Frederick Whishaw

“ Thou shalt love me again, as before, and marry me. Help me in this, dear Chelminsky.{221} She has robbed me of the Tsar and insulted me. I shall die if I am not quickly avenged. Tell me, truly, does she love thee?’
‘I think it may well be so,’ said I, for this farce amused me and I would see how it should end. ‘For one who marries such a husband as Ivan, it is no very great sin to keep a little affection for a handsome lover from the old days!’
‘Make sure of her, Chelminsky; let her love thee madly, and when she is at her maddest thou shalt marry me before her eyes. ”

“ Let Peter marry when he is old enough, and leave me alone—you, sister, and you, Galitsin, and you, Miloslavsky. I have done you no harm.’
‘But see, dear Ivan,’ said the Regent Sophia, ‘you have come to man’s estate, and men should marry. It is the intention and the will of the Almighty that they should do so; go not contrary to the laws of God. Your life is dull and lonely; why should you not choose for yourself a companion, as other men do, to comfort your days? ”

“ What manner of a husband would the Tsar be for such as your daughter? She should marry a man, not a plaster figure!’
‘And who in the devil’s name are you, then?’ said old Kurbatof, astonished at my boldness.
‘I own to as good a name as even your own—Chelminsky. It is one of the best of our Cossack names; not like Mazeppa’s there, which he picked up Heaven knows where—no Cossack knows it! I am a better suitor than he, Boyar. He tells you doubtless that he will be Hetman; but it is also possible that I shall be so, and not he; for I have a Tsar behind me, and he a Regent. ”

“ Doubtless those few who were unwilling to be chosen were they whom Love had so securely entangled in his net that the poor fluttering things had lost their heads and were unable to see salvation except in struggling for freedom.
Thus some preferred, as I say, to disfigure themselves, and a few tried to escape; and among these latter was a fair maiden, Doonya Meschersky, who was so terribly in love with her lover, Kostromsky, that they could not wait upon events, but must needs take destiny into their own hands and attempt in clumsy fashion to shape their own ends. ”

“ And to my boundless surprise I recognised this frantic rider for the Tsar Peter himself—for him who is at this day known as Piotr Veleeki, Peter the Great; whose slightest word or frown is feared or hailed by millions of subjects; the conqueror of Charles of Sweden; a second Alexander the Great; the maker of a new Russia; the greatest Russian that God’s sun ever shone upon. ”

“ Lord! when I think of it, I suspect thee still!’
‘That is for ever the way of a man when he is fully in love; he must needs suspect that all other men are of the same way of thinking as himself! It is a good thing that men differ in their opinion of a woman. This Vera is certainly fair enough, but to my eyes there are others as fair and fairer. I doubt not my old love will come back to me, now that she has failed to outdo Praskovia Soltikof in the regard of the Tsar. ”

“ You are a beautiful woman, Olga; what man could gaze upon you and his pulses not beat the faster?’{232}
‘Well—well, I am yours, if you will. I have always preferred you above the rest, at Batourin or elsewhere, though I have loved to live gaily and to hear the flattery of men; come, you shall have me, you shall marry me here in Moscow, when you will, and then you shall tell Soltikof, or, better still, I shall tell her myself that I have carried off her lover. Does the fool think she shall have the Tsar and thee too?’
‘There is a difficulty, but only one,’ I said, as if perplexed. ”

“ If my heart were of the breaking kind, that would have been a deadly blow when thou didst leave Batourin in my absence for the terem of the Tsar, forgetting thy plighted troth to me!’
‘What, the chance to be Tsaritsa, and abandon it because of a word to thee? Thou must think me a fool indeed, Chelminsky!’
‘And what of certain courting with Mazeppa while the lover was away?’
‘Bah! Mazeppa! to dally with Mazeppa means nothing, for every woman is the same to him; all are toys, to play with and to forget in a day! ”

“ Were I one of them I should pray to God from this moment until the last hour of the choice that the Tsar might choose any one of the maidens rather than myself. Imagine, my brothers, the being mated with such a thing! A Tsar that dribbles at the mouth and chatters to himself, but will speak to no other if he can avoid it. A Tsar that falls in a fit if startled or loudly spoken to; a creature that—if he were not a Tsar—must be laughed at, or wept over ”

“ Shall we not do the best for our own country? What matters who is Hetman or whether a man dies, or a hundred men, if we are learning meanwhile what is wisdom and what is folly?’
‘I am not a reader of riddles,’ said I, ‘but this I know and will say, that you shall treat me as an equal, for your equal I am, or it maybe that swords will be drawn, and it shall be shown that you have a superior.’
‘See here, Chelminsky,’ said Mazeppa in his friendliest manner; ‘put up your sword, or rather do not dream of drawing it against me who am your best friend. ”