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Updated: May 12, 2025
One evening early in October, 1773, Captain Mironoff called Chvabrine and me to his house. He had received a letter from the general at Orenburg with information that a fugitive Cossack named Pugatchéf had taken the name of the late Czar, Peter III., and, with an army of robbers, was rousing the country, destroying forts and committing murder and theft.
Chvabrine, an officer who had been dismissed from the guards for fighting a duel, and Marya, a young girl of sixteen, with a fresh, round face, the commandant's daughter, were also at dinner. Mironoff pleaded in excuse for being late for dinner that he had been busy drilling his little soldiers, but his wife cut him short ruthlessly.
I wished earnestly to draw him from the band of robbers of which he was the chief, and save his head ere it should be too late. The presence of Chvabrine and of the crowd around us prevented me from expressing to him all the feelings which filled my heart. We parted friends. Pugatchéf saw in the crowd Akoulina Pamphilovna, and amicably threatened her with his finger, with a meaning wink.
On the morrow, just as I was busy composing an elegy, and I was biting my pen as I searched for a rhyme, Chvabrine tapped at my window. I laid down the pen, and I took up my sword and left the house. "Why delay any longer?" said Chvabrine. "They are not watching us any more. Let us go to the river-bank; there nobody will interrupt us."
You would never believe how frightened I used to be of those confounded Pagans. If ever I chanced to see their hairy caps, or hear their howls, believe me, my little father, I nearly died of it. And now I am so accustomed to it that I should not budge an inch if I was told that the rascals were prowling all around the fort." "Vassilissa Igorofna is a very brave lady," remarked Chvabrine, gravely.
The position of a poor orphan left solitary and friendless in the power of rascals filled me with fear, while my own powerlessness equally distressed me; but Chvabrine, Chvabrine above all, filled me with alarm. Invested with all power by the usurper, and left master in the fort, with the unhappy girl, the object of his hatred, he was capable of anything. What should I do? How could I help her?
I went out with Chvabrine, speculating upon what we had just heard. "What do you think of it? How will it all end?" I asked him. "God knows," said he; "we shall see. As yet there is evidently nothing serious. If, however " Then he fell into a brown study while whistling absently a French air. In spite of all our precautions the news of Pugatchéf's appearance spread all over the fort.
Then, approaching Marya, "Tell me, my little dove, why your husband punishes you thus?" "My husband!" rejoined she; "he is not my husband. Never will I be his wife. I am resolved rather to die, and I shall die if I be not delivered." Pugatchéf cast a furious glance upon Chvabrine. "You dared deceive me," cried he. "Do you know, villain, what you deserve?" Chvabrine dropped on his knees.
He avers that he saved my life by not exposing Akoulina Pamphilovna's stratagem when she spoke of me to the robbers as her niece, but it would be easier to me to die than to become the wife of a man like Chvabrine. He treats me with great cruelty, and threatens, if I do not change my mind, to bring me to the robber camp, where I should suffer the fate of Elizabeth Kharloff.
It is scarcely necessary to say that every day we met, Chvabrine and I. Still hour by hour his conversation pleased me less. His everlasting jokes about the Commandant's family, and, above all, his witty remarks upon Marya Ivánofna, displeased me very much. I had no other society but that of this family within the little fort, but I did not want any other.
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