Chapter 9 - Page 2

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