Page:Pushkin - Russian Romance (King, 1875).djvu/134

122

kibitka stopped at the commandant's house. The people had recognized the sound of Pougatcheff's bells, and came out in a throng to meet him. Shvabrine received the pretender at the very threshold. He wore a Cossack uniform, and had allowed his beard to grow. The traitor helped Pougatcheff to alight with fawning demonstrations of joy and zeal. He looked confused upon seeing me, but soon recovered himself and stretched out his hand, saying:—

"And thou also art one of us? That's right. It should have been so long ago!"

I turned away without making any reply.

My heart ached when I found myself in the old familiar room where the late commandant's commission still hung from the wall, a sad epitaph on times gone by. Pougatcheff seated himself on the sofa where Ivan Kouzmitch used to doze, lulled to sleep by his consort's grumbling. Shvabrine himself carried a glass of vodka to him. Pougatcheff drank it off, and said, pointing to me:—

"Offer some to his lordship as well."

Shvabrine approached me with the tray; but I turned away from him a second time. He did not look like himself. With his usual perspicacity, he could not have