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Updated: June 15, 2025
All at once I thought I saw some thing black. "Halloo! coachman," I cried out, "what is that black thing yonder?" The coachman looked attentively where I indicated. "God knows, my lord," he replied, re-mounting to his seat; "it is not a kibitka, nor a tree; it seems to be moving. It must be a wolf or a man!" I ordered him to go in the direction of the unknown object which was coming toward us.
Our Tartar was humming a plaintive air; Saveliitch, sound asleep, swayed from side to side; our kibitka was gliding rapidly over the winter road. I saw in the distance a village well known to my eyes, with its palisade and church spire on the steep bank of the river Iaik. A quarter of an hour after we entered the fortress of Belogorsk. The kibitka stopped before the Commandant's house.
Military life seemed now a calamity. The next morning a kibitka was at the door; my trunk was placed on it, and also a case holding tea and a tea-service, with some napkins full of rolls and pastry, the last sweet bits of the paternal home. Both my parents gave me their solemn benediction. My father said, "Adieu, Peter.
Ordinarily by means of boats specially built for the conveyance of travelers, carriages, and horses, the passage of the Yenisei takes about three hours, and then it is with extreme difficulty that the boats reach the opposite bank. Now, in the absence of any ferry, how was the kibitka to get from one bank to the other?
His sagacity, the delicacy of his sense of smell, filled me with admiration; I ordered my coachman to go wherever the other wished. The horses walked heavily through the deep snow. The kibitka advanced but slowly, now raised on a hillock, now descending into a hollow, swaying from side like a boat on a stormy sea. Saveliitch, falling over on me every instant, moaned.
He was cast out of a window, he was massacred, burnt, and his ashes blown abroad at the cannon's mouth, to the four winds of heaven." The Tartar began to hum a plaintive song; Savéliitch, fast asleep, oscillated from one side to the other. Our "kibitka" was passing quickly over the wintry road.
"The Tartars have burnt out his eyes!" replied Nadia, extending her hands, as if imploring pity. "Burnt out his eyes! Oh! poor little father! I am going to Krasnoiarsk. Well, why should not you and your sister mount in the kibitka? By sitting a little close, it will hold us all three. Besides, my dog will not refuse to go on foot; only I don't go fast, I spare my horse."
Get out, excellency, as quick as you can, and let us see you get warm." I got out of the kibitka. The snowstorm still raged, but less violently. It was so dark that one might, as we say, have as well been blind. The host received us near the entrance, holding a lantern beneath the skirt of his caftan, and led us into a room, small but prettily clean, lit by a loutchina.
My attention was called to several vehicles of local manufacture but my friends advised me not to try them. I sought a Kazanski kibitka and with the aid of an intelligent isvoshchik succeeded in finding one. Its purchase was accomplished in a manner peculiarly Russian. The seller was a mischanin or Russian merchant of the peasant class.
In the meanwhile the kibitka pursued its way, at a pace which Michael longed to render more rapid. But Nicholas and his horse were accustomed to a pace which neither of them would like to alter. The horse went for two hours and rested one so on, day and night. During the halts the horse grazed, the travelers ate in company with the faithful Serko.
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