Chapter 1

I

GAYETY AND DYNAMITE

"BARINIA, the young stranger has arrived."

"Where is he?"

"Oh, he is waiting at the lodge."

"I told you to show him to Natacha's sitting-room. Didn't you
understand me, Ermolai?"

"Pardon, Barinia, but the young stranger, when I asked to search
him, as you directed, flatly refused to let me."

"Did you explain to him that everybody is searched before being
allowed to enter, that it is the order, and that even my mother
herself has submitted to it?"

"I told him all that, Barinia; and I told him about madame your
mother."

"What did he say to that?"

"That he was not madame your mother. He acted angry."

"Well, let him come in without being searched."

"The Chief of Police won't like it."

"Do as I say."

Ermolai bowed and returned to the garden. The "barinia" left the
veranda, where she had come for this conversation with the old
servant of General Trebassof, her husband, and returned to the
dining-room in the datcha des Iles, where the gay Councilor Ivan
Petrovitch was regaling his amused associates with his latest
exploit at Cubat's resort. They were a noisy company, and certainly
the quietest among them was not the general, who nursed on a sofa
the leg which still held him captive after the recent attack, that
to his old coachman and his two piebald horses had proved fatal.
The story of the always-amiable Ivan Petrovitch (a lively, little,
elderly man with his head bald as an egg) was about the evening
before. After having, as he said, "recure la bouche " for these
gentlemen spoke French like their own language and used it among
themselves to keep their servants from understanding - after having
wet his whistle with a large glass of sparkling rosy French wine,
he cried:

"You would have laughed, Feodor Feodorovitch. We had sung songs
on the Barque* and then the Bohemians left with their music and we

[*The "Barque" is a restaurant on a boat, among the isles,
near the Gulf of Finland, on a bank of the Neva.]

went out onto the river-bank to stretch our legs and cool our faces
in the freshness of the dawn, when a company of Cossacks of the
Guard came along. I knew the officer in command and invited him to
come along with us and drink the Emperor's health at Cubat's place.
That officer, Feodor Feodorovitch, is a man who knows vintages and
boasts that he has never swallowed a glass of anything so common as
Crimean wine. When I named champagne he cried, 'Vive l'Empereur!'
A true patriot. So we started, merry as school-children. The
entire company followed, then all the diners playing little whistles,
and all the servants besides, single file. At Cubat's I hated to