

                                



                           HADJI MURAD



                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy



                     First Published in 1904

             Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude



            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine

                     



                            CHAPTER I



     I was returning home by the fields.  It was midsummer, the hay

harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye.  At

that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers --

red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye

daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell;

yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and

lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink

scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plaintains with

blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened

blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder

towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented

dodder flowers that withered quickly.  I gathered myself a large

nosegay and was going home when I noticed in a ditch, in full

bloom, a beautiful thistle plant of the crimson variety, which in

our neighborhood they call "Tartar" and carefully avoid when mowing

-- or, if they do happen to cut it down, throw out from among the

grass for fear of pricking their hands.  Thinking to pick this

thistle and put it in the center of my nosegay, I climbed down into

the ditch, and after driving away a velvety bumble-bee that had

penetrated deep into one of the flowers and had there fallen

sweetly asleep, I set to work to pluck the flower. But this proved

a very difficult task.  Not only did the stalk prick on every side

-- even through the handkerchief I wrapped round my hand -- but it

was so tough that I had to struggle with it for nearly five

minutes, breaking the fibers one by one; and when I had at last

plucked it, the stalk was all frayed and the flower itself no

longer seemed so fresh and beautiful.  Moreover, owing to a

coarseness and stiffness, it did not seem in place among the

delicate blossoms of my nosegay.  I threw it away feeling sorry to

have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its proper

place.

     "But what energy and tenacity!  With what determination it

defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life!" thought I,

remembering the effort it had cost me to pluck the flower.  The way

home led across black-earth fields that had just been ploughed up. 

I ascended the dusty path.  The ploughed field belonged to a landed

proprietor and was so large that on both sides and before me to the

top of the hill nothing was visible but evenly furrowed and moist

earth.  The land was well tilled and nowhere was there a blade of

grass or any kind of plant to be seen, it was all black.  "Ah, what

a destructive creature is man....How many different plant-lives he

destroys to support his own existence!" thought I, involuntarily

looking around for some living thing in this lifeless black field. 

In front of me to the right of the road I saw some kind of little

clump, and drawing nearer I found it was the same kind of thistle

as that which I had vainly plucked and thrown away.  This "Tartar"

plant had three branches.  One was broken and stuck out like the

stump of a mutilated arm.  Each of the other two bore a flower,

once red but now blackened. One stalk was broken, and half of it

hung down with a soiled flower at its tip.  The other, though also

soiled with black mud, still stood erect.  Evidently a cartwheel

had passed over the plant but it had risen again, and that was why,

though erect, it stood twisted to one side, as if a piece of its

body had been torn from it, its bowels drawn out, an arm torn off,

and one of its eyes plucked out.  Yet it stood firm and did not

surrender to man who had destroyed all its brothers around it....

     "What vitality!" I thought.  "Man has conquered everything and

destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit."  And I

remembered a Caucasian episode of years ago, which I had partly

seen myself, partly heard of from eye-witnesses, and in part

imagined.

     The episode, as it has taken shape in my memory and

imagination, was as follows.



                             *  *  *



     It happened towards the end of 1851.

     On a cold November evening Hadji Murad rode into Makhmet, a

hostile Chechen aoul that lay some fifteen miles from Russian

territory and was filled with the scented smoke of burning Kizyak. 

The strained chant of the muezzin had just ceased, and though the

clear mountain air, impregnated with kizyak smoke, above the lowing

of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep that were dispersing

among the saklyas (which were crowded together like the cells of

honeycomb), could be clearly heard the guttural voices of disputing

men, and sounds of women's and children's voices rising from near

the fountain below.

     This Hadji Murad was Shamil's naib, famous for his exploits,

who used never to ride out without his banner and some dozens of

murids, who caracoled and showed off before him.  Now wrapped in a

hood and burka, from under which protruded a rifle, he rode, a

fugitive with one murid only, trying to attract as little attention

as possible and peering with his quick black eyes into the faces of

those he met on his way.

     When he entered the aoul, instead of riding up the road

leading to the open square, he turned to the left into a narrow

side street, and on reaching the second saklya, which was cut into

the hill side, he stopped and looked round.  There was no one under

the penthouse in front, but on the roof of the saklya itself,

behind the freshly plastered clay chimney, lay a man covered with

a sheepskin.  Hadji Murad touched him with the handle of his

leather-plaited whip and clicked his tongue, and an old man,

wearing a greasy old beshmet and a nightcap, rose from under the

sheepskin.  His moist red eyelids had no lashes, and he blinked to

get them unstuck.  Hadji Murad, repeating the customary "Selaam

aleikum!" uncovered his face.  "aleikum, selaam!" said the old man,

recognizing him, and smiling with his toothless mouth.  And raising

himself on his thin legs he began thrusting his feet into the

wooden-heeled slippers that stood by the chimney.  Then he

leisurely slipped his arms into the sleeves of his crumpled

sheepskin, and going to the ladder that leant against the roof he

descended backwards, while he dressed and as he climbed down he

kept shaking his head on its thin, shrivelled sunburnt neck and

mumbling something with his toothless mouth.  As soon as he reached

the ground he hospitably seized Hadji Murad's bridle and right

stirrup; but the strong active murid had quickly dismounted and

motioning the old man aside, took his place. Hadji Murad also

dismounted, and walking with a slight limp, entered under the

penthouse.  A boy of fifteen, coming quickly out of the door, met

him and wonderingly fixed his sparkling eyes, black as ripe sloes,

on the new arrivals.

     "run to the mosque and call your father," ordered the old man

as he hurried forward to open the thin, creaking door into the

saklya.

     As Hadji Murad entered the outer door, a slight, spare,

middle-aged woman in a yellow smock, red beshmet, and wide blue

trousers came through an inner door carrying cushions.

     "May thy coming bring happiness!" said she, and bending nearly

double began arranging the cushions along the front wall for the

guest to sit on.

     "May thy sons live!" answered Hadji Murad, taking off his

burka, his rifle, and his sword, and handing them to the old man

who carefully hung the rifle and sword on a nail beside the weapons

of the master of the house, which were suspended between two large

basins that glittered against the clean clay-plastered and

carefully whitewashed wall.

     Hadji Murad adjusted the pistol at his back, came up to the

cushions, and wrapping his Circassian coat closer round him, sat

down.  The old man squatted on his bare heels beside him, closed

his eyes, and lifted his hands palms upwards.  Hadji Murad did the

same; then after repeating a prayer they both stroked their faces,

passing their hands downwards till the palms joined at the end of

their beards.

     "Ne habar?" ("Is there anything new?") asked Hadji Murad,

addressing the old man.

     "Habar yok" ("Nothing new"), replied the old man, looking with

his lifeless red eyes not at Hadji Murad's face but at his breast. 

"I live at the apiary and have only today come to see my son....He

knows."

     Hadji Murad, understanding that the old man did not wish to

say what he knew and what Hadji Murad wanted to know, slightly

nodded his head and asked no more questions.

     "There is no good news," said the old man.  "The only news is

that the hares keep discussing how to drive away the eagles, and

the eagles tear first one and then another of them. The other day

the Russian dogs burnt the hay in the Mitchit aoul....May their

faces be torn!" he added hoarsely and angrily.

     Hadji Murad's murid entered the room, his strong legs striding

softly over the earthen floor.  Retaining only his dagger and

pistol, he took off his burka, rifle, and sword as Hadji Murad had

done, and hung them up on the same nails as his leader's weapons.

     "Who is he?" asked the old man, pointing to the newcomer.

     "My murid.  Eldar is his name," said Hadji Murad.

     "That is well," said the old man, and motioned Eldar to a

place on a piece of felt beside Hadji Murad.  Eldar sat down,

crossing his legs and fixing his fine ram-like eyes on the old man

who, having now started talking, was telling how their brave

fellows had caught two Russian soldiers the week before and had

killed one and sent the other to Shamil in Veden.

     Hadji Murad heard him absently, looking at the door and

listening to the sounds outside.  Under the penthouse steps were

heard, the door creaked, and Sado, the master of the house, came

in.  He was a man of about forty, with a small beard, long nose,

and eyes as black, though not as glittering, as those of his

fifteen-year-old son who had run to call him home and who now

entered with his father and sat down by the door.  The master of

the house took off his wooden slippers at the door, and pushing his

old and much-worn cap to the back of his head (which had remained

unshaved so long that it was beginning to be overgrown with black

hair), at once squatted down in front of Hadji Murad.

     He too lifted his palms upwards, as the old man had done,

repeated a prayer, and then stroked his face downwards.  Only after

that did he begin to speak.  He told how an order had come from

Shamil to seize Hadji Murad alive or dead, that Shamil's envoys had

left only the day before, that the people were afraid to disobey

Shamil's orders, and that therefore it was necessary to be careful.

     "In my house," said Sado, "no one shall injure my kunak while

I live, but how will it be in the open fields?...We must think it

over."

     Hadji Murad listened with attention and nodded approvingly. 

When Sado had finished he said:

     "Very well.  Now we must send a man with a letter to the

Russians.  My murid will go but he will need a guide."

     "I will send brother Bata," said Sado.  "Go and call Bata," he

added, turning to his son.

     The boy instantly bounded to his nimble feet as if he were on

springs, and swinging his arms, rapidly left the saklya.  Some ten

minutes later he returned with a sinewy, short-legged Chechen,

burnt almost black by the sun, wearing a worn and tattered yellow

Circassian coat with frayed sleeves, and crumpled black leggings.

     Hadji Murad greeted the newcomer, and again without wasting a

single word, immediately asked:

     "Canst thou conduct my murid to the Russians?"

     "I can," gaily replied Bata.  "I can certainly do it.  There

is not another Chechen who would pass as I can.  Another might

agree to go and might promise anything, but would do nothing; but

I can do it!"

     "All right," said Hadji Murad.  "Thou shalt receive three for

thy trouble," and he held up three fingers.

     Bata nodded to show that he understood, and added that it was

not money he prized, but that he was ready to serve Hadji Murad for

the honor alone. Every one in the mountains knew Hadji Murad, and

how he slew the Russian swine.

     "Very well....A rope should be long but a speech short," said

Hadji Murad.

     "Well then I'll hold my tongue," said Bata.

     "Where the river Argun bends by the cliff," said Hadji Murad,

"there are two stacks in a glade in the forest -- thou knowest?"

     "I know."

     "There my four horsemen are waiting for me," said Hadji Murad.

     "Aye," answered Bata, nodding.

     "Ask for Khan Mahoma.  He knows what to do and what to say. 

Canst thou lead him to the Russian Commander, Prince Vorontsov?"

     "Yes, I'll take him."

     "Canst thou take him and bring him back again?"

     "I can."

     "then take him there and return to the wood.  I shall be there

too."

     "I will do it all," said Bata, rising, and putting his hands

on his heart he went out.

     Hadji Murad turned to his host.

     "A man must also be sent to Chekhi," he began, and took hold

of one of the cartridge pouches of his Circassian coat, but let his

hand drop immediately and became silent on seeing two women enter

the saklya.

     One was Sado's wife -- the thin middle-aged woman who had

arranged the cushions.  The other was quite a young girl, wearing

red trousers and a green beshmet.  A necklace of silver coins

covered the whole front of her dress, and at the end of the short

but thick plait of hard black hair that hung between her thin

shoulder-blades a silver ruble was suspended.  Her eyes, as sloe-

black as those of her father and brother, sparkled brightly in her

young face which tried to be stern.  She did not look at the

visitors, but evidently felt their presence.

     Sado's wife brought in a low round table on which stood tea,

pancakes in butter, cheese, churek (that is, thinly rolled out

bread), and honey.  The girl carried a basin, a ewer, and a towel.

     Sado and Hadji Murad kept silent as long as the women, with

their coin ornaments tinkling, moved softly about in their red

soft-soled slippers, setting out before the visitors the things

they had brought.  Eldar sat motionless as a statue, his ram-like

eyes fixed on his crossed legs, all the time the women were in the

saklya.  Only after they had gone and their soft footsteps could no

longer be heard behind the door, did he give a sigh of relief.

     Hadji Murad having pulled out a bullet from one of the

cartridge-pouches of his Circassian coat, and having taken out a

rolled-up note that lay beneath it, held it out, saying:

     "To be handed to my son."

     "Where must the answer be sent?"

     "To thee; and thou must forward it to me."

     "It shall be done," said Sado, and placed the note in the

cartridge-pocket of his own coat.  Then he took up the metal ewer

and moved the basin towards Hadji Murad.

     Hadji Murad turned up the sleeves of his beshmet on his white

muscular arms, held out his hands under the clear cold water which

Sado poured from the ewer, and having wiped them on a clean

unbleached towel, turned to the table.  Eldar did the same.  While

the visitors ate, Sado sat opposite and thanked them several times

for their visit.  The boy sat by the door never taking his

sparkling eyes off Hadji Murad's face, and smiled as if in

confirmation of his father's words.

     Though he had eaten nothing for more than twenty-four hours

Hadji Murad ate only a little bread and cheese; then, drawing out

a small knife from under his dagger, he spread some honey on a

piece of bread.

     "Our honey is good," said the old man, evidently pleased to

see Hadji Murad eating his honey.  "This year, above all other

years, it is plentiful and good."

     "I thank thee," said Hadji Murad and turned from the table. 

Eldar would have liked to go on eating but he followed his leader's

example, and having moved away from the table, handed him the ewer

and basin.

     Sado knew that he was risking his life by receiving such a

guest in his house, for after his quarrel with Shamil the latter

had issued a proclamation to all the inhabitants of Chechnya

forbidding them to receive Hadji Murad on pain of death.  He knew

that the inhabitants of the aoul might at any moment become aware

of Hadji Murad's presence in his house and might demand his

surrender.  But this not only did not frighten Sado, it even gave

him pleasure with himself because he was doing his duty.

     "Whilst thou are in my house and my head is on my shoulders no

one shall harm thee," he repeated to Hadji Murad.

     Hadji Murad looked into his glittering eyes and understanding

that this was true, said with some solemnity --

     "Mayst thou receive joy and life!"

     Sado silently laid his hand on his heart in token of thanks

for these kind words.

     Having closed the shutters of the saklya and laid some sticks

in the fireplace, Sado, in an exceptionally bright and animated

mood, left the room and went into that part of his saklya where his

family all lived.  The women had not yet gone to sleep, and were

talking about the dangerous visitors who were spending the night in

their guest chambers.



                           CHAPTER II



     At Vozvizhensk, the advanced fort situated some ten miles from

the aoul in which Hadji Murad was spending the night, three

soldiers and a non-commissioned officer left the fort and went

beyond the Shahgirinsk Gate.  The soldiers, dressed as Caucasian

soldiers used to be in those days, wore sheepskin coats and caps,

and boots that reached above their knees, and they carried their

cloaks tightly rolled up and fastened across their shoulders. 

Shouldering arms, they first went some five hundred paces along the

road and then turned off it and went some twenty paces to the right

-- the dead leaves rustling under their boots -- till they reached

the blackened trunk of a broken plane tree just visible through the

darkness.  There they stopped.  It was at this plane tree that an

ambush party was usually placed.

     The bright stars, that had seemed to be running along the tree

tops while the soldiers were walking through the forest, now stood

still, shining brightly between the bare branches of the trees.

     "A good job it's dry," said the non-commissioned officer

Panov, bringing down his long gun and bayonet with a clang from his

shoulder and placing it against the plane tree.

     The three soldiers did the same.

     "Sure enough I've lost it!" muttered Panov crossly.  "Must

have left it behind or I've dropped it on the way."

     "What are you looking for?" asked one of the soldiers in a

bright, cheerful voice.

     "The bowl of my pipe.  Where the devil has it got to?"

     "Have you got the stem?" asked the cheerful voice.

     "Here it is."

     "Then why not stick it straight into the ground?"

     "Not worth bothering!"

     "We'll manage that in a minute."

     smoking in ambush was forbidden, but this ambush hardly

deserved the name.  It was rather an outpost to prevent the

mountaineers from bringing up a cannon unobserved and firing at the

fort as they used to.  Panov did not consider it necessary to

forego the pleasure of smoking, and therefore accepted the cheerful

soldier's offer.  the latter took a knife from his pocket and made

a small round hole in the ground.  Having smoothed it, he adjusted

the pipe stem to it, then filled the hole with tobacco and pressed

it down, and the pipe was ready.  A sulphur match flared and for a

moment lit up the broadcheeked face of the soldier who lay on his

stomach, the air whistled in the stem, and Panov smelt the pleasant

odor of burning tobacco.

     "Fixed ut up?" said he, rising to his feet.

     "Why, of course!"

     "What a smart chap you are, Avdeev!...As wise as a judge!  Now

then, lad."

     Avdeev rolled over on his side to make room for Panov, letting

smoke escape from his mouth.

     Panov lay down prone, and after wiping the mouthpiece with his

sleeve, began to inhale.

     When they had had their smoke the soldiers began to talk.

     "They say the commander has had his fingers in the cashbox

again," remarked one of them in a lazy voice.  "He lost at cards,

you see."

     "He'll pay it back again," said Panov.

     "Of course he will!  He's a good officer," assented Avdeev.

     "Good! good!" gloomily repeated the man who had started the

conversation.  "In my opinion the company ought to speak to him. 

'If you've taken the money, tell us how much and when you'll repay

it.'"

     "That will be as the company decides," said Panov, tearing

himself away from the pipe.

     "Of course.  'The community is a strong man,'" assented

Avdeev, quoting a proverb.

     "There will be oats to buy and boots to get towards spring. 

the money will be wanted, and what shall we do if he's pocketed

it?" insisted the dissatisfied one.

     "I tell you it will be as the company wishes," repeated Panov.

"It's not the first time; he takes it and gives it back."

     In the Caucasus in those days each company chose men to manage

its own commissariat.  they received 6 rubles 50 kopeks a month per

man from the treasury, and catered for the company.  They planted

cabbages, made hay, had their own carts, and prided themselves on

their well-fed horses.  The company's money was kept in a chest of

which the commander had the key, and it often happened that he

borrowed from the chest.  This had just happened again, and the

soldiers were talking about it. The morose soldier, Nikitin, wished

to demand an account from the commander, while Panov and Avdeev

considered that unnecessary.

     After Panov, Nikitin had a smoke, and then spreading his cloak

on the ground sat down on it leaning against the trunk of the plane

tree.  The soldiers were silent.  Far above their heads the crowns

of the trees rustled in the wind and suddenly, above this incessant

low rustling, rose the howling, whining, weeping and chuckling of

jackals.

     "Just listen to those accursed creatures -- how they

caterwaul!"

     "They're laughing at you because your mouth's all on one

side," remarked the high voice of the third soldier, an Ukrainian.

     All was silent again, except for the wind that swayed the

branches, now revealing and now hiding the stars.

     "I say, Panov," suddenly asked the cheerful Avdeev, "do you

ever feel dull?"

     "Dull, why?" replied Panov reluctantly.

     "Well, I do....I feel so dull sometimes that I don't know what

I might not be ready to do to myself."

     "There now!" was all Panov replied.

     "That time when I drank all the money it was from dullness. 

It took hold of me...took hold of me till I thought to myself,

'I'll just get blind drunk!'"

     "But sometimes drinking makes it still worse."

     "Yes, that's happened to me too.  But what is a man to do with

himself?"

     "But what makes you feel so dull?"

     "What, me? ... Why, it's the longing for home."

     "Is yours a wealthy home then?"

     "No; we weren't wealthy, but things went properly -- we lived

well."  And Avdeev began to relate what he had already told Panov

many times.

     "You see, I went as a soldier of my own free will, instead of

my brother," he said.  "He has children.  They were five in family

and I had only just married.  Mother began begging me to go.  So I

thought, 'Well, maybe they will remember what I've done.'  So I

went to our proprietor ...  he was a good master and he said,

'You're a fine fellow, go!'  So I went instead of my brother."

     "Well, that was right," said Panov.

     "And yet, will you believe me, Panov, it's chiefly because of

that that I feel so dull now?  'Why did you go instead of your

brother?' I say to myself.  'He's living like a king now over

there, while you have to suffer here;' and the more I think of it

the worse I feel. ... It seems just a piece of ill-luck!"

     Avdeev was silent.

     "Perhaps we'd better have another smoke," said he after a

pause.

     "Well then, fix it up!"

     But the soldiers were not to have their smoke.  Hardly had

Avdeev risen to fix the pipe stem in its place when above the

rustling of the trees they heard footsteps along the road. Panov

took his gun and pushed Nikitin with his foot.

     Nikitin rose and picked up his cloak.

     The third soldier, Bondarenko, rose also, and said:

     "And I have dreamt such a dream, mates...."

     "Sh!" said Avdeev, and the soldiers held their breath,

listening.  The footsteps of men in soft-soled boots were heard

approaching.  The fallen leaves and dry twigs could be heard

rustling clearer and clearer through the darkness.  Then came the

peculiar guttural tones of Chechen voices.  The soldiers could now

not only hear men approaching, but could see two shadows passing

through a clear space between the trees; one shadow taller than the

other.  When these shadows had come in line with the soldiers,

Panov, gun in hand, stepped out on to the road, followed by his

comrades.

     "Who goes there?" cried he.

     "Me, friendly Chechen," said the shorter one.  This was Bata. 

"Gun, yok!...sword, yok!" said he, pointing to himself.  "Prince,

want!"

     The taller one stood silent beside his comrade.  He too was

unarmed.

     "He means he's a scout, and wants the Colonel," explained

Panov to his comrades.

     "Prince Vorontsov...much want!  Big business!" said Bata.

     "All right, all right!  We'll take you to him," said Panov. 

"I say, you'd better take them," said he to Avdeev, "you and

Bondarenko; and when you've given them up to the officer on duty

come back again.  Mind," he added, "be careful to make them keep in

front of you!"

     "and what of this?" said Avdeev, moving his gun and bayonet as

though stabbing someone.  "I's just give a dig, and let the steam

out of him!"

     "What'll he be worth when you've stuck him?" remarked

Bondarenko.

     "Now, march!"

     When the steps of the two soldiers conducting the scouts could

no longer be heard, Panov and Nikitin returned to their post.

     "What the devil brings them here at night?" said Nikitin.

     "Seems it's necessary," said panov.  "But it's getting

chilly," he added, and unrolling his cloak he put it on and sat

down by the tree.

     About two hours later Avdeev and Bondarenko returned.

     "Well, have you handed them over?"

     "Yes.  They weren't yet asleep at the Colonel's -- they were

taken straight in to him.  And do you know, mates, those shaven-

headed lads are fine!" continued Avdeev.  "Yes, really.  What a

talk I had with them!"

     "Of course you'd talk," remarked Nikitin disapprovingly.  

     "Really they're just like Russians.  One of them is married. 

'Molly,' says I, 'bar?'  'Bar,' he says.  Bondarenko, didn't I say

'bar'?  'Many bar?'  'A couple,' says he.  A couple!  Such a good

talk we had!  Such nice fellows!"

     "Nice, indeed!" said Nikitin.  "If you met him alone he'd soon

let the guts out of you."

     "It will be getting light before long." said panov.

     "Yes, the stars are beginning to go out," said Avdeev, sitting

down and making himself comfortable.

     And the soldiers were silent again.

     

 

                                



                           HADJI MURAD



                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy



                     First Published in 1904

             Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude



            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine





                           CHAPTER II



     The windows of the barracks and the soldiers' houses had long

been dark in the fort; but there were still lights in the windows

of the best house.

     In it lived Prince Simon Mikhailovich Vorontsov, Commander of

the Kurin Regiment, an Imperial Aide-de-Camp and son of the

Commander-in-Chief.  Vorontsov's wife, Marya Vasilevna, a famous

Petersburg beauty, was with him and they lived in this little

Caucasian fort more luxuriously than any one had ever lived there

before.  To Vorontsov, and even more to his wife, it seemed that

they were not only living a very modest life, but one full of

privations, while to the inhabitants of the place their luxury was

surprising and extraordinary.

     Just now, at midnight, the host and hostess sat playing cards

with their visitors, at a card table lit by four candles, in the

spacious drawing room with its carpeted floor and rich curtains

drawn across the windows.  Vorontsov, who had a long face and wore

the insignia and gold cords of an aide-de-camp, was partnered by a

shaggy young man of gloomy appearance, a graduate of Petersburg

University whom Princess Vorontsov had lately had sent to the

Caucasus to be tutor to her little son (born of her first

marriage).  Against them played two officers:  one a broad, red-

faced man, Poltoratsky, a company commander who had exchanged out

of the Guards; and the other the regimental adjutant, who sat very

straight on his chair with a cold expression on his handsome face.

     Princess Marya Vasilevna, a large-built, large-eyed, black-

browed beauty, sat beside Poltoratsky -- her crinoline touching his

lets -- and looked over his cards.  In her words, her looks, her

smile, her perfume, and in every movement of her body, there was

something that reduced Poltoratsky to obliviousness of everything

except the consciousness of her nearness, and he made blunder after

blunder, trying his partner's temper more and more.

     "No ... that's too bad!  You've wasted an ace again," said the

regimental adjutant, flushing all over as Poltoratsky threw out an

ace.

     Poltoratsky turned his kindly, wide-set black eyes towards the

dissatisfied adjutant uncomprehendingly, as though just aroused

from sleep. 

     "Do forgive him!" said Marya Vasilevna, smiling.  "There, you

see!  Didn't I tell you so?" she went on, turning to Poltoratsky.

     "But that's not at all what you said," replied Poltoratsky,

smiling.

     "Wasn't it?" she queried, with an answering smile, which

excited and delighted Poltoratsky to such a degree that he blushed

crimson and seeing the cards began to shuffle.

     "It isn't your turn to deal," said the adjutant sternly, and

with his white ringed hand he began to deal himself, as though he

wished to get rid of the cards as quickly as possible.

     The prince's valet entered the drawing room and announced that

the officer on duty wanted to speak to him.

     "Excuse me, gentlemen," said the prince speaking Russian with

an English accent.  "Will you take my place, marya?"

     "Do you all agree?" asked the princess, rising quickly and

lightly to her full height, rustling her silks, and smiling the

radiant smile of a happy woman.

     "I always agree to everything," replied the adjutant, very

pleased that the princess -- who could not play at all -- was now

going to play against him.

     Poltoratsky only spread out his hands and smiled.

     The rubber was nearly finished when the prince returned to the

drawing room, animated and obviously very pleased.

     "Do you know what I propose?"

     "What?"

     "That we have some champagne."

     "I am always ready for that," said Poltoratsky.

     "Why not?  We shall be delighted!" said the adjutant.

     "Bring some, Vasili!" said the prince.

     "What did they want you for?" asked Marya Vasilevna.

     "It was the officer on duty and another man."

     "Who?   What about?" asked Marya Vasilevna quickly.

     "I mustn't say," said Vorontsov, shrugging his shoulders.

     "You mustn't say!" repeated Marya Vasilevna.  "We'll'' see

about that."

     When the champagne was brought each of the visitors drank a

glass, and having finished the game and settled the scores they

began to take their leave.

     "Is it your company that's ordered to the forest tomorrow?"

the prince asked Poltoratsky as they said goodbye.

     "Yes, mine...why?"

     "Then we shall meet tomorrow," said the prince, smiling

slightly.

     "Very pleased," replied Poltoratsky, not quite understanding

what Vorontsov was saying to him and preoccupied only by the

thought that he would in a minute be pressing Marya Vasilevna's

hand.

     Marya Vasilevna, according to her wont, not only pressed his

hand firmly but shook it vigorously, and again reminding him of his

mistake in playing diamonds, she gave him what he took to be a

delightful, affectionate, and meaning smile.

     Poltoratsky went home in an ecstatic condition only to be

understood by people like himself who, having grown up and been

educated in society, meet a woman belonging to their own circle

after months of isolated military life, and moreover a woman like

Princess Vorontsov.

     When he reached the little house in which he and his comrade

lived he pushed the door, but it was locked.  He knocked, with no

result.  He felt vexed, and began kicking the door and banging it

with his sword.  Then he heard a sound of footsteps and Vovilo --

a domestic serf of his -- undid the cabin hook which fastened the

door.

     "What do you mean by locking yourself in, blockhead?"

     "But how is it possible, sir...?"

     "You're tipsy again!  I'll show you 'how it is possible!'" and

Poltoratsky was about to strike Vovilo but changed his mind.  "Oh,

go to the devil! ... Light a candle."

     "In a minute."

     Vovilo was really tipsy.  He had been drinking at the name day

party of the ordnance sergeant, Ivan Petrovich.  On returning home

he began comparing his life with that of the latter.  Ivan

Petrovich had a salary, was married, and hoped in a year's time to

get his discharge.

     Vovilo had been taken "up" when a boy -- that is, he had been

taken into his owner's household service -- and now although he was

already over forty he was not married, but lived a campaigning life

with his harum-scarum young master.  He was a good master, who

seldom struck him, but what kind of a life was it?  "He promised to

free me when we return from the Caucasus, but where am I to with my

freedom? ... It's a dog's life!" thought Vovilo, and he felt so

sleepy that, afraid lest someone should come in and steal

something, he fastened the hook of the door and fell asleep.



                             * * * 



     Poltoratsky entered the bedroom which he shared with his

comrade Tikhonov.

     "Well, have you lost?" asked Tikhonov, waking up.

     "No, as it happens, I haven't.  I've won seventeen rubles, and

we drank a bottle of Cliquot!"

     "And you've looked at Marya Vasilevna?"

     "Yes, and I have looked at Marya Vasilevna," repeated

Poltoratsky.

     "It will soon be time to get up," said Tikhonov.  "We are to

start at six."

     "Vovilo!" shouted Poltoratsky, "see that you wake me up

properly tomorrow at five!"

     "How can I wake you if you fight?"

     "I tell you you're to wake me!  Do you hear?"

     "All right."  Vovilo went out, taking Poltoratsky's boots and

clothes with him.  Poltoratsky got into bed and smoked a cigarette

and put out his candle smiling the while.  In the dark he saw

before him the smiling face of Marya Vasilevna.



                             * * * 



     The Vorontsovs did not go to bed at once.  When the visitors

had left, Marya Vasilevna went up to her husband and standing in

front of him, said severely -- 

     "Eh bien!  vous allez me dire ce que c'est."

     "Mais, ma chere..."

     "Pas de 'ma chere'!  C'etait un emissaire, n'est-ce pas?"

     "Quand meme, je ne puis pas vous le dire."

     "Vous ne pouvez pas?  Alors, c'est moi qui vais vous le dire!"

     "Vous?"

     "It was Hadji Murad, wasn't it?" said Marya Vasilevna, who had

for some days past heard of the negotiations and thought that Hadji

Murad himself had been to see her husband.  Vorontsov could not

altogether deny this, but disappointed her by saying that it was

not Hadji Murad himself but only an emissary to announce that Hadji

Murad would come to meet him next day at the spot where a wood-

cutting expedition had been arranged.

     In the monotonous life of the fortress the young Vorontsovs --

both husband and wife -- were glad of this occurrence, and it was

already past two o'clock when, after speaking of the pleasure the

news would give his father, they went to bed.



                           CHAPTER IV



     After the three sleepless nights he had passed flying from the

murids Shamil had sent to capture him, Hadji Murad fell asleep as

soon as Sado, having bid him goodnight, had gone out of the saklya.



He slept fully dressed with his head on his hand, his elbow sinking

deep into the red down-cushions his host had arranged for him.

     At a little distance, by the wall, slept Eldar. He lay on his

back, his strong young limbs stretched out so that his high chest,

with the black cartridge-pouches sewn into the front of his white

Circassian coat, was higher than his freshly shaven, blue-gleaming

head, which had rolled off the pillow and was thrown back.  His

upper lip, on which a little soft down was just appearing, pouted

like a child's, now contracting and now expanding, as though he

were sipping something.  Like Hadji Murad he slept with pistol and

dagger in his belt.  the sticks in the grate burnt low, and a night

light in a niche in the wall gleamed faintly.

     In the middle of the night the floor of the guest-chamber

creaked, and Hadji Murad immediately rose, putting his hand to his

pistol.  Sado entered, treading softly on the earthen floor.

     "What is it?" asked Hadji Murad, as if he had not been asleep

at all.

     "We must think," replied Sado, squatting down in front of him.



"A woman from her roof saw you arrive and told her husband, and now

the whole aoul knows.  A neighbor has just been to tell my wife

that the Elders have assembled in the mosque and want to detain

you."

     "I must be off!" said Hadji Murad.

     "The horses are saddled," said Sado, quickly leaving the

saklya.

     "Eldar!" whispered Hadji Murad.  And Eldar, hearing his name,

and above all his master's voice, leapt to his feet, setting his

cap straight as he did so.

     Hadji Murad put on his weapons and then his burka.  Eldar did

the same, and they both went silently out of the saklya into the

penthouse.  The black-eyed boy brought their horses.  Hearing the

clatter of hoofs on the hard-beaten road, someone stuck his head

out of the door of a neighboring saklya and a man ran up the hill

towards the mosque, clattering with his wooden shoes.  There was no

moon, but the stars shone brightly in the black sky so that the

outlines of the saklya roofs could be seen in the darkness, the

mosque with its minarets in the upper part of the village rising

above the other buildings.  From the mosque came a hum of voices.

     quickly seizing his gun, Hadji Murad placed his foot in the

narrow stirrup, and silently and easily throwing his body across,

swung himself onto the high cushion of the saddle.

     "May God reward you!" he said, addressing his host while his

right foot felt instinctively for the stirrup, and with his whip he

lightly touched the lad who held his horse, as a sign that he

should let go.  The boy stepped aside, and the horse, as if it knew

what it had to do, started at a brisk pace down the lane towards

the principal street.  Eldar rode behind him.  Sado in his

sheepskin followed, almost running, swinging his arms and crossing

now to one side and now to the other of the narrow sidestreet.  At

the place where the streets met, first one moving shadow and then

another appeared in the road.

     "Stop...who's that?  Stop!" shouted a voice, and several men

blocked the path.

     Instead of stopping, Hadji Murad drew his pistol from his belt

and increasing his speed rode straight at those who blocked the

way.  They separated, and without looking round he started down the

road at a swift canter.  Eldar followed him at a sharp trot.  Two

shots cracked behind them and two bullets whistled past without

hitting either Hadji Murad or Eldar.  Hadji Murad continued riding

at the same pace, but having gone some three hundred yards he

stopped his slightly panting horse and listened.

     In front of him, lower down, gurgled rapidly running water. 

Behind him in the aoul cocks crowed, answering one another.  Above

these sounds he heard behind him the approaching tramp of horses

and the voices of several men.  Hadji Murad touched his horse and

rode on at an even pace.  Those behind him galloped and soon

overtook him.  They were some twenty mounted men, inhabitants of

the aoul, who had decided to detain Hadji Murad or a least to make

a show of detaining him in order to justify themselves in Shamil's

eyes.  When they came near enough to be seen in the darkness, Hadji

Murad stopped, let go his bridle, and with an accustomed movement

of his bridle, and with an accustomed movement of his left hand

unbuttoned the cover of his rifle, which he drew forth with his

right.  Eldar did the same.

     "What do you want?" cried Hadji Murad.  "Do you wish to take

me?...Take me, then!" and he raised his rifle.  The men form the

aoul stopped, and Hadji Murad, rifle in hand, rode down into the

ravine.  the mounted men followed him but did not draw any nearer. 

When Hadji Murad had crossed to the other side of the ravine the

men shouted to him that he should hear what they had to say.  In

reply he fired his rifle and put his horse to a gallop.  When he

reined it in his pursuers were no longer within hearing and the

crowing of the cocks could also no longer be heard; only the murmur

of the water in the forest sounded more distinctly and now and then

came the cry of an owl.  The black wall of the forest appeared

quite close.  It was in the forest that his murids awaited him.

     On reaching it Hadji Murad paused, and drawing much air into

his lungs he whistled and then listened silently.  the next minute

he was answered by a similar whistle from the forest.  Hadji Murad

turned from the road and entered it.  When he had gone about a

hundred paces he saw among the trunks of the trees a bonfire, the

shadows of some men sitting round it, and, half lit-up by the

firelight, a hobbled horse which was saddled.  Four men were

sitting by the fire.

     One of them rose quickly, and coming up to Hadji Murad took

hold of his bridle and stirrup.  This was Hadji Murad's sworn

brother who managed his household affairs for him.

     "Put out the fire," said Hadji Murad, dismounting.

     The men began scattering the pile and trampling on the burning

branches.

     "Has Bata been here?" asked Hadji Murad, moving towards a

burka that was spread on the ground.

     "Yes, he went away long ago with Khan Mahoma."

     "Which way did they go?"

     "That way," answered Khanefi pointing in the opposite

direction to that from which Hadji Murad had come.

     "All right," said Hadji Murad, and unslinging his rifle he

began to load it.

     "We must take care -- I have been pursued," he said to a man

who was putting out the fire.

     This was Gamzalo, a Chechen.  Gamzalo approached the barka,

took up a rifle that lay on it wrapped in its cover, and without a

word went to that side of the glade from which Hadji Murad had

come.

     When Eldar had dismounted he took Hadji Murad's horse, and

having reined up both horses's heads high, tied them to two trees. 

Then he shouldered his rifle as Gamzalo had done and went to the

other side of the glade.  The bonfire was extinguished, the forest

no longer looked as black as before, but in the sky the stars still

shone, thought faintly.

     Lifting his eyes to the stars and seeing that the Pleiades had

already risen half-way up in the sky, Hadji Murad calculated that

it must be long past midnight and that his nightly prayer was long

overdue.  He asked Khanefi for a ewer (they always carried one in

their packs), and putting on his barka went to the water.

     Having taken off his shoes and performed his ablutions, Hadji

Murad stepped onto the burka with bare feet and then squatted down

on his calves, and having first placed his fingers in his ears and

closed his eyes, he turned to the south and recited the usual

prayer.

     When he had finished he returned to the place where the saddle

bags lay, and sitting down on the burka he leant his elbows on his

knees and bowed his head and fell into deep thought.

     Hadji Murad always had great faith in his own fortune.  When

planning anything he always felt in advance firmly convinced of

success, and fate smiled on him.  It had been so, with a few rare

exceptions, during the whole course of his stormy militray life;

and so he hoped it would be now.  He pictured to himself how --

with the army vorontsov would place at his disposal -- he would

march against Shamil and take him prisoner, and revenge himself on

him; and how the russian Tsar would reward him and how he would

again rule not only over Avaria, but over the whole of Chechnya,

which would submit to him.  With these thoughts he unwittingly fell

asleep.

     He dreamt how he and his brave followers rushed at Shamil with

songs and with the cry, "Hadji Murad is coming!" and how they

seized him and his wifes and how he heard the wives crying and

sobbing.  He woke up.  The song, Lya-il-allysha, and the cry "Hadji

Murad is coming!" and the weeping of shamil's wives, was the

howling, weeping and laughter of jackals that awoke him.  Hadji

Murad lifted his head, glanced at the sky which, seen between the

trunks of the trees, was already growing light in the east and

inquired after Khan Mahoma of a murid who sat at some distance from

him.  On hearing that Khan Mahoma had not yet returned, Hadji Murad

again bowed his head and at once fell asleep.

     He was awakened by the merry voice of Khan Mahoma returning

from his mission with Bata.  Khan Mahoma at once sat down beside

Hadji Murad and told him how the soldiers had met them and had led

them to the prince himself, and how pleased the prince was and how

he promised to meet them in the morning where the Russians would be

felling trees beyond the Mitchik in the Shalin glade.  Bata

interrupted his fellow-envoy to add details of his own.

     Hadji Murad asked particularly for the words with which

Vorontsov had answered his offer to go over to the russians, and

Khan Mahoma and Bata replied with one voice that the prince

promised to receive Hadji Murad as a guest, and to act so that it

should be well for him.

     Then Hadji Murad questioned them about the road, and when Khan

Mahoma assured him that he knew the way well and would conduct him

straight to the spot, Hadji Murad took out some money and gave Bata

the promised three rubles.  Then he ordered his men to take out of

the saddle bags his gold-ornamented weapons and his turban, and to

clean themselves up so as to look well when they arrived among the

Russians.

     While they cleaned their weapons, harness, and horses, the

stars faded away, it became quite light, and an early morning

breeze sprang up.



                            CHAPTER V



     Early in the morning, while it was still dark, two companies

carrying axes and commanded by Poltoratsky marched six miles beyond

the Shagirinsk Gate, and having thrown out a line of sharpshooters

set to work to fell trees as soon as the day broke.  Towards eight

o'clock the mist which had mingled with the perfumed smoke of the

hissing and crackling damp green branches on the bonfires began to

rise and the wood-fellers -- who till then had not seen five paces

off but had only heard one another -- began to see both the

bonfires and the road through the forest, blocked with falled

trees.  The sun now appeared like a bright spot in the fog and now

again was hidden.

     In the glade, some way from the road, Poltoratsky, his

subaltern Tikhonov, two officers of the Third Company, and Baron

Freze, an ex-officer of the Guards and a fellow student of

Poltoratsky at the Cadet College, who had been reduced to the ranks

for fighting a duel, were sitting on drums.  Bits of paper that had

contained food, cigarette stumps, and empty bottles, lat scattered

around them.  The officers had had some vodka and were now eating,

and drinking porter.  A drummer was uncorking their third bottle.

     Poltoratsky, although he had not had enough sleep, was in that

peculiar state of elation and kindly careless gaiety which he

always felt when he found himself among his soldiers and with his

comrades where there was a possibility of danger.

     The officers were carrying on an animated conversation, the

subject of which was the latest news:  the death of General

Sletpsov.  None of them saw in this death that most important

moment of a life, its termination and return to the source when it

sprang -- they saw in it only the valour of a gallant officer who

rushed at the mountaineers sword in hand and hacked them

desperately.

     Though all of them -- and especially those who had been in

action -- knew and could not help  knowing that in those days in

the Caucasus, and in fact anywhere and at any time, such hand-to-

hand hacking as is always imagined and described never occurs (or

if hacking with swords and bayonets ever does occur, it is only

those who are running away that get hacked), that fiction of hand-

to-hand fighting endowed them with the calm pride and cheerfulness

with which they say on the drums -- some with a jaunty air, others

on the contrary in a very modest pose, and drank and joked without

troubling about death, which might overtake them at any moment as

it had overtaken Sleptsov.  And in the midst of their talk, as if

to confirm their expectations, they heard to the left of the road

the pleasant stirring sound of a rifle shot; and a bullet, merrily

whistling somewhere in the misty air, flew past and crashed into a

tree.

     "Hullo!" exclaimed Poltoratsky in a merry voice; "Why that's

at our line. ... There now, Kostya," and he turned to Freze, "now's

your chance.  Go back to the company.  I will lead the whole

company to support the cordon and we'll arrange a battle that will

be simply delightful ... and then we'll make a report."

     Freze jumped to his feet and went at a quick pace towards the

smoke-enveloped spot where he had left his company.

     Poltoratsky's little Kabarda dapple-bay was brought to him,

and he mounted and drew up his company and led it in the direction

whence the shots were fired.  The outposts stood on the skirts of

the forest in front of the bare descending slope of a ravine.  The

wind was blowing in the direction of the forest, and not only was

it possible to see the slope of the ravine, but the opposite side

of it was also distinctly visible.  When Poltoratsky rode up to the

line the sun came out from behind the mist, and on the other side

of the ravine, by the outskirts of a young forest, a few horsemen

could be seen at a distance of a quarter of a mile.  These were the

Chechens who had pursued Hadji Murad and wanted to see him meet the

Russians.  One of them fired at the line.  Several soldiers fired

back.  The Chechens retreated and the firing ceased.

     But when Poltoratsky and his company came up he nevertheles

gave orders to fire, and scarcely had the word been passed than

along the whole line of sharpshooters the incessant, merry,

stirring rattle of our rifles began, acompanied by pretty

dissolving cloudlets of smoke.  The soldiers, pleased to have some

distraction, hastened to load and fired shot after shot. The

Chechens evidently caught the feeling of excitement, and leaping

forward one after another fired a few shots at our men.  One of

these shots wounded a soldier.  It was the same Avdeev who had lain

in ambush the night before.

     When his comrades approached him he was lying prone, holding

his wounded stomach with both hands, and rocking himself with a

rhythmic motion moaned softly.  He belonged to Poltoratsky's

company, and Poltoratsky, seeing a group of soldiers collected,

rode up to them.

     "What is it, lad?  Been hit?" said Poltoratsky.  "Where?"

     Avdeev did not answer.

     "I was just going to load, your honor, when I heard a click,"

said a soldier who had been with Avdeef; "and I look and see he's

dropped his gun."

     "Tut, tut, tut!" Poltoratsky clicked his tongue.  "Does it

hurt much, Avdeev?"

     "It doesn't hurt but it stops me walking.  A dropu of vodka

now, your honor!"

     Some vodka (or rather the spirit drunk by the soldiers in the

Caucasus) was found, and Panov, severely frowning, brought Avdeev

a can-lid full.  Avdeev tried to drink it but immediately handed

back the lid.

     "My soul truns against it," he said.  "Drink it yourself."

     Panov drank up the spirit.

     Avdeev raised himself but sank back at once.  They spread out

a cloak and laid him on it.

     "Your honor, the colonel is coming," said the sergeant-major

to Poltoratsky.

     "All right.  then will you see to him?" said Poltoratsky, and

flourishing his whip he rode at a fast trot to meet Vorontsov.

     Vorontsov was riding his thoroughbred English chestnut

gelding, and was accompanied by the adjutant, a Cossack, and a

Chechen interpreter.

     "What's happening here?" asked Vorontsov.

     "Why, a skirmishing party attacked our advanced line,"

Poltoratsky answered.

     "Come, come -- you arranged the whole thing yourself!"

     "Oh no, Prince, not I," said Poltoratsky with a smile; "they

pushed forward of their own accord."

     "I hear a soldier has been wounded?"

     "Yes, it's a great pity.  He's a good soldier."

     "Seriously?"

     "Seriously, I believe ... in the stomach."

     "And do you know where I am going?" vorontsov asked.

     "I don't."

     "Can't you guess?"

     "No."

     "Hadji Murad has surrendered and we are now going to meet

him."

     "You don't mean to say so?"

     "His envoy came to me yesterday," said Vorontsov, with

difficulty repressing a smile of pleasure.  "He will be waiting for

me at the Shalin glade in a few minutes.  Place sharpshooters as

far as the glade, and then come and join me."

     "I understand," said Poltoratsky, lifting his hand to his cap,

and rode back to his company.  He led the sharp shooters to the

right himself, and ordered the seargeant-major to do the same on

the left side.

     The wounded Avdeev had meanwhile been taken back to the fort

by some of the soldiers.

     On his way back to rejoin vorontsov, Poltoratsky noticed

behind him several horsemen who were overtaking him.  In front on

a white-maned horse rode a man of imposing appearance. He wore a

turban and carried weapons with gold ornaments.  This man was Hadji

Murad.  He approached Poltoratsky and said something to him in

Tartar.  Raising his eyebrows, Poltoratsky made a gesture with his

arms to show that he did not understand, and smiled.  Hadji Murad

gave him smile for smile, and that smile struck Poltoratsky by its

childlike kindliness.  Poltoratsky had never expected to see the

terrible mountain chief look like that.  He had expected to see a

morose, hard-featured man, and here was a vivacious person whose

smile was so kindly that Poltoratsky felt as if he were an old

acquaintance.  He had only one peculiarity:  his eyes, set wide

apart, which gazed from under their black brows calmly,

attentively, and penetratingly into the eyes of others.

     Hadji Murad's suit consisted of five men, among them was Khan

Mahoma, who had been to see Prince Vorontsov that night.  He was a

rosy, round-faced fellow with black lashless eyes and a beaming

expression, full of the joy of life.  Then there was the Avar

Khanefi, a thick-set, hairy man, whose eyebrows met.  He was in

charge of all Hadji Murad's property and led a stud-bred horse

which carried tightly packed saddle bags.  Two men of the suite

were particularly striking.  The first was a Lesghian:  a youth,

broad-shouldered but with a waist as slim as a woman's, beautiful

ram-like eyes, and the beginnings of a brown beard.  This was

Eldar.  The other, Gamzalo, was a Chechen with a short red beard

and no eyebrows or eyelashes; he was blind in one eye and had a

scar across his nose and face.  Poltoratsky pointed out Vorontsov,

who had just appeared on the road.  Hadji Murad rode to meet him,

and putting his right hand on his heart said something in Tartar

and stopped.  The Chechen interpreter translated.

     "He says, 'I surrender myself to the will of the Russian Tsar.



I wish to serve him,' he says.  'I wished to so do long ago but

Shamil would not let me.'"

     Having heard what the interpreter said, Vorontsov stretched

out his hand in its wash-leather glove to Hadji Murad.  Hadji Murad

looked at it hestitatingly for a moment and then pressed it firmly,

again saying something and looking first at the interpreter and

then at Vorontsov.

     "He says he did not wish to surrender to any one but you, as

you are the son of the Sirdar and he respects you much."

     Vorontsov nodded to express his thanks.  Hadji Murad again

said something, pointing to his suite.

     "He says that these men, his henchmen, will serve the Russians

as well as he."

     Vorontsov turned towards then and nodded to them too.  The

merry, black-eyed, lashless Chechen, Khan Mahoma, also nodded and

said something which was probably amusing, for the hairy Avar drew

his lips into a smile, showing his ivory-white teeth.  But the red-

haired Gamzalo's one red eye just glanced at Vorontsov and then was

again fixed on the ears of his horse.

     When Vorontsov and Hadji Murad with their retinues rode back

to the fort the soldiers released form the lines gathered in groups

and made their own comments.

     "What a lot of men that damned fellow has destroyed!  And now

see what a fuss they will make of him!"

     "Naturally.  He was Shamil's right hand, and now -- no fear!"

     "Still there's no denying it! he's a fine fellow -- a regular

dzhigit!"

     "And the red one!  He squints at you like a beast!"

     "Ugh!  He must be a hound!"

     They had all specially noticed the red one.  Where the wood-

felling was going on the soldiers nearest to the road ran out to

look.  Their officer shouted to them, but Vorontsov stopped him.

     "Let them have a look at their old friend."

     "You know who that is?" he added, turning to the nearest

soldier, and speaking the words slowly with his English accent.

     "No, your Excellency."

     "Hadji Murad. ... Heard of him?"

     "How could we help it, your Excellency?  We've beaten him many

a time!"

     "Yes, and we've had it hot from him too."

     "Yes, that's true, your Excellency," answered the soldier,

pleased to be talking with his chief.  

     Hadji Murad understood that they were speaking about him, and

smiled brightly with his eyes.

     Vornotsov returned to the fort in a very cheerful mood.













 

                                



                           HADJI MURAD



                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy



                     First Published in 1904

             Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude



            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine





                           CHAPTER VI   



     Young Vorontsov was much pleased that it was he, and no one

else, who had succeeded in winning over and receiving Hadji Murad

-- next to Shamil Russia's chief and most active enemy.  There

was only one unpleasant thing about it:  General Meller-

Zakomelsky was in command of the army at Vozdvizhenski, and the

whole affair ought to have been carried out through him.  As

Vorontsov had done everything himself without reporting it there

might be some unpleasantness, and this thought rather interfered

with his satisfaction.  On reaching his house he entrusted Hadji

Murad's henchmen to the regimental adjutant and himself showed

Hadji Murad into the house.

     Princess Marya Vasilevna, elegantly dressed and smiling, and

her little son, a handsome curly-headed child of six, met Hadji

Murad in the drawing room.  The latter placed his hands on his

heart, and through the interpreter -- who had entered with him --

said with solemnity that he regarded himself as the prince's

kunak, since the prince had brought him into his own house; and

that a kunak's whole family was as sacred as the kunak himself.

     Hadji Murad's appearance and manners pleased Marya

Vasilevna, and the fact that he flushed when she held out her

large white hand to him inclined her still more in his favor. 

She invited him to sit down, and having asked him whether he

drank coffee, had some served.  He, however, declined it when it

came.  He understood a little Russian but could not speak it. 

When something was said which he could not understand he smiled,

and his smile pleased Marya Vasilevna just as it had pleased

Poltoratsky.  The curly-haired, keen-eyed little boy (whom his

mother called Bulka) standing beside her did not take his eyes

off Hadji Murad, whom he had always heard spoken of as a great

warrior.

     Leaving Hadji Murad with his wife, Vorontsov went to his

office to do what was necessary about reporting the fact of Hadji

Murad's having cove over to the Russians.  When he had written a

report to the general in command of the left flank -- General

Kozlovsky -- at Grozny, and a letter to his father, Vorontsov

hurried home, afraid that his wife might be vexed with him for

forcing on her this terrible stranger, who had to be treated in

such a way that he should not take offense, and yet not too

kindly.  But his fears were needless.  Hadji Murad was sitting in

an armchair with little Bulka, Vorontsov's stepson, on his knee,

and with bent head was listening attentively to the interpreter

who was translating to him the words of the laughing marya

Vasilevna.  Marya Vasilevna was telling him that if every time a

kunak admired anything of his he made him a present of it, he

would soon have to go about like Adam. ...

     When the prince entered, Hadji Murad rose at once and,

surprising and offending Bulka by putting him off his knee,

changed the playful expression of his face to a stern and serious

one.  He only sat down again when Vorontsov had himself taken a

seat.

     Continuing the conversation he answered Marya Vasilevna by

telling her that it was a law among his people that anything your

kunak admired must be presented to him.

     "Thy son, kunak?" he said in Russian, patting the curly head

of the boy who had again climbed on his knee.

     "He is delightful, your brigand!" said Marya Vasilevna to

her husband in french.  "Bulka has been admiring his dagger, and

he has given it to him."

     Bulka showed the dagger to his father.  "C'est un objet de

prix!" added she.

     "Il faudra trouver l'occasion de lui faire cadeau," said

Vorontsov.

     Hadji Murad, his eyes turned down, sat stroking the boy's

curly hair and saying:  "Dzhigit, dzhigit!"

     "A beautiful, beautiful dagger," said Vorontsov, half

drawing out the sharpened blade which had a ridge down the

center.  "I thank thee!"

     "Ask him what I can do for him," he said to the interpreter.

     The interpreter translated, and Hadji Murad at once replied

that he wanted nothing but that he begged to be taken to a place

where he could say his prayers.

     Vorontsov called his valet and told him to do what Hadji

Murad desired.

     As soon as Hadji Murad was alone in the room allotted to him

his face altered.  The pleased expression, now kindly and now

stately, vanished, and a look of anxiety showed itself. 

Vorontsov had received him far better than Hadji Murad had

expected.  But the better the reception the less did Hadji Murad

trust Vorontsov and his officers.  He feared everything:  that he

might be seized, chained, and sent to Siberia, or simply killed;

and therefore he was on his guard.  He asked Eldar, when the

latter entered his room, where his murids had been put and

whether their arms had been taken from them, and where the horses

were.  Eldar reported that the horses were in the prince's

stables; that the men had been placed in a barn; that they

retained their arms, and that the interpreter was giving them

food and tea.

     Hadji Murad shook his head in doubt, and after undressing

said his prayers and told Eldar to bring him his silver dagger. 

He then dressed, and having fastened his belt, sat down on the

divan with his legs tucked under him, to await what might befall

him.

     At four in the afternoon the interpreter came to call him to

dine with the prince.

     At dinner he hardly ate anything except some pilau, to which

he helped himself from the very part of the dish from which Marya

Vasilevna had helped herself.

     "He is afraid we shall poison him," Marya Vasilevna remarked

to her husband.  "He has helped himself from the place where I

took my helping."  Then instantly turning to Hadji Murad she

asked him through the interpreter when he would pray again. 

Hadji Murad lifted five fingers and pointed to the sun.  "Then it

will soon be time," and Vorontsov drew out his watch and pressed

a spring.  The watch struck four and one quarter.  This evidently

surprised Hadji Murad, and he asked to hear it again and to be

allowed to look at the watch.

     "Voila l'occasion!  Donnez-lui la montre," said the princess

to her husband.

     Vorontsov at once offered the watch to Hadji Murad.

     The latter placed his hand on his breast and took the watch.

He touched the spring several times, listened, and nodded his

head approvingly.

     After dinner, Meller-Zakomelsky's aide-de-camp was

announced.

     The aide-de-camp informed the prince that the general,

having heard of Hadji Murad's arrival, was highly displeased that

this had not been reported to him, and required Hadji Murad to be

brought to him without delay.  Vorontsov replied that the

general's command should be obeyed, and through the interpreter

informed Hadji Murad of these orders and asked him to go to

Meller with him.

     When Marya Vasilevna heard what the aide-de-camp had come

about, she at once understood that unpleasantness might arise

between her husband and the general, and in spite of all her

husband's attempts to dissuade her, decided to go with him and

Hadji Murad.

     "Vous feriez blen mieux de rester -- c'est mon affaire, non

pas la votre. ..."

     "Vous ne pouvez pas m'empecher d'aller voir madame la

generale!"

     "You could go some other time."

     "But I wish to go now!"

     There was no help for it, so Vorontsov agreed, and they all

three went.

     When they entered, Meller with somber politeness conducted

Marya Vasilevna to his wife and told his aide-de-camp to show

Hadji Murad to the waiting room and not let him out till further

orders.

     "Please..." he said to Vorontsov, opening the door of his

study and letting the prince enter before him.

     Having entered the study he stopped in front of Vorontsov

and, without offering him a seat, said:

     "I am in command here and therefore all negotiations with

the enemy have to be carried on through me!  Why did you not

report to me that Hadji Murad had come over?"

     "An emissary came to me and announced his wish to capitulate

only to me," replied Vorontsov growing pale with excitement,

expecting some rude expression from the angry general and at the

same time becoming infected with his anger.

     "I ask you why was I not informed?"

     "I intended to inform you, Baron, but..."

     "You are not to address me as 'Baron,' but as 'Your

Excellency'!"  And here the baron's pent-up irritation suddenly

broke out and he uttered all that had long been boiling in his

soul.

     "I have not served my sovereign twenty-seven years in order

that men who began their service yesterday, relying on family

connections, should give orders under my very nose about matters

that do not concern them!"

     "Your Excellency, I request you not to say things that are

incorrect!" interrupted Vorontsov.

     "I am saying what is correct, and I won't allow..." said the

general, still more irritably.

     But at that moment Marya Vasilevna entered, rustling with

her skirts and followed by a model-looking little lady, Meller-

Zakomelsky's wife.

     "Come, come, Baron!  Simon did not wish to displease you,"

began Marya Vasilevna.

     "I am not speaking about that, Princess. ..."

     "Well, well, let's forget it all!... You know, 'A bad peace

is better than a good quarrel!' ... Oh dear, what am I saying?"

and she laughed.

     The angry general capitulated to the enchanting laugh of the

beauty.  A smile hovered under his moustache.

     "I confess I was wrong," said Vorontsov, "but--"

     "And I too got rather carried away," said Meller, and held

out his hand to the prince.

     Peace was re-established, and it was decided to leave Hadji

Murad with the general for the present, and then to send him to

the commander of the left flank.

     Hadji Murad sat in the next room and though he did not

understand what was said, he understood what it was necessary for

him to understand -- namely, that they were quarrelling about

him, that his desertion of Shamil was a matter of immense

importance to the Russians, and that therefore not only would

they not exile or kill him, but that he would be able to demand

much from them.  He also understood that though Meller-Zakomelsky

was the commanding officer, he had not as much influence as his

subordinate Vorontsov, and that Vorontsov was important and

Meller-Zakomelsky unimportant; and therefore when Meller-

Zakomelsky sent for him and began to question him, Hadji Murad

bore himself proudly and ceremoniously, saying that he had come

from the mountains to serve the White Tsar and would give account

only to his Sirdar, meaning the commander-in-chief, Prince

Vorontsov senior, in Tiflis.



                           CHAPTER VII



     The wounded Avdeev was taken to the hospital -- a small

wooden building roofed with boards at the entrance of the fort --

and was placed on one of the empty beds in the common ward. 

There were four patients in the ward:  one ill with typhus and in

high fever; another, pale, with dark shadows under his eyes, who

had ague, was just expecting attack and yawned continually; and

two more who had been wounded in a raid three weeks before:  one

in the hand -- he was up -- and the other in the shoulder.  The

latter was sitting on a bed.  All of them except the typhus

patient surrounded and questioned the newcomer and those who had

brought him.

     "Sometimes they fire as if they were spilling peas over you,

and nothing happens ... and this time only about five shots were

fired," related one of the bearers.

     "Each man get what fate sends!"

     "Oh!" groaned Avdeev loudly, trying to master his pain when

they began to place him on the bed; but he stopped groaning when

he was on it, and only frowned and moved his feet continually. 

He held his hands over his wound and looked fixedly before him.

     The doctor came, and gave orders to turn the wounded man

over to see whether the bullet had passed out behind.

     "What's this?" the doctor asked, pointing to the large white

scars that crossed one another on the patient's back and loins.

     "That was done long ago, your honor!" replied Avdeev with a

groan.

     They were scars left by the flogging Avdeev had received for

the money he drank.

     Avdeev was again turned over, and the doctor probed in his

stomach for a long time and found the bullet, but failed to

extract it.  He put a dressing on the wound, and having stuck

plaster over it went away.  During the whole time the doctor was

probing and bandaging the wound Avdeev lay with clenched teeth

and closed eyes, but when the doctor had gone he opened them and

looked around as though amazed.  His eyes were turned on the

other patients and on the surgeon's orderly, though he seemed to

see not them but something else that surprised him.

     His friends Panov and Serogin came in, but Avdeev continued

to lie in the same position looking before him with surprise.  It

was long before he recognized his comrades, though his eyes gazed

straight at them.

     "I say, Peter, have you no message to send home?" said

Panov.

     Avdeev did not answer, though he was looking Panov in the

face.

     "I say, haven't you any orders to send home?" again repeated

Panov, touching Avdeev's cold, large-boned hand.

     Avdeev seemed to come to.

     "Ah! ... Panov!"

     "Yes, I'm here. ... I've come!  Have you nothing for home? 

Serogin would write a letter."

     "Serogin ... " said Avdeev moving his eyes with difficulty

towards Serogin, "will you write? ... Well then, wrote so:  'Your

son,' say 'Peter, has given orders that you should live long.  He

envied his brother' ... I told you about that today ... ' and now

he is himself glad.  Don't worry him. ... Let him live.  God

grant it him.  I am glad!' Write that."

     Having said this he was silent for some time with his eyes

fixed on Panov.

     "And did you find your pipe?" he suddenly asked.

     Panov did not reply.

     "Your pipe ... your pipe!  I mean, have you found it?"

Avdeev repeated.

     "It was in my gag."

     "That's right! ... Well, and now give me a candle to hold

... I am going to die," said Avdeev.

     Just then Poltoratsky came in to inquire after his soldier.

     "How goes it, my lad!  Badly?" said he.

     Avdeev closed his eyes and shook his head negatively.  His

broad-cheeked face was pale and stern.  He did not reply, but

again said to Panov:

     "Bring a candle. ... I am going to die."

     A wax taper was placed in his hand but his fingers would not

bend, so it was placed between them and held up for him.

     Poltoratsky went away, and five minutes later the orderly

put his ear to Avdeev's heart and said that all was over.

     Avdeev's death was described in the following manner in the

report sent to Tiflis:

     "23rd Nov. -- Two companies of the Kurin regiment advanced

from the fort on a wood-felling expedition.  At mid-day a

considerable number of mountaineers suddenly attacked the wood-

fellers.  The sharpshooters began to retreat, but the 2nd Company

charged with the bayonet and overthrew the mountaineers.  In this

affair two privates were slightly wounded and one killed.  The

mountaineers lost about a hundred men killed and wounded."



                          CHAPTER VIII



     On the day Peter Avdeev died in the hospital at

Vozdvizhensk, his old father with the wife of the brother in

whose stead he had enlisted, and that brother's daughter -- who

was already approaching womanhood and almost of age to get

married -- were threshing oats on the hard-frozen threshing

floor.

     There had been a heavy fall of snow the previous night

followed towards morning by a severe front.  The old man woke

when the cocks were crowing for the third time, and seeing the

bright moonlight through the frozen windowpanes got down from the

stove, put on his boots, his sheepskin coat and cap, and went out

to the threshing floor.  Having worked there for a couple of

hours he returned to the hut and awoke his son and the women. 

When the woman and girl came to the threshing floor they found it

ready swept, with a wooden shovel sticking in the dry white snow,

beside which were birch brooms with the twigs upwards and two

rows of oat sheaves laid ears to ears in a long line the whole

length of the clean threshing floor.  They chose their flails and

started threshing, keeping time with their triple blows.  The old

man struck powerfully with his heavy flail, breaking the straw,

the girl struck the ears from above with measured blows, and the

daughter-in-law turned the oats over with her flail.

     The moon had set, dawn was breaking, and they were finishing

the line of sheaves when Akim, the eldest son, in his sheepskin

and cap, joined the threshers.

     "What are you lazing about for?" shouted his father to him,

pausing in his work and leaning on his flail.

     "The horses had to be seen to."

     "'Horses seen to!'" the father repeated, mimicking him. 

"The old woman will look after them. ... Take your flail!  You're

getting too fat, you drunkard!"

     "Have you been standing me treat?" muttered the son.

     "What?" said the old man, frowning sternly and missing a

stroke.

     The son silently took a flail and they began threshing with

four flails.

     "Trak, tapatam...trak, tapatam...trak ..." came down the old

man's heavy flail after the three others.

     "Why, you've got a nape like a goodly gentleman! ... Look

here, my trousers have hardly anything to hand on!" said the old

man, omitting his stroke and only swinging his flail in the air

so as not to get out of time.

     They had finished the row, and the women began removing the

straw with rakes.

     "Peter was a fool to go in your stead.  They'd have knocked

the nonsense out of you in the army, and he was worth five of

such as you at home!"

     "That's enough, father," said the daughter-in-law, as she

threw aside the binders that had come off the sheaves.

     "Yes, feed the six of you and get no work out of a single

one!  Peter used to work for two.  He was not like ..."

     Along the trodden path from the house came the old man's

wife, the frozen snow creaking under the new bark shoes she wore

over her tightly wound woolen leg-bands.  The men were shovelling

the unwinnowed grain into heaps, the woman and the girl sweeping

up what remained.

     The Elder has been and orders everybody to go and work for

the master, carting bricks," said the old woman.  "I've got

breakfast ready. ... Come along, won't you?"

     "All right. ... Harness the roan and go," said the old man

to Akim, "and you'd better look out that you don't get me into

trouble as you did the other day! ... I can't help regretting

Peter!"

     "When he was at home you used to scold him," retorted Akim. 

"Now he's away you keep nagging at me."

     "That shows you deserve it," said his mother in the same

angry tones.  "You'll never be Peter's equal."

     "Oh, all right," said the son.

     "'All right,' indeed!  You've drunk the meal, and now you

say 'all right!'"

     "Let bygones be bygones!" said the daughter-in-law.

     The disagreements between father and son had begun long ago

-- almost from the time Peter went as a soldier.  Even then the

old man felt that he had parted with an eagle for a cuckoo.  It

is true that it was right -- as the old man understood it -- for

a childless man to go in place of a family man.  Akin had four

children and Peter had none; but Peter was a worker like his

father, skilful, observant, strong, enduring, and above all

industrious.  He was always at work.  If he happened to pass by

where people were working he lent a helping hand as his father

would have done, and took a turn or two with the scythe, or

loaded a cart, or felled a tree, or chopped some wood.  The old

man regretted his going away, but there was no help for it. 

Conscription in those days was like death.  A soldier was a

severed branch, and to think about him at home was to tear one's

heart uselessly.  Only occasionally, to prick his elder son, did

the father mention him, as he had done that day.  But his mother

often thought of her younger son, and for a long time -- more

than a year now -- she had been asking her husband to send Peter

a little money, but the old man had made no response.

     The Kurenkovs were a well-to-do family and the old man had

some savings hidden away, but he would on no account have

consented to touch what he had laid by.  Now however the old

woman having heard him mention their younger son, made up her

mind to ask him again to send him at least a ruble after selling

the oats.  This she did.  As soon as the young people had gone to

work for the proprietor and the old folks were left alone

together, she persuaded him to send Peter a ruble out of the

oats-money.  

     So when ninety-six bushels of the winnowed oats had been

packed onto three sledges lined with sacking carefully pinned

together at the top with wooden skewers, she gave her husband a

letter the church clerk had written at her dictation, and the old

man promised when he got to town to enclose a ruble and send it

off to the right address.

     The old man, dressed in a new sheepskin with homespun cloak

over it, his legs wrapped round with warm white woollen leg-

bands, took the letter, placed it in his wallet, said a prayer,

got into the front sledge, and drove to town.  His grandson drove

in the last sledge.  When he reached town the old man asked the

innkeeper to read the letter to him, and listened to it

attentively and approvingly.

     In her letter Peter's mother first sent him her blessing,

then greetings from everybody and the news of his godfather's

death, and at the end she added that Aksinya (Peter's wife) had

not wished to stay with them but had gone into service, where

they heard she was living honestly and well.  Then came a

reference to the present of a ruble, and finally a message which

the old woman, yielding to her sorrows, had dictated with tears

in her eyes and the church clerk had taken down exactly, word for

word:

     "One thing more, my darling child, my sweet dove, my own

Peterkin!  I have wept my eyes out lamenting for thee, thou light

of my eyes.  To whom has thou left me?..."  At this point the old

woman had sobbed and wept, and said:  "That will do!"  So the

words stood in the letter; but it was not fated that Peter should

receive the news of his wife's having left home, nor the present

of the ruble, nor his mother's last words.  The letter with the

money in it came back with the announcement that Peter had been

killed in the war, "defending his Tsar, his Fatherland, and the

Orthodox Faith."  That is how the army clerk expressed it.

     The old woman, when this news reached her, wept for as long

as she could spare time, and then set to work again.  The very

next Sunday she went to church and had a requiem chanted and

Peter's name entered among those for whose souls prayers were to

be said, and she distributed bits of holy bread to all the good

people in memory of Peter, the servant of God.

     Aksinya, his widow, also lamented loudly when she heard of

the death of her beloved husband with whom she had lived but one

short year.  She regretted her husband and her own ruined life,

and in her lamentations mentioned Peter's brown locks and his

love, and the sadness of her life with her little orphaned Vanka,

and bitterly reproached Peter for having had pity on his brother

but none on her -- obliged to wander among strangers!

     But in the depth of her soul Aksinya was glad of her

husband's death.  She was pregnant a second time by the shopman

with whom she was living, and no one would now have a right to

scold her, and the shopman could marry her as he had said he

would when he was persuading her to yield.

     

                           CHAPTER IX



     Michael Semenovich Vorontsov, 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

Krasnoe.

     In 1852 he was over seventy, but young for his age, he moved

briskly, and above all was in full possession of a facile,

refined, and agreeable intellect which he used to maintain his

power and strengthen and increase his popularity.  He possessed

large means -- his own and his wife's (who had been a countess

Branitski) -- 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 December the 4th, 1852, a courier's troika

drew up before his palace in Tiflis. an officer, tired and black

with dust, sent by General Kozlovski with the news of Hadji

Murad's surrender to the Russians, entered the wide porch,

stretching the stiffened muscles of his legs as he passed the

sentinel.  It was six o'clock, and Vorontsov was just going in to

dinner when he was informed of the courier's arrival.  He

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, who were sitting beside Princess Elizabeth Ksaverevna

Vorontsova, or standing in groups by the windows, turned their

faces towards him.  Vorontsov was dressed in his usual black

military coat, with shoulderstraps but no epaulets, and wore the

White Cross of the Order of St. George at his neck.

     His clean shaven, foxlike face wore a pleasant smile as,

screwing up his eyes, he surveyed the assembly.  Entering with

quick soft steps he apologized to the ladies for being late,

greeted the men, and approaching Princess Manana Orbelyani -- 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. 

Princess Elizabeth Ksaverevna Vorontsova gave her arm to a red-

haired general with bristly mustaches who was visiting Tiflis.  A

Georgian prince offered his arm to Princess Vorontsova's friend,

Countess Choiseuil.  Doctor Andreevsky, 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.

     Vorontsov took his place in the center of one side of the

long table, and wife sat opposite, with the general on her right. 

On the prince's right sat his lady, the beautiful Orbelyani; and

on his left was a graceful, dark, red-cheeked Georgian woman,

glittering with jewels and incessantly smiling.

     "Excellentes, chere amie!" replied Vorontsov to his wife's

inquiry about what news the courier had brought him.  "Simon a eu

de la chance!"  And he began to tell aloud, so that everyone

could hear, the striking news (for him alone not quite

unexpected, because negotiations had long been going on) that

Hadji Murad, the bravest and most famous of Shamil's officers,

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 Murad?"

asked the princess of her neighbor, the carroty general with the

bristly mustaches, when the prince had finished speaking.

     "More than once, Princess."

     And the general went on to tell how Hadji Murad, after the

mountaineers had captured Gergebel in 1843, had fallen upon

General Pahlen's detachment and killed Colones Zolotukhin almost

before their very eyes.

     Vorontsov listened to the general and smiled amiably,

evidently pleased that the latter had joined in the conversation. 

But suddenly his face assumed an absent-minded and depressed

expression.

     The general, having started talking, had begun to tell of

his second encounter with Hadji Murad.

     "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 Vorontsov, 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 Vorontsov 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

Vorontsov'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 Vorontsov's presence they

did so only in the aspect in which Vorontsov 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 mustaches noticed nothing, and

carried away by his narrative quietly replied:

     "At the rescue, your Excellency."

     Having started on his favorite theme, the general recounted

circumstantially how Hadji Murad 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...He did

not finish his story, for Manana Orbelyani, 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 he

suddenly understood!  Without replying to the princess's

question, he frowned, became silent, and began hurriedly

swallowing the delicacy that lay on his plate, the appearance and

taste of which both completely mystified him.

     Everybody felt uncomfortable, but the awkwardness 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 Princess Vorontsova. 

Without seeming to have noticed anything he began to relate how

Hadji Murad had carried off the widow of Akhmet Khan of Mekhtuli.

     "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 for her old friend

Countess Choiseuil, who sat next to the Georgian prince.

     "Quelle horreur!" said the countess, closing her eyes and

shaking her head.

     "Oh no!" said Vorontsov, 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 honorably."  

     These words of Vorontsov's set the tone for the further

conversation.  The courtiers understood that the more importance

was attributed to Hadji Murad the better the prince would be

pleased.

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

     "Why, in 1849 he dashed into Temir Khan Shura and plundered

the shops in broad daylight."

     An Armenian sitting at the end of the table, who had been in

Temir Khan Shura at the time, related the particulars of that

exploit of Hadji Murad's.

     In fact, Hadji Murad was the sole topic of conversation

during the whole dinner.

     Everybody in succession praised his courage, his ability,

and his magnanimity.  Someone mentioned his having ordered twenty

six prisoners to be killed, but that too was met by the usual

rejoinder, "What's to be done?  A la guerre, comme al la guerre!"

     "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

Vorontsov, 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 Vorontsov.

     "If not Napoleon, then Murat."

     "And his name is Hadji Murad!"

     "Hadji Murad has surrendered and now there'll be an end to

Shamil too," someone remarked.

     "They feel that now" (this "now" meant under Vorontsov)

"they can't hold out," remarked another.

     "Tout cela est grace a vous!" said Manana Orbelyani.

     Prince Vorontsov 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 mustaches 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.  His

partners were the Georgian prince, an Armenia general (who had

learned the game of ombre from Prince Vorontsov's valet), and

Doctor Andreevsky, a man remarkable for the great influence he

exercised.

     Placing beside him his gold snuff-box with a portrait of

Aleksandr 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 brought him a letter on a silver tray.

     "Another courier, your Excellency."

     Vorontsov laid down the cards, excused himself, opened the

letter, and began to read.

     The letter was from his son, who described Hadji Murad's

surrender and his own encounter with Meller-Zakomelsky.

     The princess came up and inquired what their son had

written.

     "It's all about the same matter. ... Il a eu quelques

desagrements avec le commandant de la place.  Simon a eu tort.

... 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 Vorontsov 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 to his nose, and released it.



 

                                



                           HADJI MURAD



                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy



                     First Published in 1904

             Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude



            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine



                            CHAPTER X



     When Hadji Murad appeared at the prince's palace next day,

the waiting room was already full of people.  Yesterday's general

with the bristly mustaches was there in full uniform with all his

decorations, having come to take leave.  There was the commander

of a regiment who was in danger of being court martialled for

misappropriating commisarriat money, and there was a rich

Armenian (patronized by Doctor Andreevsky) who wanted to obtain

from the Government a renewal of his monopoly for the sale of

vodka.  There, dressed in black, was the widow of an officer who

had been killed in action.  She had come to ask for a pension, or

for free education for her children.  There was a ruined Georgian

prince in a magnificent Georgian costume who was trying to obtain

for himself some confiscated Church property.  There was an

official with a large roll of paper containing a new plan for

subjugating the Caucasus.  There was also a Khan who had come

solely to be able to tell his people at home that he had called

on the prince.

     They all waited their turn and were one by one shown into

the prince's cabinet and out again by the aide-de-camp, a

handsome, fair-haired youth.

     When Hadji Murad entered the waiting room with his brisk

though limping step all eyes were turned towards him and he heard

his name whispered from various parts of the room.

     He was dressed in a long white Circassian coat over a brown

beshmet trimmed round the collar with fine silver lace.  He wore

black leggings and soft shoes of the same color which were

stretched over his instep as tight as gloves.  On his head he

wore a high cap draped turban-fashion -- that same turban for

which, on the denunciation of Akhmet Khan, he had been arrested

by General Klugenau and which had been the cause of his going

over to Shamil.

     He stepped briskly across the parquet floor of the waiting

room, his whole slender figure swaying slightly in consequence of

his lameness in one leg which was shorter than the other.  His

eyes, set far apart, looked calmly before him and seemed to see

no one.

     The handsome aide-de-camp, having greeted him, asked him to

take a seat while he went to announce him to the prince, but

Hadji Murad declined to sit down and, putting his hand on his

dagger, stood with one foot advanced, looking round

contemptuously at all those present.

     The prince's interpreter, Prince Tarkhanov, approached Hadji

Murad and spoke to him.  Hadji Murad answered abruptly and

unwillingly.  A Kumyk prince, who was there to lodge a complaint

against a police official, came out of the prince's room, and

then the aide-de-camp called Hadji Murad, led him to the door of

the cabinet, and showed him in.

     The Commander-in-Chief received Hadji Murad standing beside

his table, and his old white face did not wear yesterday's smile

but was rather stern and solemn.

     On entering the large room with its enormous table and great

windows with green venetian blinds, Hadji Murad placed his small

sunburnt hands on his chest just where the front of his white

coat overlapped, and lowering his eyes began, without hurrying,

to speak distinctly and respectfully, using the Kumyk dialect

which he spoke well.

     "I place myself under the powerful protection of the great

Tsar and of yourself," said he, "and promise to serve the White

Tsar in faith and truth to the last drop of my blood, and I hope

to be useful to you in the war with Shamil who is my enemy and

yours."

     Having the interpreter out, Vorontsov glanced at Hadji Murad

and Hadji Murad glanced at Vorontsov.

     The eyes of the two men met, and expressed to each other

much that could not have been put into words and that was not at

all what the interpreter said.  Without words they told each

other the whole truth.  Vorontsov's eyes said that he did not

believe a single word Hadji Murad was saying, and that he knew he

was and always would be an enemy to everything Russian and had

surrendered only because he was obliged to. Hadji Murad

understood this and yet continued to give assurances of his

fidelity.  His eyes said, "That old man ought to be thinking of

his death and not of war, but though he is old he is cunning, and

I must be careful."  Vorontsov understood this also, but

nevertheless spoke to Hadji Murad in the way he considered

necessary for the success of the war.

     "Tell him," said Vorontsov, "that our sovereign is as

merciful as he is mighty and will probably at my request pardon

him and take him into his service. ... Have you told him?" he

asked looking at Hadji Murad. ... "Until I receive my master's

gracious decision, tell him I take it on myself to receive him

and make his sojourn among us pleasant."

     Hadji Murad again pressed his hands to the center of his

chest and began to say something with animation.

     "He says," the interpreter translated, "that formerly, when

he governed Avaria in 1839, he served the Russians faithfully and

would never have deserted them had not his enemy, Akhmet Khan,

wishing to ruin him, calumniated him to General Klugenau."

     "I know, I know," said Vorontsov (though if he had ever

known he had long forgotten it).  "I know," he repeated, sitting

down and motioning Hadji Murad to the divan that stood beside the

wall.  But Hadji Murad did not sit down.  Shrugging his powerful

shoulders as a sign that he could not bring himself to sit in the

presence of so important a man, he went on, addressing the

interpreter:

     "Akhmet Khan and Shamil are both my enemies.  Tell the

prince that Akhmet Khan is dead and I cannot revenge myself on

him, but Shamil lives and I will not die without taking vengeance

on him," said he, knitting his brows and tightly closing his

mouth.

     "Yes, yes; but how does he want to revenge himself on

Shamil?" said Vorontsov quietly to the interpreter.  "And tell

him he may sit down."

     Hadji Murad again declined to sit down, and in answer to the

question replied that his object in coming over to the Russians

was to help them to destroy Shamil.

     "Very well, very well," said Vorontsov; "but what exactly

does he wish to do? ... Sit down, sit down!"

     Hadji Murad sat down, and said that if only they would send

him to the Lesghian line and would give him an army, he would

guarantee to raise the whole of Daghestan and Shamil would then

be unable to hold out.

     "That would be excellent. ...  I'll think it over," said

Vorontsov.

     The interpreter translated Vorontsov's words to Hadji Murad.

     Hadji Murad pondered.

     "Tell the Sirdar one thing more," Hadji Murad began again,

"that my family are in the hands of my enemy, and that as long as

they are in the mountains I am bound and cannot serve him. 

Shamil would kill my wife and my mother and my children if I went

openly against him.  Let the prince first exchange my family for

the prisoners he has, and then I will destroy Shamil or die!"

     "All right, all right," said Vorontsov.    "I will think it

over. ...  Now let him go to the chief of the staff and explain

to him in detail his position, intentions, and wishes."

     Thus ended the first interview between Hadji Murad and

Vorontsov.

     That even an Italian opera was performed at the new theater,

which was decorated in Oriental style.  Vorontsov was in his box

when the striking figure of the limping Hadji Murad wearing a

turban appeared in the stalls.  He came in with Loris-Melikov,

Vorontsov's aide-de-cam;, in whose charge he was placed, and took

a seat in the front row.  Having sat through the first act with

Oriental Mohammedan dignity, expressing no pleasure but only

obvious indifference, he rose and looking calmly round at the

audience went out, drawing to himself everybody's attention.

     The next day was Monday and there was the usual evening

party at the Vorontsovs'.  In the large brightly lighted hall a

band was playing, hidden among trees.  Young women and women not

very young wearing dresses that displayed their bare necks, arms,

and breasts, turned round and round in the embrace of men in

bright uniforms.  At the buffet, footmen in red swallow-tail

coats and wearing shoes and knee-breeches, poured out champagne

and served sweetmeats to the ladies.  The "Sirdar's" wife also,

in spite of her age, went about half-dressed among the visitors

smiling affably, and through the interpreter said a few amiable

words to Hadji Murad who glanced at the visitors with the same

indifference he had shown yesterday in the theater.  After the

hostess, other half-naked women came up to him and all of them

stood shamelessly before him and smilingly asked him the same

question:  How he liked what he saw?  Vorontsov himself, wearing

gold epaulets and gold shoulder-knots with his white cross and

ribbon at his neck, came up and asked him the same question,

evidently feeling sure, like all the others, that Hadji Murad

could not help being pleased at what he saw.  Hadji Murad replied

to Vorontsov as he had replied to them all, that among his people

nothing of the kind was done, without expressing an opinion as to

whether it was good or bad that it was so.

     Here at the ball Hadji Murad tried to speak to Vorontsov

about buying out his family, but Vorontsov, pretending that he

had not heard him, walked away, and Loris-Melikov afterwards told

Hadji Murad that this was the place to talk about business.

     When it struck eleven Hadji Murad, having made sure of the

time by the watch the Vorontsovs had given him, asked Loris-

Melikov whether he might now leave.  Loris-Melikov said he might,

though it would be better to stay.  In spite of this Hadji Murad

did not stay, but drove in the phaeton placed at his disposal to

the quarters that had been assigned to him.



                           CHAPTER XI



     On the fifth day of Hadji Murad's stay in Tiflis Loris-

Melikov, the Viceroy's aide-de-camp, came to see him at the

latter's command.

     "My head and my hands are glad to serve the Sirdar," said

Hadji Murad with his usual diplomatic expression, bowing his head

and putting his hands to his chest.  "Command me!" said he,

looking amiably into Loris-Melikov's face.

     Loris-Melikov sat down in an arm chair placed by the table

and Hadji Murad sank onto a low divan opposite and, resting his

hands on his knees, bowed his head and listened attentively to

what the other said to him.

     Loris-Melikov, who spoke Tartar fluently, told him that

though the prince knew about his past life, he yet wanted to hear

the whole story from himself.

     Tell it me, and I will write it down and translate it into

Russian and the prince will send it to the Emperor."

     Hadji Murad remained silent for a while (he never

interrupted anyone but always waited to see whether his

interlocutor had not something more to say), then he raised his

head, shook back his cap, and smiled the peculiar childlike smile

that had captivated Marya Vasilevna.

     "I can do that," said he, evidently flattered by the thought

that his story would be read by the Emperor.

     "Thou must tell me" (in Tartar nobody is addressed as "you")

"everything, deliberately from the beginning," said Loris Melikov

drawing a notebook from his pocket.

     "I can do that, only there is much -- very much -- to tell! 

Many events have happened!" said Hadji Murad.

     "If thou canst not do it all in one day thou wilt finish it

another time," said Loris-Melikov.

     "Shall I begin at the beginning?"

     "Yes, at the very beginning ... where thou wast born and

where thou didst live."

     Hadji Murad's head sank and he sat in that position for a

long time.  Then he took a stick that lay beside the divan, drew

a little knife with an ivory gold-inlaid handle, sharp as a

razor, from under his dagger, and started whittling the stick

with it and speaking at the same time.

     "Write:  Born in Tselmess, a small aoul, 'the size of an

ass's head,' as we in the mountains say," he began.  "not far

from it, about two cannon-shots, lies Khunzakh where the Khans

lived.  Our family was closely connected with them.

     "My mother, when my eldest brother Osman was born, nursed

the eldest Khan, Abu Nutsal Khan.  Then she nursed the second son

of the Khan, Umma Khan, and reared him; but Akhmet my second

brother died, and when I was born and the Khansha bore Bulach

Khan, my mother would not go as wet-nurse again.  My father

ordered her to, but she would not.  She said:  'I should again

kill my own son, and I will not go.'  Then my father, who was

passionate, struck her with a dagger and would have killed her

had they not rescued her from him.  So she did not give me up,

and later on she composed a song ... but I need not tell that."

     "Yes, you must tell everything.  It is necessary," said

Loris-Melikov.

     Hadji Murad grew thoughtful.  He remembered how his mother

had laid him to sleep beside her under a fur coat on the roof of

the saklya, and he had asked her to show him the place in her

side where the scar of her wound was still visible. 

     He repeated the song, which he remembered:

     

     "My white bosom was pierced by the blade of bright steel,

     But I laid my bright sun, my dear boy, close upon it

     Till his body was bathed in the stream of my blood.

     And the wound healed without aid of herbs or of grass.

     As I feared not death, so my boy will ne'er fear it."



     "My mother is now in Shamil's hands," he added, "and she

must be rescued."

     He remembered the fountain below the hill, when holding on

to his mother's sarovary (loose Turkish trousers) he had gone

with her for water.  He remembered how she had shaved his head

for the first time, and how the reflection of his round bluish

head in the shining brass vessel that hung on the wall had

astonished him.  He remembered a lean dog that had licked his

face.  He remembered the strange smell of the lepeshki (a kind of

flat cake) his mother had given him -- a smell of smoke and of

sour milk.  He remembered how his mother had carried him in a

basket on her back to visit his grandfather at the farmstead.  He

remembered his wrinkled grandfather with his grey hairs, and how

he had hammered silver with his sinewy hands.

     "Well, so my mother did not go as nurse," he said with a

jerk of his head, "and the Khansha took another nurse but still

remained fond of my mother, and my mother used to take us

children to the Khansha's palace, and we played with her children

and she was fond of us.

     "There were three young Khans:  Abu Nutsal Khan my brother

Osman's foster-brother; Umma Khan my own sworn brother; and

Bulach Khan the youngest -- whom Shamil threw over the precipice.

But that happened later.  

     "I was about sixteen when murids began to visit the aouls. 

They beat the stones with wooden scimitars and cried 'Mussulmans,

Ghazavat!'  The Chechens all went over to Muridism and the Avars

began to go over too.  I was then living in the palace like a

brother of the Khans.  I could do as I liked, and I became rich. 

I had horses and weapons and money.  I lived for pleasure and had

no care, and went on like that till the time when Kazi-Mulla, the

Imam, was killed and Hamzad succeeded him.  Hamzad sent envoys to

the Khans to say that if they did not join the Ghazavat he would

destroy Khunzakh.

     "This needed consideration.  The Khans feared the Russians,

but were also afraid to join in the Holy War.  The old Khansha

sent me with her second son, Umma Khan, to Tiflis to ask the

Russian Commander-in-Chief for help against Hamzad.  The

Commander-in-Chief at Tiflis was Baron Rosen.  He did not receive

either me or Umma Khan.  He sent word that he would help us, but

did nothing.  Only his officers came riding to us and played

cards with Umma Khan.  They made him drunk with wine and took him

to bad places, and he lost all he had to them at cards.  His body

was as strong as a bull's and he was as brave as a lion, but his

soul was weak as water.  He would have gambled away his last

horses and weapons if I had not made him come away.

     "After visiting Tiflis my ideas changed and I advised the

old Khansha and the Khans to join the Ghazavat...."

     What made you change your mind?" asked Loris-Melikov.  "Were

you not pleased with the Russians?"

     Hadji Murad paused.

     "No, I was not pleased," he answered decidedly, closing his

eyes.  "and there was also another reason why I wished to join

the Ghazavat."

     "What was that?"

     "Why, near Tselmess the Khan and I encountered three murids,

two of whom escaped but the third one I shot with my pistol.

     "He was still alive when I approached to take his weapons. 

He looked up at me, and said, 'Thou has killed me...I am happy;

but thou are a Mussulman, young and strong.  Join the Ghazavat!

God wills it!'"

     "And did you join it?"

     "I did not, but it made me think," said Hadji Murad, and he

went on with his tale.

     "When Hamzad approached Kunzakh we sent our Elders to him to

say that we would agree to join the Ghazavat if the Imam would

sent a learned man to explain it to us.  Hamzad had our Elders'

mustaches shaved off, their nostrils pierced, and cakes hung to

their noses, and in that condition he sent them back to us.

     "The Elders brought word that Hamzad was ready to send a

sheik to teach us the Ghazavat, but only if the Khansha sent him

her youngest son as a hostage.  She took him at his word and sent

her youngest son, Bulach Khan.  Hamzad received him well and sent

to invite the two elder brothers also.  He sent word that he

wished to serve the Khans as his father had served their father.

... The Khansha was a weak, stupid, and conceited woman, as all

women are when they are not under control.  She was afraid to

send away both sons and sent only Umma Khan.  I went with him. 

We were met by murids about a mile before we arrived and they

sang and shot and caracoled around us, and when we drew near,

Hamzad came out of his tent and went up to Umma Khan's stirrup

and received him as a Khan.  He said, 'I have not done any harm

to thy family and do not wish to do any.  Only do not kill me and

do not prevent my bringing the people over to the Ghazavat, and I

will serve you with my whole army as my father served your

father!  Let me live in your house and I will help you with my

advice, and you shall do as you like!'

     "Umma Khan was slow of speech.  He did not know how to reply

and remained silent.  Then I said that if this was so, Let Hamzad

come to Khunzakh and the Khansha and the Khans would receive him

with honor. ... but I was not allowed to finish -- and here I

first encountered Shamil, who was beside the Imam.  He said to

me, 'Thou has not been asked. ... It was the Khan!'

     "I was silent, and Hamzad led Umma Khan into his tent. 

Afterwards Hamzad called me and ordered me to go to Kunzakh with

his envoys.  I went.  The envoys began persuading the Khansha to

send her eldest son also to Hamzad.  I saw there was treachery

and told her not to send him; but a woman has as much sense in

her head as an egg has hair.  She ordered her son to go.  Abu

Nutsal Khan did not wish to.  Then she said, 'I see thou are

afraid!'  Like a bee she knew where to sting him most painfully.

Abu Nutsal Khan flushed and did not speak to her any more, but

ordered his horse to be saddled.  I went with him.

     "Hamzad met us with even greater honor than he had shown

Umma Khan.  He himself rode out two rifle-shot lengths down the

hill to meet us.  A large party of horsemen with their banners

followed him, and they too sang, shot, and caracoled.

     "When we reached the camp, Hamzad led the Khan into his tent

and I remained with the horses....

     "I was some way down the hiss when I heard shots fired in

Hamzad's tent.  I ran there and saw Umma Khan lying prone in a

pool of blood, and Abu Nutsal was fighting the murids.  One of

his cheeks had been hacked off and hung down.  He supported it

with one hand and with the other stabbed with his dagger at all

who came near him.  I saw him strike down Hamzad's brother and

aim a blow at another man, but then the murids fired at him and

he fell."

     Hadji Murad stopped and his sunburnt face flushed a dark red

and his eyes became bloodshot.

     "I was seized with fear and ran away."

     "Really? ...  I thought thou never wast afraid," said Loris-

Melikov.

     "Never after that. ... Since then I have always remembered

that shame, and when I recalled it I feared nothing!"







                           CHAPTER XII



     "But enough!  It is time for me to pray," said Hadji Murad

drawing from an inner breast-pocket of his Circassian coat

Vorontsov's repeater watch and carefully pressing the spring. 

The repeater struck twelve and a quarter.  Hadji Murad listened

with his head on one side, repressing a childlike smile.

     "Kunak Vorontsov's present," he said, smiling.

     "It is a good watch," said Loris-Melikov.  "Well then, to

thou and pray, and I will wait."

     "Yakshi.  Very well," said Hadji Murad and went to his

bedroom.

     Left by himself, Loris-Melikov wrote down in his notebook

the chief things Hadji Murad had related, and then lighting a

cigarette began to pace up and down the room.  On reaching the

door opposite the bedroom he heard animated voices speaking

rapidly in Tartar.  He guessed that the speakers were Hadji

Murad's murids, and opening the door he went to them.

     The room was impregnated with that special leathery acid

smell peculiar to the mountaineers.  On a burka spread out on the

floor sat the one-eyed, red-haired Gamzalo, in a tattered greasy

beshmet, plaiting a bridle.  He was saying something excitedly,

speaking in a hoarse voice, but when Loris-Melikov entered he

immediately became silent and continued his work without paying

any attention to him.

     In front of Gamzalo stood the merry Khan Mahoma showing his

white teeth, his black lashless eyes glittering, and saying

something over and over again.  The handsome Eldar, his sleeves

turned up on his strong arms, was polishing the girths of a

saddle suspended from a nail.  Khanefi, the principal worker and

manager of the household, was not there, he was cooking their

dinner in the kitchen.

     "What were you disputing about?" asked Loris-Melikov after

greeting them.

     "Why, he keeps on praising Shamil," said Khan Mahoma giving

his hand to Loris-Melikov.  "He says Shamil is a great man,

learned, holy, and a dzhigit."

     "How is it that he has left him and still praises him?"

     "He has left him and still praises him," repeated Khan

Mahoma, his teeth showing and his eyes glittering.

     "And does he really consider him a saint?" asked Loris-

Melikov.

     "If he were not a saint the people would not listen to him,"

said Gamzalo rapidly.

     "Shamil is no saint, but Mansur was!" replied Khan Mahoma. 

"He was a real saint.  When he was Imam the people were quite

different.  He used to ride through the aouls and the people used

to come out and kiss the him of his coat and confess their sins

and vow to do no evil.  Then all the people -- so the old men say

-- lived like saints:  not drinking, nor smoking, nor neglecting

their prayers, and forgiving one another their sins even when

blood had been spilt.  If anyone then found money or anything, he

tied it to a stake and set it up by the roadside.  In those days

God gave the people success in everything -- not as now."

     "In the mountains they don's smoke or drink now," said

Gamzalo.

     "Your Shamil is a lamorey," said Khan Mahoma, winking at

Loris-Melikov.  (Lamorey was a contemptuous term for a

mountaineer.)

     "Yes, lamorey means mountaineer," replied Gamzalo.  "It is

in the mountains that the eagles dwell."

     "Smart fellow!  Well hit!" said Khan Mahoma with a grin,

pleased at his adversary's apt retort.

     Seeing the silver cigarette-case in Loris Melikov's hand,

Khan Mahoma asked for a cigarette, and when Loris=Melikov

remarked that they were forbidden to smoke, he winded with one

eye and jerking his head in the direction of Hadji Murad's

bedroom replied that they could do it as long as they were not

seen.  He at once began smoking -- not inhaling -- and pouting

his red lips awkwardly as he blew out the smoke.

     "That is wrong!" said Gamzalo severely, and left the room. 

Khan Mahoma winked in his direction, and while smoking asked

Loris-Melikov where he could best buy a silk beshmet and a white

cap.

     "Why, has thou so much money?"

     "I have enough," replied Khan Mahoma with a wink.

     "Ask him where he got the money," said Eldar, turning his

handsome smiling face towards Loris-Melikov.

     "Oh, I won it!" said Khan Mahoma quickly, and related how

while walking in Tiflis the day before he had come upon a group

of men -- Russians and Armenians -- playing at orlyanka (a kind

of heads-and-tails).  the stake was a large one: three gold

;pieces and much silver.  Khan Mahoma at once saw what the game

consisted in, and jingling the coppers he had in his pocket he

went up to the players and said he would stake the whole amount.

     "How couldst thou do it?  Hadst thou so much?" asked Loris-

Melikov.

     "I had only twelve kopecks," said Khan Mahoma, grinning.

     "But if thou hadst lost?"

     "Why, this!" said Khan Mahoma pointing to his pistol.

     "Wouldst thou have given that?"

     "Give it indeed!  I should have run away, and if anyone had

tried to stop me I should have killed him -- that's all!"

     "Well, and didst thou win?"

     "Aye, I won it all and went away!"

     Loris-Melikov quite understood what sort of men Khan Mahoma

and Eldar were.  Khan Mahoma was a merry fellow, careless and

ready for any spree.  He did not know what to do with his

superfluous vitality.  He was always gay and reckless, and played

with his own and other people's lives.  For the sake of that

sport with life he had now come over to the Russians, and for the

same sport he might go back to Shamil tomorrow.

     Eldar was also quite easy to understand.  He was a man

entirely devoted to his Murshid; calm, strong, and firm.

     The red-haired Gamzalo was the only one Loris-Melikov did

not understand.  He saw that that man was not only loyal to

Shamil but felt an insuperable aversion, contempt, repugnance,

and hatred for all Russians, and Loris-Melikov could therefore

not understand why he had come over to them.  It occurred to him

that, as some of the higher officials suspected, Hadji Murad's

surrender and his tales of hatred of Shamil might be false, and

that perhaps he had surrendered only to spy out the Russians'

weak spots that, after escaping back to the mountains, he might

be able to direct his forces accordingly.  Gamzalo's whole person

strengthened this suspicion.

     "The others, and Hadji Murad himself, know how to hid their

intentions, but this one betrays them by his open hatred,"

thought he.

     Loris-Melikov tried to speak to him.  He asked whether he

did not feel dull.  "No, I don't!" he growled hoarsely without

stopping his work, and glancing at his questioner out of the

corner of his one eye.  He replied to all Loris-Melikov's other

questions in a similar manner.

     While Loris-Melikov was in the room Hadji Murad's fourth

murid came in, the Avar Khanefi; a man with a hairy face and neck

and an arched chest as rough as if it were overgrown with moss. 

He was strong and a hard worker, always engrossed in his duties,

and like Eldar unquestioningly obedient to his master.

     When he entered the room to fetch some rice, Loris-Melikov

stopped him and asked where he came from and how long he had been

with Hadji Murad.

     "Five years," replied Khanefi.  "I come from the same aoul

as he.  My father killed his uncle and they wished to kill me."

he said calmly, looking from under his joined eyebrows straight

into Loris-Melikov's face.  "Then I asked them to adopt me as a

brother."

     "What do you mean by 'adopt as a brother'?"

     "I did not shave my head nor cut my nails for two months,

and then I came to them.  They let me in to Patimat, his mother,

and she gave me the breast and I became his brother."

     Hadji Murad's voice could be heard from the next room and

Eldar, immediately answering his call, promptly wiped his hands

and went with large strides into the drawing room.

     "He asks thee to come," said he, coming back.

     Loris-Melikov gave another cigarette to the merry Khan

Mahoma and went into the drawing room.



                          CHAPTER XIII



     When Loris-Melikov entered the drawing room Hadji Murad

received him with a bright face.

     "Well, shall I continue?" he asked, sitting down comfortably

on the divan.

     "Yes, certainly," said Loris-Melikov.  "I have been in to

have a talk with thy henchmen. ... One is a jolly fellow!" he

added.

     "Yes, Khan Mahoma is a frivolous fellow," said Hadji Murad.

     "I liked the young handsome one."

     "Ah, that's Eldar.  He's young but firm -- made of iron!"

     They were silent for a while. 

     "So I am to on?"

     "Yes, yes!"

     "I told the how the Khans were killed. ... Well, having

killed them Hamzad rode into Khunzakh and took up his quarters in

their palace.  The Khansha was the only one of the family left

alive.  Hamzad sent for her.  She reproached him, so he winked to

his murid Aseldar, who struck her from behind and killed her."

     "Why did he kill her?" asked Loris-Melikov.

     "What could he do? ... Where the forelegs have gone the hind

legs must follow!  He killed off the whole family.  Shamil killed

the youngest son -- threw him over a precipice. ...

     "Then the whole of Avaria surrendered to Hamzad.  But my

brother and I would not surrender.  We wanted his blood for the

blood of the Khans.  We pretended to yield, but our only thought

was how to get his blood.  We consulted our grandfather and

decided to await the time when he would come out of his palace,

and then to kill him from an ambush.  Someone overheard us and

told Hamzad, who sent for grandfather and said, 'Mind, if it be

true that thy grandsons are planning evil against me, thou and

they shall hang from one rafter.  I do God's work and cannot be

hindered. ... To, and remember what I have said!'

     "Our grandfather came home and told us.

     "Then we decided not to wait but to do the deed on the first

day of the feast in the mosque.  Our comrades would not take part

in it but my brother and I remained firm.

     "We took two pistols each, put on our burkas, and went to

the mosque.  Hamzad entered the mosque with thirty murids.  They

all had drawn swords in their hands.  Aseldar, his favorite murid

(the one who had cut off Khansha's head), saw us, shouted to us

to take off our burkas, and came towards me.  I had my dagger in

my hand and I killed him with it and rushed at Hamzad; but my

brother Osman had already shot him.  He was still alive and

rushed at my brother dagger in hand, but I have him a finishing

blow on the head.  There were thirty murids and we were only two. 

They killed my brother Osman, but I kept them at bay, leapt

through the window, and escaped.

     "When it was known that Hamzad had been killed all the

people rose.  The murids fled and those of them who did not flee

were killed."

     Hadji Murad paused, and breathed heavily.

     "That was very good," he continued, "but afterwards

everything was spoilt.

     "Shamil succeeded Hamzad.  He sent envoys to me to say that

I should join him in attacking the Russians, and that if I

refused he would destroy Kunzakh and kill me.

     "I answered that I would not join him and would not let him

come to me. ..."

     "Why didst thou not go with him?" asked Loris-Melikov.

     Hadji Murad frowned and did not reply at once.

     "I could not.  The blood of my brother Osman and of Abu

Nutsal Khan was on his hands.  I did not go to him.  General

Rosen sent me an officer's commission and ordered me to govern

Avaria.  All this would have been well, but that Rosen appointed

as Khan of Kazi-Kumukh, first Mahomet-Murza, and afterwards

Akhmet Khan, who hated me.  He had been trying to get the

Khansha's daughter, Sultanetta, in marriage for his son, but she

would not giver her to him, and he believed me to be the cause of

this. ... Yes, Akhmet Khan hated me and sent his henchmen to kill

me, but I escaped from them.  Then he spoke ill of me to General

Klugenau.  He said that I told the Avars not to supply wood to

the Russian soldiers, and he also said that I had donned a turban

-- this one" (Hadji Murad touched his turban) "and that this

meant that I had gone over to Shamil.  The general did not

believe him and gave orders that I should not be touched.  But

when the general went to Tiflis, Akhmet Khan did as he pleased. 

He sent a company of soldiers to seize me, put me in chains, and

tied me to a cannon.

     "So they kept me six days," he continued.  "On the seventh

day they untied me and started to take me to Temir-Khan-Shura. 

Forty soldiers with loaded guns had me in charge.  My hands were

tied and I knew that they had orders to kill me if I tried to

escape.

     "As we approached Mansokha the path became narrow, and on

the right was an abyss about a hundred and twenty yards deep.  I

went to the right -- to the very edge.  A soldier wanted to stop

me, but I jumped down and pulled him with me.  He was killed

outright but I, as you see, remained alive.

     "Ribs, head, arms, and leg -- all were broken!  I tried to

crawl but grew giddy and fell asleep.  I awoke wet with blood.  A

shepherd saw me and called some people who carried me to an aoul. 

My ribs and head healed, and my leg too, only it has remained

short," and Hadji Murad stretched out his crooked leg.  "It still

serves me, however, and that is well," said he.

     "The people heard the news and began coming to me.  I

recovered and went to Tselmess.  The Avars again called on me to

rule over them," he went on, with tranquil, confident pride, "and

I agreed."

     He rose quickly and taking a portfolio out of a saddlebag,

drew out two discolored letters and handed one of them to Loris-

Melikov.  They were from General Klugenau.  Loris-Melikov read

the first letter, which was as follows:

     "Lieutenant Hadji Murad, thou has served under me and I was

satisfied with thee and considered thee a good man.

     "Recently Akhmet Khan informed me that thou are a traitor,

that thou has donned a turban and has intercourse with Shamil,

and that thou has taught the people to disobey the Russian

Government.  I ordered thee to be arrested and brought before me

but thou fledst.  I do not know whether this is for thy good or

not, as I do not know whether thou art guilty or not.

     "Now hear me.  If thy conscience is pure, if thou are not

guilty in anything towards the great Tsar, come to me, fear no

one.  I am thy defender.  The Khan can do nothing to thee, he is

himself under my command, so thou has nothing to fear."

     Klugenau added that he always kept his word and was just,

and he again exhorted Hadji Murad to appear before him.

     When Loris-Melikov had read this letter Hadji Murad, before

handing him the second one, told him what he had written in reply

to the first.

     "I wrote that I wore a turban not for Shamil's sake but for

my soul's salvation; that I neither wished nor could go over to

Shamil, because he had cause the death of my father, my brothers,

and my relations; but that I could not join the Russians because

I had been dishonored by them.  (In Khunzakh, a scoundrel had

spat on me while I was bound, and I could not join your people

until that man was killed.)  But above all I feared that liar,

Akhmet Khan.

     "Then the general sent me this letter," said Hadji Murad,

handing Loris-Melikov the other discolored paper.

     "Thou has answered my first letter and I thank thee," read

Loris-Melikov.  "Thou writest that thou are not afraid to return

but that the insult done thee by a certain giarou prevents it,

but I assure thee that the Russian law is just and that thou

shalt see him who dared to offend thee punished before thine

eyes.  I have already given orders to investigate the matter.

     "Hear me, Hadji Murad!  I have a right to be displeased with

thee for not trusting me and my honor, but I forgive thee, for I

know how suspicious mountaineers are in general.  If thy

conscience is pure, if thou hast put on a turban only for they

soul's salvation, then thou art right and mayst look me and the

Russian Government boldly in the eye.  He who dishonored thee

shall, I assure thee, be punished and thy property shall be

restored to thee, and thou shalt see and know what Russian law

is.  Moreover we Russians look at things differently, and thou

hast not sunk in our eyes because some scoundrel has dishonored

thee.

     "I myself have consented to the Chimrints wearing turbans,

and I regard their actions in the right light, and therefore I

repeat that thou hast nothing to fear.  Come to me with the man

by whom I am sending thee this letter.  He is faithful to me and

is not the slave of thy enemies, but is the friend of a man who

enjoys the special favor of the Government."

     Further on Klugenau again tried to persuade Hadji Murad to

come over to him.

     "I did not believe him," said Hadji Murad when Loris-Melikov

had finished reading, "and did not go to Klugenau.  The chief

thing for me was to revenge myself on Akhmet Khan, and that I

could not do through the Russians.  Then Akhmet Khan surrounded

Tselmess and wanted to take me or kill me.  I had too few men and

could not drive him off, and just then came an envoy with a

letter from Shamil promising to help me to defeat and kill Akhmet

Khan and making me ruler over the whole of Avaria.  I considered

the matter for a long time and then went over to Shamil, and from

that time I have fought the Russians continually."

     Here Hadji Murad related all his military exploits, of which

there were very many and some of which were already familiar to

Loris-Melikov.  all his campaigns and raids had been remarkable

for the extraordinary rapidity of his movements and the boldness

of his attacks, which were always crowned with success.

     "There never was any friendship between me and Shamil," said

Hadji Murad at the end of his story, "but he feared me and needed

me.  But it so happened that I was asked who should be Imam after

Shamil, and I replied:  'He will be Imam whose sword is

sharpest!'

     "This was told to Shamil and he wanted to get rid of me.  He

sent me into Tabasaran.  I went, and captured a thousand sheep

and three hundred horses, but he said I had not done the right

thing and dismissed me from being Naib, and ordered me to send

him all the money.  I sent him a thousand gold pieces.  He sent

his murids and they took from me all my property.  He demanded

that I should go to him, but I knew he wanted to kill me and I

did not go.  Then he sent to take me.  I resisted and went over

to Vorontsov.  Only I did not take my family.  My mother, my

wives, and my son are in his hands.  Tell the Sirdar that as long

as my family is in Shamil's power I can do nothing."

     "I will tell him," said Loris-Melikov.

     "Take pains, try hard!. ... What is mine is thine, only help

me with the Prince.  I am tied up and the end of the rope is in

Shamil's hands," said Hadji Murad concluding his story.



                           CHAPTER XIV



     On the 20th of December Vorontsov wrote to Chernyshov, the

Minister of War.  The letter was in French:

     "I did not write to you by the last post, dear Prince, as I

wished first to decide what we should do with Hadji Murad, and

for the last two or three days I have not been feeling quite

well.

     "In my last letter I informed you of Hadji Murad's arrival

here.  He reached Tiflis on the 8th, and next day I made his

acquaintance, and during the following seven or eight days have

spoken to him and considered what use we can make of him in the

future, and especially what we are to do with him at present, for

he is much concerned about the fate of his family, and with every

appearance of perfect frankness says that while they are in

Shamil's hands he is paralysed and cannot render us any service

or show his gratitude for the friendly reception and forgiveness

we have extended to him.

     "His uncertainty about those dear to him makes him restless,

and the persons I have appointed to live with him assure me that

he does not sleep at night, eats hardly anything, prays

continually, and asks only to be allowed to ride out accompanied

by several Cossacks -- the sole recreation and exercise possible

for him and made necessary to him by life-long habit.   Every day

he comes to me to know whether I have any news of his family, and

to ask me to have all the prisoners in our hands collected and

offered to Shamil in exchange for them.  He would also give a

little money.  There are people who would let him have some for

the purpose. He keeps repeating to me:  'Save my family and then

give me a chance to serve thee' (preferably, in his opinion, on

the Lesghian line), 'and if within a month I do not render you

great service, punish me as you think fit.'  I reply that to me

all this appears very just, and that many among us would even not

trust him so long as his family remain in the mountains and are

not in our hands as hostages, and that I will do everything

possible to collect the prisoners on our frontier, that I have no

power under our laws to give him money for the ransom of his

family in addition to the sum he may himself be able to raise,

but that I may perhaps find some other means of helping him. 

After that I told him frankly that in my opinion Shamil would not

in any case give up the family, and that Shamil might tell him so

straight out and promise him a full pardon and his former posts,

and might threaten if Hadji Murad did not return, to kill his

mother, his wives, and his six children.  I asked him whether he

could say frankly what he would do if he received such an

announcement from Shamil.  He lifted his eyes and arms to heaven,

and said that everything is in God's hands, but that he would

never surrender to his foe, for he is certain Shamil would not

forgive him and he would therefore not have long to live.  As to

the destruction of his family, he did not think Shamil would act

so rashly:  firstly, to avoid making him a yet more desperate and

dangerous foe, and secondly, because there were many people, and

even very influential people, in Daghestan, who would dissuade

Shamil from such a course.  Finally, he repeated several times

that whatever God might decree for him in the future, he was at

present interested in nothing but his family's ransom, and he

implored me in God's name to help him and allow him to return to

the neighborhood of the Chechnya, where he could, with the help

and consent of our commanders, have some intercourse with his

family and regular news of their condition and of the best means

to liberate them.  He said that many people, and even some Naibs

in that part of the enemy's territory, were more or less attached

to him and that among the whole of the population already

subjugated by Russia or neutral it would be easy with our help to

establish relations very useful for the attainment of the aim

which gives him no peace day or night, and the attainment of

which would set him at ease and make it possible for him to act

for our good and win our confidence.  

     "He asks to be sent back to Grozny with a convoy of twenty

or thirty picked Cossacks who would serve him as a protection

against foes and us as a guarantee of his good faith.

     "You will understand, dear Prince, that I have been much

perplexed by all this, for do what I will a great responsibility

rests on me.  It would be in the highest degree rash to trust him

entirely, yet in order to deprive him of all means of escape we

should have to lock him up, and in my opinion that would be both

unjust and impolitic. A measure of that kind, the news of which

would soon spread over the whole of Daghestan, would do us great

harm by keeping back those who are now inclined more or less

openly to oppose Shamil (and there are many such), and who are

keenly watching to see how we treat the Imam's bravest and most

adventurous officer now that he has found himself obliged to

place himself in our hands.  If we treat Hadji Murad as a

prisoner all the good effect of the situation will be lost. 

Therefore I think that I could not act otherwise than as I have

done, though at the same time I feel that I may be accused of

having made a great mistake if Hadji Murad should take it into

his head to escape again.  In the service, and especially in a

complicated situation such as this, it is difficult, not to say

impossible, to follow any one straight path without risking

mistakes and without accepting responsibility, but once a path

seems to be the right one I must follow it, happen what may.

     "I beg of you, dear Prince, to submit this to his Majesty

the Emperor for his consideration; and I shall be happy if it

pleases our most august monarch to approve my action.

     "All that I have written above I have also written to

Generals Zavodovsky and Kozlovsky, to guide the latter when

communicating direct with Hadji Murad whom I have warned not to

act or go anywhere without Kozlovsky's consent.  I also told him

that it would be all the better of us if he rode out with our

convoy, as otherwise Shamil might spread a rumor that we were

keeping him prisoner, but at the same time I made him promise

never to go to Vozdvizhensk, because my son, to whom he first

surrendered and whom he looks upon as his kunak (friend), is not

the commander of that place and some unpleasant misunderstanding

might easily arise. In any case Vozdvizhensk lies too near a

thickly populated hostile settlement, which for the intercourse

with his friends which he desires, Grozny is in all respects

suitable.

     "Besides the twenty chosen Cossacks who at his own request

are to keep close to him, I am also sending Captain Loris-Melikov

-- a worthy, excellent, and highly intelligence officer who

speaks Tartar, and knows Hadji Murad well and apparently enjoys

his full confidence.  During the ten days that Hadji Murad has

spent here, he has, however, lived in the same house with

Lieutenant-Colonel Prince Tarkhanov, who is in command of the

shoushin District and is here on business connected with the

service.  He is a truly worthy man whom I trust entirely.  He

also has won Hadji Murad's confidence, and through him alone --

as he speaks Tartar perfectly -- we have discussed the most

delicate and secret matters.  I have consulted Tarkhanov about

Hadji Murad, and he fully agrees with me that it was necessary

either to act as I have done, or to put Hadji Murad in prison and

guard him in the strictest manner (for if we once treat him badly

he will not be easy to hold), or else to remove him from the

country altogether.  But these two last measures would not only

destroy all the advantage accruing to us from Hadji Murad's

quarrel with Shamil, but would inevitably check any growth of the

present insubordination, and possible future revolt, of the

people against Shamil's power.  Prince Tarkhanov tells me he

himself has no doubt of Hadji Murad's truthfulness, and that

Hadji Murad is convinced that Shamil will never forgive him but

would have him executed in spite of any promise of forgiveness. 

The only thing Tarkhanov has noticed in his intercourse with

Hadji Murad that might cause any anxiety, is his attachment to

his religion.  Tarkhanov does not deny that Shamil might

influence Hadji Murad from that side.  But as I have already

said, he will never persuade Hadji Murad that he will not take

his life sooner or later should the latter return to him.

     "This, dear Prince, is all I have to tell you about this

episode in our affairs here."





     

 

                                



                           HADJI MURAD



                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy



                     First Published in 1904

             Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude



            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine





                           CHAPTER XV



     The report was dispatched from Tiflis on the 24th of

December 1851, and on New Year's Eve a courier, having overdriven

a dozen horses and beaten a dozen drivers till they bled,

delivered it to Prince Chernyshov who at that time was Minister

of War; and on the 1st of January 1852 Chernyshov took

Vorontsov's report, among other papers, to the Emperor Nicholas.

     Chernyshov disliked Vorontsov because of the general respect

in which the latter was held and because of his immense wealth,

and also because Vorontsov was a real aristocrat while

Chernyshov, after all, was a parvenu, but especially because the

Emperor was particularly well disposed towards Vorontsov. 

Therefore at every opportunity Chernyshov tried to injure

Vorontsov.

     When he had last presented the report about Caucasian

affairs he had succeeded in arousing Nicholas's displeasure

against Vorontsov because -- through the carelessness of those in

command -- almost the whole of a small Caucasian detachment had

been destroyed by the mountaineers.  He now intended to present

the steps taken by Vorontsov in relation to Hadji Murad in an

unfavorable light.  He wished to suggest to the Emperor that

Vorontsov always protected and even indulged the natives to the

detriment of the Russians, and that he had acted unwisely in

allowing Hadji Murad to remain in the Caucasus for there was

every reason to suspect that he had only come over to spy on our

means of defense, and that it would therefore be better to

transport him to Central Russia and make use of him only after

his family had been rescued from the mountaineers and it had

become possible to convince ourselves of his loyalty.

     Chernyshov's plan did not succeed merely because on that New

Year's Day Nicholas was in particularly bad spirits, and out of

perversity would not have accepted any suggestion whatever from

anyone, least of all from Chernyshov whom he only tolerated --

regarding him as indispensable for the time being but looking

upon him as a blackguard, for Nicholas knew of his endeavors at

the trial of the Decembrists to secure the conviction of Zachary

Chernyshov, and of his attempt to obtain Zachary's property for

himself.  So thanks to Nicholas's ill temper Hadji Murad remained

in the Caucasus, and his circumstances were not changed as they

might have been had Chernyshov presented his report at another

time.



                              * * *



     It was half-past nine o'clock when through the mist of the

cold morning (the thermometer showed 13 degrees below zero

Fahrenheit) Chernyshov's fat, bearded coachman, sitting on the

box of a small sledge (like the one Nicholas drove about in) with

a sharp-angled, cushion-shaped azure velvet cap on his head, drew

up at the entrance of the Winter Palace and gave a friendly nod

to his chum, Prince Dolgoruky's coachman -- who having brought

his master to the palace had himself long been waiting outside,

in his big coat with the thickly wadded skirts, sitting on the

reins and rubbing his numbed hands together.  Chernyshov had on a

long cloak with a large cap and a fluffy collar of silver beaver,

and a regulation three-cornered had with cocks' feathers.  He

threw back the bearskin apron of the sledge and carefully

disengaged his chilled feet, on which he had no over-shoes (he

prided himself on never wearing any).  Clanking his spurs with an

air of bravado he ascended the carpeted steps and passed through

the hall door which was respectfully opened for him by the

porter, and entered the hall.  Having thrown off his cloak which

an old Court lackey hurried forward to take, he went to a mirror

and carefully removed the hat from his curled wig.  Looking at

himself in the mirror, he arranged the hair on his temples and

the tuft above his forehead with an accustomed movement of his

old hands, and adjusted his cross, the shoulder-knots of his

uniform, and his large-initialled epaulets, and then went up the

gently ascending carpeted stairs, his not very reliable old legs

feebly mounting the shallow steps.  Passing the Court lackeys in

gala livery who stood obsequiously bowing, Chernyshov entered the

waiting-room.  He was respectfully met by a newly appointed aide-

de-camp of the Emperor's in a shining new uniform with epaulets

and shoulder-knots, whose face was still fresh and rosy and who

had a small black mustache, and the hair on his temples brushed

towards his eyes in the same way as the Emperor.

     Prince Vasili Dolgoruky, Assistant-Minister of War, with an

expression of ennui on his dull face -- which was ornamented with

similar whiskers, mustaches, and temple tufts brushed forward

like Nicholas's -- greeted him.

     "L'empereur?" said Chernyshov, addressing the aide-de-camp

and looking inquiringly towards the door leading to the cabinet.

     "Sa majeste vient de rentrer," replied the aide-de-camp,

evidently enjoying the sound of his own voice, and stepping so

softly and steadily that had a tumbler of water been placed on

his head none of it would have been spilt, he approached the door

and disappeared, his whole body evincing reverence for the spot

he was about to visit.

     Dolgoruky meanwhile opened his portfolio to see that it

contained the necessary papers, while Chernyshov, frowning, paced

up and down to restore the circulation in his numbed feet, and

thought over what he was about to report to the Emperor.  He was

near the door of the cabinet when it opened again and the aide-

de-camp, even more radiant and respectful than before, came out

and with a gesture invited the minister and his assistant to

enter.

     The Winter Palace had been rebuilt after a fire some

considerable time before this, but Nicholas was still occupying

rooms in the upper story.  The cabinet in which he received the

reports of his ministers and other high officials was a very

lofty apartment with four large windows.  A big portrait of the

Emperor Alexander I hung on the front side of the room.  Two

bureaux stood between the windows, and several chairs were ranged

along the walls.  IN the middle of the room was an enormous

writing table and an arm chair before it for Nicholas, and other

chairs for those to whom he gave audience.

     Nicholas sat at the table in a black coat with shoulder-

straps but no epaulets, his enormous body -- with his overgrown

stomach tightly laced in -- was thrown back, and he gazed at the

newcomers with fixed, lifeless eyes.  His long pale face, with

its enormous receding forehead between the tufts of hair which

were brushed forward and skillfully joined to the wig that

covered his bald patch, was specially cold and stony that day. 

His eyes, always dim, looked duller than usual, the compressed

lips under his upturned mustaches, the high collar which

supported his chin, and his fat freshly shaven cheeks on which

symmetrical sausage-shaped bits of whiskers had been left, gave

his face a dissatisfied and even irate expression.  His bad mood

was caused by fatigue, due to the fact that he had been to a

masquerade the night before, and while walking about as was his

wont in his Horse Guards' uniform with a bird on the helmet,

among the public which crowded round and timidly made way for his

enormous, self-assured figure, he had again met the mask who at

the previous masquerade had aroused his senile sensuality by her

whiteness, her beautiful figure, and her tender voice.  At that

former masquerade she had disappeared after promising to meet him

at the next one.

     At yesterday's masquerade she had come up to him, and this

time he had not let her go, but had led her to the box specially

kept ready for that purpose, where he could be alone with her. 

Having arrived in silence at the door of the box Nicholas looked

round to find the attendant, but he was not there.  He frowned

and pushed the door open himself, letting the lady enter first.

     "Il y a quelq'un!" said the mask, stopping short.

     And the box actually was occupied.  On the small velvet-

covered sofa, close together, sat an Uhlan officer and a pretty,

fair curly-haired young woman in a domino, who had removed her

mask.  On catching sight of the angry figure of Nicholas drawn up

to its full height, she quickly replaced her mask, but the Uhlan

officer, rigid with fear, gazed at Nicholas with fixed eyes

without rising from the sofa.

     Used as he was to the terror he inspired in others, that

terror always pleased Nicholas, and by way of contrast he

sometimes liked to astound those plunged in terror by addressing

kindly words to them.  He did so on this occasion.

     "Well, friend!" said he to the officer, "You are younger

than I and might give up your place to me."

     The officer jumped to his feet, and growing first pale and

then red and bending almost double, he followed his partner

silently out of the box, leaving Nicholas alone with his lady.

     She proved to be a pretty, twenty-year-old virgin, the

daughter of a Swedish governess.  She told Nicholas how when

quite a child she had fallen in love with him from his portraits;

how she adored him and had made up her mind to attract his

attention at any cost.  Now she had succeeded and wanted nothing

more -- so she said.

     The girl was taken to the place where Nicholas usually had

rendezvous with women, and there he spent more than an hour with

her.

     When he returned to his room that night and lay on the hard

narrow bed about which he prided himself, and covered himself

with the cloak which he considered to be (and spoke of as being)

as famous as Napoleon's hat, it was a long time before he could

fall asleep.  He thought now of the frightened and elated

expression on that girl's fair face, and now of the full,

powerful shoulders of his established mistress, Nelidova, and he

compared the two.  That profligacy in a married man was a bad

thing did not once enter his head, and he would have been greatly

surprised had anyone censured him for it.  Yet though convinced

that he had acted rightly, some kind of unpleasant after-taste

remained, and to stifle that feeling he dwelt on a thought that

always tranquilized him -- the thought of his own greatness.

     Though he had fallen asleep so late, he rose before eight,

and after attending to his toilet in the usual way -- rubbing his

big well-fed body all over with ice -- and saying his prayers

(repeating those he had been used to from childhood -- the prayer

to the Virgin, the apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer,

without attaching any kind of meaning to the words he uttered),

he went out through the smaller portico of the palace onto the

embankment in his military cloak and cap.

     On the embankment he met a student in the uniform of the

School of Jurisprudence, who was as enormous as himself.  On

recognizing the uniform of that school, which he disliked for its

freedom of thought, Nicholas frowned, but the stature of the

student and the painstaking manner in which he drew himself up

and saluted, ostentatiously sticking out his elbow, mollified his

displeasure.

     "Your name?" said he.

     "Polosatov, your Imperial Majesty."

     "...fine fellow!"

     The student continued to stand with his hand lifted to his

hat.

     Nicholas stopped.

     "Do you wish to enter the army?"

     "Not at all, your Imperial Majesty."

     "Blockhead!"  And Nicholas turned away and continued his

walk, and began uttering aloud the first words that came into his

head.

     "Kopervine...Kopervine -- " he repeated several times (it

was the name of yesterday's girl).  "Horrid ... horrid -- " He

did not think of what he was saying, but stifled his feelings by

listening to the words.

     "Yes, what would Russia be without me?" said he, feeling his

former dissatisfaction returning.  "What would -- not Russia

alone but Europe be, without me?" and calling to mind the

weakness and stupidity of his brother-in-law the King of Prussia,

he shook his head.

     As he was returning to the small portico, he saw the

carriage of Helena Pavlovna, with a red-liveried footman,

approaching the Saltykov entrance of the palace.

     Helena Pavlovna was to him the personification of that

futile class of people who discussed not merely science and

poetry, but even the ways of governing men:  imagining that they

could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them! 

He knew that however much he crushed such people they reappeared

again and again, and he recalled his brother, Michael Pavlovich,

who had died not long before.  A feeling of sadness and vexation

came over him and with a dark frown he again began whispering the

first words that came into his head, which he only ceased doing

when he re-entered the palace.

     On reaching his apartments he smoothed his whiskers and the

hair on his temples and the wig on his bald patch, and twisted

his mustaches upwards in front of the mirror, and then went

straight to the cabinet in which he received reports.

     He first received Chernyshov, who at once saw by his face,

and especially by his eyes, that Nicholas was in a particularly

bad humor that day, and knowing about the adventure of the night

before he understood the cause.  Having coldly greeted him and

invited him to sit down, Nicholas fixed on him a lifeless gaze. 

The first matter Chernyshov reported upon was a case of

embezzlement by commissariat officials which had just been

discovered; the next was the movement of troops on the Prussian

frontier; then came a list of rewards to be given at the New Year

to some people omitted from a former list; then Vorontsov's

report about Hadji Murad; and lastly some unpleasant business

concerning an attempt by a student of the Academy of Medicine on

the life of a professor.

     Nicholas heard the report of the embezzlement silently with

compressed lips, his large white hand -- with one ring on the

fourth finger -- stroking some sheets of paper, and his eyes

steadily fixed on Chernyshov's forehead and on the tuft of hair

above it.

     Nicholas was convinced that everybody stole.  He knew he

would have to punish the commissariat officials now, and decided

to send them all to serve in the ranks, but he also knew that

this would not prevent those who succeeded them from acting in

the same way.  It was a characteristic of officials to steal, but

it was his duty to punish them for doing so, and tired as he was

of that duty he conscientiously performed it.

     "It seems there is only one honest man in Russia!" said he.

     Chernyshov at once understood that this one honest man was

Nicholas himself, and smiled approvingly.

     "It looks like it, your Imperial Majesty," said he.

     "Leave it -- I will give a decision," said Nicholas, taking

the document and putting it on the left side of the table.  

     Then Chernyshov  reported the rewards to be given and about

moving the army on the Prussian frontier.

     Nicholas looked over the list and struck out some names, and

then briefly and firmly gave orders to move two divisions to the

Prussian frontier.  He could not forgive the King of Prussia for

granting a Constitution to his people after the events of 1848,

and therefore while expressing most friendly feelings to his

brother-in-law in letters and conversation, he considered it

necessary to keep an army near the frontier in case of need.  He

might want to use these troops to defend his brother-in-law's

throne if the people of Prussia rebelled (Nicholas saw a

readiness for rebellion everywhere) as he had used troops to

suppress the rising in Hungary a few years previously.  they were

also of use to give more weight and influence to such advice as

he gave to the King of Prussia.

     "Yes -- what would Russia be like now if it were not for

me?" he again thought.

     "Well, what else is there?" said he.

     "A courier from the Caucasus," said Chernyshov, and he

reported what Vorontsov had written about Hadji Murad's

surrender.

     "Well, well!" said Nicholas.  "It's a good beginning!"

     "Evidently the plan devised by your Majesty begins to bear

fruit," said Chernyshov.

     this approval of his strategic talents was particularly

pleasant to Nicholas because, though he prided himself upon them,

at the bottom of his heart he knew that they did not really

exist, and he now desired to hear more detailed praise of

himself.

     "How do you mean?" he asked.

     "I mean that if your Majesty's plans had been adopted

before, and we had moved forward slowly and steadily, cutting

down forests and destroying the supplies of food, the Caucasus

would have been subjugated long ago.  I attribute Hadji Murad's

surrender entirely to his having come to the conclusion that they

can hold out no longer."

     "True," said Nicholas.

     Although the plan of a gradual advance into the enemy's

territory by means of felling forests and destroying the food

supplies was Ermolov's and Velyaminov's plan, and was quite

contrary to Nicholas's own plan of seizing Shamil's place of

residence and destroying that nest of robbers -- which was the

plan on which the dargo expedition in 1845 (that cost so many

lives) had been undertaken -- Nicholas nevertheless attributed to

himself also the plan of a slow advance and a systematic felling

of forests and devastation of the country.  It would seem that to

believe the plan of a slow movement by felling forests and

destroying food supplies to have been his own would have

necessitated hiding the fact that he had insisted on quite

contrary operations in 1845.  But he did not hide it and was

proud of the plan of the 1845 expedition as well as of the plan 

of a slow advance -- though the two were obviously contrary to

one another.  Continual brazen flattery from everybody round him

in the teeth of obvious facts had brought him to such a state

that he no longer saw his own inconsistencies or measured his

actions and words by reality, logic, or even simple common sense;

but was quite convinced that all his orders, however senseless,

unjust, and mutually contradictory they might be, became

reasonable, just, and mutually accordant simply because he gave

them.  His decision in the case next reported to him -- that of

the student of the Academy of Medicine -- was of the that

senseless kind.

     The case was as follows:  A young man who had twice failed

in his examinations was being examined a third time, and when the

examiner again would not pass him, the young man whose nerves

were deranged, considering this to be an injustice, seized a pen-

knife from the table in a paroxysm of fury, and rushing at the

professor inflicted on him several trifling wounds.

     "What's his name?" asked Nicholas.

     "Bzhezovski."

     "A Pole?"

     "Of Polish descent and a roman Catholic," answered

Chernyshov.

     Nicholas frowned.  He had done much evil to the Poles.  To

justify that evil he had to feel certain that all Poles were

rascals, and he considered them to be such and hated them in

proportion to the evil he had done them.

     "Wait a little," he said, closing his eyes and bowing his

head.

     Chernyshov, having more than once heard Nicholas say so,

knew that when the Emperor had to take a decision it was only

necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments

and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision

presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to

do.  He was now thinking how most fully to satisfy the feeling of

hatred against the Poles which this incident had stirred up

within him, and the inner voice suggested the following decision. 

He took the report and in his large handwriting wrote on its

margin with three orthographical mistakes:

     "Diserves deth, but, thank God, we have no capitle

punishment, and it is not for me to introduce it.  Make him fun

the gauntlet of a thousand men twelve times. -- Nicholas."

     He signed, adding his unnaturally huge flourish.

     Nicholas knew that twelve thousand strokes with the

regulation rods were not only certain death with torture, but

were a superfluous cruelty, for five thousand strokes were

sufficient to kill the strongest man.  But it pleased him to be

ruthlessly cruel and it also pleased him to think that we have

abolished capital punishment in Russia.

     Having written his decision about the student, he pushed it

across to Chernyshov.

     "There," he said, "read it."

     Chernyshov read it, and bowed his head as a sign of

respectful amazement at the wisdom of the decision.

     "Yes, and let all the students be present on the drill-

ground at the punishment," added Nicholas.

     "It will do them good!  I will abolish this revolutionary

spirit and will tear it up by the roots!" he thought.

     "It shall be done," replied Chernyshov; and after a short

pause he straightened the tuft on his forehead and returned to

the Caucasian report.

     "What do you command me to write in reply to Prince

Vorontsov's dispatch?"

     "To keep firmly to my system of destroying the dwellings and

food supplies in Chechnya and to harass them by raids." answered

Nicholas.

     "And what are your Majesty's commands with reference to

Hadji Murad?" asked Chernyshov.

     "Well, Vorontsov writes that he wants to make use of him in

the Caucasus."

     "Is it not dangerous?" said Chernyshov, avoiding Nicholas's

gaze.  "Prince Vorontsov is too confiding, I am afraid."

     "And you -- what do you think?" asked Nicholas sharply,

detecting Chernyshov's intention of presenting Vorontsov's

decision in an unfavorable light.

     "Well, I should have thought it would be safer to deport him

to Central Russia."

     "You would have thought!" said Nicholas ironically.  "But I

don't think so, and agree with Vorontsov.  Write to him

accordingly."

     "It shall be done," said Chernyshov, rising and bowing

himself out.

     Dolgoruky also bowed himself out, having during the whole

audience only uttered a few words (in reply to a question from

Nicholas) about the movement of the army.

     After Chernyshov, Nicholas received Bibikov, General-

Governor of the Western Provinces.  Having expressed his approval

of the measures taken by Bibikov against the mutinous peasants

who did not wish to accept the orthodox Faith, he ordered him to

have all those who did not submit tried by court-martial.  that

was equivalent to sentencing them to run the gauntlet.  He also

ordered the editor of a newspaper to be sent to serve in the

ranks of the army for publishing information about the transfer

of several thousand State peasants to the imperial estates.

     "I do this because I consider it necessary," said Nicholas,

"and I will not allow it to be discussed."

     Bibikov saw the cruelty of the order concerning the Uniate

peasants and the injustice of transferring State peasants (the

only free peasants in Russia in those days) to the Crown, which

meant making them serfs of the Imperial family.  But it was

impossible to express dissent.  Not to agree with Nicholas's

decisions would have meant the loss of that brilliant position

which it had cost Bibikov forty years to attain and which he now

enjoyed; and he therefore submissively bowed his dark head

(already touched with grey) to indicate his submission and his

readiness to fulfil the cruel, insensate, and dishonest supreme

will.

     Having dismissed Bibikov, Nicholas stretched himself, with a

sense of duty well fulfilled, glanced at the clock, and went to

get ready to go out.  Having put on a uniform with epaulets,

orders, and a ribbon, he went out into the reception hall where

more than a hundred persons -- men in uniforms and women in

elegant low-necked dresses, all standing in the places assigned

to them -- awaited his arrival with agitation.

     He came out to them with a lifeless look in his eyes, his

chest expanded, his stomach bulging out above and below its

bandages, and feeling everybody's gaze tremulously and

obsequiously fixed upon him he assumed an even more triumphant

air.  When his eyes met those of people he knew, remembering who

was who, he stopped and addressed a few words to them sometimes

in Russian and sometimes in French, and transfixing them with his

cold glassy eye listened to what they said.

     Having received all the New year congratulations he passed

on to church, where God, through His servants the priests,

greeted and praised Nicholas just as worldly people did; and

weary as he was of these greetings and praises Nicholas duly

accepted them.  All this was as it should be, because the welfare

and happiness of the whole world depended on him, and wearied

though he was he would still not refuse the universe his

assistance.

     When at the end of the service the magnificently arrayed

deacon, his long hair crimped and carefully combed, began the

chant "Many Years," which was heartily caught up by the splendid

choir, Nicholas looked round and noticed Nelidova, with her fine

shoulders, standing by a window, and he decided the comparison

with yesterday's girl in her favor.

     After Mass he went to the empress and spent a few minutes in

the bosom of his family, joking with the children and his wife. 

then passing through the Hermitage, he visited the Minister of

the Court, Volkonski, and among other things ordered him to pay

out of a special fund a yearly pension to the mother of

yesterday's girl.  From there he went for his customary drive.

     Dinner that day was served in the Pompeian Hall.  Besides

the younger sons of Nicholas and Michael there were also invited

Baron Lieven, Count Rzhevski, Dolgoruky, the Prussian Ambassador,

and the King of Prussia's aide-de-camp.

     While waiting for the appearance of the Emperor and Empress

an interesting conversation took place between Baron Lieven and

the Prussian Ambassador concerning the disquieting news from

Poland.

     "La Pologne et le Caucases, ce sont les deux cauteres de la

Russie," said Lieven.  "Il nous faut dent mille hommes a peu

pres, dans chcun de ces deux pays."

     The Ambassador expressed a fictitious surprise that it

should be so.

     "Vous dites, la Pologne -- " began the Ambassador.

     "Oh, oui, c'etait un coup de maitre de Metternich de nous en

avoir laisse l'embarras. ... "

     At this point the Empress, with her trembling head and fixed

smile, entered followed by Nicholas.

     At dinner Nicholas spoke of Hadji Murad's surrender and said

that the war in the Caucasus must now soon come to an end in

consequence of the measures he was taking to limit the scope of

the mountaineers by felling their forests and by his system of

erecting a series of small forts.

     The Ambassador, having exchanged a rapid glance with the

aide-de-camp -- to whom he had only that morning spoken about

Nicholas's unfortunate weakness for considering himself a great

strategist -- warmly praised this plan which once more

demonstrated Nicholas's great strategic ability.

     After dinner Nicholas drove to the ballet where hundreds of

women marched round in tights and scanty clothing.  One of the

specially attracted him, and he had the German ballet-master sent

for and gave orders that a diamond ring should be presented to

her.

     The next day when Chernyshov came with his report, Nicholas

again confirmed his order to Vorontsov -- that now that Hadji

Murad had surrendered, the Chechens should be more actively

harassed than ever and the cordon round them tightened.

     Chernyshov wrote in that sense to Vorontsov; and another

courier, overdriving more horses and bruising the faces of more

drivers, galloped to Tiflis.



                           CHAPTER XVI



     In obedience to this command of Nicholas a raid was

immediately made in Chechnya that same month, January 1852.

     The detachment ordered for the raid consisted of four

infantry battalions, two companies of Cossacks, and eight guns. 

The column marched along the road; and on both sides of it in a

continuous line, now mounting, now descending, marched Fagers in

high boots, sheepskin coats, and tall caps, with rifles on their

shoulders and cartridges in their belts.

     As usual when marching through a hostile country, silence

was observed as far as possible.  Only occasionally the guns

jingled jolting across a ditch, or an artillery horse snorted or

neighed, not understanding that silence was ordered, or an angry

commander shouted in a hoarse subdued voice to his subordinates

that the line was spreading out too much or marching too near or

too far from the column.  Only once was the silence broken, when

from a bramble patch between the line and the column a gazelle

with a white breast and grey back jumped out followed by a buck

of the same color with small backward-curving horns.  Doubling up

their forelegs at each big bound they took, the beautiful timid

creatures came so close to the column that some of the soldiers

rushed after them laughing and shouting, intending to bayonet

them, but the gazelles turned back, slipped through the line of

Fagers, and pursued by a few horsemen and the company's dogs,

fled like birds to the mountains.

     It was still winter, but towards noon, when the column

(which had started early in the morning) had gone three miles,

the sun had risen high enough and was powerful enough to make the

men quite hot, and its rays were so bright that it was painful to

look at the shining steel of the bayonets or at the reflections -

- like little suns -- on the brass of the cannons.

     The clear and rapid stream the detachment had just crossed

lay behind, and in front were tilled fields and meadows in

shallow valleys.  Farther in front were the dark mysterious

forest-clad hills with craigs rising beyond them, and farther

still on the lofty horizon were the ever-beautiful ever-changing

snowy peaks that played with the light like diamonds.

     At the head of the 5th Company, Butler, a tall handsome

officer who had recently exchanged from the Guards, marched along

in a black coat and tall cap, shouldering his sword.  He was

filled with a buoyant sense of the joy of living, the danger of

death, a wish for action, and the consciousness of being part of

an immense whole directed by a single will.  This was his second

time of going into action and he thought how in a moment they

would be fired at, and he would not only not stoop when the

shells flew overhead, or heed the whistle of the bullets, but

would carry his head even more erect than before and would look

round at his comrades and the soldiers with smiling eyes, and

begin to talk in a perfectly calm voice about quite other

matters.

     The detachment turned off the good road onto a little-used

one that crossed a stubbly maize field, ant they were drawing

near the forest when, with an ominous whistle, a shell flew past

amid the baggage wagons -- they could not see whence -- and tore

up the ground in the field by the roadside.

     "It's beginning," said Butler with a bright smile to a

comrade who was walking beside him.

     And so it was.  After the shell a thick crowd of mounted

Chechens appeared with their banners from under the shelter of

the forest.  In the midst of the crowd could be seen a large

green banner, and an old and very far-sighted sergeant-major

informed the short-sighted Butler that Shamil himself must be

there.  The horsemen came down the hiss and appeared to the

right, at the highest part of the valley nearest the detachment,

and began to descend.  A little general in a thick black coat and

tall cap rode up to Butler's company on his ambler, and ordered

him to the right to encounter the descending horsemen.  Butler

quickly led his company in the direction indicated, but before he

reached the valley he heard two cannon shots behind him.  He

looked round:  two clouds of grey smoke had risen above two

cannon and were spreading along the valley.  The mountaineers'

horsemen -- who had evidently not expected to meet artillery --

retired.  Butler's company began firing at them and the whole

ravine was filled with the smoke of powder.  Only higher up above

the ravine could the mountaineers be seen hurriedly retreating,

though still firing back at the Cossacks who pursued them.  The

company followed the mountaineers farther, and on the slope of a

second ravine came in view of an aoul.

     Following the Cossacks, Butler and his company entered the

aoul at a run, to find it deserted.  The soldiers were ordered to

burn the corn and the hay as well as the saklyas, and the whole

aoul was soon filled with pungent smoke amid which the soldiers

rushed about dragging out of the saklyas what they could find,

and above all catching and shooting the fowls the mountaineers

had not been able to take away with them.

     The officers sat down at some distance beyond the smoke, and

lunched and drank.  The sergeant-major brought them some

honeycombs on a board.  There was no sigh of any Chechens and

early in the afternoon the order was given to retreat.  The

companies formed into a column behind the aoul and Butler

happened to be in the rearguard.  As soon as they started

Chechens appeared, following and firing at the detachment, but

they ceased this pursuit as soon as they came out into an open

space.

     Not one of Butler's company had been wounded, and he

returned in a most happy and energetic mood.  When after fording

the same stream it had crossed in the morning, the detachment

spread over the maize fields and the meadows, the singers of each

company came forward and songs filled the air.

     "Verry diff'rent, very diff'rent, Fagers are, Fagers are!"

sang Butler's singers, and his horse stepped merrily to the

music.  Trezorka, the shaggy grey dog belonging to the company,

ran in front, with his tail curled up with an air of

responsibility like a commander.  Butler felt buoyant, calm, and

joyful.  War presented itself to him as consisting only in his

exposing himself to danger and to possible death, thereby gaining

rewards and the respect of his comrades here, as well as of his

friends in Russia.  Strange to say, his imagination never

pictured the other aspect of war:  the death and wounds of the

soldiers, officers, and mountaineers.  To retain his poetic

conception he even unconsciously avoided looking at the dead and

wounded. So that day when we had three dead and twelve wounded,

he passed by a corpse lying on its back and did not stop to look,

seeing only with one eye the strange position of the waxen hand

and a dark red spot on the head.  The hosslmen appeared to him

only a mounted dzhigits from whom he had to defend himself.

     "You see, my dear sir," said his major in an interval

between two songs, "it's not as it is with you in Petersburg --

'Eyes right!  Eyes left!'  Here we have done our job, and now we

go home and Masha will set a pie and some nice cabbage soup

before us.  That's life -- don't you think so?  -- Now then!  As

the Dawn Was Breaking!"  He called for his favorite song.

     There was no wind, the air was fresh and clear and so

transparent that the snow hills nearly a hundred miles away

seemed quite near, and in the intervals between the songs the

regular sound of the footsteps and the jingle of the guns was

heard as a background on which each song began and ended.  The

song that was being sung in Butler's company was composed by a

cadet in honor of the regiment, and went to a dance tune.  The

chorus was:  "Verry diff'rent, very diff'rent, Fagers are, Fagers

are!"

     Butler rode beside the officer next in rank above him, Major

Petrov, with whom he lived, and he felt he could not be thankful

enough to have exchanged from the Guards and come to the

Caucasus.  His chief reason for exchanging was that he had lost

all he had at cards and was afraid that if he remained there he

would be unable to resist playing though he had nothing more to

lose.  Now all that was over, his life was quite changed and was

such a pleasant and brave one!  He forgot that he was ruined, and

forgot his unpaid debts. The Caucasus, the war, the soldiers, the

officers -- those tipsy, brave, good-natured fellows -- and Major

Petrov himself, all seemed so delightful that sometimes it

appeared too good to be true that he was not in Petersburg -- in

a room filled with tobacco smoke, turning down the corners of

cards and gambling, hating the holder of the bank and feeling a

dull pain in his head -- but was really here in this glorious

region among these brave Caucasians.

     The major and the daughter of a surgeon's orderly, formerly

known as Masha, but now generally called by the more respectful

name of Marya Dmitrievna, lived together as man and wife.  Marya

Dmitrievna was a handsome, fair-haired, very freckled, childless

woman of thirty.  Whatever her past may have been she was now the

major's faithful companion and looked after him like a nurse -- a

very necessary matter, since he often drank himself into

oblivion.

     When they reached the fort everything happened as the major

had foreseen.  Marya Dmitrievna gave him and Butler, and two

other officers of the detachment who had been invited, a

nourishing and tasty dinner, and the major ate and drank till he

was unable to speak, and then went off to his room to sleep.

     Butler, having drunk rather more chikhir wine than was good

for him, went to his bedroom, tired but contented, and hardly had

time to undress before he fell into a sound, dreamless, and

unbroken sleep with his hand under his handsome curly head.



                          CHAPTER XVII



     The aoul which had been destroyed was that in which Hadji

Murad had spent the night before he went over to the Russians. 

Sado and his family had left the aoul on the approach of the

Russian detachment, and when he returned he found his saklya in

ruins -- the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting

the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy.  His son, the

handsome bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at Hadji

Murad, was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a

barka; he had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet.  the

dignified woman who had served Hadji Murad when he was at the

house now stood over her son's body, her smock torn in front, her

withered old breasts exposed, her hair down, and she dug her

hails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly.  Sado,

taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a

grave for his son.  The old grandfather sat by the wall of the

ruined saklya cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of

him.  He had only just returned from the apiary.  The two stacks

of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had

planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all

the beehives and bees had been burnt.  The wailing of the women

and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled

with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. 

The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders

with frightened eyes.  The fountain was polluted, evidently on

purpose, so that the water could not be used.  The mosque was

polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were

cleaning it out.  No one spoke of hatred of the Russians.  the

feeling experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the

oldest, was stronger than hate.  It was not hatred, for they did

not regard those Russian dogs as human beings, but it was such

repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of

these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them -- like the

desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves -- was

as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

     The inhabitants of the aoul were confronted by the choice of

remaining there and restoring with frightful effort what had been

produced with such labor and had been so lightly and senselessly

destroyed, facing every moment the possibility of a repetition of

what had happened; or to submit to the Russians -- contrary to

their religion and despite the repulsion and contempt they felt

for them.  The old men prayed, and unanimously decided to send

envoys to Shamil asking him for help.  Then they immediately set

to work to restore what had been destroyed.



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