Page:Pushkin - Russian Romance (King, 1875).djvu/96

84 a speedy and inevitable change in these circumstances, still, I could not rid myself of a feeling of alarm, when I considered the danger of her situation.

My reflections were interrupted by the entrance of a Cossack, who had come with the announcement that the great emperor required me to appear before him.

"Where is he?" I asked, preparing to obey.

"In the commandant's house," answered the Cossack. "After dinner our father went to take a bath, and now, he is having his rest. Well, your lordship, everything proves that he is an important personage. At dinner he deigned to eat up two roasted sucking pigs, and he bore the hot steam so well, that even Tarass Koúrotchkine could not stand it, being obliged to give the birch broom to Tomka Bichbayeff, and only recovered from its effects after having a quantity of cold water thrown over him. It is impossible not to admit that all his ways are very grand. And I was told that in the bath-room he showed the marks of a Tzar on his breasts—on one side he has the two-headed eagle of the size of a pyatàck, and on the other he has the likeness of his own person."

I did not think it necessary to dispute the point with the Cossack, so I followed him to the commandant's house, endeavouring to imagine beforehand, my interview with Pougatcheff, and wondering how it would end. My reader will easily understand that I did not feel perfectly indifferent to its result.

It was getting dusk when I approached the