University of Virginia Library

IX

MICHAEL SEMÉNOVICH VORONTSÓV, being the son of the Russian ambassador, had been educated in England, and possessed a European education quite exceptional among the higher Russian officials of his day. He was ambitious, gentle, and kind in his manner with inferiors, and a finished courtier with superiors. He did not understand life without power and submission. He had obtained all the highest ranks and decorations, and was looked upon as a clever commander, and even as the conqueror of Napoleon at Krásnoye.

In 1852 he was over seventy, but was still quite fresh, moved briskly, and above all was in full possession of a facile refined and agreeable intellect, which he used to maintain his power and to strengthen and spread his popularity. He possessed large means — his own and his wife's (née Countess Branítsky) — and received an enormous salary as viceroy; and he

spent a great part of his means on building a palace and laying out a garden on the south coast of the Crimea.

On the evening of 4th December 1852 a courier's troyka drew up before his palace in Tiflis. A tired officer, black with dust, whom General Kozlóvsky had sent with the news of Hadji Murád's surrender to the Russians, went stretching the stiffened muscles of his legs past the sentinel, and entered the wide porch. It was six o'clock, and Vorontsóv was just going in to dinner, when he was informed of the arrival of the courier. Vorontsóv received him at once, and was therefore a few minutes late for dinner.

When he entered the drawing-room, the thirty persons invited to dine, sitting beside the Princess Elizabeth Ksavérevna Vorontsóv, or standing in groups by the windows, turned their faces towards him. Vorontsóv was dressed in his usual black military coat, with shoulder-straps but no epaulets, and wore the White Cross of the Order of St. George at his neck.

His clean-shaven, foxlike face smiled pleasantly as, screwing up his eyes, he surveyed the

assembly. Entering with quick, soft steps he apologised to the ladies for being late, greeted the men, and approaching the Princess Manana Orbelyáni — a tall, fine, handsome woman of Oriental type about forty-five years of age — he offered her his arm to take her in to dinner. The Princess Elizabeth Ksavérevna Vorontsóv herself gave her arm to a red-haired general with bristly moustaches, who was visiting Tiflis. A Georgian Prince offered his arm to the Princess Vorontsóv's friend, the Countess Choiseuil; Dr. Andréevsky, the aide-de-camp, and others, with ladies or without, followed these first couples. Footmen in livery and knee-breeches drew back and replaced the guests' chairs when they sat down, while the major-domo ceremoniously ladled out steaming soup from a silver tureen.

Vorontsóv took his place in the centre of one side of the long table, and his wife sat opposite, with the General on her right. On the Prince's right sat his lady, the beautiful Orbelyáni; and on his left was a graceful, dark, red-cheeked Georgian woman, glittering with jewels and incessantly smiling.

"Excellentes, chère amie!"[22] replied Vorontsóv to his wife's inquiry about what news the courier had brought him. "Simon a eu de la chance!"[23] And he began to tell aloud, so that every one could hear, the striking news (for him alone not quite unexpected, because negotiations had long been going on) that the bravest and most famous of Shamil's officers, Hadji Murád, had come over to the Russians, and would in a day or two be brought to Tiflis.

Everybody — even the young aides-de-camp and officials who sat at the far ends of the table, and who had been quietly laughing at something among themselves — became silent and listened.

"And you, General, have you ever met this Hadji Murád?" asked the Princess of her neighbour, the carroty General with the bristly moustaches, when the Prince had finished speaking.

"More than once, Princess."

And the General went on to tell how Hadji Murád, after the mountaineers had captured Gergebel in 1843, had fallen upon General

Pahlen's detachment and killed Colonel Zolotúkhin almost before their very eyes.

Vorontsóv listened to the General and smiled amiably, evidently pleased that the latter had joined in the conversation. But suddenly Vorontsóv's face assumed an absent-minded and depressed expression.

The General, having started talking, had begun to tell of his second encounter with Hadji Murád.

"Why, it was he, if your Excellency will please remember," said the General, "who arranged the ambush that attacked the rescue party in the 'Biscuit' expedition."

"Where?" asked Vorontsóv, screwing up his eyes.

What the brave General spoke of as the "rescue,'" was the affair in the unfortunate Dargo campaign in which a whole detachment, including Prince Vorontsóv who commanded it, would certainly have perished had it not been rescued by the arrival of fresh troops. Every one knew that the whole Dargo campaign under Vorontsóv's command — in which the Russians lost many killed and wounded and several cannon

— had been a shameful affair; and therefore, if any one mentioned it in Vorontsóv's presence they only did so in the aspect in which Vorontsóv had reported it to the Tsar: as a brilliant achievement of the Russian army. But the word "rescue" plainly indicated that it was not a brilliant victory, but a blunder costing many lives. Everybody understood this, and some pretended not to notice the meaning of the General's words, others nervously waited to see what would follow, while a few exchanged glances and smiled. Only the carroty General with the bristly moustaches noticed nothing, and, carried away by his narrative, quietly replied,—

"At the rescue, your Excellency."

Having started on his favourite theme the General recounted circumstantially how Hadji Murád had so cleverly cut the detachment in two, that if the rescue party had not arrived (he seemed to be particularly fond of repeating the word "rescue") not a man in the division would have escaped, because....The General did not finish his story, for Manana Orbelyáni, having understood what was happening,

interrupted him by asking if he had found comfortable quarters in Tiflis. The General, surprised, glanced at everybody all round, and saw his aides-de-camp from the end of the table looking fixedly and significantly at him, and suddenly he understood! Without replying to the Princess's question, he frowned, became silent, and began hurriedly eating, without chewing, the delicacy that lay on his plate, both the appearance and taste of which completely mystified him.

Everybody felt uncomfortable, but the discomfort of the situation was relieved by the Georgian Prince — a very stupid man, but an extraordinarily refined and artful flatterer and courtier — who sat on the other side of the Princess Vorontsóv. Without seeming to have noticed anything, he began to relate how Hadji Murád had carried off the widow of Akhmet Khan of Mekhtulí.

"He came into the village at night, seized what he wanted, and galloped off again with the whole party."

"Why did he want that particular woman?" asked the Princess.

"Oh, he was her husband's enemy, and pursued him, but could never once succeed in meeting him right up to the time of his death, so he revenged himself on the widow."

The Princess translated this into French to her old friend the Countess Choiseuil, who sat next to the Georgian Prince.

"Quelle horreur!"[24] said the Countess, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

"Oh, no!" said Vorontsóv, smiling. "I have been told that he treated his captive with chivalrous respect and afterwards released her."

"Yes, for a ransom!"

"Well, of course. But, all the same, he acted honourably."

These words of the Prince's set the tone for the further conversation. The courtiers understood that the more importance was attributed to Hadji Murád the better pleased the Prince would be.

"The man's audacity is amazing. A remarkable man!"

"Why, in 1849, he dashed into Temir Khan

Shurá, and plundered the shops in broad daylight."

An Armenian sitting at the end of the table, who had been in Temir Khan Shurá at the time, related the particulars of that exploit of Hadji Murád's.

In fact, only Hadji Murád was talked about during the whole dinner.

Everybody in succession praised his courage, his ability, and his magnanimity. Some one mentioned his having ordered twenty-six prisoners to be slain; but that too was met by the usual rejoinder, "What's to be done? À la guerre, comme à la guerre!"[25]

"He is a great man."

"Had he been born in Europe he might have been another Napoleon," said the stupid Georgian Prince with a gift of flattery.

He knew that every mention of Napoleon was pleasant to Vorontsóv, who wore the White Cross at his neck as a reward for having defeated him.

"Well, not Napoleon, perhaps, but a gallant cavalry general, if you like," said Vorontsóv.

"If not Napoleon, then Murad."

"And his name is Hadji Murád!"

"Hadji Murád has surrendered, and now there'll be an end to Shamil also," some one remarked.

"They feel that now" — this "now" meant under Vorontsóv — "they can't hold out," remarked another.

"Tout cela est grâce à vous!"[26] said Manana Orbelyáni.

Prince Vorontsóv tried to moderate the waves of flattery which began to flow over him. Still, it was pleasant, and in the best of spirits he led his lady back into the drawing-room.

After dinner, when coffee was being served in the drawing-room, the Prince was particularly amiable to everybody, and going up to the General with the red bristly moustaches, he tried to appear not to have noticed his blunder.

Having made a round of the visitors, he sat down to the card table. He only played the old-fashioned game of ombre. The Prince's partners were the Georgian Prince, an Armenian

General (who had learnt the game of ombre from Prince Vorontsóv's valet, and the fourth was Dr. Andréevsky, a man remarkable for the great influence he exercised.

Placing beside him his gold snuff-box, with a portrait of Alexander I on the lid, the Prince tore open a pack of highly-glazed cards, and was going to spread them out when his Italian valet, Giovanni, brought him a letter on a silver tray.

"Another courier, your Excellency."

Vorontsóv laid down the cards, excused himself, opened the letter, and began to read.

The letter was from his son, who described Hadji Murád's surrender, and his own encounter with Meller-Zakomélsky.

The Princess came up and inquired what their son had written.

"It's all about the same matter.... Il a eu quelques désagréments avec le commandant de la place. Simon a eu tort[27].... But 'All's well that ends well,'" he added in English, handing the letter to his wife; and

turning to his respectfully waiting partners, he asked them to draw cards.

When the first round had been dealt, Vorontsóv did what he was in the habit of doing when in a particularly pleasant mood: with his white, wrinkled old hand he took out a pinch of French snuff, carried it up to his nose, and released it.