CHAPTER XLVII

THE TEMPTER

One stormy winter's day, on which not even his neighbors dared venture out of their houses to make their customary visit to Pushkin, a sledge, amid the tinkling of many bells, drove into the courtyard, and from out the midst of his fur wrappings and high felt boots emerged Chevalier Galban.

A host stifles all inimical feeling towards his guest, the more so when he comes in such vile weather. The road was invisible from snow-drifts; it was impossible to see where one was driving.

Pushkin welcomed Galban cordially. The pipe of peace was lighted in the warm, cosey room. Bethsaba prepared the tea.

"But, in the name of all that's wonderful, what brought you out of St. Petersburg in such weather?"

"H'm! My dear fellow, that your own experience can give you a good inkling of! Your windows do not look on to Nevski Prospect either! You, too, have your reasons for being here."

"Right you are," said Pushkin, blowing the smoke in blue rings into the air, which rings gathered together over Bethsaba's head, as an aureole over the head of a saint; and, ostentatiously drawing his wife towards him, he put his arm round her waist as he said, "This is my reason!"

Galban laughed. "Well, I certainly cannot lay claim to such a reason! As far as I am concerned, it is _Veteres migrate coloni_" (Old cottagers take to wandering). "The world is topsy-turvy. The old set have to fly for their lives. Even Araktseieff is smoking his pipe at Grusino."

"That surprises me. Czar Constantine was his ideal. And I know that there is no one Araktseieff loves better than Czar Constantine."

"Yes; if Constantine were the Czar, I, too, should have known what I was about; but he is not."

"Not Czar?" said Pushkin, amazed. "But the papers give his name in all proclamations."

"But, my dear Alexander Sergievitch! You a writer yourself, and yet are naïve enough to believe what is in the papers?"

"The devil! But one must believe them when they announce that the Senate has proclaimed Constantine to be Czar, and that the household troops have sworn the oath of allegiance to him."

"All the same, Constantine is not Czar. We live, my friend, in an age of miracles and absurdities. Official papers do not publish everything; still, in St. Petersburg people pretty well know what is happening. When Constantine was proclaimed Czar, and from Grand Dukes to guards all had duly sworn the oath of allegiance to him, the President of the Senate, Lapukhin, produces a sealed packet, upon which was inscribed, in the late Czar's handwriting--'To be opened in cabinet council after my death.' The seals were broken, and within was found a document in which Grand Duke Constantine, the Czarevitch, renounced his succession to the throne in favor of his younger brother, Grand Duke Nicholas. A second document contained in the packet was Alexander's will, wherein he states that he had accepted Constantine's renunciation of the throne, and naming Grand Duke Nicholas as his heir."

"So, then, Constantine is not Czar, but Nicholas. That is plain." Pushkin said this in a tone from which it was easy to infer that it was a matter of indifference to him.

"Not quite so plain as you think. Grand Duke Nicholas refuses to accept the succession. He is a follower of the old régime, which suffers no changes, and now the war of high-mindedness runs high between St. Petersburg and Warsaw. Grand Duke Michael, the third brother, acting as intermediary, goes from one brother to the other with the request that he should accept the crown."

"Anyway, a display of great brotherly love, unexampled in the world's history. Up to now princes have been more apt to dispute a crown!"

"And what makes the farce complete is that two accomplished facts, contradictory to each other, have to be surmounted. It is an accomplished fact that Constantine has been proclaimed Czar and cannot relinquish the throne; and, equally so, that he has taken to wife Johanna Grudzinska, a Pole, a Catholic, and only of aristocratic birth, three circumstances which render it impossible for her husband to wear the crown. And so, on the one hand, Constantine _cannot_ relinquish the throne; on the other, he _cannot_ ascend it."

"For all I care, let him stay where he is."

"You, in your Tusculum, can afford to make cheap jokes; but what are all the poor devils about the court to do in such an imbroglio?"

"Especially as his wife is more to the Czarevitch than his crown!"

"No more of that! With that overdrawn conjugal love we do not throw sand into other people's eyes. I had opportunity of putting that love to the proof. I assure you that it needed no magic to have led Frau Johanna to forget her Grand Ducal lover for a _knightly_ one. At that time she had not the right to call him husband. Ah! had not a more powerful feeling swayed my heart"--a suppressed sigh and secret side-glance at Bethsaba here explained his words--"truly in my hands would have lain the power to present Grand Duke Constantine the nineteen crowns of Russia--even a twentieth. It only needed me to have stayed one day longer in the gardens of the lovely Lazienka."

Pushkin was disgusted at this bragging. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe. Galban's boasting he valued at the same rate as those ashes.

"I happen to know, however, that the Czarevitch and his wife are so devotedly attached to each other that Constantine would not exchange Johanna's head-dress for Rurik's crown."

"But what if that is not due to Johanna's head-dress, but is the fault of Rurik's crown? A sensible man does not shelter from the storm under a fir-tree if he means to keep dry, and of all fir-trees the crown of a Russian fir is the most dangerous in a storm. Every one knows--even the sparrows twitter it--that the late Czar was only saved by the kind agency of Caucasian fever from the fatality which awaits every Russian czar. There are many rumors, even, about his end. People talk of poison. The _bon-mot_ of Talleyrand is going the round: 'It is really time that Russian czars changed their manner of dying.' One shudders to say it, how assassination, treachery, conspiracy, await him who sits upon Rurik's throne. The very kneeling-chair, the altar, the church wherein he prays, are undermined. Is not this explanation enough why one brother vies with another in refusing the throne? The most open expression of feeling was that which caused the Czarevitch to explain the reason of his hesitation to the Queen Dowager of Saxony in these words: 'Russian czars need to have very strong necks, and I am not fond of having my neck tickled.'"

So outspoken! Only _agents provocateurs_ venture to say such audacious things.

Pushkin shoved the amber mouth-piece so far into his mouth that he could not bring out a word. Bethsaba saw that her husband was on thorns, and left the room. She had divined his wish, and ordered three sledges to be horsed and despatched to fetch their neighbors, hindered from coming by the snow-storm.

Galban, meanwhile, continued the conversation.

"You know very well who I was and what I am. My whole life long I have been a courtier. I loved to serve, to obey, to intrigue. Never did I have the least inclination to join a league of conspirators. I tell the truth. But under the present circumstances a man's ordinary loyalty is of no account whatever. The whole country is at sixes and sevens. Even political leagues are disrupted. By the death of the Czar the ground has been cut from under their feet. There is no Czar. Against whom should they conspire? They have split up into two parties. If Constantine take the crown, Nicholas will immediately be proclaimed Czar as well; if Nicholas, Constantine will be set up against him. The soldiers are ready to fire upon each other; each party will fight for their legitimate head. Under the counter battle-cry, 'Long live the Czar!' we shall have a fine revolution breaking out. Nor can one tell who will come out conqueror. If Constantine's party win the day, Nicholas's followers will be the rebels; if Nicholas's party gain the upperhand, it will be Constantine's followers who will suffer. The position of a man like myself is simply terrible. Whichever side I take to-day, how am I to tell if, with all my loyal devotion, I shall not to-morrow be proscribed as a rebel? Under such circumstances a wise man cannot do better than to leave the chaos to take care of itself and flee to the woods to hunt wolves. And, I trust, Alexander Sergievitch, that we shall often join in that healthful pursuit together."

"I am not allowed to go a day's journey from Pleskow."

"Well, then, my estate lies within your boundary--just a short winter day's distance. Let us get all the enjoyment out of it we can as long as this chaotic world endures."

Pushkin promised to return the visit shortly.

"Then, now we are friends and companions," continued Galban, garrulously. "You may imagine the lamentations under the tsinovniks in St. Petersburg. Next March Czar Alexander was to have celebrated his five-and-twentieth year of accession. Every man about the court was congratulating himself on the prospect of ascending a step on this ladder of rank; instead of being 'vasé blagorodié' that he would become 'vasé vomszkoblagorodié.' Numbers of them had had their uniforms made beforehand, and had prepared their answers for the forthcoming examinations. You are aware that all of us, when we get preferment, have to undergo an examination? Luckily for us the professors give out the papers in good time; a golden key lets them out the sooner. And now all this has come to naught. I myself stood on the list, in the third rank of nobility, as director of the St. Petersburg Theatre, and you figured in it in the rank of major. Three thousand aspirants! most of whom had paid pretty heavily for their chances into Daimona's fair hands. Money thrown away now."

This dangerous conversation was brought to an end by the noisy entrance of the three neighbors. Never had doors opened to more welcome guests. They had not, moreover, come to quarrel over involved questions of succession, but to play tarok; and it is an acknowledged axiom--tarok before everything!

Chevalier Galban excused himself on the plea that he only played hazard, and that for high stakes.

"Well, then, sit down and have a game of chess with my wife. But look to your laurels; Bethsaba plays a good game."

Thus Chevalier Galban settled to a game that is the greatest hazard in all the world, and is played for the highest stakes of all.