bloodshed.

  Everywhere I had been advised, “If ever you happen to stop at Makarieff, remember to pay a visit to the ruins facing the Monastery, on the opposite bank of the Volga — the ruins of the Castle of Groubenski. Above all,” people invariably added, “do not forget to ask to sec the Portrait Gallery.”

  None but such as have been my travelling companions can properly appreciate the degree of obstinacy I am capable of under circumstances of this sort. Once I nose a legend, a tradition, a bit of history, no objection or opposition whatsoever will turn me from the scent, once the hunt is up.

  Accordingly, I had not failed to exact a promise from the skipper of the steamer I had boarded to convey me from Nijni to Kasan, to stop under any circumstances at Makarieff, whether the boat passed that place by day or by night. And, as a matter of fact, the instant we hove in sight — I will not say of Makarieff, for Makarieff is not actually visible from the surface of the Volga — but of the battlemented walls of the old Monastery, which oomes down to the banks of the stream there, the Captain was as good as his word, and sought me out to tell me — “You must be getting ready, sir, if you still mean to get off at Makarieff; we shall be there in ten minutes.” Ten minutes more and we were there; and in obedience to my beckoning, a boatman put off from the left bank of the Volga and struck out for the steamer, to put me ashore.

  Then, and not till then, I noticed a young Russian officer, with whom I had exchanged a few words of casual talk during my passage down the river, to be engaged in the same preparations as myself.

  “Are you by any chance getting off at Makarieff, sir?” I asked him.

  “Alas I yes, sir; I am on garrison duty there.”

  “Your ‘alas!’ is not over and above flattering to Makarielï.”

  “‘Tis an abominable hole, and I cannot help asking you however you come, without exterior compulsion, to be stopping there. What in Heaven’s name have you to do at Makarieff?”

  “Two most important things. I am going to buy a carved chest, and I am going to pay a visit to the Castle of Groubenski. Indeed, I am bound to confess that, when I saw you were getting your baggage together, I congratulated myself on the very thing that occasions your despair. Knowing your kindness and courtesy, I said to myself, ‘Ha, ha I here’s a cicerone ready found to help me make my bargain and make my visit. ‘“

  “As far as that goes,” the young officer assured me, “you are not mistaken, and it is I shall be obliged to you for filling up my time. Distractions are few and far between at Makarieff; you offer me that of your society, and I accept it gratefully. It is the honey nurses put on the rim of the cup, when they want to get children to lake medicine. Now, you must permit me to lay down some conditions to our bargain.”

  “Out with them; I agree to them beforehand.”

  “You understand this, that since the removal of the great fair to Nijni-Novgorod, nobody ever stops at Makarieff nowadays.”

  “Except people coming to buy a chest and visit the Castle of Groubenski!”

  “True; but such people are extremely rare. Anyhow, the fact remains, there is no inn at Makarieff, or if there is, it is of such a sort as to make it worse than there being none.”

  “Ah, I see what you are driving at. You are going to offer me board and lodging. I am used to these little Russian peculiarities.”

  “Yes, that is precisely what I am going to do.”

  “Another man might hesitate about accepting your kindness, but I say’ Yes ‘right out;” and, so saying, I gave him my hand.

  “‘Faith,” said he, “I was far from expecting such luck. Let’s get into our boat at once;” for the shore-boat that was to convey us to land had just ranged alongside the steamer.

  I said good-bye to the skipper and sundry persons with whom I had scraped acquaintance during my three days’ sail on the Volga, and proceeded to take my seat in the skiff, whither my young companion followed me.

  “Ah! so here you are, Count?” the boatman exclaimed on recognising him. “Why, the carriage has been wailing for you ever since yesterday evening.”

  “Yes,” replied the young man, “I fully expected to have arrived yesterday; but these wretched boats are as slow as tortoises.... And is all well at Makarieff?”

  “Yes, Count, praise God, all is well.”

  “Now, I hoped he was going to inform me that the town had been burnt down, that not a house was left standing and that the garrison had been recalled to St. Petersburg, or, at any rate, moved on to Kasan. But nothing, nothing whatever, has happened. Well, God’s will be done;” and the Count heaved a sigh as heartfelt as if he had veritably wished to find the town burnt to the ground.

  A carriage and a man-servant in French livery awaited us on the quay — the carriage not a droshky at all, but a well-appointed American buggy.

  The sight raised my highest hopes — to wit, that in the room my host was going to give me I should find a bed and washhand-stand, two articles I had not met with in one and the same apartment since leaving Moscow.

  I was not disappointed. Count Vaninkof’s house — Vaninkof was my young officer’s name — was furnished in French fashion, and I found within a verst of the Volga a replica, more or less exact, of my Paris bedroom.

  Tea was awaiting us — real Russian tea, I was thankful to see, full-flavoured and fragrant, and brewed, moreover, with all the exquisite art a Muscovite servant is master of in the matter of tea-making.

  As we emptied our glasses — in Russia tea is drunk from glasses, ladies only being allowed cups — we arranged that next day after breakfast would be the time for our excursion to the Castle of Groubenski; and the same evening orders were given for a boat to be at our disposal between ten and eleven the following morning.

  Also before breakfast we were to inspect — Count Vaninkof and myself — two or three shops containing the best assortment of carved chests in the town.

  At nine o’clock the Count was up and about, and we started to roam the town through — driving, of course, for like the complete Russian gentleman he was, our young Gaptain was incapable, unless absolutely obliged, of walking a hundred yards anywhere.

  I bought two chests, which, needless to remark, my host insisted on paying for. No help for it, it is the custom of the country — and a very agreeable custom too — and you are bound to submit.

  After an excellent breakfast — my host boasted a French cook — we had the carriage out again, then took boat, and crossed to the other side of the Volga. There a couple of saddle-horses were in readiness, their bridles held by two grooms. There was a hill about as high as Montmartre to climb; but this was far too heavy an undertaking for a Russian officer to attempt on foot — one of the men who scale the peaks of the Caucasus by mountain-tracks known only to the chamois and the bouquetins, when it becomes a question of bringing Schamyl to bay among the clouds or in the precipitous gorges of his native mountains.

  We mounted, and in ten minutes more found ourselves face to face with the ruins of the Castle of Groubenski. It was a magnificent edifice built towards the latter end of the eighteenth century from the plans of the celebrated architcct Rastrelli, the same who designed the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg and the Czarina’s Palace near Moscow. Abandoned for perhaps thirty or forty years past, it has suffered the fate of every neglected building — that is to say, with the exception of a few of the offices, a single gallery, and a single pavilion, it lies in ruins.

  At its feet, at the very moment when its life expired, a nondescript fishing village, Niskevo by name, had sprung into existence; and from the summit of it s hill -the old-time Residency stood scornfully looking down upon the youthful activity of this child of yesterday.

  True, by carrying its gaze further afield and looking towards the Volga, the granite spectre of the old Castle might behold the Monastery of Makarieff; and perhaps the two ancients, of nights, when all is asleep around, may by help of the wind hold mysterious discourse with one another touching the mutability of human creations — the Castle deploring the days when its saloons and pavilions and galleries sparkled with lights and re-echoed to the tread of crowds of guests and merry-makers, the sound of music and the shock of glasses; the Monastery bewailing the seasons of sacred solemnity, when it spoke aloud to sixty vassal villages by the voice of its twelve bells and the chants of its two hundred monks.

  Nowadays a poor dozen monks only inhabit the Monastery. As for the Castle, the illustrious race of its masters is extinct, and it belongs to the Farmer of the local taxes, a certain Master Kirdiapine, whose father was third waiter once upon a time at Razgoulai’s Hotel, the best inn in Makarieff in the days when Makarieff still possessed inns — in other words, when Makarieff still had a faiT.

  Wo had driven from Makarieff to the Volga, w’e had ferried over from the right to the left bank of that river, we had climbed the hill leading to the ruins; but so far we had accomplished only the easier half of our pilgrimage. We had still to get hold of the keys of the Castle.

  The fact is, the two or three servants to whom had been intrusted the care of these venerable ruins, never dreaming anybody would take it into his head to visit them, and never fearing any wreckers would think it worth their while to knock them about, had very reasonably concluded they might just as well absent themselves a while, in order to offer their services to shipowners as stevedores and porters. By this means they were enabled every day to enjoy the luxury of drinking a glass or two of tea, with sugar to match, seated comfortably together round the same table, which is the greatest treat imaginable among men of the labouring class in Russia.

  On this particular occasion they had begun the day as they intended to finish it, and though it was barely midday, my three fine fellows were already installed at the tavern.

  However, one of the party agreed to move on receiving a promise of twenty copeks, which the Count’s man took it upon himself to make, and he started up the hill keys in hand.

  To find the fellow and strike the bargain had taken pretty near an hour; but meantime we had employed our time to good advantage. Slipping through a breach in the wall, we had made our way into the gardens, which formerly belonged, and presumably belong still, to the Castle. They formed a vast enclosure, quite a couple of versts in length, and after stretching along the level summit of the hill, finally sloped down to the banks of the Volga. But here time had produced an effect exactly the opposite to its destructive power on the buildings, and the result was beneficent and picturesque. Left to themselves, the trees had attained a gigantic size when standing isolated, while those united in groups had interlaced their boughs in the most wonderful profusion of greenery. Certain lime avenues were especially magnificent; the trees must have been planted many years ago, under the Queen Elizabeth, and were grown so thick and impenetrable to the sun’s rays that the moment you entered their shade you seemed to have descended into a mine, and to be threading one of those subterranean corridors that pierce the bowels of the Ural Mountains.

  In some places, closing the vista of one of these avenues or marking the centre of lawns now all overgrown with weeds and brambles, stone pedestals were still to be seen, on which statues had once stood — masterpieces, or at any rate copies of the masterpieces, of antiquity. On one of them you could still make out the letters JOV... OMNIPOT.. and on another the dedication, To Venus and Adonis.

  On quitting the main avenue and turning off to the left we came across the deep bed of an artificial stream, now all but dried up; though far down in the depths there still ran a tiny thread of limpidly clear water, flowing from a neighbouring spring, which we had all the difficulty in the world to discover, hidden as it was in the tall grass. No doubt this watercourse had once been the fairest ornament of the garden, which it traversed from end to end, winding in graceful curves, while several arches, thrown boldly and picturesquely across the ravine, formed bridges, still in substantial repair, though their utility was altogether a thing of the past.

  In the most retired corner of the park we lighted on the remains of a detached Pavilion. It had once been the rendezvous of Prince Alexis and his courtiers; but alas! years ago the winter storms, its only visitors now, had torn away doors and windows, and scattered them far and wide. If only these walls, which in their prime possessed both eyes and ears, had had a tongue, no doubt they could have told tales to-day to make the stones of Monceaux and the Grand Trianon blush with shame. But they are dumb and silent, save when the hurricane lends them a voice — a voice that in sad and sombre tones ever proclaims to the monuments of men’s hands what experience ever teaches men themselves: “There is naught sure and naught eternal save only Death!”

  In the interior were still discernible a series of mythological frescoes in very fair preservation. They were undoubtedly the work of a French artist of the school of Boucher, and represented Venus and Mars captured in the nets of Vulcan, the Rape of Europa by the White Bull, whose shape Jupiter had borrowed, Leda amorously pressing to her bosom the Divine Swan, concluding with a picture of Diana bathing and surprised by Actæon. The ceiling had fallen in.

  Facing this Pavilion was a heap of stones and bricks almost completely over-grown with brambles and ivy. I asked my young friend if he knew what was the origin of this accumulation of débris.

  “I think I remember their saying,” he told me, “on the first occasion of my visiting the ruins, that this was the remains of another Pavilion, the fellow to the first.”

  “Did it fall in from decay?” was my next question.

  “No; it was destroyed intentionally, by what I was told.”

  “And for what reason, do you happen to know?”

  “I know the story commonly told to account for it.”

  “And what is the story? I give you fair warning, I am the most persistent asker of questions ever was in this world.”

  “The story goes that the last Prince Danilo Alexiovitch, on a visit here twenty-five or thirty years ago, made so strange a discovery in this Pavilion, that not only did he resolve to demolish it, but actually drove in the first pickaxe with his own hand.”

  “And what did he find in the said Pavilion, eh?”

  “Ah, that is just where the mystery comes in! They speak of a walled-up, barricaded, condemned cell, into which nobody had ever thought, or rather dared, to penetrate. Prince Danilo did so, the tale continues, without saving a word to anyone, and by the living Lord I saw something so appalling, he came out again looking as pale as a dead man, and promptly ordered the whole building to be razed to the ground, as I mentioned before.”

  At this moment we saw approaching the servant of Master Kirdiapine, the new owner of the Castle, the individual who had been unearthed from the tavern by the promise of twenty copeks. I questioned him about the demolished Pavilion; but he knew even less of the matter than Captain Vaninkof, who, as we have already seen, did not know very much.

  However, the fellow had the keys of the Castle, and volunteered to show us the interior. I readily accepted his offer, hoping to light on something that might establish a connection between the Castle and the mysterious Pavilion.

  The man led the way, taking us in by a side door opening into the vestibule. No sooner was this door thrown back than a damp air, saturated, as it were, with antiquity and smelling of decay, set us coughing. Every step we took on the flags raised a heavy cloud of dust, while the wind, which had followed us through the open door, tossed the tom and tattered remnants, still hanging on the walls, of superb tapestry, which must originally have come straight from the Gobelins as the gift of some reigning prince or king.

  “The best-preserved part of the building,” our guide informed us, “is the Portrait Gallery.”

  Seeing it was in all likelihood the most interesting too, we told him to take us there, sacrificing the rest of the ruins to its claims.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10